Discovered a new trick for getting rid of writer's block: smelling stuff. No, seriously. I did research. Smell is actually the most potent sense in your body for remembering specific occasions and feelings and thoughts. (Like, for example, I smelled formaldehyde the other day and instantly remembered the time in 5th grade when my friend Jackie and I dissected lamb's brains in class. We ended up with brain tissue splattered all over us and reeked of organic materials for days. Ah, good times.)

So for this entire shindig, which took approximately fifteen minutes, I sat down with these yummy vanilla scented candles my friend Brooke gave me one birthday. And lo and behold! This little drabble pops up. Yay!

Open for consideration on who you think it's about, though it's really quite obvious. :)

…I really hope I don't start smelling psychedelic mushrooms next. D:

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Prompt #3: Masquerade

She's always telling me to loosen up.

Relax, she says. Calm your body.

She always did give good advice.

Sometimes she just gives me that look, that one that tells me I'm making a fool out of myself, and I know I should probably shut up and sit down before I have a hernia.

Once she even came into my room while I was working, carrying a loaded tray with tea and biscotti. Like she knew I was annoyed even before I did. And she just sat there, on the floor, while I paced and paced and paced until my legs were shaking and my vision was clouded with a sea of red frustration. And then she made me sit and calm myself until I could think again. So we sat, and for a while our minds just kind of bounced around—or maybe mine was bouncing, or maybe just hers, or maybe they were both bouncing and colliding in midair and then bouncing back into our own respective brains—and her silence was calming in a way I had never known before.

And then, when she was sure I was myself again, we drank the tea she brought. She talked. And I laughed.

I laughed.

While I was working.

And there was this one, single time, just a random afternoon, when she asked me why I was hiding behind a mask. It only took a second or two for her to ask, but afterwards I think time stretched on and on and on, spanning years of awkward silences and eons of unanswered questions.

So I told her my scripted answer, the one I no longer have to think about, the one that comes almost unbidden to my mouth: I hide behind a mask because there are people—there are secrets, identities—that I need to protect.

And even though I looked away from her a split second after I said it, I saw the well-disguised hurt deep inside her eyes.

She didn't say anything after that, just withdrew into one of her typical silences, and later I wondered if I was forgiven, even though I knew I probably wasn't.

Still—it left me wondering. Questioning. Doubting myself. Something I hate to think about and hate even more to do. There's no room in my mind for uncertainty. Every breath, every movement, every thought…it's all calculated, analyzed, evaluated. But I calculate quickly, analyze instinctively. I am swift, relentless, and unreserved in judgment.

I have to be.

But sometimes the doubt steals in, slipping between the tight bands I've wrapped around my soul. Am I lonely? I wonder. Am I lost in this solitary game of mine? Have I stumbled so deeply into the masquerade that I am now ensnared? Will I ever find my way out?

It's times like these when the mask that shields everything—more than just my face: my past, my present, my secrets, my thoughts—suddenly becomes heavier than just bio-plastic and microfilaments. Suddenly it's suffocating me. Weighing me down. Shackling me to my own world, when all I want is to become lost in someone else's.

It's times like these when I silently cry out to her, when I know I will break under the strain, when I am struggling with every dark thought that lashes my mind: Help me. Save me. Rescue me from myself.

But for all her empathy, she never seems to hear.

And it's times like these that I wonder if she, too, is lost in the masquerade.

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So, who do you think the narrator was? Kid Flash? Robin? Jericho? Speedy? And who do you think 'she' was? Jinx? Starfire? Raven? Argent? Someone else?

Let me know...I'm really quite curious.