writing_shadows

A piece of fiction (1/3, hopefully) for Casey, a new Lost character who I hope to introduce at Inverness on Sunday (it won't be a Primary, so no need for any approvals :).

It didn't seem like Snaggle would be very welcome, let alone bother showing up for, a memorial party over Laine; so I put my thinking hat on. It's a Mirrorskin, like all the cool kids are playing these days (they're the new Shadowsouls, eh?). Here's a piece about their re-emergence and Durance, heavily inspired by this scene from American Psycho (which I thank Richard Jennings for bringing to my attention), and The Birth Caul (which can be found in Alan Moore's Disease of Language collection, which is honest-to-god one of the top-ten pieces of literature I could recommend to someone.)

My thanks to Rhona for being no end of help during character creation.

Things flick in, like they'd never been gone.

You know they have, but it hardly seems to matter. You have a routine to follow, continuity remains. Just get on with it.

Put on your face again, you know the routine, put on your face. But from where?

Just a mirror, fitted to a wall. Incongruous, out here in the alleyway. You know that it doesn't make sense, you aren't sure why, but you know that it doesn't fit. Flashes of white, of dressing rooms, plush toilets with quilted tissues, the inside of cupboards. That's where they belong, not here, not next to the grime and the box of the filth of the city and the boarded-up windows. But no matter.

You peel off the mask like a caul, less a cage and more a womb. The flesh beneath, softened. Made gentle, and pink, and plush.

What can you remember? You are aware that it's worth bothering, although there's little else there. Nevermind, now, there's work to be done.

The lipstick, as you slip it across you can feel your fingers trembling. A heavy breath, then you're calm. You have done this so many times. More times than can be counted, more times than there are numbers. You can do it again, this one more time, here and now. In front of this strange mirror you had to wipe the grime of several unattended years from, that everyone else had forgotten. But not you. Never you.

More features than can be counted, more disguises than you could trace throughout those endless scarcely sequential non-years, more hair-nets and wigs and faux beards and bras and boxers and scraps of cloth and trimmings and tussels and shades and...

Still the mirror, still there, not forgotten. There for you, should you need it. You hadn't forgotten.

The last of the mask is peeled away, flecks of salmon exoskelton, remnants of a world you've left behind, a trail in your wake.

But not the habit.