Death Masks: Vignettes of Anti-Reactionary Retribution—A Reimagining of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”

The Guard

Death came for the last guard, begowned in the red of the blood the soldier had spilled, first overseas, then at home. Though their pallid face’s lowered lids appeared alluring under ashy eyeshadow, their suddenly upturned irises glowed green with jealousy at the thought of a mortal man with a mere gun thinking himself their equal. Ensuring the guard had adequate time to both feel and grasp his earthly end, Death killed him with a lingering, withering look. Like his fallen comrades, he crumbled to the ground at their feet, only a faint, final exhalation escaping his shocked face’s parted lips. With a single gesture, upturning their wrist and unfurling their fingers, Death watched the man’s immaculate uniform disintegrate and muscular corpse decay until both were reduced to nothing more than a heap of dust.

The Congressman

Once inside, Death came for the congressman, dressed in blue—blue jeans, to be exact. Stretched tight over both rounded ass and bulging crotch, they lured the latter, lurker of men’s rooms, without fail. Relishing embodying the young man murdered by the closeted hypocrite’s inflammatory rhetoric, Death arched their back away from the urinal, clenched their buttocks, and let loose a forceful stream aimed to attract attention.

“How you got in here dressed like that I’ll never know,” the congressman began, standing behind and to the side, between his prey and the door he had just locked, his arms crossed and eyes fixed. “You’re disrespecting the dignity of the office and the occasion. I should have you tossed out on the street.”

In answer, Death turned their curly-haired head to face the man and, also turning their youthful body just enough to offer him a better view, smiled, all the while keeping the arcing stream on target and going strong.

Approaching Death, the pudgy, balding, bespeckled politician, his stern tone softening into a Southern drawl, continued “But there’s no need for that, is there? After all, one good turn deserves another, and you turned so well, my lovely, lovely boy.”

Now the object of the man’s desire, Death’s adopted penis performed its part to his delight, playfully spritzing shortening bursts of piss as its length and girth grew, skin tightened, veins bulged, and glans swelled and purpled.

“You need a hand with that,” the old man said, omitting the question mark.

Death looked down at their upcurved, bobbing erection and back up at their flush-faced, lip-licking Lothario wannabe who, uninvited, reached out his hand. But before he could seize his prize, both his hands smacked against the urine-stained floor to break his fall as he suddenly dropped to his knees!

Untouched and not unwell, the congressman looked up at Death but only saw their fully engorged phallus waving so tantalizingly beyond his grasp. Unable to rise as mesmerized as he was, the fat old man in the expensive blue suit gazed agonizingly at what he, after so many, many years of “public service,” unexpectedly could not now possess. But then, his rheumy gray eyes spied precum leaking out of the youth’s turgid cock, beginning to form a clear droplet that grew and hung lower with each additional scintilla of sweet, sweet nectar. When, after an interminable wait, the dangling drop descended along a thinning strand, the congressman could not help but strain desperately against his invisible bonds to reach it. His grunts and groans only silenced by necessity, he stretched out his slobbering pale tongue, which had helped voiced lie after lie, to its full length in a last, frantic effort to taste and take into himself youth’s virile essence. Then to his unblinking, tearing eyes’ delight, the fragile thread finally snapped and the drop fell free to land on the tip of his forked tongue. In this way, Death killed the congressman with the very poison of his deceitful desire.

The Press Secretary

Death came for the press secretary, wearing white and a large gold cross—the bleach-bottle blonde’s signature look. However, they took things a step further than with the guard and the congressman by also donning the young woman’s likeness while rendering her unseen and unheard. Quickly enough, the smart mouth realized to her indignant dismay how imperceptible and impotent she had been rendered no matter how loudly and shamelessly she carried on. So, finding she had no choice, she pursed her “Gatling gun” lips and glared at herself with more hostility than she had ever looked upon the press pool.

As imposter Death fired off the press secretary’s tried-and-true lies one after the other, at first spinning a web and then a cocoon of falsehoods to ensnare her small audience of select sycophants as would a mother spider about to eat her own, the young woman scrutinized her doppelganger hatefully, then curiously, and finally incredulously—incredulously because of the changes ever more rapidly overtaking her fake face as faint lines deepened into wrinkles that then loosened into sagging skin, transforming chiseled cheeks into drooping jowls and a taut neck into that of a gobbling turkey. But an even uglier degradation soon arrested the press secretary’s attention as the spittle flying from her mimicked vaunted lips turned black with bile that quickly overflowed them and began to gush out in gouts between strangled words. Horrified, the president’s prized spokeswoman made to scream, but unexpectedly finding herself the object of her shocked entourage’s disgust, choked to death in front of them on her last garbled lie.

The President

Death came for the president, dressed, without guilt, only in gilt—naked living luster that, with each forthright step, shone like molten gold under the sallow glow of begrimed ballroom chandeliers. Goddess of Mammon with the maiden’s face and figure of Columbia, she silenced masters of inconsequential earthly domains with her mere presence, parting their tuxedo-cloaked human corruption as light dispels darkness. Amid the garishly ornate temple to one wretch’s hubris erected atop history’s grave to bolster his fragile ego, she captivated every titan of industry, media, and technology, every millionaire, billionaire, and trillionaire, effortlessly.

Ironically the least but most powerful among them, the usually slouched president stood, for the first time in a long time, fully erect before her, enraptured! For once speechless, unable to ramble incoherently with confidence as was his way, he silently gazed agape upon the embodiment of everything he had ever desired in his long, miserable life—and she—Fortune incarnate—smiled back upon him! Not pausing to appreciate he had consent to take what he would and, as always, not caring what others thought, the president stepped forward and reached out to grab what in all the world enticed him most. In response, Death pointed Fortune’s finger at him and screamed—a silent scream that neither deafened and alarmed nor shattered wine glasses and windows—a silent scream so intense and focused it only tore through a single artery’s weakened wall. And so, the president, dead before his corpse impacted the marble floor, fell on his face before the woman of his dreams, inevitably forsaking all his wealth and power at the feet of the IRRESISTIBLE.