Masks
by Jason Colpitts
©Jason Colpitts
Desperate hands thrust repeatedly toward an inkwell. Drips of gooey black ink crept across the desk.
Running long bony fingers through his straw-like hair, he feverishly tried to finish.
"No! No! Not again!" he yelled. "Why can't I escape you?"
Clumps of parchment encircled his chair. The old man returned his feather quill to its greasy shelter, only to rip it out again. The worn tip bore down on yellowed paper. Only the story mattered.
The library slowly melted into the background as the sound of fierce ramming, metal on stone, grew in his ears...
-
Rage quickened Prince Gailan's step.
Eerie news reached his father's army long before they arrived. His father, dead. Their kingdom, taken. The land, in anarchy.
Battle scarred and tired, he was eager for home. The young man longed to remove his heavy armor, to unstrap the leather ties holding both sword and scabbard.
Gailan would receive no such relief. Dark rumors swirled. His uncle had turned the loyalty of the imperial guard and usurped the throne. In response, the King's army stormed the gate and surged the front line, to overthrow this insidious brood.
The Prince alone broke through. His fury was driven by anger and overconfidence. Were it not for those commissioned to protect him, he never would have survived. The scrawny youth wasn't ready for war. Nobody had the heart to tell him.
Charging the inner castle, Gailan had one objective in mind - to kill his uncle. His sword coruscated in the moonlight.
A long set of looming stairs lay between he and his foe. Obscured by fog and mist, his uncle waited. Cloaked in velvet robes and an elaborate helm, his hollow eyes hid an evil intent.
Gailan's wiry frame sprang up the stairs faster than an arrow. Gritting his teeth, he let out a blood curdling scream, intent on unleashing his revenge. But the boy's uncle deftly outmaneuvered his wobbly swings. A sly smile spread across his face.
The ever-shifting motions of his uncle's ornate plate-mail were silent and fluid, like a spider maneuvering prey. Cunningly, he pinned Gailan above the stairs and then drove his hand forward. Caught unaware, Gailan had foolishly stumbled into his uncle's trap.
He felt a hard push. The Prince fell backward. Losing his footing, he tumbled into the gloom below. His body bounced again and again off the stairs. The world spun around him, a whirling jumble of stone, metal, and flesh. Gailan winced as each limb bent sharply. Skin shredded. Bone crushed.
He finally landed on the bottom.
His uncle, like a blood red spider, was sure to overtake him, but Gailan's bony limbs were in too much pain, and his armor, too heavy to budge. A rancorous virulent smile crept down steps. Hazy panic gave way to pure fear as he looked into conscienceless eyes...
-
"Get out of my head!"
The writer felt himself within the armor, he felt the painful blows, and he felt the fear. Would his uncle trap him again? Would the flowing cloak enshroud him at the bottom of the stairs?
The man grabbed his story. Ripping at it, he pulled it down and tried shredding the memory. Gailan fell among the others.
The old man's memories clung to him like leaches. No knife could exorcise them. They sucked his very life away.
Trying to divorce himself from the character, he bellowed in despair. Echoes resounded across the library. Even the books shook in fear.
"I see you. I see you there!"
The old man's head turned to the wall. Buried amongst the shelves overflowing with books was a family portrait. His gaze settled upon it.
"How could you? How could you?!" he demanded of the painting. His bottom lip quivered. "I was a child." When it refused to answer he vehemently turned his back, delving into yet another escape.
"Wine! They need more wine."
Soaking his quill in gobs of thick ink and grabbing another slice of parchment, he slammed it onto the desk, determined this time he would succeed. The old man began to write...
-
New wine was just what the masquerade needed!
Picking the choicest young red, Bastion couldn't wait. Tonight Gamay would flow.
The wine cellar was a dank dingy room. Long oak wine racks lined the walls, stained from time.
Bastion excitedly chose a few bottles. Clutching two in each hand, he turned and stopped abruptly as he noticed a shadowy figure lurking just outside the cellar's entrance.
The person slowly entered wearing stripes of dark crimson and black, like a smooth coiling serpent, leering behind a mask painted with black fathomless eyes and a huge sneering smile. He looked down as his question slithered over to the boy, "Do you know me?"
Bastion answered naively, "I've seen you. Pray sir, tell me your name."
"First, we will speak of your father. You and I share the same blood. I've come to seize what should be mine." Not a board creaked as he slid menacingly down the steps.
"My father is dead sir. What, do tell, is yours to claim?"
Bastion's question hung silent in the air.
Pulling the candelabra off the wall, his relative blew out the only flame. With the last ember fading, Bastion grew desperate. He knew his father had a brother. Hushed whispers spoke of an evil man.
"I heard of my poor brother's passing." His voice held a sickening sneer. "Now, all I need do is spill your blood - and I will have my due!"
Suddenly, his uncle threw himself against the wine racks, shoving them with all his might.
Glass shattered. One rack after another toppled. There was nowhere to run.
Bastion found himself trapped beneath the weight. The smell of wax smoke filled his nostrils.
He wanted to escape. He needed to run, but the horrifying mask danced before his eyes. Its lascivious smile haunted him to his core. He could feel the cobra staring in the dark. He was still out there.
Pressing a boot on the oak, the man swiftly stepped over Bastion, pulling a dagger from the folds of his costume.
Crushed under the pressure, the bottles in Bastion's hands burst one by one. New wine ran into the earth.
The predator raised his blade...
-
Like the wine, ink ran everywhere. Sobbing tears dripped off his paper. The old man could take no more.
Gailan ascended off the page and placed a hand upon the elderly shoulder. Bastion too climbed from balls of torn parchment to offer comfort. Heritus the Magistrate, Antonio the Centurion, Enery the Slave, and all the other stories arose and surrounded him.
"Why can't I escape you?!" The old man cried.
Bastion took to one knee. Comfortingly he answered, "We suffer your fate. Characters are the masks which writers hide behind. You must face the evil now. Stop hiding."
"From whom do I hide?!"
"You know the answer." Bastion turned and gestured toward the family portrait.
The old man saw his parents in wealthy dress. He saw himself, a boy merely five years in age. Aside from the rest he saw a man behind his father. His uncle was there, cloaked in a facade. The man's mask was a look of purity, a look of cleanness. Most believed it. What they did not see was the depraved curl in the smile and his slight angular glance toward the young child.
Grown men don't shed tears. Hide it. Hide it all. So he tried. The old man could no longer bear the weight.
"I was a boy! I was a little boy! How could you?" he demanded, ripping the canvass from off the wall. "You appear in everything I write, over and over! Why can't I escape you? You shoved me into the cellar. You took advantage of me and you never paid for it!!!"
He did not wish to face it. The old man collapsed in an empty library, sobbing and clutching the gilded frame to his chest.
"I was just a child," he whispered to the portrait, "A fleeting moment for you has belabored the whole of my life."
After a while, he stopped.
That was the answer. Use them. The stories plagued him; why not plague the predator? Burn him. Burn him in fiction. Burn him in symbol, in metaphor, in effigy. Burn him until his bones beneath the earth cry for mercy!
"Ha!" the old man laughed, for the first time in years. "I don't need it. I don't need the mask anymore!"
Instead, the old man began unrolling the stories. He stretched them out in proud stacks upon the desk, ready to be finished. Also the corner of a new piece of parchment waved to him in the wind, beckoning his quill. Finishing the old adventures and writing new ones felt different somehow.
"Try to skulk in the dark! The bright fire of my words will blaze upon you!" He glared at the painting. "I'm free of you! I'm unmasked! I'm finally unmasked!!!"