Flatten the Curve

Once again, Karen let him put the mask over her face, tighter this time. Straight up proper too - over the nose and mouth, straps over the ears. Airtight.

Nobody masked like Tony.

Nobody.

“Hit me,” she said, her voice mumbling its way through the sky blue fabric.

Before she could revel in the scent of her own exhalation, Tony’s large hands invaded her peripheral vision. He strapped another mask to her face, right over the footprint of the last one, pulling the straps so hard that she could hear them cut into his fleshy fingers. Then he let them go, and they snapped like whips across the backs of her ears.

“Oh…yeah!!!” she cried out in muffled ecstasy. Her heart skipped a beat and blood rushed into her cheeks as her lungs searched in vain for fresh air. The filthy warehouse she sat in began to blur, and a suffocated bliss took over.

“Hit me,” she said. The masks translated it into incomprehensible gibberish.

“I can’t understand you,” Tony said. His thick, gravelly Italian accent made him sound much bigger than he was.

“Hhhit me!” she cried.

“I think you have something over your face interfering with your speech.”

“Hhhhhitt mmm!!!”

“Hmmmm mmmh?” He was clearly mocking her. She secretly loved it.

“Hmmm mmm!!!” she screamed, shaking so violently that she nearly tipped over the chair she was strapped into. Like a child having a tantrum, she kicked and stomped on the floor as she cried out again and again, desperate for another fix. Sure, she could have stayed home and masked herself, but what fun was that? Yes, she wore two masks in the car by herself on the way here, but that was just her being safe. The reality of the situation was that nobody masked like Tony.

Nobody.

“Hhht mm,” she cried. “Hhht mmm, hhhtt mmmmm….HHHTTT MMMMM!!!!”

"That’s the spirit.”

Tony ripped open a new box of N-95s. He pulled out a handful of the masks and threw the carton aside. One after another he strapped them onto her, pulling them over her nose and mouth with such vigor that it felt like he was painting them onto her face. She cried out with each one, barely able to keep up with the escalating bombardment of virtuous asphyxiation. Tony laughed as she squirmed and twitched, thrashing about like a tied up hog. A dozen if not more of the awful rags now sat on her face, expanding and contracting like a demented pufferfish with each of her desperate futile breaths.

“Remember,” Tony said, tossing the empty box of N-95’s to the floor, “You’re doing this for others.” He leaned in close, whispering in her ear. “You’re doing this to help keep other people safe.”

Karen squealed with delight. “Hmmm Mmmmm,” she moaned, thrusting her head upwards so as to provide her servicer easier access to his target.

Tony grabbed another box and tore it open. Mask after mask, he savagely branded her visage, plastering her very essence with the muzzles of shame. How many she now wore was a mystery, but several dozen would be conservative and with Tony’s dazzling speed, the number might have actually grown closer to a hundred. Breathing was impossible. Her lungs had been filled with the same air for five minutes and everything was a blur. Lights and sounds were a sensory mush, a pudding of information her oxygen starved brain could no longer digest.

None of this mattered though. Karen was living out her ultimate fantasy, being punished for being human. Deep in her heart she knew the masks were bullshit. Sometimes she even wondered if the pandemic was real or not, or if it was actually some cruel trick the establishment was playing on the general public for some sinister motive. It didn’t matter. With no God in her life to render adoration upon, the ever present fear of an invisible disease had become her new guiding light. Hating herself for her uncleanliness had become her new religion, and masking had become her penance for the inescapable sin of being alive and dirty. The warehouse was her church, and Tony was her pastor. With every feeble attempt at inhalation, with every mask she wore, she could taste her own hypothetical unprovable infectiousness, and she loved every minute of it.

The masks continued to arrive on her face at a breakneck pace, the constant motion rocking her head back and forth in perpetual whiplash while an endless barrage of straps lashed across the backs of her ears. The pace of the fervor rose and rose like a symphony, until Tony finally broke it with a somber announcement.

“Last one,” he said.

Just like that, everything stopped. Karen sat bewildered, sweat dripping down her forehead onto the sponge-like protrusion of masks already soaked to capacity. Fragments of reality began to return as she sat in silence. She had driven forty-five minutes to get here and gas wasn’t cheap. Neither was Tony, for that matter. Her expectation was that she would be here for most of the afternoon, but what Tony said began to erode that fantasy.

What did he mean…last one?

Tony stepped out from behind the chair and walked in front of her, the empty box of N-95’s in one hand, and a single remaining mask dangling from the other. She slowly raised her oxygen deprived head, her droopy eyes gazing at him like he was some sort of god. The dim lighting in the warehouse obscured his features and so he looked like a large silhouette against the dusty wall behind him.

For a moment, everything was still. Then, Tony’s phone buzzed. He reached into his pocket and pulled it out, glancing at the screen.

“Uh oh.” he said, looking back at Karen. A devilish smile crept across his darkened face.

“News alert. Case numbers are up.”

Tony walked over a dark corner of the room and came back with several boxes of masks in hand. Karen’s eyes went wide and excitement filled her chest.

“Backup supply,” he said. “But first…”

Tony removed two long thin plastic tubes from his coat - PCR tests. He grabbed the pile of masks that sat on her face and forcefully yanked them down, stretching to elastic bands to their breaking points. With her nose and mouth exposed, Karen’s respiratory system let out a brief cry of relief. Favoring self-preservation over pandemic protocol, it quickly expelled the contents of her lungs and grabbed as much fresh air as it could. A moment later, Tony took the PCR tests and shoved one in each of her nostrils as far as they would go. Karen screamed in pain. Then he let go of the masks. The elastic bands contracted, whipping the pile of soaked fabric back onto her face, and driving the PCR tests into her brain like plastic nails.

“Two weeks baby!” Tony said, laughing maniacally as he ripped open a fresh box of masks.

“Time to flatten that curve!”