I was a teenager at the turn of the millennium. It’s never easy being young and insecure, but in a low-income environment it can easily get downright depressing. Most of us were adopted by well-meaning aunts, uncles, or grandparents. Some were foster kids. Most of us were just unwanted, myself included. Things often got violent. You didn’t dare to be different. Minnesotans can be cruel.
Our town had a boost when a large shipping company set up downtown. We got about 120 new full-time jobs, and the town suddenly just came alive. With this windfall the mayor decided to restore old buildings and repair failing infrastructure. One of those buildings, down by the lake, was completely rebuilt. New floors and reinforced roof. Soundproofed walls, so it could be used as a practice room for local bands. This new building was made open to the public as a Youth Club, and for a bunch of teenagers who’d been given nothing this was as close to a gift as we’d get.
We loved that place. The Tomskog Youth Club, TYC, was lovingly referred to as the Tick. It was special.
For one glorious summer, that place was our church. There was a basketball court outside, a ping-pong table, a few computers (for LAN gaming) and three couches set up around a coffee table. There were snacks, sodas, a little kitchen, and there was talk of a few volunteers setting up a sauna. We never really got that far.
No one messed with the Tick. No broken windows, no graffiti, no stealing. That place was ours, collectively, and you would be ostracized if you messed with it. There was this one 17-year-old who almost broke the ping-pong table, and he got literally carried out. I wasn’t there myself, but I heard he was beaten.
But in early September, as we returned to school, there was a barrage of floods. We weren’t allowed to go back to the Tick, and things got bad, quick. We realized that all the repairs had an effect on the ground it was standing on. The new and improved floors and reinforced walls were weighing into the soil, and over the course of a few days the building started sinking into the ground.
I remember walking home from school one day. There were six of us, following the path next to the lake. We’d just gotten the Tick, and we’d already lost it. We were disillusioned. Of course we couldn’t have nice things, and seeing a third of the front door sunken into the ground broke my heart.
They cut the power, and the water was already gone. The Tick was dead.
Things were starting to get back to normal. If anything, people were more destructive than usual. Our neighbor had their car broken into, and we all knew the kids who did it. There was no way for us to have anything for ourselves, so a few of us just resorted to taking whatever we wanted.
That is, until one night in late October.
I got a text message from my friend Byron. We were sneaking out at midnight. I didn’t even question it. I could probably just walk out the front door without anyone asking questions anyway.
I met him just a few minutes past midnight. He was the tallest kid in the class, the kind of 16-year-old that is born to be a linebacker. He’d dressed all in black and covered himself in a hood, looking a bit sketchier than usual.
“Come on” he said. “We’re going to the Tick.”
“What do you mean?”
“You heard me. Come on.”
We hurried down the street, gym shoes slapping against the cracked pavement. We took the path down by the lake, making sure to stay out of the light. It wasn’t hard, only a handful of streetlights worked anyway.
There were almost two dozen people standing outside the Tick. Some as young as 13, some as old as 20. Teenagers and youngsters from all over town.
At the very front, someone had dressed up in a black hood and a white full-faced mask. It had this strange, panicked expression. It looked homemade. He bent open one of the windows with a crowbar, and no one tried to stop him.
As the window cracked open, he turned to us. He had these unblinking, intense eyes.
“This is ours” he said. “At night, this is ours. No one will know we’re here. This is no man’s land. If you step into this place, you’re a part of this. There are no laws here. Just us.”
He stepped inside. The rest of us just looked at each other. We just wanted the Tick back, and we could keep a secret.
That was the first night we broke into the Tick. Most of the floor was covered in sediment and dirt. We couldn’t play on the ping-pong table, since the building was leaning. There was no power, and the computers were gone anyway. Still, the couches remained, and they were in pretty good condition.
The kid in the mask sat down in the back. I say ‘kid’, but it was impossible to tell his age. Someone brought a CD player. There were a few beers being passed around, and a few of us had brought flashlights. It was the only light we had.
We covered up the windows with garbage bags. Using a few buckets from the broom closet, we moved most of the dirt into an adjacent room. We stayed up all night helping out, without even questioning it. The kid in the mask just sat there, in the back, looking at us. We had no idea who he was, but we were into it. We were taking back the Tick. It was broken and battered, but goddamn it, it was ours.
Little by little, we turned the place into a haven. Byron brought a kind of floodlight that we covered in red plastic, sheathing the room in a red glow. We put up posters, scrubbed the floor, washed the tables, and aired out the couches. We set up a proper sound system powered by a car battery; the soundproof walls still worked to our advantage. From the outside, it was hard knowing what was going on unless you knew where to look.
I remember walking into the Tick after a week of repairs. Friday night. It’d been hard work but skipping a few hours of school every now and then went a long way. You really don’t need that much sleep when you’re that age.
There were almost 30 people there. I could barely recognize half of them. Some had brought masks of their own, like the first kid. Others were just new.
It was just past 1 am when a fight broke out. Two of the seniors got into an argument. It was the first time the kid who started this whole thing got up from the couch, and everyone just sort of… fell in line. He picked up a tray of empty glasses and walked over to them. The music stopped.
