The Masquerade

(This is just a short story I have written. I hope you enjoy it. Tell me what you think of it in the comment :) )

The eyes of the green creature scanned the room. Tendrils decorated his eyebrows and hung from its cheeks like whiskers. It crept low on the ground, his body swaying with its own inner rhythm. The lights glittered on the gold skin that outlined his features. Onlookers couldn’t place what he was. Some called it a dragon; others, a tiger; and more called it the kraken. A small low trill tickled its throat as he explored its space.

                              

A stranger approached him. Her head was adorned with small dull horns that made her features seem more bug- than fawn-like. The high forehead she sported piqued the green creature’s curiosity. The green creature brought his huge wrinkled nose closer to sniff the small bug-like stranger. The stranger shied away, but did not run. She bobbed and circled him, staying lower to the ground than he was. He tried to investigate her further. Her small horns inspired a desire to inspect them. Did he have horns like that? Not that he knew of. What did it feel like to have horns? How did one use them? However, as he approached, the stranger shied away and flitted off. 

The green creature trilled a low and disheartened hum. His curiosity had not been quenched. This new world he had been granted investigation to triggered every sensory nerve in his body and intensified each to its maximum level. He swayed on all fours with the rhythm of his inspired fascination.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a waterfall of red descending from the heavens. His sensory nerves went on overload! His mind practically exploded with the thrill of this new discovery. He darted over to the shimmery red cascade. The red enveloped him as he collided into it. The touch of the red intrigued him. It was soft, but it did not part or drip with his searching and attentive tendrils. What was this substance? It was solid and stretched as he pulled. He pressed his face and rolled in the red. Soon he became wrapped in its embrace. He purred with satisfaction. His fascination beckoned him further, calling him to scale to the heavens by the red path.

However, when he sought to disengage himself from the red, he found its embrace tightened and constricted the more he flailed. His high pitched trill became louder and louder as he struggled to free himself. He bucked and wrenched on the ground, seeking an escape, but the constricting grip of the red grew tighter. Finally, he lay limp, defeated by the vivid red that streamed down from heavens.

Suddenly he felt a tug come from the red. A chirp sounded next to him. He looked to the sound and found the bug-like stranger, flitting around him and tugging on the red, loosening its hold until he could move his feet, his limbs, and finally his whole body was free from its constricting grasp. The green creature rolled to his feet. The bug-like stranger danced over to him and inspected him closely. When she observed no serious harm had befallen him, she danced off and left him alone with the red stream.

She saved him. Why? Had he not frightened her in their original encounter? His gratitude and desire to appease his inquiries compelled him to follow her. He crawled, bouncing slightly on all fours to hasten his stride. He finally found the bug-like stranger. She was being confronted by a tall bird being. The bird being stood on her back two legs and bobbed around the bug-like stranger. She cawed noisily at the bug-like stranger. Like the green creature, the bird being was fascinated by this new organism. However, the bug-like stranger seemed to be seeking a way out. Each time the bird being bobbed in one direction, the bug-like stranger would flit another way, only to be blocked again by the red and gold face of the bird being. Her tall stature and long limbs spread out like wings impressed a sense of superiority on the bug-like stranger.

This attitude of the bird being perplexed the green creature. These juxtaposed creatures tugged at his understanding of the world around him. Was not every creature like the bug-like stranger? This new world was a fascinating, but frightening place with tall constricting red pillars? What spurred the bird being to be less timid and more commanding than him or the bug-like stranger?  Did she not empathize with the feelings of curiosity and caution that spurred them all?

The green creature crept closer to the bird being. The bird being’s attention was distracted from the frightened bug-like stranger as she bobbed over to the green creature.  This allowed the bug-like stranger to flit away to a safer distance. A spark flared in the green creature’s mind. Their predicaments seemed to have paralleled: the bug-like stranger had saved him from the red, and now the green creature was saving the bug-like stranger from the bird being. This new sense of purpose empowered the green creature. The bird being bobbed around him while the green creature trilled in curiosity, swaying in time to the rhythm of this new conflict. With his senses overloaded with the search of a new solution, he remained unmoving in the center of the bird being’s circle of attention. He did not give the bird being the satisfaction of forcing him lower to the ground. His thirst for knowledge made him impervious to the submission that the bird being was attempting to impose on him. 

