Mask on, Mask Off
With such a strong need to be social yet such an unfavorable appearance and poor sense of societal place, mingling is hard.
A set of three 55 fics for World of Lingua's March 2020 monthly prompt.
Mask on, and he becomes a rose by any other name. How quaint, attending a carnival’s masquerade ball, how sickeningly “fun” it is to be gawked at like so, but it is what it is: the best that he gets. T’is a chance to talk, be seen for once, and he hungrily takes it.
Mask off, if only for a moment: a clumsy bump is all it takes. For a moment, his world melts: pure anxiety, all eyes on him. Stop looking at me, stop looking at me!... but, these celebratory drunkards likely shan’t remember come morning. Recomposing himself, he fixes his mask with a huff. False alarm.
Mask off, for real this time, and moonlight illuminates the jalousies. Streamers and confetti litter the floor around him, chatty memories of food and drink. The crowd is gone; the camouflage, discarded. Back to the strangled shadows he must return. There is no place here for one like him. Onomancy, onomancy, wherefore art thou onomancy?