We still had no idea who this kid was, and he was still just… completely unopposed. Maybe it was those intense, unblinking eyes. We all had our suspicions about his identity, but nothing had been confirmed.
He threw the glasses on the floor, breaking half of them.
“Settle it” he said, pointing at the shards of glass. “First blood.”
“You’re insane” one of them protested. “No way.”
“Then get out.”
“You don’t get to-“
“This is no man’s land!” the masked kid interrupted. “Law ends at the door!”
“I’m not cutting anyone!”
“Then you’re out!”
It got dead quiet. The two seniors looked at one another. The guy who protested, an ordinary Johnny Nobody named Kenneth, just stood there. The other guy, on the other hand, picked up a palm-sized shard of glass. The two of them looked at one another.
“Settle this” said the mask kid. “Or get out.”
“I’m not cutting anyone”
The senior with the glass shard stepped over to Kenneth, put an arm around him, and pricked him on the shoulder. A drop of blood. They had a nervous laugh about it.
“See? Look. Done. We’re good, alright?”
There was a drop of blood. Just a drop.
“You’re in this” the masked kid warned them. “Laws won’t protect you in here.”
A growing trend started that night. More and more people started hiding behind masks. They started going by nicknames, and many of them completely changed their personalities. Even if you kind of recognized their voices, it was hard knowing who you were talking to. Even Byron, who I’d been friends with for years, was hard to pick out of a crowd. It became taboo talking about your Mask. It was against the Law of the Tick.
Arguments were to be settled with either a knife fight or banishment. Most people chose neither, instead settling on pricking themselves with a blade to show their dedication. It became sort of a ritual, and some started doing it like an absurd greeting. People were bringing gifts as tribute, and the Tick started getting synonymous with the masked kid who first took initiative to reopen it. He was the Tick. Bringing something to the Tick was basically just… giving it to him.
After about a month of the Tick re-opening under this “new management”, you wouldn’t recognize the place. Red lights, glow-in-the-dark graffiti on the walls. More chairs, a few sofas. A mini-fridge, a few coolers. The ping-pong table had been repurposed into a sort of snack buffet.
And the guests? Well… by now everyone had a mask. Myself included. It was this bug-like full-head mask thing that I’d bought from a going-out-of-business sale. It smelled like death and the eyes had a dark mesh that made me practically blind, but it was high quality for the price. But first and foremost, it was cool. Kids with cool masks had a higher status.
Down at the Tick, I was no longer just “me”. I was Bug.
As Bug, I had a goddamn blast. I was more outgoing, more brazen. I hit on girls, I drank my first shot of vodka, and I didn’t back down from a challenge. It felt good. I had an extra life without any expectations of who I was supposed to be, and I could really just let it all go for a while. I got swept up in the moment. I made out with a girl called “Headache”, I danced like an idiot to Rob Zombie, and I brought my own tribute to the Tick; a bottle of shoplifted whiskey.
And the Tick? That first kid with the mask?
Not a word. Just those intense, unblinking eyes.
School got different. People were making their own masks, practicing writing their nickname in fancy letters. I was no different, I wrote “Bug” like it was made of maggots. I never figured out who the “Headache” girl was, but I suspected she might’ve been older than me. Maybe even in her 20’s.
Sometimes, I’d see kids walking around at night with their masks outside of the Tick. Even parents started taking notice. There was this unsettling feeling that “someone” was doing “something”, and people started making nervous calls. One kid in my class had a deadbolt installed on their bedroom door to prevent them from leaving. He just started climbing out the window instead, or just not coming home from school at all.
I remember walking home one day, only to see a gang of four masked kids down by the lake. It was broad daylight, and they were just hanging out. One of them openly wielded a knife, another was drinking flavored vodka straight from the bottle. As I passed by them, they blocked my path. I wasn’t “Bug” then and there. I was just me, and “me” was getting uncomfortable.
“I’m, uh… I’m with you” I said. “I’m from no man’s land.”
“Prove it.”
A girl with a crow mask handed me a knife. My adrenaline was racing as I pricked my thumb and showed it to them. They nodded in unison, chuckling to themselves. Yeah, I was one of them.
“I’m in it” I said, giving back the knife.
“We’re meeting by the lake tonight” they said. “Bring tribute.”
I considered not going. I thought about staying home and watching a movie with my parents. It felt like Bug was dragging me along to a life I didn’t want, and at the very least, it was getting dangerous. My thumb still ached.
As night rolled around, I took a long look at the Bug mask. I’d started to hate it. I walked downstairs only to find my parents half-asleep on the couch, having had a few glasses too many. There would be no movie tonight, or any other night. I didn’t even care. I put on the Bug mask, walked right up to them, and took twenty bucks out of my dad’s wallet.
“Put it back” he murmured.
I didn’t even respond. I just walked out the door, crumpling my 20-dollar tribute into a ball.
A lot of us were already out on the street. There were sirens going off in the distance, and I had a feeling the Tick had something to do with it. We were spreading. Growing bolder. Angrier.
By the time I got to the path circling the lake, there were six of us. I was pretty sure one of them, a big guy in a boar mask, was Byron. We’d just never talked about it. Didn’t seem right.
