The mask

This façade of porcelain is becoming far too easy to slip into. Cracking with every blow dealt by loving hands. I bring it closer. No more cracks, it will break eventually. No more breaking. But it still fractured. That mask of mine was far too delicate for my liking.

It changed. I don’t recall when. The blow came, but the mask looked untouched. A perfect sneer painted across the cool, pristine white surface. I laughed wild, maniacal cries of joy. A tainted child’s laughter. The mask had become harder to break and I reveled in the knowledge.

You changed then. The harsh blows came less frequently, you smiled more. Sometimes you even laughed. I should have been ecstatic. Outwardly I smiled, confused at the lack of actual joy. Fearing this emotionless void I seemed to have become, I clutched the mask tighter to myself. Bruising the flesh, breaking the bone. The pain confirming that yes, I was real. I longed for more pain, more validity. I was alive. My eyes rolled up into my head, body falling to the ground like a rag doll. A boneless, sagging fall. Lifeless.

Your emotions were now worn on your sleeve. That smile, once never seen, was now an every day occurrence. I wasn’t entirely sure when that came about. The nights inched along; I’d close my eyes and wake the next morn. The days dragging on, I’d turn around and be asleep. My life became a timeless slope. The sides too high to climb and too smooth to try, my lethargy keeping me from even preventing the fall to the gaping yaw of the greasy black and fangs.

The world dulled. Blood dulled, pain dulled, the fear dulled also. I watched the fangs approach. It seemed I’d been watching that scene forever. Those glinting white daggers somehow shattering the darkness around them, but at the same time allowed the cursed night to caress them. I smiled at the scene. That’s all it was.

I didn’t notice when the mask was no longer a bruising force to my skin. Oblivious as to when my flesh curled around the shield I’d made. Clueless to the fact I could no longer remove the deviation of myself. Ignorant that I had turned into the hollow shell I’d hidden in.

You noticed. Ironically. Warm fingers touched my cheek for only a moment before I jerked away. The heat, at once craved and feared, stung me beyond any imaginable level. You frowned, eyes narrowing in concern. I laughed at that. Shocked though you were, you continued trying to save me.

“Let me love you…”

I’d scoffed at those words; another demonic laughing fit almost overcoming me. Love was not what I’d pictured. There was no angel chorus in the background of your whimpered plea. No wings sprouted from your back. You just stood there. And, for the first time, I noticed how painfully mortal you were. Flawed and imperfect.

A grin touched the lips of my flesh mask. In trying all those years to earn your kind words, all those years of adoring you, of loving you from afar. I’d finally attained my goal. You loved me. In life’s true fashion, the path I took to get that, all my sacrifice finally added up. By warming your heart I’d extinguished my own. In getting you to be happy, I’d driven emotion from my own bruised heart.

“Love me if you must,” I muttered. Having been burned by love’s flame, burned out entirely because of said flame; I knew the lack of control. The utter helplessness our hearts inflict upon us. My pale lips continued speaking, “ but I can’t ever love you. I can’t ever love…again.”

Then came the pleadings, the half-sobs spurned from your throat by the dull hope of change. I remember that hope now. Never how nice it felt to have hope, only the acrid sting of disappointment and the bitter taste of after-lust. I didn’t answer your inquiries, just walked on. I could no longer give you myself, for you’d killed me once. I was bleeding hopelessly, hanging limply in your arms. Yet, you didn’t notice. Now when you need to cling to that, when you long to hold that warm body close to your own, you’ll only find my cooled corpse huddled on the floor. A puddle of black blood curled around my pale form. The darkness caressing a glint of white in the night.