Average.

By Dhiren S

grows quieter, for all I can hear is my racing heart attempting to jump out of its skeletal cage.

“Do you love me?” I finally speak, my voice cracking. 

“Of course I do. Why would you ask that?”

“Well, what do you love about me?” a gauge. I’ve always wanted to tell you the truth. My cowardice makes me sick.

“Well, you feel like home to me…” and as she says this, did I realise how tense my forehead was, because it finally relaxed. “You’re kind, loving, and an absolute romantic. How could I not love you?”

“Regardless of how I look?” 

“Well, it certainly helps.” She runs her hand through my thick chestnut brown locks, tucking them behind my ear. I lean in, and we kiss.

Not today.

Her warm, soft hands in mine. The cool winds of Yami’s autumn kisses our skin as it slyly percolates through our clothes. You and I pull into each other, sharing our heat as you lean your head onto my shoulder, arm in arm all so instinctively. You feel like home. You are my home. Maybe you think of me as a close adjacent, I wouldn’t know. I’d like to believe that I am.

But I can’t.

“I wanted to ask you something.” Words I’ve struggled to muster any courage to say for a year now.

Your pink, plump lip’s part and out comes a voice I’ve accepted to be a part of my very being.

“What is it love?”

The world 

A small copper coin rings as it falls on the beggar’s plate. Bandages and gauzes, moderately crusted with dried blood, coarsely tied, covering his entire skull, leaving behind only a few patches of skin on his cranium, his right eye, and his mouth.  A crow sits on his shoulder looking around and cawing. A jute bag, cut with three holes to mimic a shirt is what he wears on top, ragged just as his muddy pants, filled by one, the other leg missing from the knee down. He looks as the numerous gray faces walk by him, all worried about their own individual trials and tribulations. He had amassed a few copper coins today, all from strangers who did not even look at him as they threw the money. It was not fear of how he looked. It was the depressing fact that he was insignificant.

The sun was setting, and he knew it was around time the couple would exit from the park. He knew the boy would not keep that girl passed dark, purely out of fear. The crow turns towards the exit, and caws twice. There they were, leaving the park, arm in arm.

The girl, in her early twenties, graceful with each step, long black hair that bounced off her bottom as she walked, her skin a dusky rarity with a flawless complexion. She looked like a highborn woman, ordained her long neck in gold and jewels.

The boy, tall, easily past six feet two inches, with long, chestnut brown locks that cover only a little bit of his forehead. He knows he must not hide any part of his face, for it truly was angelic to gaze at. Sharp nose, plump lips, deep, blue-green eyes placed at the right place, if there ever was one. A chin and jawline that appeared to be chiseled out of marble, a neck that was long yet defined. A lean body, where his tunic was worn to tease the eyes of the beholder by giving just a small look at his slabs of chocolate he had for an abdomen.

They look at each other, deeply into their eyes and smile. They were the happiest couple, on this road of gray faces. The couple walks by the beggar, and without even looking, the boy throws a copper coin in the beggar’s plate. The ring of the coin, the flapping of wings.

‘Any man that has a nose can taste the smell of piss emanating from this alley. The alley I enter every day as the man I want to be, and leave as the man I am. Who am I true to? I lie to myself every day that if I kept her happy, I’m doing right by her. Her ignorant bliss kills me. A ruse to justify what I am doing. But today’s not the day I can lament about this. For tomorrow, I will tell her. This time, I will do it.

Even light chooses not to grace this alley. The piss stains, littered rotting food, vomit everywhere, and despite that, there is a beggar lying against a wall, asleep. That’s mighty rich, isn’t it? I visit here everyday to do this, and I’m judging this poor man. 

Oma, spare me. 

He really is asleep. Maybe I can do this without him noticing? But just in case, I’ll go a bit deeper.’

 The young man looks around nervously, and turns his back toward the beggar, in the off-chance he might see his deed.

The young man places his right hand on his left cheek, grasping at the skin near his left ear.

He yanks at it, as though peeling away a lid tightly closed.

He grits his teeth as the skin elongates and thins, a soft painful moan as he rips his own face off the bone. As he pulls the mask off, his body changed.

His hair turned a pitch black.

He shrunk by nearly half a foot.

His slabs of chocolate replaced by an undefined flat stomach.

His blue-green eyes turned brown.

And in his right arm he holds while he pants heavily, a bronze mask. A bronze mask that had engravings of an ancient tongue along its forehead, with symbol of the moon on one cheek, symbol of the sun on the other.

The boy vomits on the ground, a regurgitation so strong, it brings him to his knees. As he wipes face on his forearm, he looks at his hand to find the mask was missing. His eyes, panic-stricken, dart around him and as he turns to see the beggar, he sees him standing ten feet away, crutch in one hand, the precious mask in the other, completed with the crow perched on his shoulder.

