The Lies We Tell Ourselves | Flash Fiction
The pre-dawn air shivered with the orange of pumpkins and the trembling whiskers of black cats. Arin stood in her screen porch, arms tucked into the folds of her bathrobe. She stood still, listening to the world slowly wake up. The harsh light crashed through the kitchen window and cut her shadow sharp, like a brooding goblin’s.
If this were any other morning Arin would have turned and stepped back inside. She would’ve had to shower and dress, quickly snatch a granola bar as she slipped into her car for work. But this morning was different.
Her mind turned to the dressed up kids standing at her front door the evening before; a princess, a headless horseman, and a superhero. She’d given them candy, praising each at how well they’d constructed their costumes. In reality, she was rewarding them for figuring out the key to life; put the best mask on and you can get anything; candy, pictures, attention.
Arin shivered and returned to the present, to this morning of taking masks off. Could she really expose her true self, after all these years of wearing the perfect costume that’d won her success?
Her’s was the costume of an overachiever; climb the ladders, smile when you got your master’s, all her family were so proud.
She didn’t even know what would meet her in the mirror when she removed it. What if, once the mask was gone, there would be nothing behind it? Or worse, would she find that her goblin shadow was coming from the true silhouette of what was within her?
The new November dawn sent out tendrils of light that were prying at the edges of her, and she wasn’t sure now that she wanted it to. She almost wanted her chocolate coated lies over the truth. How many years had it been since she’d hidden herself away? She was a stranger to herself and maybe it was better that way.
She almost began to turn, began to reach for the handle to go back inside. Her boss would understand when she’d come in and say, “just kidding, I’m not quitting after all.”
She knew the curves of her mask by heart; take the turn on tenth, park in Lot B, smile back to the other smiling masks; all those perfect masks lined up in cubicles. Arin often wondered if she was the only one desperately super-gluing her cracked mask back together in the evenings. Her teeth were rotting from the over sweetness of all the begged candy she’d garnered. A steady diet of insincerities had left cavities in her soul.
She looked back up at the brightening sky. The maple in her neighbor’s yard was resplendent, every branch and leaf vein bare in a beautiful vulnerability. The dawn’s light shone through. Arin reached up and took off her mask, letting it clatter on the porch boards. She would be brave enough to let the dawn reveal who she really was.
Author's Note
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