Doors Masquerade (doorsmasquerade) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-03-27 23:10:00 |
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Entry tags: | plot: masquerade |
Who: Deformity
What: Reveal.
Where: A hall in Passages.
When: Just post-sunrise.
Warnings/Rating: None.
He'd lost track of the dragging time, hidden away in a dark corner (not an alcove, because they were too likely to be invaded by someone) with his hands either pressed to the mask or running along the twists and scars of his own face. He was half-expecting to be stuck like this forever as some sort of karmic retribution, and by the time the sun's first rays struck out over the horizon, he'd almost convinced himself it was the only sensible thing to have happened. But then morning came, and everything stretched, and without warning he was dumped flat on his back with sharp curse.
The first thing he noticed was the lack of pressure of the mask. The second was, as he frantically tried to get up and pull his jacket's collar up higher again, that his hands were no longer slashed and shredded. The red-copper stain was gone, leaving behind only the usual callouses and short, slightly-dirty fingernails. He almost slapped himself in his haste to feel his face and see if everything was normal again there or if he was in yet another hallucination - and yes, it was all gone: the scarred-up eye, the twists and whorls of pulled and ruined skin, likely the awful stains that had slowly started to creep and spread over the night. He could see normally again, without one eye's vision being gray and faded. After a moment of frozen disbelief he pulled out his cellphone and stared at his reflection in the silent surface.
Normal. As normal as ever. It was like nothing had changed - like he hadn't just resembled the victim of a slasher, or an acid attack, or a molotov cocktail to the face. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the journal, flipped it open and read the mysterious, authorless entry, and felt an empty pit in his stomach.
There was no question of why. He knew why. He knew what every stain and scar meant, now. Didn't people always say you couldn't live on anger alone? That you couldn't bottle things up without killing yourself? And yet he'd spent most of the last ten years doing exactly that. Angry, pointlessly rude and snide, refusing to breach any subject that might have some sort of sensitivity for him. Never 'letting go', because he didn't know how to do that. Never forgiving anybody, much less himself.
There wasn't much Aiden felt guilty for, but the one big thing in his life had claws in his soul so deep nothing would ever take it out. Probably not even death, he thought humorlessly.
He put away the phone and the journal and fished his glasses out of the pocket they'd been stored in. Luckily his frantic insanity on realizing what he'd become (turned inside out) hadn't gotten them crushed or broken. Quickly, he put them on, stood up, and made his way back out of the hotel as fast as he could without drawing much attention to himself. It was a hell of a walk back to the store, but at least he could grab a drink on the way there.