‘No no no no no no no’

“Sir? Please return that to me?” The young man asks, his voice shaking. The strange beggar stares at him, unresponsive. The young man sweats as his eyebrows raise.

“I’ll pay you for it, sir? Please, take all of my money too!” He says as he pulls out his little bag and throws it at the beggars feet. Frigid stare remains.

“Come on… please? You can’t… do this…” The young man says, his voice breaking. Still no response. The boy yells and charges at the beggar. “Atleast say something you bastard!!”

Barely ten seconds later, the boy finds himself prone on the ground, his one arm locked behind his back, and a dagger an inch away from his eye. The boy freezes, and his eyes begin to well up.

“HELP! HELP! SOMEBODY! ROBBERY!!! ROBBERY!!!” He screams.

“You know better than anyone, nobody can hear you down here. I’m robbing you of one life. Do not let me rob you of two.” A raspy voice whispers into his ear.

“You… You know?! How do you-“ The boy exclaims. 

“Who gave you this mask?” The beggar asks.

“Some old man I met in the woods… he gave me this mask as a prize for my company…”

“If you met the old man, he must have warned you of the bad luck he spreads.”

“Clearly, he wasn’t wrong! Please sir, Let me go. I have a sickly father and if i-“

“Die, he would soon after. I know.” The crow caws as it circles around them in the sky. “You’re quite strange. Any other man, if he were to get a hold of this mask, would have been the richest man by now. Yet you used it for a woman. Why?”

“I… love her. I…”

“Why not approach her with the way you look now?”

“Have you seen her? She wouldn’t even notice a man who looks like me. Her last lover was one of the most handsome men in this city. Why would she bother to look at me?”

The beggar remains silent for a few seconds, and sighs.

“I’ll let you get up now, but if you try anything, you’ll notice some broken bones.” The beggar releases the arm, and gets up, with difficulty. The young man turns to his back and sees the beggar.

“You await your father’s death so you can live as such with your woman, never having to take off this dreaded mask.”

“What? No...”

“This mask is mine now.” The beggar cuts him short.

“You can’t take that from me…”

“I could take your life, and take this mask with me. I’m offering you a way out. A way out of your deceit, a way into clarity.”

“At the very least, let me take this mask for one last day, and by sunset tomorrow I’ll return it to you.” The young man tries to negotiate.

“You do realize, I know where your father and your woman live.” He stares the boy down 

“I’ll give it back, I just need to show her…”

The beggar remains quite for a minute, and finally throws the mask at the young man.

“Tomorrow, Sunset.”

The boy nods and begins to walk away.

“You should know, you’re not ugly, unattractive, even. You’re just average.” The young man turns and shoots a smile at the beggar.

“What’s the rush today, honey?” The young girl asks.

“Today’s just a bit strange, y’know?” He responds his eyes jumping around the park, looking for the beggar. 

“Why?”

“Darling, earlier you said you’d love me regardless of my looks, right?” He asks, his arms grasping at her thin shoulders.

“Yes?”

“But what if I was different to look at? But I treated you the same?”

“For the last time, I’d still love and cherish you. Why?”

“Because… well… I’ll show it to you.” He gets up from the park bench and signals her to close her eyes.

“Ummm why? Are you gonna run away or something?” She chuckles. He leans forward and holds her hands in his hands.

“I promise, I’ll never run away from you.” 

She smiles and closes her eyes.

The young man turns and just as he grasps his left cheek again, he catches a moment where he sees the beggar. He begins to rip the mask off his face. 

However, as he groans softly in pain, the young girl opens her eyes out of worry and witnesses the horrid transformation of her lover. His bones make an audible cracking noise as the flesh underneath his skin moves, almost rearranging itself within. She gasps and puts her hand against her mouth, utterly shocked. She gets up and walks up to his side and sees the skin on his face being stretched a foot off his face with the pull of the mask. She screams as he pants away, the bronze mask in his right hand steaming.

He takes a second to compose himself and turns to smile at his love, who responds with horror. 

“This is how I really look…” the girl faints, and falls. He quickly reaches for her, and few moments go by until she regains her consciousness. She awakens to her lovers’ real face, and awakens screaming, pushing him away and scattering to her feet. She turns around and runs, tears flowing through her eyes.

The young man stands in the park, watching as she runs away, bronze mask in hand. He drops it and walks away.

A couple of days go by, and the beggar walks by the young man’s house where he sees the sickly father sitting outside, coughing, and crying. People are coming in and out of the house, dressed in black. He uses the crutch to walk toward one of the people exiting.

“Excuse me, sir… what happened to the young man from that house? He used to be gracious with his alms.” The beggar asked.

“Oh, the poor boy hung himself… the stress of taking care of his father… it must have gotten to him.”

The beggar thanks the strangers, and walks away.

The same day, the beggar sees the young girl sitting on the bench in the park, the same bench the two occupied every day.

Her eyes, looking for someone.

By Dhiren S