Snagged Skin

Pale white in form, her eyes looked hollowed and sunken beneath the textured face. Pasty white would dust off with each unconscious brush of her fingers, but the uncanniness of it all would give me shivers.

"Take off the mask, let me know that it is you." I heard myself say, though my mind was far from my lips, spinning ideas, spinning tales, weaving worthless lies of imagery in queried quips.

"It's just me, silly," Ferrah responded, her voice light and quick. I remember her pulling at the bottom of her chin. Lifting up, tacky sucking as if the mask was plastered on thick, peeling back, while my eyes did a quick little dip.

I found my head dipping, my neck a bow before it jerked back quick. There she was, Ferrah in all her beautiful-faerie-eyed trick. The ghoulish mask of the Forgotten, long left behind in its wispy sick, made me tired as I felt her hands grip my own with an icy prick. I had heard all the stories in my tiny leaf-stitched bed, acorn endcaps, daffodil plumage with a goose down fringe. And when I thought that I'd open my eyes to reveal what was a silly image deep within, my eyes would widen, her teeth would prickly the air with that sharp toothy grin.

And we'd dance, dance down the street in the cold hallowed night, singing our cheer, dancing our dance, letting children scream on our cold, pumpkin night. Pointed ears, sharpened teeth, and beady black eyes. I guess the mask was less scary to the humans with our unnatural guise.