When I Wear the Mask

"About fifteen years, maybe. Long enough to seem like he was always there to anyone growing up in those parts."

So he's at least ten years older than me, probably more. Older than Kai, Sheba, and Mason.

"Did he choose Depot to haunt from the start?"

"Not sure, but it was probably pretty soon after he worked out his first pig suit," Mason said. His eyes always scanned their surroundings. "I didn't watch the early work. I only got here eight years ago, but he's changed his appearance in that time. If something works better in the design of the costume. Most don't realize it, though. They don't get close enough, stay along enough at Depot, or live to tell about it if they do."

She nodded, kept her voice low. "Why Depot?"

Mason pursed his lips. He might have an idea but was picking his answer. She jumped on him again, caught him mid-thought.

"He called you 'little brother' when you introduced me," she prompted.

"We're not related," Mason stated in no uncertain terms.

"But he's been fucking with you like he's fucking with me. The type of fuckery that occasionally helps and protects you from other arsehats, but it's still not a good thing. Am I right? Not an alliance you can trust at all because he's calling all the shots and using rules known only to him. Because he wants something in particular from you and he's protecting you for his own interest."

The man grimaced. "Alright, yeah. He might be part of the reason I'm still here. And still alive."

"He thinks of you as his brother," she suggested.

Mason exhaled slowly, looked around them. He leaned closer, and so did she. "Don't use what I'm going to say against him. I'm only saying because I don't want you to poke him directly about this and get yourself killed."

She nodded with all earnestness. "Agreed."

"Again, I wasn't here when whatever happened, happened. But over the years I've gleaned that he had a younger brother named Adam, a kid he might have given a shit about, but something happened to him. As far as I can tell, I'm the surrogate, though he never calls me by his brother's name. I'm 'Mikey.' Nobody calls me that but him, nobody fucks with me but him. He makes sure of it."

Mason stood up to toss the rest of his cone into a nearby trash, perhaps only because he had to move around a bit. He was deep in thought when he joined her again.

"It's part of the reason I'm stuck where I am," he told her. "I won't be promoted out of Depot if I gave a shit about climbing upward, which I don't. But I can't quit, either, never mind what leverage your own guys think they have over me. They kill me, and Pigman finds out it was yours who did it, he'll cause them problems. Guaranteed. Maybe they don't care about collateral damage with us way down here and them up there. Hell, I don't care, either. But he would. And you already know he's unstable."

Cammie absorbed that and considered. "It's as I thought, then. He must have contacts with upper management at Depot. They let him hang around and do what he likes. They trained him to fight rather than brawl."

Mason shrugged noncommittally as if there was something else. "He's some of the best security they've got. Keeps everyone paranoid, never know what he'll see them do. He knows the place inside and out. Randomly appears to make an example of someone. He's the mascot everyone recognizes and the boogeyman people tell stories about. He loves it. He's the happiest motherfucker in this Hellhole, and Management likes having him around."

Her breath was coming faster, but she realized it and slowed it down.

"If you're a brother, what am I to him?" she asked nervously. "He doesn't seem to have much experience with women."

"Not ones that talk back like he's got a brain and laugh at his jokes," Mason agreed dryly.

"One crude joke about a contact not being able to find shit in diapers," she protested. "And it slipped out. It was in the delivery."

