Young Writers Society

You come to talk to me and I put her on, my mask. Living flesh and living skin fuse together with the lifeless, cold clay of the mask to form a unity, as real as my true face but perfect and wonderful. A being from out of my dimension has taken over me. But I don't realize her, until you reach me and you open your mouth to say something.

Your words don't reach me, my mask shelters me from them, keeps them away from me, keeps me safe. And I feel my lips moving, bending, stretching out, forming the grotesque gesture that we call smile and my lips hurt by being stretched against my will, but my false face forces them and enjoys my pain, while you keep talking and my mask smiles and laughs and says something from time to time.

Beautiful words, full of meaning, charm and humor but I don't know what they mean, they just come out of me, rather out of her, like stringing pearls on a neckless the drip out of her mouth. Dirty and full of lies. I don't feel my lips moving, don't feel my breath leaving my mouth, just hear them, those beautiful words she says and I hate the feeling that I'm loosing control over myself, hate the feeling that my face gets numb when I put her on, this whole non-feeling I have when she is me. And I don't even want to talk to you, I  don't even like you. I almost hate you, hate your voice, so dull and voiceless, like a whisper. But my mask wants me to smil, my mask loves you, loves everybody, wants to be loved by everybody. She disgusts me, her need to be loved by everybody, her constant lies, her perfection.

Finally you're gone and I try to take my veil of, but she refuses, protests, fights my wish to be me. I feel the once so lifeless clay pulling on my skin, sticking to it like tar, black and gross. She bites my skin, trying to suck life out of me, screaming in pain, and I'm exhausted, wearing her drains my spirit, sucks out my life. All the smiling and laughing, giving the reactions people expect me to do, reactions I expect myself to do.

She screams and roars like the beast she is as I rip her of my skin. All my anger bottled up under my mask while I was talking to you bursts out as I toss her away, and finally I feel free, free of expectations, free of a stranger controlling me, free of her. And as I look at her, I notice how beautiful she is, so realistic and perfect. And she whispers to me, whispers in my ear, more in my mind. Her voice is everywhere. She's the shadow in the darkness surrounding me like the ocean in its deepest parts. She whispers to me soft and silent: "Put me back on! I know you want me, you can't be without me!" I hate it, I cover my ears, tell her she's not really me, but her voice is in my mind giving me orders, soft and silent, but urging. She speaks in my ear, telling me to put her on. I tell her she's not real, not really me, not really anything but clay. She commands me to pick her up and this time I don't refuse. I can't, her voice, my voice is cold and sharp as ice.

I pick her up and feel her greed to be worn, to be one with me, to consume me and be me. I feel her greed like worms under my skin, crawling in every direction, trying to capture my whole body, or is it my greed to wear her, be her, be perfect like her, loved by everybody?

I reject these thoughts but she knows me, knows what I think and starts to whisper again, whispers to my soul. Tells me to wear her, one last time to just enjoy the experience. I scream at her, I don't need her, that I created her. I posses her, not the other way. She laughs, cold and without emotion, then speaks into my ear: "If you don't need me, then you can face yourself." I'm afraid of what she means with that, and my eyes wander to the mirror and as I want to look at my face, I only see a dark spot, made of nothing. Only darkness and she chuckles. Panic rushes through my body, fills every limb, every corner of my body as I look into the nothing I've become. I scream in fear what she has done to me, done to my face, and she tells me, that I just had to put her on and everything would be perfect again. Her words sound true, so gentle, so appropriate for the situation, so perfect that it disgusts me. I tell her to give my face back, tell her that I'm her master, tell her I created her and she agrees. Agrees that I created her to be me everyday, when I am not me. She tells me that I'm less me than her and I have to agree, agree to what she says. I don't feel like me today, I feel strange and cold. She doesn't, she is perfect, she can be anything she wants to be, needs to be, needs to be successful every time. But I refuse to wear her, wear a thing that controls me and is not me, something I created. I am stronger than my disguise, stronger than her unnatural desire to be a living being, to be something, to be itself, just the pure existence.

And I see you coming back, walking towards me and say something, your words pure like snowflakes and I noticed I never really heard your voice, never heard the sound of it, the way it moves the air, the way it creates rhythm. But still I hate you and I feel my lips moving, my tongue twitching creating sounds, almost words. A strange feeling, something the mask has always felt when she was speaking, and now I'm free to speak. And as my organs move to create a sound, I see your face changing and I notice, I don't hear the words I say, just feel them leave my mouth like moths, dull and ugly moths, poisonous and ready to hurt you. I feel them but don't hear them, but I hear your voice clear as never before, and I hear your cries and sobs as you curse me for the words, I didn't say and nothing is their to shelter me, to protect me from your wrath. I feel it and I hear it and as you start raising your voice again to throw words at me, I feel the mask in my hand, the cold clay, somehow calming and I feel how living flesh and living skin fuse together to form a unity, perfect and wonderful. And I want her on my face, protecting me from reality and reality from me.