Mask of His Own

Mask of His Own

None of the masks on the wall of the costume shop would give anybody a hint of who was underneath, the man thought. The frog mask said only clowning amphibian. The crescent moon and the attached kitten head covered up enough to leave the person beneath a patchwork mystery. The captain and his tricorn hat told of a different age that suggested nobody who was now living. Up and down the wall, faces covered by diamonds of red, black, and white gave no clear idea of the figures they were meant to depict. The archetypes of Comedy and Tragedy plastered over individual features and extinguished them. A person would never be recognized in any of the different masks.

The man looked then into the oval mirror set up for the shop customers. As he saw himself there surrounded by the masks on the wall, he wondered what his face would show anyone of who he was. Would they guess what he believed at heart? His receded hairline that revealed the shape of his head did not reveal the thoughts he had over his health, art, or faith. He himself might pick out he had his father’s dark eyes and his mother’s longish lips. But a stranger would read no family tree from them; nor would they see the inventiveness he believed he had from his father or the politeness he believed he had from his mother. The crinkle between his brows and the long lines in his cheeks spoke of a serious-minded, older man. But a person who trusted those traits were everything to him would not imagine the joy he took in a new idea, sketch, or pun. Nor would they guess the anger, frustration, and vanity that could brood inside and consume him. His face, he realized, hid as much as one of the masks on the wall.

AUTHOR BIO: Norbert Kovacs lives and writes in Hartford, Connecticut. He has published fiction recently in Blink-Ink, Worthing Flash, and The Ekphrastic Review. His website: www.norbertkovacs.net.