All right, then -- let's go with a seasonal topic!

Challenge #80 (Out of the Closet) is now closed.

Challenge #81 is, in the spirit of the season (get it? get it? "spirit"? ....yes, I'm a huge dork), masks.

In Hiding

It's me, and the mirror: a woman, peeling away the masks.

The first one, flesh and fever, is the woman of today, feeling her age, feeling her systems breaking down. The lips are cautious, the eyeslits come with hoods. This one's about protection against loss.

Beneath that, another: passion, scarlet-painted cheeks, a full ripe mouth, what they see, what they should have seen, when they looked down at her, her body moving under them.

Third mask: the girl who won't die, comedy/tragedy, laughter and tears, tinted with the flame of her need, painted in all the colours of the rainbow.

For today, let me put my mask on. Let me be your Salome; let’s give reality a pass today. Pretend there’s nothing but right now...the sweet taste of chocolate and what happens when our lips touch. Tomorrow will happen soon enough...with its bill paying and my finding the flaws in my face.Tonight I’l be a temptress and give you everything. I’ll be a goddess and make you a world, just to smash. I’ll be a princess and pretend that I rule. I’ll be a clown just to make you smile. I’ll be a naughty schoolgirl and let you give me...detention.(I never have been very disciplined.) I’m a spy on a mission...a detective that needs to make a few confessions herself. For tonight, I’ll be anything but me.

erika, you just broke me.

Me, too.

Mask drabble:

It's ugly, but it works.

The oxygen mask is bulbous rubber in dark olive drab, an elephant's trunk strapped to my face. The weight of the long, thick, stretched concertina of the hose is a constant downward pull, while the top of the mask pushes my cheeks up, giving me a squint and making it difficult to see.

Afterwards I'm left with a red line like a pillow crease across my nose, down both cheeks, and under my chin. I don't mind looking like a clown. I've just flown the Pikes Peak wave to thirty thousand feet without an engine.

Oh, NICE, dcp.

Weirdly, I have a similar one working its way up.

The Natural Look

Women wear make-up like a mask, "putting our face on” before going outside. We complain of feeling naked without it. Some days, it’s lightly done, subtly highlighting things in a way to leave us looking untouched by artifice. Other times, we flaunt it with glitter and gloss, harlequinesque party masks to shine in the dark and draw men like moths to our flame.

My mother’s allergies only allowed her to wear lipstick. Looking at her that last time, I wanted to wipe off the make-up, the mask of death prepared for her then as she never wore it in life.

Wow, Sail, that give me chills.

It was so strange, to see my mother with make-up on. The funeral parlor did a great job, it was totally natural looking. If she had ever wore make-up. It was the thing that really made me realize she was dead. Yeah, chills, even now.