A Mask

Will I ever be free? Will I ever be free of this tormenting life after death? To exist as a ghost wandering around in my own despair, just longing to be put back to rest?

I remember how peaceful the long rest was. There I was, sleeping in my ancient tomb without a thought to the living. Complete solitude. I was not being a bother to anyone living.

But all of that was snatched from me, many years later. Everything I had in life, and even in death were all taken away. Gone. And I still don’t know why to this day, and I probably never will. Suddenly, the past came rushing back to me. I remembered who I was, yet still not why I was here.

I never did any ill deed in my life. I was born a human, for Christ’s sakes! Not this, this… fiend! This creature, lurking through the night and mad with anguish as I gloss over everything I have lost! This legend of campfire tales and nightmare fuel, the scary stories that small boys tell in the dark!

But all I have left is this damned mask that taunts me so. I can’t be separated from it. Everywhere I go, it trails behind me. Everywhere I turned; it would follow me like a long lost puppy.

I passed by a graveyard, Lavender Town was its name, to be exact, at least the town name. The cemetery did not really have one that anybody knew of. There were many rumors and hoaxes surrounding it. Stories of how the dead came back from life to haunt the living. The stories of buried corpses sucking victims in, or of ghastly hands clasping around the living. The most frightening of them all being a ghost, a devil, giving its trainer immense power, just to take it away. But all I have to ask is, why?

What sick, twisted monster would torture us so?

I took out the mask, my mask…

Except, it was not always a mask, it was once my face.

Hesitant, frail tears came to its eyes as I gazed upon it.

My face… was once so beautiful…

All I could do was stare at the mask, and weep silently to myself. I can never be free.