Masks

She'd gone to Tijuana, where plastic surgery was cheap.

Dear editor(s) of The Foundling Review, please consider this short piece 'Masks' for inclusion in a future issue of your online magazine.

Thank you,

Robert Aquino Dollesin

robertdollesin@comcast.net

Masks

WC: 749

Juanita collected masks. The walls of her bedroom were covered with them. Diego had never seen so many masks gathered together in a single place before. From the simplest rubber pig's snout to the more elaborate African wooden.

The night Diego met her, at a singles mixer, all Juanita talked about was the heartbreak that followed her failed marriage. Experience had taught Diego that the secret to sleeping with divorced women was in being a good listener, a friend, and someone whose shoulder could be cried on. So he offered an understanding ear, and all the while Juanita lamented her woes, Diego patted her knee politely, never revealing the fact that he was himself happily married.

All day he tried not to excite himself by thinking about what might happen when he got to Juanita's apartment.

Earlier they shared a candlelight dinner at a classy restaurant, then they were off to a small bar, where they drank too many drinks, and even danced a little.

Now, while Juanita undressed at the foot of her bed, Diego took a bright red Kabuki demon mask off the wall. He held it up and it seemed to mold itself against his face almost perfectly. He called out to Juanita,

“How do I look?”

Juanita, moving naked toward the edge of her bed, smiled and said, “Scary.” She then plopped belly-up on the sheet and burst into giggles. Above the headboard behind her hung two stick masks.

Tragedy and Comedy.

She reached over her shoulder and wrapped her fingers around one of the wooden handles. She raised the mask to cover her face. Under the eye holes above Tragedy's fixed frown, Juanita's deep green eyes widened suggestively. She said, “Put that away and come lie beside me.”

Diego replaced the Kabuki. Juanita did the same with Tragedy. After shedding his clothes, Diego crossed the room and climbed onto the mattress next her.

“Thank you,” she softly said, tracing his arm with her fingertips, “for being with me tonight.” She reached for the chain dangling from the lamp on the nightstand and yanked it. Except for some moonlight coming in through the curtains, the room went dark.

In that instant Diego felt a warning chill blow against the back of his neck. The hair on his arms bristled. The muscles in his thighs knotted.

Lying in bed, he glanced around the dim room. His gaze pounced from Jester to Joker to Harlequin. All of them leering back with wild grins.

Juanita rolled toward Diego and pressed her naked body against him. “Something wrong?”

Diego didn't answer. His eyes were fixed on a scowl from a blue, beaded Mexican mask. He turned his head to the right and his glare was met by a mask whose hungry expression had been hacked onto a coconut half-shell. Diego realized, with a sick feeling, that all of Juanita's mask were wide-eyed and staring.

He shifted his gaze from a butterfly-shaped mask with dangling antennae, to a gold replicate funerary mask of the young Tutankhamen. Then to a snarling El Gato. Finally, Diego stared a long time into the vacant eyes of an Inca warrior with a red-feathered headdress sprouting from the top of its head.

He felt the outpouring of torturous memories that had been trapped in wood and plaster; in terra-cotta and plastic; in glass and latex. “I can't” – He stopped and caught his breath – “I can't do this.”

He started to climb out of bed, but Juanita curled her long fingers around his wrist and dug her nails into his arm. In the bedroom's scant light, her shoulders rose and fell, rose and fell. She tossed her hair back, half-closed her eyes, and sighed.

Speaking ever so slightly, she said to Diego,

“They like you.”

Then, raising her hand above the covers, Juanita said loudly, “But you'll all have to wait your turns, won't you?”

Juanita's hand swelled. It took on the texture of vapor. Her arm elongated like pulled clouds. Her splayed fingers stretched long, twining through the room like coils of black smoke.

Diego, trembling and with his mouth wide open, pulled himself into a tight ball. He watched Juanita's smoky hand – a blur of flight -- zip through the room, a green glow trailing behind. In front of each mask the hand stopped a mere fraction of a second and, in a puff of smoke, flipped the mask's eyelids shut.

***

Bio:

Robert Aquino Dollesin was still a kid when he left the Philippines. He now lives in Sacramento, where on occasion he sits down and writes a story. His work has appeared in Nossa Morte, Bending Spoons, Underground Voices, and a number of other online venues. He sometimes blogs here: http://robertaquinodollesin.blogspot.com/