Mask

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Scene Title Mask
Synopsis "A mask tells us more than a face." ― Oscar Wilde
Date February 25, 2019

5:59 am


Eyes open just a moment before the alarm sounds.

Sitting forward in the chair he slept in, he touches the screen of his phone and dismisses the wake-up call. Faint blue light shines through drawn curtains of his tiny, closet-sized studio apartment. It’s morning. Time to start.

Slowly rising from his chair, he moves across the floor past a table stacked with printed maps and sea charts. A photograph of a shipping container and a tanker ship are pinned to the wall above his couch with a single red thread connecting them.

He steps into the bathroom, flicks the light on, and looks in the dirty mirror.

“Good morning.”


7:01 am


“Good morning Mr. Bennet,” greets the executive assistant at the front desk of Fort Jay.

Coffee in hand, Noah offers an incline of his head and a raise of his paper cup in a cheers gesture as he briskly walks past the security desk and down one of the wood-panel accented corridors, past glass-walled offices. Most of the people in Fort Jay don’t say good morning, most move one step aside when he passes them in the halls, most know him only by reputation and the shadow of what was.

Noah stops outside of an office marked Administrative Planning, 1 and raps on the door with his free hand, coffee in the other. “Another day, another dossier…” Inside the room, Benjamin Ryans turns a slow look up at Bennet, one brow raised.


12:13 pm


There’s a wooden bench situated under the bough of a three-hundred year old elm tree on Governor’s Island. Bennet looks overly large sitting on the bench, a crinkled-top paper bag at his side, hands in his lap, shoulders square and eyes forward. A cool wind blows through the leafless tree, patches of mostly melted snow are persistent against the still-cold ground. No one else is around, it’s too cold, too windy.

Bennet looks down to the heavy bag containing his lunch, brows furrowed in thought, and then looks back out to the lapping shore in silence.


5:02 pm


“Good night Mr. Bennet,” the executive assistant at the front desk of Fort Jay says as Bennet walks through the lobby on his way out for the day. He turns, just enough to flash a smile and raise his coffee in a “cheers” gesture. Most of the people in Fort Jay don’t say goodnight to Noah, though leave a few minutes before he does to catch the ferry. Noah is never too concerned with catching the first ferry off of Governor’s Island.

He always misses it by 3 minutes.


8:17 pm


The door shuts and locks, and he leans against the door frame. Swallowing dryly, he rests his head against the door with a soft thump, eyes shut, shoulders slack. The sound of the rain outside hammers on the apartment’s small windows, light from outside casts streaking shadows of rain on the walls, their forking paths ever-dividing.

With a deep exhalation of breath, he tries to find the energy to do anything other than collapse. It’s a hard fought battle, the sound of movement in his tiny kitchenette enough to stir him to movement. Leaning away from the door, he slides the chain shut and the deadbolt in place, then retrieves a handgun from inside of his jacket. Creeping across the floor of the apartment, he makes his way for the small kitchenette, stepping through the doorway with a sudden burst of speed and leveling the handgun down at—

A young girl stares back up at him, cradling a box of crackers in one hand, some in her mouth. Dark hair is plastered to her face, clothing rainslick and clinging to her slight frame. He lowers the gun, brows furrowed, seeing both the fear and confusion in her eyes.

“How’d you get in here?” He asks, gun down at his side. The girl, finishing her cracker with a noisy chomp, sets the box down and slides down from where she sits on the countertop. As her bare and dirty feet touch the tile floor, she takes one step toward him and into the streetlamp light coming in through the kitchen windows.

“How did you get in there?” She asks of him, one brow raised over wide eyes.

Gold eyes.

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