They All Wear Masks

They all wear masks that contour to their faces like second skins. Smoothing around the orbital sockets, eyeballs of various colors and patterns peering out. Wrinkles settled into creases of the plaster of forehead and laugh lines. Dimples and crows feet. They all wear masks. 

Nobody and nothing is as it seems. Their darks are deeper and their brights are blinding. The shadows stealthier. The fake skin slides up to their lip lines of perfect bows and broad smiles. The teeth within some warped and crooked to perfect and gleaming. They all wear masks.

Noses of different sizes and shapes, different colors and textures jut out from the centers of their fake faces. Some bearing imperfection, some as flawless as porcelain. They all wear masks.

Some impossibly high hawk-like cheekbones, some low and unremarkable, blending into face edges and angular ears designed to hear platitudes and bar argument and truth. Some pierced with studs, hoops, everything in between; some unmarked, but none really made to listen. They all wear masks.

It should stop there, but no, over jawlines stretch unreality, square and round lines, pointed and curved, some defined and some sporting jowls. Bonding with ears to the edges and stretching to the backs of various style hair covered skulls and down the fronts of swan-like throats and over adam's apples. They all wear masks. 

How do they breathe? How do they speak? They look so different, voices so different, words so similar. Mouths tell stories. Eyes tell lies. They all wear masks.

They're your mothers and fathers, your siblings. Your extended families and your friends and coworkers. They're acquaintances you ride the bus with, wave at in the halls and strangers you pass on the street. We all wear masks.

Can we peel them off?  

What would we find?

Learning to Look to See

It's amazing how often we look, but don't really see. Objects, scenes, people. We so frequently don't notice what's right before our eyes. We miss so many things because we are so wrapped up in the scenarios in our heads, the stressors of the day, the meal preps of the evening, the Ambien of the night. We ignore the smiles of strangers, the consternation of acquaintances, and the tears of friends.  So self involved we are, so selfish that we miss the beauty in all things. 

Think of the sunrises you've slept through and the sunsets you've complained about coming too soon. The calls you didn't return and the appointments you failed to take. The people you love and the people you love to neglect.

The acceptable flowers in the yard and the cracks in the concrete springing dandelions to invade your lawn; you mow them all down. The wearing of your carpet and peeling of the paint of your home, you see disrepair when you could see wearing from use of fellowship; the fingerprints on the glasses in your sink from sharing a meal and not eating alone. 

Is it worth it? Your perception?

The death of the deer is the delicacy of the buzzard, the carrion beetle, the worm, the soil, the Earth. Nothing ends. There is no ugly. There is only beauty.

We have to learn how to look. We need to look to see.

It's Getting Dark in Here

and the days are slipping one into the next into the next into the liminal space where time has no significant meaning. I barely remember them, these short periods of lucidity, of consciousness. Brief glimpses of a reality in which I no longer recall ever belonging. They're boring, exhausting, these glances into the outside of my head; I'd rather simply shut them off for the silence of the void. 

Time passes differently here. One minute becomes one hour becomes three. It's tomorrow. It's next week. I don't know what day it is in your world; in mine it's all the same. 

Sometimes I reach, with the little energy I have, and I attempt to drag myself up from the pit of darkness while it's crookedly knuckled fingers clutch at my edges, it's veins struggling to break through it's translucent skin. I can feel it's scalpel-like talons digging into my cognizance, springing pinpoints of light into my being, and I reach and I claw and I pull myself up by sheer will alone. Into the light. 

I stand. I bathe. I smile. I speak. I function. 

But just barely. 

Before the darkness creeps in, nibbling at the edges of the luster with sharp, hateful little teeth, to remind me of the solace in the void. The indifference. Peace. 

I flip the switches on and I throw open the blinds, I light candles and I grab a flashlight. I stand firm that this time will be different. I ignore the soothing hum of silence that attempts to lull me into compliance and cover my ears with my palms as it escalates into a banshee's wail. 

The sun sets and my batteries die, I open the doors in desperation for the moon's radiance and the wind from outside extinguishes my candles. The electricity flickers. The light bulb explodes to the sound of the wail. Tendrils of shadow creep along my walls and contour the corners of my vision before wholly draping everything in gloom. 

The void offers reprieve as it's scream submits into an expectant silence and I close my eyes against it's waiting, knowing it's waiting for me to choose peace. Indifference.

And I do. 

These Beings I Called Friends

 They broke into my home.

These beings I called friends.

It started innocently enough. I invited them to my address, right up to my front door. I invited them inside. We laughed and we played games. We enjoyed each others’ company. We shared our secrets.

Or rather, I shared mine.