The bird being seemed puzzled by this. The green creature watched in fascination as she bobbed and cawed more frantically, demanding more of his submission. The green creature trilled at this new gimmick in the bird being.  His mind twisted and flipped at the new possibilities this presented him. The bird being seemed more frantic and desperate. She did not seem to have a clear means of gaining her objective. What if he tried to escape? The possibility seemed too tempting for his curiosity to reject. It could be the solution to this challenge.  He swayed to the right as if to escape the bird being. She bobbed in front of him and cawed furiously. He swayed to the left and observed a similar reaction from her. The green creature observed his space for another means of escape. In her frantic bobbing, the bird being was not completely watching the green creature. The green creature looked up to see a stream of red. Both ends of it were connected to the heavens, but the center seemed to sag down the middle. An idea sparked but was stalled by the green creature’s fear of the constricting red. He watched the bird creature observe his fear, cawing louder and standing taller. The renewed existence of the challenge bestowed on the green creature quenched his previous fear.

With new resolve, the green creature stood on two strong back legs and lifted himself up to the red stream above. His front limbs seized the stream, and he swung himself up on to it. He wobbled while the stream shook, but he held his balance and watched as the bird being bobbed in confusion at his sudden disappearance. The green creature observed in wonder the bird being’s outrage and confusion. The loss of power seemed too much for her to take.  The green creature’s mind sparked with a new idea, and quietly he swung himself up-side-down behind the bird-being. With the bird being only inches from his face, the green creature trilled a high pitched note. The bird being cawed and jumped in alarm. She continued to panic, jump, and caw until she had completely fled the green creature. 

The green creature heard a continual series of short and curt chirps. The bug-like stranger was crouched low, shaking and chirping as if laughing at the bird being. The green creature’s mouth curled back to smile. The predicament was solved and his discoveries had gone to satisfy is unending curiosity.

Then he stared in front of him. What was this? What were these new creatures?  Driven again by his fascination, the creature swung down from the red stream and crawled toward the new mystery. Their faces were bare and without decoration. From their heads grew fur of different colors and lengths.  What were they? He crept closer to an individual with long hair. Her lips were upturned, as if smiling. A low trill rumbled in the green creature’s throat at the new well of mysteries from which he could quench his everlasting curiosity.

~          ~          ~

“Okay! Masks off!” cried the period six drama teacher.

Seth gingerly removed the green mask he had fastened to his face. He held it in both of his palms and examined again the face that had covered his face. The green tendrils hung like whiskers from the sides of its mouth and from its eyebrows. Each tendril was outlined in gold paint that joined at the gold jewel-like sphere placed between the eyebrows of the mask.

Linda walked over to him. She held her mask, a yellow one that covered the nose and adorned the forehead with small horns, carefully in her right hand. “Good job. That was a nice improv.”

Seth smiled and complimented Linda on her part in the skit. Janet strode out from backstage holding her own bird-like mask. She returned to sit next to Linda, who high-fived for a job well done.

He looked back on to the stage. Around the stage hung red silks meant for the acrobats in the play. They hung from the ceiling, often anchored at two points by hooks attached to the rafters. The ends would then trail down like a long rope to the floor. 

Seth returned to his seat in the audience chairs. He stared at his mask in wonder. The skit was supposed to bring out their masks’ “personalities” as their teacher had put it. The characters in each mask were supposed be generated through the actor naturally and by impulse, almost as if to portray the feelings and traits of the mask itself.

But the possibilities of these implications seemed endless. They suggested that the mask was actually a creature, a sentient being seeking a host through which it could explore the world around it. Their wishes, feelings, and wants were generated through the hosts to get their desired objectives. It was like a creature, trapped in the confines of a paper maché and a strap, where it waited for its medium to come and set it free.

~          ~          ~

The green creature settled, disheartened by his new limitations. He could no longer see, taste, smell, or feel the world around him. He was trapped in the confines of a senseless and numb object, cut off from the fascinating world he had just seen. Now it was an energy full of curiosity and inquiry that could only stay and wait until his medium returned.