Nightmare Fuel, Day the Twenty-Second - The Mask

This one is a bit of a cheat, and a bit of a meta-story. There's a great deal in the image, from the shape of the mask itself to the cheap shelving behind it to those magnificent eyes. It's also something that echos another culture not my own, and not one about which I know enough to do justice to whatever the symbolism may or may not mean.

So, I cheated. That's what we do as writers, is it not?

Kary Gaul unmasked herself as a gamer in her response. I very much like the choice of format and think it can be an interesting narrative form. Samantha Dunaway Bryant went in a different direction than I expected in a piece which she thinks (perhaps rightly) could have been a touch longer.

My take follows, with apologies for ending with a pun.

The mask

To unmask a masquerade is an abomination.

That much you know, and not much more.

Oh, you know that a masquerade mask is more than just a mask, just as you know that the costume is more than a costume, not just wet leaves and raffia and whatever else. That it means something or, to a believer, that it IS something.

That it's an echo of something from the other world, made manifest in he who dons the mask.


You know all of this and think it as you turn the mask over in your hand, in the third aisle of the secondhand shop near your home. This isn't a magic shop, it isn't a mystical place between this world and the next. IT's just a place where people donate goods for others to buy. Mostly old clothes, old toys, old junk.

Sometimes something special, like the mask.

You turn it over in your hand, feeling its weight. Some kind of dense, fine-grained wood polished to a smooth and flawless finish. A broad, empty mouth holding no words and round, close-set eyeballs seeing multitudes. You weigh it in your hand again.

It should be perfect. You did, after all, come here seeking a costume to wear on All Hallows Eve, and what could be a better start than a masque. It seemed destined for you. You could wear it and be a figure of terror, striking fear in the hearts of your fellow partygoers.

You could, but this isn't that kind of story.

It could be a mistake. You could build a costume around it, clothe yourself in raffia and dried grass and cloth, only to find yourself possessed by something other when you don the mask, your self fading to the background as an ancient spirit from another continent walks your streets in your skin, the terror being yours as much as theirs.

This isn't that kind of story either.


You could don the mask and dance along the streets, joy in your heard and strange words on your tongue, words in a language you don't speak. Your world can grow unfamiliar and strange as you see it through spirit-eyes, belonging to another. You could run the streets as a spectator in your body, barely seeing and barely remembering what happens until you return home, strip the mask from your face, and see stamped on the back the words, "Made in China".

But no, it isn't that kind of story.


And, finally, this could be your end. You could do everything right, find the right people to teach you, don the mask and the proper regalia and perform all the right rituals. You could let the spirit become you, even as reality warps and bends under the stress of forbidden secrets being shared to those not destined to know them. You could walk confidently, powerfully, until a child strips the mask from your face and you fall to the ground, stone cold dead.

But this is none of those stories.

Because those are not your stories to tell, nor mine.

One aisle over you find a battered old briefcase. Fine. You'll be Willy Loman this year. At least that'll make one of your kids happy.