Info
Please note!
If you're a new reader of Masked Maidens content or the UN!Masked Canon, you do not necessarily need previous knowledge to be able to read this tale. However, this is part of the canon's main series, so please feel free to check them out if you're interested!
Written by yours truly, TrailmixNCocoa! Take a look at my author page here (Chocolate Inside)!
Credit to scutoid studios for the css help and critique, as well as
Mctoran for the feedback! You guys are awesome. <3
Author's Note ⤴
“Rosie? Could you grab that pen over there?” Evangeline asks her sister. She sighs and tosses her empty ballpoint pen into the bin. “This one is out again. God, who knew it’d be so damn hard to find a pen with full ink in this level? What was even the point of making this place an office…”
Rosaline laughs at her mumblings and stands up from the bed, walking towards her sister’s makeshift vanity table. She pushes aside small stacks of papers, broken pens, and empty Almond Water bottles until she finds a working pen. She haphazardly tosses it behind her and hits Evie square in the face.
“Ay buisit ka- watch it, Rose- you just about blinded me!” Evangeline scolds her twin, which merely earns another laugh from her. She sighs and takes the projectile weapon. Resting against the wall of their bedroom, she clicks open the pen and begins to write.
Meanwhile, Rosaline sits back down beside her sister and clutches one of the pillows. She finds herself mesmerized by Evie’s writing, as she always had been since they were children. Her handwriting is eloquent and proper, as if writing a letter to the Queen. It’s something Rosie struggles with often- her handwriting normally falls back into a slightly messy cursive. As she’s just about to say something, someone knocks on the door. “Come in!” They yell out at the same time, both focusing more on the paper.
“Hey, Evie- hey, baby.” Catelyn pops her head through the crack of the door. There is a tenderness in Catelyn’s green eyes when they fall onto one of the sisters. Rosaline is the first to look up, smiling lovingly at her girlfriend. “Just checking in on the two of you- the celebration’s just about to begin… your dad’s looking for you guys. You coming?”
There’s a sudden tension that settles into the room. When Catelyn recognizes it, her voice trails off and her smile fades a little. Rosie appears to be more bothered about the idea of going out, despite Evangeline being more occupied than her.
“Mm. Rosie can go ahead, I’ve just got a few more pages I need to spew out.” Evangeline hums and breaks the tension, teasingly waving Rosaline off. Her twins’ eyebrows furrow in protest, but her smirk contradicts the emotions her brows convey. Even with her eyes off the paper and onto Catelyn's, Rosie notices Evie continuing to write as though in perfect concentration, writing neatly and exactly on the line. Word after word after word. This is typical of Evie, she remembers–her thoughts were always just so eager to jump off her mind and onto the paper that she could achieve miraculous feats of multitasking just to keep writing.
Knowing all too well how much it means to her, Catelyn nods, laughing a little. “If you say so… just don’t take another 3 hours, alright? You kinda need to socialize more than the bare minimum, you know!”
Evangeline gestures a thumbs up to her girlfriend. Cate laughs and waves them off, shutting the door behind her as she leaves. For a few moments, the room is silent. Rosaline looks around. Should she go now? Maybe wait? She’s not too sure. If anything, she’s unsure whether she wants to see their dad in the first place… He’s usually busy regardless, so surely he wouldn’t mind them being gone, right?
Besides, Rosaline also doesn’t want to leave Evie behind. She remembers the last time she did. And when she did… Evangeline’s hand was gone. Rosaline wonders if her sister blames her for that…
“You waiting for a go signal or something, Rose?”
“Huh?” Rosaline snaps out of her thoughts, clearing her throat. “Oh… no, it’s okay. I want to stay.”
“You’re gonna peer pressure me to come out earlier, I just know it!” Evie teases her twin sister, poking her in the cheek with the end part of her pen. Rosaline scoffs and pushes the pen away from her face, rolling her eyes in feigned annoyance. Her sister smirks.
“I’m not going to peer pressure you into leaving the room, honest!” Her reply is met with suspicion, with Evangeline raising her brow. Rosaline crosses her arms, “I’m serious!”
They both exchange laughter before silence befalls them again. Eventually, Evangline stops writing with her pen. She sighs in satisfaction and places her work down beside her, pulling out her hair tie and letting her hair fall and rest upon her shoulders.
This exposed the twins’ biggest differences. Evie never liked having her black hair in her face and everywhere else, so she kept it trimmed rather often, always just above her shoulders. Rosaline on the other hand had little preference length-wise, experimenting with her hair a lot. This time – as she hadn’t had time to get it cut in a while – she had hers right below her chest. The low buns they would both have during missions with the M.E.G., however, made it a little harder to tell them apart. Despite being adults, they couldn’t help but occasionally prank other M.E.G. members by acting like the other, like they were kids in the Frontrooms. It was a fun way for them to stay connected with their childhood – back when they were safe, far away from the cruel and boundless Backrooms.
