The Mask

There sat a man, expressionless, in a chair of iron in a room upstairs, motionless and struggling. But the times was nigh upon him, for him to rise from his imprisonment and go about the day. He walked a crooked limp out the room, stuttered all down the hall, bore left then right down the stairs, and made his angular was to a mirror adjacent the front door.

In this particular mirror he kept his masks. His hands crept up to his face, feeling smooth skin carpeting his skull, and nothing else. He then turned his palms to the mirror, and with a practiced take, carved and sculpted charismatic features into the before empty planes reflected off the mirror.

With that – a layer of deceitful happiness on his empty, canvas-like visage – he opened the dorr and stole outside on balanced feet.

All through the day, he wore the bag upon his naked head. It was there while walking, while talking – with people he liked and did not – while entertaining, while being entertained, even while he was at work. It couldn’t be torn off by anything, at any time, under any circumstance. Not even the man himself could remove and cast off his plaster. For during the day, it was him.

But the hours dripped by away, and it was time to return home, for him and for the others as well. And just like every day, his mask was at its limit. It could be worn only so long before it grew dry, and cracked. Soon after it would crumble, and fall, and be shed upon the floor. So quickly he made his way to the house, and upon seeing it looming halfway up the road, he quickened his pace. It beckoned to him.

He opened the solemn door and took a step inside, letting the silence, the darkness, and the sickness envelope him. His mask ended and sunk to the dark wood floor, deadened. His true face finally shown, to no one, after being laid upon by a fake all day. His knees bent, his feet turned, his spine crookened, and he was once again his true self. Inside his house, all alone.

He made his diagonal way to the mirror. It reflected a bald face – empty of anything – back to him. Without reaction, he zigzagged up the stairs, stumbled down the hall, and collapsed lop-sided into his iron chair.

Where he was held till the very next day.