The Club, 2009

“Once the mask is gone I will just be Gerard, There is no going back. Do you understand?”

Swallowing hard, you nodded. The hand gripping your wrist relaxed and you edged your hand forward as if in slow motion. With your fingertips you dug at the edge of the mask and pulled. It came away easily in you hand, dropping into your lap. The sight before you made you gasp automatically.

A wound deep enough to need stitches at the local hospital. You heard about the attack in the news when it happened, almost fifteen years ago now. But it still didn’t prepare you to see it in real life. A long jagged wound crept from just below the corner of Gerard’s right eye, across his cheek in a diagonal to the edge of his nose. Even though new skin had formed, lumpy and silver with age, you could still see the intensity of the attack. It made a lump form in your throat. The thought that someone’s life could be turned on its head in an instant just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The man before you smiled awkwardly, seeming shy and uncomfortable. “It’s worse than you imagined, right?”