Her contact smiled a bit wider as he found this amusing. "Doesn't matter. You laughed. I expect he mostly hears crying and screaming when he gets too close to a woman who isn't a prostitute. Usually his intent, too. The only reason he's killed more men than women, I think, is just because there aren't as many women walking around in the open stirring shit up."

~~~~

Firming up her jaw, Cammie twisted the doorknob in an exaggerated motion but didn't open the door to the office as she still watched the man in the pig suit. She didn't expect him to flinch, but she thought she knew by now the way he seemed to stretch up in anticipation when he was expecting to see something vastly amusing—like a naked blonde getting perforated with shrapnel, for example.

Pigman didn't stretch up; he was relaxed and just waited, adjusting his erection again.

It was probably safe to open the door.

Cammie pushed it open with a loud creak and hopped over the tripwire, entering the dark room a few paces. Pigman immediately blocked the doorway, his elbows braced on either side of the frame. The chain was still wrapped around his forearm, the hook dangling.

"Lamp's tah yer right. Turn it on."

"Certainly," she replied and fumbled half-blind for something she thought looked like a floor lamp. She felt the rapid thump inside her chest and against her eardrums, realizing she could smell something sour and smoky in the room, like...

Well, I don't really know.

She found the neck of the lamp and followed it up toward the bulb, finally locating the switch. She turned the light on.

The room was painted a dark red—with actual paint as far as she could tell—and it contained at her first glance a very old black and white TeeVee with a set of bent rabbit ears, a worn but comfortable-looking brown couch, a desk bare of any office supplies at all, and the lamp itself with a red shade that kept the light soft and reminiscent of a whorehouse.

She blinked when she next saw the framed painting on one wall. A print, not an original, but she recognized " Setting of the Sun" by Bouchette. The frothy sea and constant rain washed everyone away except for a few naked women reaching for salvation by an unnamed, hairless man.

"Like it?" he snickered. "Nice tits."

"Uhm," she faltered, trying and failing to reconcile a classical painting she'd once seen in the Paucleaux District with Pigman's lair. She looked elsewhere, muttering, "Very nice."

There was another room farther back with the door open. She could see it was dominated by a standing, locked cabinet and a workbench with a whole stockpile of tools for repairing or building any number of things. She also glimpsed what she knew must be tanned pig leather hanging in irregular sections from the ceiling.

That's the sour-smoke smell. Definitely his 'working' area. But he doesn't live here. No bed. No food.

She wondered if this was one of those " You've seen it, now I have to kill you" situations?

Then she saw the writing on the wall. Literally.

There were numerous marks on the red wall that weren't part of any design except whatever he'd felt like scrawling or carving at the time. The freshest one had her undivided attention, gleaming nearly white from the sheetrock beneath the paint and undoubtedly made by one of his meat hooks.

Kai + Camy

Sheba + Camy

Mikey + Camy

Pigman eats Camy

She gaped. All but the last had a line struck through it. The first one was no secret; she'd been under Kai's protection for her first seven months undercover. Only recently they had gone their separate ways. Cammie had to wonder if he knew about her tryst with her Sapphic Truck Boss, or was it just a lucky guess?

Mason...

The mark through his name on the wall was made with harsher strokes than the other two.

Oh, God. I haven't slept with him.

Mason helped her. She helped him. They were both fucked anyway, and it was complicated enough without sex.

The last one. What does he mean...'eats'?

Pigman shifted his weight and made an appreciative humming noise behind her and she turned around in time to see him step over the wire and enter the room fully, shutting the door with a heavy hand. He grinned wider seeing her tits as he unwrapped the chain from his forearm.

Oh, God.

"Cold, or just happy t'see me?"

She couldn't formulate an answer. Her eyes were fixed on whatever he would do with that chain when the big man closed the distance between them. The chain and hook dropped to the floor beside them with a loud clank, and he seized her shoulders with bruising, meaty fingers. She couldn't stop him from pushing her backwards until she bumped against the desk. He kept pushing until she was bent, her feet barely scraping the bare floor as her back pressed against the hard, cold synthawood. She was held there by the hard heat of the killer's body.

She didn't scream.

Struggling to ease the edge of the desk which pressed painfully into the small of her back, she gripped him by his bare, hairy forearms, her fingernails digging in. She stared at the pig mask up close, closer than anyone got at expected to live.

The snout rough and cured, the mouth stretching grotesquely wide to outline Pigman's leering mouth and flared nostrils. His eyes—darker even than hers, dark brown but practically black—stared out from the eyeholes. She stared helplessly for a moment, forgetting in the heavy wash of his presence and his hot breath that she had planned to share in the control of this situation.

He shoved the hard ridge in his trousers against her belly, watched intently for her reaction.

Then she remembered.

"Y-You're ready to give it a go," she observed, panting, her voice shaking with adrenalin as she rubbed against him but didn't outdo him in the pelvic grind. "Alright, yes. I hope you keep your promise, and eat me first."

~~~~

"Congratulations, Mr. Mason, Miss Jeanon. Those who work here at Depot need not fear the shadows anymore."

District Manager Corey Roberts shook Mason's hand first, then her hand, looking her over for a second. He had an Uptown accent like her. It was a bit of a disconnected statement but he was putting on a show for their visitor.

