A box filled with fake

Imagine you are in a room with a hundred million light bulbs and about as many switches. You need something to illuminate the darkness, but all of them at once will blind you or drive you crazy. So, you better start making choices, boy.

I open my eyes. I have a box of masks. Some of them are happy. Some are sad. Some are gaudy flights of fantasy. Others are so realistically crafted that they are indistinguishable from real persons. Speaking of which, I once read somewhere that the work "person" is derived from "persona", which was originally synonymous with "fake identity". So what I have, is a box filled with fake. It's not the first time I'm using it. I've played this game many many times. Don a mask and say outrageous things. I've fooled good friends and family that way. I'm about to do it all over again. This time, I choose to wear a woman's face. It is a good fit. For the time being, I will call her "Storywoman". I sit in her chair, wearing her body. And I begin to write.

I close my eyes. I'm eleven. It's summer vacation. There's three of us at the old Manson Lodge. We take turns to haul ourselves upwards to peak through a cracked dusty window. Hartley sees a dead body or a dummy or something lying across the floor. Its head was hacked off and lies to one side. He only tells this later. Cadigan sees nothing but an empty room. There's a crack in the fireplace. Some papers scattered to one side. But no body. It is my turn and my burden to decide who was right. But it's a little more complicated than that. I see a young woman sitting in a rocking chair. She is writing in a thick journal book. She looks up and seems to draw me into the room, into the book with her. I let go and drop to the ground. I have no answers for Hartley or Cadigan. The only ones I found were for myself.

I open my eyes. Someone is nudging me. It turns out to be a forty-five year old woman. She asks, "Can I have your autograph please?" "I'm practically a nobody," I said. "You're Johnny Moonlight," she helped me out. "I have all your records. I'm your biggest fan." I feel pretty sure that I'm not Johnny Moonlight, but for some really odd reason, at that moment, I know how to do Johnny Moonlight's autograph. So I take the pen and trust the right hand to know what the memory knows not. When she is gone, I go over my face with my fingers. I feel the rubbery fake of a mask. Johnny Moonlight's mask. But I still don't understand how I was able to sign his name.

I close my eyes...