It was time to go home, and I needed to sleep. I didn’t speak up right away, as I hate to rush friends. Friends are always welcome in my home.

But as the party slowed and the amity diminished, I found my voice and I spoke to my fatigue. The smiles one by one turned sour and the gazes crystalized the ice I felt snaking up my spine, slowly paralyzing my ability to move. Their voices now speak, and I can hear them mocking me, satire to which I am not privy. The words not vaguely amusing.

“We have a key.”

I rush them out the door, these beings I called friends. They leave without a fuss, their informal movements turned mechanical, their glances filled with malice as they meet my gaze, and I get ready for bed.

This is my home. Every nook and cranny, every misplaced book and pair of unwashed jeans on the floor are mine. And mine alone. This is where I feel safe. I know every sound the outside foliage makes as it brushes my walls in the breeze, I recognize every flicker of light transported between the window dressings from the streetlights beaming outside. I feel its aches and pains as my own, its needs for care and its desires for dusting. I recognize every movement of décor as it waves in the temperate breezes flowing from the vents as the blood flowing throughout my own veins. This is my peace. My sanctity. This is my home.

I pull the curtains closed to shield from the fading light and I see them, leaning on my tree. Smiling that dead smile, dripping with spite.

“You can’t stop us from coming in.”

I don’t know how many there are. I can’t recall how many there were in the first place, nor can I judge the number standing together in my yard. Their identities bleed into one in my head.

Sounds I don’t know alert me to their presence inside. There are more. There are progenies, they are multiplying. They turn on my television and sit on my couch; rummage my cabinets and eat from my fridge. I didn’t know how they got inside. But then I remember.

“We have a key.”

My anger builds, raging outright war against my desire to be a gracious hostess. I cannot recognize them anymore. Maybe I never knew them.

Or myself.

Perhaps I never did.

I threaten, I demand. I insist that they leave. I turn off the entertainment and I dim the lights. I gently ease them from their comfortable spots, and I guide them to the door. I tell them they are not welcome here, these beings I called friends, and their malevolence as they pass oozes from their pores. Message received. Loud and clear.

I lock my doors and I check my windows and I see them picking at the screens. The unraveling bends of delicate wire curving the way to unwelcome entry. They laugh from beyond my sanctity, they mock as they pry holes from the outside to within.

I pick up the telephone to call for help, reinforcement, someone to make the onslaught cease. A single voice answers in the void and I begin to tell her my tale. All while I can feel the walls wearing down and my defenses wearing thin. She promises protection and the arrival of the calvary and to stay at my side as I watch through the windows for their coming.

Finally, they arrive. The violent noises from outside my home diminish to a near inaudible hum. Just in time.

I profusely thank the voice in the void as I hear a back wall cave in. I wonder if my outrage is palpable through to her end as I realize the gravity of my situation. It is clear there is no calvary, that they too in that I entrusted my faith are immoral. I glance at the phone verification that the voice was connected.

“I just killed a man.”

And I hit the Call End button.

Beneath my bed that is covered with blankets and pillows, the random comfort stuffed animal, my epitome of comfort, I reach. And I make purchase.

To the window I stride, and I fling open the blinds to the contemptuous face of a friend. I point my gun at his grinning face and he laughs as his head explodes.

They are everywhere in my home. Like cockroaches in the cracks that scatter when the lights come on. You can see only a fraction of their true number.

Sitting, standing, lounging in comfort some choose to not fight back as I place the muzzle to their foreheads, others lash out to equal my fury. Those are the ones I take pleasure in.

I just killed a man. And a woman. And a child.

Many of them.

The walls have crumbled, morsels of concrete, wood, and plaster litter the floor. The tiles have splintered and jut up at awkward angles to form spikes to impale. The textured ceiling stretches down with tendrils of flame as it reaches into the sky in phoenix defiance.

Their blood splatters the studs that were once covered in plaster and wallpaper, pieces of obliterated gray matter drip down to pool and skewer on the barbs of the floor.

One by one their malignancy fades as the frigid light behind their eyes is extinguished. Bonfires of rage simmering to ashes. The bodies fallen and motionless. The hollow vessels of my friends.

I stand erect but in no way proud in the tangled chaos of limbs and viscera.

I will rebuild. This is my home. My sanctuary. This is all I have. I will quench the flames and I will smooth the floor. Replace the glass and mend the screens. I will fortify the confines and build my resistance to defy these beings I called my friends.

There will be more. Their soldiers fed and armories enhanced. They will secure their masks and hide their emotions beneath an extra layer of compassion. The splinters in their façades embellished over in the priceless diamonds of companionship.

They will be prepared.

I will be ready.

There are always more coming.

These demons I call friends.