"Thank you, Corey," Mason replied.

"Thank you, sir," she said.

"Yes, security grabbed our man early this morning," Roberts turned to say to a tall, wide man in a dark blue business suit beside him. "He's being interrogated, but available at your beck and call, Mr. Dunham."

Mr. Abel Dunham. Not just Roberts' boss. Everybody's. Management himself, the owner of the company came to check on seeing how this "issue" had been handled. His hair was solid, iron grey and his face very wrinkled but he was still powerfully built. The suit was nice, but not top of the line that she had seen. Management didn't offer to shake hands but nodded to Mason with vague familiarity and looked her over.

"So this here girl found 'im?" Mr. Dunham asked, nodding his chin. His voice was gravelly, and his accent was low-born.

"Yes, sir," Robert responded, looking proud as if he'd suggested the test assignment himself. In his mind, he already had. "Cammie Jeanon. A runaway who's been with us nine months. Good education and a father who was a Detective among the LVR. Confirmed. She has the sleuthing skills. Mason pointed her out to us when the second body was found."

Mr. Dunham nodded, looking bored with the conversation already. He glanced at the two men behind him, his bodyguards, who were somehow even a bit taller and wider than he was. Both wore a dark grey business suit.

"Ready tah stand witness fer a hard preachin'?" Mr. Dunham asked them, formal and serious.

"Yessir," they replied.

Cammie hadn't been studying the bodyguards too closely while she focused on Roberts and Mr. Dunham, but when that odd, bored look passed over Management's eyes, she felt a creep of recognition and looked to the bodyguards when Dunham did. Two men who looked alike, and looked like younger versions of Mr. Dunham.

His sons. Mid-thirties, maybe.

Crew cut, dirty blond hair. Big. One had hazel eyes, the other very dark brown. The dark-eyed one looked at her, noticed her staring at him. He realized something just when she did, and Mason slowly, subtly closed fingers on her wrist in warning when the owner's son smiled. It was far more subdued than when he wore the mask. She kept her gasp inside.

"C'mon, then, Daniel," Mr. Dunham said, looking at the one with hazel eyes before jerking his jaw for the second to follow. "Caleb."

"Comin', Pa."

They left with Corey Roberts, none of them looked back, and she and Mason were left to do what they would. She exhaled slow and steady, willing herself not to tremble.