We followed the path in silence until we heard something in the distance. Right there, down by the lake, the Tick had moved outside of the soundproof walls.
There was a bonfire. Three masked teenagers drumming on empty paint cans. The masked kid was sitting barefoot down by the lake. At least 30 masks, illuminated by the fire. Some singing. Some chatting. Some laughing as they twirled their sharpened blades with bleeding thumbs.
I barely had the time to sit down before the music stopped. We gathered by the beach, as the masked kid stood up to speak. The mask looked different somehow. Calmer. But those eyes were the same as always. Not a blink.
“Everywhere we walk is no man’s land!” he yelled. “And every face we wear is our own!”
There was something strange about his voice. It had an echo to it.
“A life can be more than born!” he continued. “It can be made! And we can make our own as we please!”
We yelled. We cheered. It made sense, in some way. We were all just so angry.
“We can’t keep wearing these… these fakes” he spat. “We can’t stay slaves to a life we never chose! We must make that choice ourselves, no matter the cost!”
A strange smell. The cheers stopped.
It took me a few seconds to even notice the pain. The plastic melting into my skin. The edges of the mask growing hotter and hotter by the second. I grabbed the mask, trying to rip it off. I had trouble breathing. My mouth and nose filled up with the taste of burning rubber. I tried to scream, but drawing breath was impossible. It made me retch.
Through the dark mesh in the eyes, I could see others around me tearing at their masks. Screaming. Someone had torn off a big chunk of their hair.
I fell to my knees, clawing at the mask. Finally I managed to loosen the edge. It took strips of skin along with it, but the fresh air made it all worth it. I didn’t even realize how close I’d been to choking, as I ripped it off and threw it to the ground.
One guy was sitting on a log, trying to hold part of his cheek together. Another was trying not to scalp themselves. A girl down by the water had a loose lip. But among all the screams, all the bleeding faces, there was one sound that pierced through it all.
Laughter.
There were six of them. People who had just given up and let their masks burn onto their faces. It was the strangest sight, as if their masks had fused to their skin. They could make faces. They could smile. Hell, in the right light, even their eyes and teeth looked different. They looked more real. More solid.
I looked down on the Bug mask.
It was moving. Mandibles chewing. Eyes blinking. It lived.
Down by the edge of the lake, the masked kid waited. His mask was smiling, looking out at the apocalyptic bloodshed.
It took me a second to realize that it wasn’t a mask anymore.
That was just his face now.
Someone grabbed my arm, screaming at me to “get this off”. A few steps away, someone was trying to cut their mask off with a knife, only to stab themselves in the face. The laughter seemed to come from all over. There had been six of them, but now I counted twelve. They were laughing at us. One young woman in a bird mask was cawing, loudly, like a screeching crow. Were those talons on her hands?
As I looked into the masked kids unblinking eyes, the white face twisted into a grin.
“You forgot your mask” he said, his mouth unmoving. “Don’t forget your mask, Bug!”
I wiped the blood from my forehead and ran, stepping on my mask on the way.
I ran as fast as I could. I had to call for help. I had to do something.
Then I heard this awful sound; a squeal, like a wounded pig.
As I turned around, I saw Byron. Only it wasn’t Byron anymore.
The boar mask had fused to his head. It moved like a real boar. His hair had turned into a rough mane. He’d grown tusks, and a wet snout. He was being dragged back to the lake, but he was still reaching out to me. He tried screaming at me for help, but all I heard was squealing. A scared animal, desperately trying to get away.
I turned my back on him and didn’t stop running until I hit the freeway.
I’m not proud of it.
Bug would’ve stayed.
Later they said it was a party gone wrong, that we were damaged by toxic fumes and drugs. It didn’t help that they found a lot of narcotics on-site. A few of us were never found, so it was said they ran away from home, Byron included. The next day was probably the first time in years that my parents actually listened to me; all it took was some police officers barging into our living room, asking uncomfortable questions.
Is it weird that it felt like a comfort, seeing them worry about me? Even now, almost 20 years later, I think that’s the moment where I decided to finally leave Bug behind, once and for all.
I have no idea what happened to Byron, but that squealing still haunts me. To see that big frame being helplessly pulled back. There was no heroic last stand, just screaming, crying, and pain.
No one came back to the Tick after that night. I think it was demolished. Some scars literally never healed though. The people who followed that kid, who just embraced their new faces, well… I haven’t seen or heard of them since. As far as I know, no one has. Then again, who’s looking? Who cares?
I’ve been telling this story on and off for a few years. Not a lot of people believe me, but I still have scars along the back of my ears from the burning plastic to prove it. But the freakiest thing is that this is still going on. I’m sure of it.
The same mask that the kid used to wear can be found on goddamn Amazon. Eyewitnesses describe him in detail from a nightclub fire in 2007. He was also seen several times during the clown craze of 2016. I’ve found several people right here on reddit who’ve seen him. If you’re one of them, know you’re not alone.
I don’t know what this will turn out to be in the end. Just another thing in a long list of things that prey on vulnerable people. But that thing did something to us.
Something real.