F was forced into meeting with the cannibals once again. Deep underground, he entered their lair. F never liked noise, but within these rooms it were filled with them. Cracking and crunching and churning. Any thumps you can imagine were harshly inflicted here. He never got used to it, all the sounds came blasting out with high amplitudes and sometimes followed by a scream. Either a scream of euphoria or quietus, and sometimes of both.

“F! You’re finally here!” smiled the tall man. He was skinny and had abnormally large sized muscles that didn’t fit within his body type. “Were you looking for Asphoien? He’s over there,” he pointed. “In bits and pieces, unfortunately. We took out the idiot who did that.” He put his arm around F and weighed on him. “What’s behind the mask?” He lifted his hand and put it over the skull, it was far wider than it. F whacked it away and the giant got off. “I’ll pick him up and be on my way,” F said.

“You need help with that?”

“No.”

The man sat on a wooden box and watched as F sucked up the bits and pieces under his cloak like a vacuum. “You ever going to show me what you got under there?”

“No.” F was precise in his words, and it was quite accurate that he despised the cannibals, as it gave off that feeling within his voice, and the tall man was not oblivious to it. “I’ll send Asphoien here once again, make sure it can do its job next time.”

“Hey, it wasn’t my fault the fucker launched at him.”

“It is your job to have your subjects under control. Lashing out is fine, but not to the point where it destroys our property.”

“You don’t know shit, F,” he came closer. Now the gazing lights cast a shadow over F’s cloak and the cannibal’s arms swung under his waist like he had no control over them. “When they get angry, they lose all their senses and become very violent.”

“Whatever it may be, I don’t want to keep venturing out of my lab.”

“Why not send one of your puppets then?”

“They’re expensive to make, remember when I sent Idium, what happened to him?”

“That’s a rare occurrence, you should be glad it wasn’t you.”

“I rather have a mistake kill me, than have success be destroyed.”

“It’s all right, Boss gets you everything you need anyway.”

“Do you understand how shameful it is to ask Boss for extra materials? They are not infinite.”

The cannibal gave F a cold stare. He knew very well that Boss was not a force to be reckoned with, and disappointment was indeed shameful to behold such a being.

F gathered the parts and made his way towards the exit. The subway ran through here, filled with the utterly disgusting creatures. Dark places were always the best hiding spots for monsters. A man with a neck so long that he had to hunch from preventing its collision with the ceiling, a women with teeth so sharp they curved down and pierced into her chin, and a child with bloodshot eyes and completely white skin from head to toe; this was a family. “F, I don’t see you around here much,” said the women in the slowest voice imaginable.

“An accident occurred, I was required to do some clean up.”

“Oh no,” the monotonous voice filled F with impatiences, “what happened?” she finally said.

“One of my machinery broke.”

“You should get Hora to help you,” the man said in a quicker but dryer voice.

“It was small,” F caught the child staring at him with the most dumbfounded look. No one knew exactly where F’s eyes were as the skull didn’t give much away, so he stared back as the child seemed more entertaining than his parents. F didn’t know what the child was. A human? Definitely not a machine, but perhaps a demihuman? No human would be without pain with such red eyes and such pale skin. Its father and mother were probably also demihumans

“Was it another drone?”

“Not exactly, but a similar grounded machine with a simple task.”

The sirens went off as the doors to the adjacent tanks locked. The subway went straight up vertically and the tanks stacked on top of each other like an elevator. “Like Idium?” the man’s voice cracked and chafed like he was choking.

“No, Idium was much larger.”

“Oh, what’s its name?”

“Asphoien.”

“That’s tricky,” said the woman, “to say.”

“Harlow told me Idium was very slow at his task,” said the man.

“Slower than the cannibals, but delegating the task was important,” F replied.

“Hey, why do you keep calling him a cannibal?” said the man.

“Is he not?”

“He is… but that’s kind of rude.”

“I don’t know. Everyone is a crazy monster here.” Every eye in the tank turned towards F. He looked around with his eyes and saw a creature with a vertically squashed face with its mouth swung wide open, the lower eyelid of another stretched extremely downward to the point the red under the skin was visible, and the long fingers of one that contained no nails at its ends.

The man squint his eyes as the women took in a deep breath. “You,” the man paused. “You’re the one who’s a monster,” he said with a bitter tone as he paused again and noticed F’s head stuck towards his way. “Sorry,” he said in a calmer voice. “What I meant to say was, you— I don’t know what you look like at all. It’s scary. It feels like you’re hiding something.”

“My look is exactly as you see it.” F felt the eyes staring at him, he felt the danger he put himself in. “I am a fellow with a bird’s head within a cloak. This is me.”

“But you can remove it.”

“No, I can not.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Will you die without it?”

“No, but this is how I like to live day by day.”

“Ah,” the man said as if he caught something. “I can’t remove my skin because it will cause me great pain,” the last words triggered some sort of stress that could be seen upon his face. “But you can remove your mask without any.”

“Why,” F said in a stern tone, “is everyone obsessed with my mask?”

The man chuckled nervously, “I’m sorry,” he cried. The tears came pouring and he turned his head down while the women comforted him by rubbing his back and the child didn’t stop staring. The judgement of these monsters felt far stronger to F now. He wished to leave and never return to such a horrid place. The soft sobs of the man lasted until the trip was over and with every second the eyes of the creatures pierced through F’s skull.