The Mask

They know.

The paranoia of their approach has become a certainty. Their prying eyes seek my truth.

It’s the buzz word that irritates me to the point of madness. Looping around and around my head with the threat of stinging pain. The honeymoon period is over. Their gaze penetrates beyond the surface as they say it vehemently. An expletive ladened with religious fervour.

Narcissist.

Their growing awareness did not concern me at first, but then it hit a resonant frequency. There was a song of change that grew louder and louder, until my ears rang and I, the hunter, became the prey. The tables turned and I felt what all those I have bested must have suffered.

Fear.

When I wear the mask I am safe. The mask is my castle. An impenetrable wall that provides my strength. They have woken up to this. They are aware of my subterfuge and what lies beyond. They ask themselves whether they are safe from the vigilante who stalks the night. Now they see a mad man. Out of control. Beyond law and order. Beyond sense and sensibilities. They question my reason and make of it an excuse.

Ungrateful fools! I am the single reason that they now have law and order. I took the chaos of a dying city and I bent it to my will. I broke its brittle back and I made the night darker so that the day shone more brightly. There can be no light without darkness. I am necessary. A much needed evil that affords good in their waking moments. I walk the path. I dare to tread where angels will not. I do this for them. I bleed for them and they mock me.

They have such short and selective memories. They choose to forget what I have done for them. What I still do. Of course, they are right to fear me. The face that fear wears is respect. And fear cannot be selective. The underworld is terrified of me. I know them too well. I am one of them. I am the ultimate betrayal of their kind. I love them for their flaws and their weaknesses. I love them for what they made of me. They made me possible. I tempered myself in the furnace of their fury.

There is a special place in hell for the betrayers. I know this. I’m already there. I glory in what I do far too much. There is no longer a reason for this. Only a blind lust that takes more and more to sate. I think there might’ve been honest validation once. But I don’t know anymore. The past has fallen to darkness, as has the future. I live only for the night, and the night hides its secrets. Secrets that will never see the light of day. But I am no longer one of its secrets. My betrayal has come full circle. It seeks me out to undo me and expose me for what I really am. I will burn in the light one day. This I know for a certainty.

That hungry lust that takes over and blots out all else. I’m hungry. Always hungry. I once told myself that it was justice that I sought. To right the wrongs of this broken city. Then I saw the justice that the corrupt system meted out. Even after I outed the bent cops and the judges on the payroll of the mob, nothing really changed. The system itself was too twisted out of shape. A sausage factory that minced the good out of everyone. I’d catch murderers and hand them to this so-called justice system, only to see the criminals win and walk away. Emboldened by the experience. Feeling untouchable. Braver for having crossed paths with the shadow of me and lived to see another day.

They made me what I am. They made me do what I do. I can’t help but play their game, even as it twists me more and more out of shape. But I’m also playing my own game. Introducing a covert quota system. Handing them a mid-tier criminal and taking the richer pickings for myself. A tithe for the king who rules them all. A knight cloaked in darkness. There is honour in what I do. An honour that none can understand for it is mine and mine alone. This is a space only I can occupy. The splendid isolation of the damned.

I thought that what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. A cloak of gentle lies to accompany the mask. I believed that they’d willingly turn a blind eye. For a while, this was how things were. I was convenient back then. Now they ask questions and they see the holes and the absences. They want to expose it all. Me most of all. They would out and cancel me within a heartbeat. No eye towards the consequences. I am consequences. Remove me from the equation and the result is chaos. Yet they call me chaos.

Me.

I stare at my mask and I see myself. I removed the mirrors in my house long ago. The mask is my only mirror. I cannot bare to see anything else. There’s nothing to see. That’s a lie. I am a lie. I am not empty. I am not filled with nothing. There is a nothingness to me. A dark and powerful force that is not me, and is all that I am.

I am terrified of being exposed. I cannot live without the mask.

I sought the darkness. But the darkness was waiting for me. Had been waiting for an age. Knew I would come. I stared into it, wishing I could be something. Anything. In my grief and despair I sacrificed all that I was, and all that I had, to become the darkness itself.

The darkness.

I’m in there somewhere. Sometimes I hear an anguished cry and I know it is me. My true self. Fighting. Always fighting. Never knowing when to give up. To drink of the darkness and drown. The blessing of death would be a release, but I will never kiss those poisoned lips.

I am a lie.

This will never end. This is only the start. I sold my soul. Hell is waiting. I am already there. I kill them all so easily and I feel nothing. Nothing for them. Nothing for me. I am a rage-filled impulse. Hateful vengeance upon the unfairness of a life that deprived me of the simple love of my mother and father, even when they were alive.

My legend says that they were killed by a petty thief. The story is half true. Theirs were the first lives I took. Another sacrifice was required. My soul was not worthy. I had to prove my worth. Besides, I had to know. And they had to know also. I needed to see the light of recognition in their eyes before they dimmed and succumbed to the darkness that awaits us all.

I am the contrast to humanity. A stark warning. It is right to be afraid of the dark. The dark that resides in us all. A hungry slick of evil that can so easily consume us. As I consume the criminals who are weak in their unwillingness to succumb to their true nature. I am more whole than any of them. They see that and they despair. In their final moments, they see beyond the mask and they know me for what I am.

And I wish I could see what they see.