Read Masked (2010) for Free Online Page A

an idol.
    I bite down. Nothing. It’s like biting steel. I bite again, harder this time, and I can feel the skin give way, just a little, but my Rock teeth sing with a queer pain, like I’m biting down on electrified tinfoil.
    I bite down as hard as I can, clamping my jaw on Verlaine’s forearm like an attack dog. I can feel the teeth beginning to crack in my mouth. The pain, my God the pain is unbelievable. Just when I think I can’t take another second of this, Verlaine’s skin parts and his flesh pours into my mouth, soft and clean, filet mignon.
    The transformation is mind-blowing. Verlaine blasts through my system, ejecting the Rock without a moment’s notice, totally taking me over. I feel him surge into my bones and muscles, bubble up into my brain. My teeth begin to heal. My body balances and relaxes, poised and graceful. My mind reels; I’m dizzy with the potency of it. Then Verlaine seeps into my consciousness and I feel a sense of clarity like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I’m gasping, trying to control my thoughts. Everything is so
obvious
. Verlaine, who he was. Me, who I am. I see the way Verlaine saw, not just with my eyes, though this too is astonishing and I find myself drinking in even the tiniest aspect of the visual world. But I feel his goodness and wisdom as well. I reflect on myself. I see and understand David Caulfield: Wildcard in a way that I’ve never, ever known myself, and I realize that this is how Verlaine always knew me.
    I know that Verlaine, though he would never have told anyone, apparently not even Jeanie, actually held one small, petty jealousy.
    It was of me.

    Flying with Verlaine’s power is nothing like flying on NightingaleAir. The wind doesn’t fight against me—it becomes my ally. The Universe lifts me and carries me where I want to go. I can sense the globe underneath me; I can feel the vibrations of the cities. I can smell the Ghoul King and his children ahead of me while I’m still over Pennsylvania.
    I see him the instant he clears the horizon, my vision cutting through clouds and air pollution. I can see him like he’s right in front of my face. I feel invincible.
    Oh my sweet fucking Christ. This is exactly how Verlaine must have felt flying toward the thing on the day he died.
    Verlaine wasn’t invincible. He wasn’t immortal. My skin crawls and even that sensation is multiplied a hundredfold by my enhanced awareness. What chance do
I
have?
    It’s too late, though. The Ghoul King has put down everyone who’s stood against him. It’s been almost three hours since I left the fight and the King and what remain of his minions are having the city of Milwaukee for brunch. I see him right in front of me. I’m flying at around six hundred miles an hour. Somehow he senses me coming and turns to meet me. Unable to pull back in time, I accelerate directly into his lashed-out fist at the speed of sound.

    To Verlaine, pain is a sensation that, like all sensations, can be savored by his heightened consciousness. My own way of thinking about pain—i.e., that it hurts—vies with Verlaine’s and it’s like I’m seeing double, but with my mind instead of my eyes. The pain separates what is quintessentially me from what is quintessentially Verlaine, and the comparison in no way flatters me.
    It takes a second for me to realize that I’m on the ground and that the Ghoul King is standing above me, shrieking. His right hand is hanging at an odd angle and I realize, peering through his rocky exterior with X-ray vision, that my impact on him broke two bones in his wrist. All
I
broke was my nose. Take
that
, asshole.
    My mind gets caught up in the many nonvisible spectra for a second, and when I switch back to plain old light, I note that inthe Ghoul King’s left hand he is holding a minivan. I don’t need Verlaine’s insight to realize that the King’s plan is to brain me with the minivan, so I pivot and stand, gracefully pirouetting my body in the air. My God, how