As read on 40 Story Radio Tower, Episode 28.
In the shadows of the morning, Loretta puts on her masks, caring for her pale young skin. She should age, but no, that's the time for reflection. She can't handle seeing her knowledge.
She was a caring girl behind all of her tough behavior. Magnificent with beauty. Some days she would try to understand why the men with wives would follow her. Why she frequently had to run home frightened late at night. Her face would itch and swell with welts. Yet everyday, the mask was fitted on so very tightly. By her family, by her lover, by the people she thought cared.
Think about how sad it is for the masquerade to never be able to feel what it meant to be loved. It's a fight never won.
Loretta became just as fake as her mask. Waxy, and with a head full of hair that wasn't her own. Was it her heart beating, or just the water dripping into the eroded metal sink? You couldn't even tell if she was breathing. Air so shallowly moving her belly, which was bloated from not eating for days. She just forgot.
She used the masks to get what she wanted. She used the masks to signify trust. Masks for friendship. Masks for lust. They are all there. Created in her likeness, but also out of sheer greed and narcissism. If she didn't wear one, no one paid attention. It became a daily crutch.
"Who am I?", Loretta asked the brightly lit silver bathroom mirror. "Mirror, oh Mirror.... the falseness falls off every night as I bash my sobbing face off of these faded, half painted walls."
These masks, they are always in front of me, waiting for who I need to be today.
How did this happen?
Loretta stood in the street as the sun rose in the cloudy sky, threatening an annoying spritz. "I renounce these addictions!" she wailed as the pavement under her feet grew cold.
Time for a new plan. "I will be a story teller, just like them...pretending that my every surly heart cry is nothing but poetry hanging in my fine lace dress." It is so splattered and stained, much like my face. I've had to hide behind my false truth. It seems like I'm covered in lies. My fault for being so proud.
I'll figure out what it's like to be an Artist, or a Writer, maybe I'll be a Musician. I hear they get a lot of attention....but only if you're good. Maybe I can fake that too. Oh shit! Shit, I can't be false. I can't be a fraud.
So how do you do this?
She spent the entire day in bed, contemplating a fresh look. A new day. Somewhere, something, someone that is real. The times before the masks and the people who remembered her. The real Loretta. A beautiful mess full of warmth. A compassionate soul who never meant any harm. A thankful person who wanted to believe there is good in the world. It was surely just a broken heart that made her run so cold.
You should see her now. After she hid all of the masquerader's confessions, and the empty grumbles they spewed at her weary, porcelain cracks, her face had fallen down into nothing but that mask. The one they had gazed so deeply on, sinking down into the shame. The one they kissed and pretended it meant nothing, over, and over, and over again. There became so many layers of masks just so she could look at them. Finally she realized, "I thought they loved me, but it's as false as this face." As she spoke, the mask she fixated on wilted, and gave away through her pallid, spindle fingers as she traced the floorboards in flaying swoop.
Today, the same town she has lived in for many years, doesn't recognize Loretta. The masquerade never sends an invitation. She doesn't have an appearance worth noting, or knowing....except for some. The ones who greet her in the morning. The ones that ask her how her day was. The few, proud and true, who kiss her cheek and tell her how lovely it is to see the person she promised to be. Loretta is loved by all the right people.
They are not the sun,
They are in the shadows
wearing a mask.
When they choose to know me,
be with all certainty
that I am not the one they can hide behind.
Not the one you can use and abuse,
or the one who agrees on your lies.
I am the brilliant light,
and a wrinkled face
because I have learned
what it's like to dance in the masquerade.
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