Ah yes, the mask. They ask me about my mask. I suppose I can’t blame them for it. It is, after all, what makes me such an enigma –a thing to be ogled at, studied, treated. Remove the mask, and I would be a creature ostracized. I would be given uneasy glances out of the corners of eyes and anxious frowns from the parental units of every block. They would shun me out of no particular evidence for my character, but merely on the absence of a surface texture.
No, I don’t seek to blame. There are many reasons for the mask, far more than I would ever expect another living person to understand. But what it ultimately boils down to is the clear and simple fact that I am a creature apart. I share in human sentiments, of course. I delve into anger and sorrow, envy and pride. I feel timid and brave just like the rest of them. But I understand that I am not a proper gear turning in the societies in which I find myself. If anything, I am the monkey-wrench, which brings an end to all productive function if I attempt to apply myself too much to any particular juncture.
And so I have sought to reside outside of it, akin to a shadow beneath the soles of a hero’s or villain’s shoes. I didn’t harbor any particular dislike for anyone, or even for the circumstance that applied such a peculiar gravity to my way of life. In fact, I admit to enjoying the solitude that such a way of life afforded me. From the start, I felt a sort of peace wash over me, as if some external power –and I do not consider myself a religious nor superstitious person– was whispering approval for my decision.
On that first day I had stationed myself atop a bench to one side of the market square in a relatively small mountain village. I sat with my feet on the seat and my elbows propped up on my knees, scooted all the way to one side to ensure plenty of room for any weary shopper to sit should the need arise.
Everyone noticed me: all ages, all manners of posture. The children were particularly adamant about it, of course. Where their parents and schoolteachers hastened to look the other way, the children twisted their heads and shoulders to blink at me in open fascination. They pointed their fingers at me and exclaimed and inquired. I would tilt my head at them, watching as they were herded away.
On the first day, an anxious young fellow pointed a town guard in my direction. The guard, as confident as he felt himself obligated to be, didn’t appear to be quite certain what to do with me. He rested his hands on his belt and ambled over with a pensive cock of the head.
“What are you supposed to be?” he asked me in a voice that wasn’t entirely friendly.
In silence, I tilted my head just a few degrees farther than his, until I could feel the right horn of my mask hovering over my shoulder.
He waited.
I waited.
He hiked up his belt and propped a foot up on the seat of the bench, discomfort beginning to crease his features. “D’ya…speak… English?”
I tilted my head all the way to the other side before, fully comprehending the implications of this question, hastening to nod and tap at my ear.
“Alright…” Slowly. His training hadn’t prepared him for the likes of me. “Not…up t’any trouble, are ya?”
Amused as I was at his uncertainty, and a touch fearful that handcuffs wouldn’t fit over my sleeves and gloves, I held up my empty palms and shook my head.
The look that he gave me as he paced away was not unlike that of most other adults as they walked by me that and the following day. But little by little I came to be an element in the backdrop, an ornament stationed to one side of their market square. Children were allowed to venture closer, and I would flutter my fingers at them and tilt my head and inspect that new trinket they had just bought from that stall over there. I even shook hands with a few of them, as gentle as I could manage. They gave my gloves a most peculiar look as if they thought the leather to be some strange sort of skin, or a disease that they had come into contact with.
After a while, the bench became a bench again, and the village residents deemed it safe to sit beside me, if perched on the far end of the seat. Some attempted to pretend that I wasn’t there, looking dutifully off in the other direction. Others inspected my feet, or outright stared at the face of my mask in dogged attempts at identifying the features beneath. On the first day of the third week, a man spoke to me.
It was after much staring –both at me and at the organized chaos of the market. He raked a hand back through his thin, graying hair and slanted me a look of such companionship as if together we had witnessed the dawn of time and everything to transpire since. In truth, I had only seen him two or three times before, and the only way that I could think of by way of response was to tilt my head, that the puzzlement might be communicated to him.
“Not a talkative one, are you?” he said, a grin adding new wrinkles to his cheeks. “Is it by choice?”
The question confused me to the point of tilting my head further. My role in these conversations, I soon came to realize, was that of inquiry. For lack of conveying expression through my mask, my primary mode of communication was the implied expression of puzzlement. The curls of my horns were the curls of question marks, defining my presence as one in a perpetual state of mystery.
“That’s alright,” he assured me, before letting the rest of the evening roll by in silence.
He returned the next day, and the day after that he presented me with one half of a sandwich bought fresh from one of the stalls on the far side of the square. “You seeking refuge from the war?” he asked me.
Turning the sandwich over in my hands, I shook my head.
“Traveling?”
I shook my head.
“Then what do you do, my friend?”
I froze in the act of peeling back the layers of the sandwich. The words rang sharply in my ear. My friend. My friend. A jarring cymbal crash echoed through my teeth. I eyed the sandwich, and then pushed it back at his hands.
He took it, but caught my wrist as I stood to go. “Please don’t run. You don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to.”
I remained frozen there, half-standing and transfixed by a heart-thumping feeling that my decision whether to stay or go might mean something more than I wanted it to. I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t fathom why. I wanted to stay, but I couldn’t fathom why. Neither option seemed greater or lesser to me.
“Look,” he told me. “I’ve appreciated spending time with someone who doesn’t feel obligated to hold a conversation. You’re someone who listens. Y’don’t see that often.”
Still I stared, baffled by what I was hearing, anchored to the spot by his astonishingly-strong grip on my arm.
“You don’t have to talk,” the man said again. “I just wanted to thank you for listening.”
The moment he released my wrist, I sprang over the back of the bench and fled into the alleyway.
But his words stuck with me. He had called me his friend, although he barely knew me. He had appreciated my silence, thanked me for it. How I could be thanked for merely occupying a particular space at a particular time baffled me. I didn’t intend to be anyone’s friend. One doesn’t thank the shadows for merely sitting at the periphery. Yet he had thanked me. Was this unusual? Was this some peculiarity of the human spirit to which I could only be exposed by stepping back from it?
It fascinated me.
The next day I returned, and so did he.
He spoke.
I listened.
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