La - Mascara

People treated her differently. They filled in the blank spaces of the mask with their own fantasies. She was mysterious. She was tragic. She was beautiful in a way that required no proof.

Elena didn't answer. She just tilted her head, let the gold filigree catch the fluorescent light, and walked out.

Within a week, the mask had become her face. She wore it to work (she taught art history to sleepy undergraduates; they suddenly paid attention). She wore it to the laundromat (a man offered to fold her sheets). She wore it to the café where she had once been ignored by a barista who now called her madame and asked if she wanted the special reserve . La Mascara

Elena turned it over in her hands. It was belle époque —porcelain-white, with delicate gold filigree trailing from the eyes like frozen tears. A half-mask, meant to cover only the upper face. The inside was velvet, soft as a whisper.

And behind the velvet, in the dark hollow where her face should have been, a thin smile was already beginning to form. People treated her differently

The first time she tried to take it off, the velvet clung to her skin like a second layer.

Inside was a mirror—small, hand-sized, framed in tarnished silver. No note. But as she held it up, she saw not her reflection, but the inside of the mask. The velvet was moving. Softly, like breathing. She was tragic

Days passed. She stopped trying to remove it. She told herself this was better. The mask was power. The mask was freedom. At night, she dreamed of gold filigree growing into her nerves like roots.