Mason leaned close to her ear, still touching her wrist. "Do not breathe a word. "

~~~~

The pig's head looked down, ears quivering in front of her eyes. He bit down on her nipple.

"AH! Oh, shit!"

He lapped at it with the full width of his tongue then sucked hard. Popped his lips off, leaving it long, aching, and red.

Oww.

Cammie half-expected him to go for the other one and give it the same treatment, but he slid his gloved hand behind her skull and grabbed her short hair instead. He was back to staring into her eyes. The man's face, the shine in his eyes, was nothing like how he had looked next to his father and brother back at Depot. No smile. No calm observance. Just deep wells for eyes, twisted lips, his skin sweating and giving off heat like a furnace as he shook with barely restrained violence.

"Gonna say this once," he rumbled. "Name ain't Caleb when I wear the mask."

"Understood," she grimaced at the grip he had on her hair. "Never again. Ow, fuck."

He paused as if weighing whether he believed her, whether this was punishment enough or if he should press it more. Her spine was in pain and she still gripped his forearms to alleviate it as her sore toes dragged against the throw rug under the desk without a chair. She tried opening her legs to distract him, and he stepped right into them, letting go of her hair and reaching down to grab her bare ass with both, huge hands. He lifted, settling her on top of the desk proper and that alleviated the strain immediately.

She exhaled. He squeezed with his fingers, eyes drawn down to her breasts. He leaned forward to inhale the scent of her skin, the cure snout nudging and bumping her chin. He leaned back up, and the broad, mad grin was back, the dialect thick and exaggerated.

"Kinda like it when yah cuss. Sounds hot comin' out o' that prissy, proper ahk-sent."

"Fucking lovely," she replied, slowly drawing up a thigh against his hip as a test. "Those gloves feel like sandpaper, you know."

Chuckling, Pigman took them off without a tease, as if he couldn't wait to maul her again without the obstruction. He groped her ass some more before trying her thighs and hips, then her tits straight on. His hands were true worker's hands. He squeezed, kneading roughly like she was one of his feral catches being rubbed down for curing. His breath shuddered in his eagerness. He drooled a little at the corner of his mouth as his cock pulsed again, the lump pressed hard against her.

"Oh, shit," she whispered, and he became harder still.

He liked to hear her talk. His body was very hot, such that her skin became tacky where she touched him. He smelled as though he regularly visited the sewers or roamed the streets picking fights, chasing some poor fuck, sweating all the while in his suit.

Pigman took her left arm by the wrist and stretched it up above her head; he pressed nose and lips to her armpit—more recently bathed than him, for certain, but she'd been sweating since she woke up—and he nuzzled and licked and rumbled in contentment. Then he switched to the other one. His eyes were closed as he sniffed her pit and groped one breast at the same time.

"Damned shit," she breathed again, arching against him and squeezing her thighs around him.

"Mmmm, prime trim," he growled.

He wasn't done mouthing her by a far shot; he took his time. His tongue would eventually coat her chest and belly with his spit, and he pushed her thighs open as he went to one knee to start sniffing her sex, the pigheaded hood of his costume appearing from her view like it was rooting around in her navel for grubs.

Ew.

Cammie froze when he started eating her pussy, her eyes fixed on a crack in the ceiling through the first part of it. He had no practice with oral sex, but that wasn't really his intent. He tilted his head, drew her labia between his lips, champed them lightly with his teeth. In between sampling licks with his tongue, he chewed on her—mostly with his lips, but enough with his teeth to keep her cooperative, not making any sudden movements.

"Taste piss," he drawled.

"Yes, well, uh—"

"Like it. 'Specially on you."

Pigman tasted deeper, pushing his tongue up inside her and she gasped, clenching around him, and he growled again happily, lifting his head but sticking his finger in deep, all at once, as he chortled between her thighs.

"How tight is this piece? Squeeze again."

"Fuck!" she barked, trembling as she complied, drawing down tight as she could it.

"Slut hasn't been used up by everyone around Depot, eh?"

"Piss off, Pigman, you know I haven't."

"Maybe. But everyone wants to."

He fucked her like a clod with his finger.

"Like those punks chasin' you when you first got here."

She grimaced in frustration. Again, he didn't know what to do, but he had the sawing motion down right behind her bladder, and she was so flushed from the chase and the capture and the extended mauling, she was fucking starting to respond!

Lucky? This could have started off at a much worse point, yet it could still shift that way in the blink of an eye if she set him off.

Fuck my job.

Pigman noticed her hips move and her biting both her lips at the same time like she was trying to be quiet but failing. He sniffed the air. Deeply. She made noises even if she kept her mouth closed. He leaned down closer. Those black eyes were fixed, unblinking.

"Yer wet," he whispered.

She stared back, made sure she sounded very Uptown in her reply. "Fingers are well and good, Pigman, but clearly I'd rather have your cock rutting this hole."

For a moment he was still, then he bellowed one, loud laugh in her face and jerked out his finger. He sniffed that and swiftly opened his trousers. She glimpsed a wild nest and generous spread of light brown body hair framing a decent erection, the large, swollen head dark red bordering on purple.

Then he aimed right for it and pushed it in.

She cried out, feeling herself yield to the whole length all at once. "Fucking, shit-banging wanker!"

Pigman uttered something that sounded like an affirmative and grunted like a boar, slamming in hard and fast. Very soon he had to grab her shoulder and her opposite wrist to prevent her from shifting off the far side of the desk with each slap and bang. Cammie kept her legs wide and her pelvic muscles tense and gripping, trying to get him off quickly.

She might have expected that wouldn't work to plan. Nothing ever did. For some unfathomable reason, now he felt like talking.

He stopped, held himself inside to the root—she could feel his hair damp between them—and leaned down to breathe in her face.

"What's Kai gonna say when he hears I fucked yah, an' yah liked it?"

She turned her head slightly. "Not his say anymore, is it?

"Sure ain't. Heh. Has the butch made you eat her snatch yet?"

Cammie became stubborn. "No. She didn't make me do anything. I was going to, anyway."

"Figured she'd soften yah up some first."

"She only does that to blokes who try too hard to watch."