He drags jagged, bitten nails across his flawed cheek, feeling the last bit of flaking makeup fade into his skin. He can tell the white is all but completely gone, revealing a smooth but anemically colored face.

At first it didn't bother him to know his painted facade had at last given out on him, but the stolen glances and glimpses in a food tray brought on a surprising amount of vehemence. It used to be a ritual, he remembers, the time spent in front of the reflection of his knife putting on the colors that made people fear him. He'd spend an hour or so - or perhaps a little more for those extra special occasions - smoothing on the white paint with a rotating palm, tracing his scars with red lipstick, blackening his eyes until he looked like the grave. Sloppy perfection. If it was not to his liking, he would start the process again. For a man who loves anarchy some things have to be just so with him.

But now he is annoyed. When the staff comes to feed him he can practically taste the absolute terror exuding from their every motion, but when he catches their darting eyeballs he sees the glint of frightened sympathy. They don't like the craggy mountains that have pulled his jaw line into a perpetual smile. Without his mask of painted hues they notice that it really is his actual flesh there, that he did suffer something in that past they liked to think he didn't have. It irritates him immensely; when people aren't scared they are frighteningly predictable. Scared people are the ones who do irrational things.

The staff learns quickly what is and is not permissible with him in terms of the asylum's regulations. They find him a tad more fearsome than their superiors. Within the second week he has a cracked little mirror in his hands, smuggled by a frightened nurse he thinks might be useful for such ventures in the future. It is with that little mirror that he bloats up against his vanity, disgusted and yet strangely affectionate of the disfigured features looking back at him. A carved grin that keeps on grinning taunts him in the reflection, formidable without aid. Smooth, clear, unpainted skin. The perfect blank canvas. He used to feel like an artist, and now he craves like one. The makeup and the chaos are just waiting for him out there. He shivers; it'll only be a while, he tells himself. Only a little while.