“I never thought to ask you,” Rosaline speaks up first, turning her whole body to face her sister, “did you ever write about us – or you – being here? I mean, like in a story. Did you ever write about us… leaving this place?”
Evangeline takes a moment to think about this, looking around her room and at the stacks of papers neatly arranged on the tables and chairs. “Mm… Not… not us, I suppose.”
“Not us?” Rose repeats, tilting her head. Evangeline nods simply. “What do you mean?”
Evie bites her lip, as if to think about whether she should really answer this question. It worries Rosaline, but then Evie begins to reply: “I mean… think about it.” She pauses for a moment. “Do you… do you really think we’re getting out of here? I mean, really?”
Rosie’s almost baffled by the nature of this question. Of course, no one in the Backrooms has ever documented a door or a level that could get them to leave, and no one even knows just how far this realm can go…. But who would genuinely want to accept or acknowledge that?
Between being realistic or being hopeful, she decides to go with the latter route. “Of course we are, Evie- we’ve already gotten this far, right?” She tries to give her sister a hopeful smile, but it comes off awkward and nervous. “The M.E.G. has already achieved so many things, and we have been part of those things too… who knows, maybe- maybe by tomorrow, we’ll finally be out of here!”
Evangeline suddenly lets out a loud, short laugh. There’s a coldness in her laugh. “Yea, well… Unlike us, they don’t have to wait.” She gestures towards her stories with her mouth, a painfully cliché Filipino way of pointing at things.
Rosaline looks around, trying to pinpoint which stack of papers her sister was referring to before realizing she meant all of them. Her eyes skim over a couple. It was just like Evie'd said - they were set in the Backrooms, but the protagonists weren't really them. There’s a large variety of characters in her tales- humans and entities alike, but never… them. Evie lets her twin read a couple before speaking again. “I never thought it practical or… kind to us to write us an escape story.”
Rosie double-takes at her sister after that. Evangeline wastes no time before continuing: “If I wrote the both of us into a story about us finally leaving this- this stupid maze, I think it would hurt me– hurt us, I mean. Sure, it’s ‘hopeful’ or whatever… but after the story’s done, we have to look at reality again and sit in it. We’re just… we’re just so far from home…” Her voice breaks and trails off as she coughs to clear her throat. Her eyelids flutter and she looks away, toward the bedroom door. Rosaline notices the scrapped drafts in the bin next to her desk. “So.. when I write about somebody else, it’s not as close to home. I can forget for a while… but I don’t get… lost in it.” Evangeline places her hands up in the air as if to be pressing against the wall, then drops her hands to her lap. A sad smile creeps up her face.
"I wish… I wish we were them… for a day." Rosaline sighs, glancing at Evie's latest story. Evie cocks her head at this statement. "Your characters, I mean. We'd hide behind their faces like masks, and we'd go on all sorts of adventures without worrying about all this… danger. We'd be able to go back home at the end of the day- we would be at peace- we'd… we'd be okay…."
Her sister snickers. Evangeline looks down at a random corner of the room. “Yeah… I wish for that too. Imagine it, huh? I guess that’s what they say about authors… there’s always a piece of them behind whoever they write. Guess that applies to me too, huh?” Rosaline nods in response.
“Mhm… Hah. You know… in a way, you did kind of write us in these pages.”
“Hm?”
Rosie pats the pages beside them. “There’s always two people in here. Doesn’t matter who they are, but they’re always friends or siblings. That’s us in reality, isn’t it?”
Her twin widens her eyes, surprised by this analysis, as if the idea hadn’t even really come to mind before. But the more she thinks about it, the more she realizes that Rosaline is right… it is them. On every page. Evie smiles and chuckles, the coldness fading away. “I suppose so.”
Rosaline lays her head on Evie’s shoulder tenderly, wrapping her arms around hers. There’s a lot of things the twins could say to each other at this moment. Words of encouragement that one day they really will leave… gratitude toward one another… maybe even shed a couple tears. But they don’t. The sounds of celebration from outside slip through the closed bedroom, being the only ambience other than the quiet, flickering noises of the lantern that sits on Evie’s bedside table. There’s many things they could say… but right now, the silence is good enough.
After a few moments, the sisters sit up properly, restacking a couple papers and placing them aside. Without a word the two of them stand up, walking toward the door and promptly leaving the bedroom to join the party.