He has a cold, his
speech subject to coughing, and thus his voice filters through the telephone
audibly thick and blunted with its congestion.
deleted name: When I was in my early twenties I went to a Hallowe’en party all dressed up in a black suit, white shirt, black tie...
deleted name: ..and a, a a, a skull mask. The eh, the suit had actually been bought for my grandfather’s funeral not ehm, not that long before, my first suit
deleted name: it wasn’t, it wasn’t actually a suit, it was just, it was just a black jacket and trousers, but
deleted name: And the mask... it stank; it was some weird rubber thing which, like a full over-the-head rubber or latex mask, and it had a weird sort of synthetic... chemical smell; the longer you wore it you could really taste it on your breath.
deleted name: I kept it on for as long as I could. I think the, my original idea had been not to take it off at all, and it had a hinged jaw... mandible, but it didn’t fit properly, way too big for me, so whenever, I would have to manually pull down the jawbone whenever I had to speak, which I tried to keep to a minimum, just... for eh, for effect.
deleted name: Anyway, it all eventually got to me, the smell, the taste, just... sweating away inside this thing, so I did eventually have to remove it, but that left me just a guy in a suit.
deleted name: Not... and having already established this... persona, once they realised I’d had to... people would now come up to me and say “oh, you’ve taken the mask off” because having worn it for so long that had become a thing in itself, and whenever anyone would say that, I would look them straight in the eye, point at my naked face and say “No, this is the mask.”
ache1: I’m pregnant...
his response immediate
deleted name: I’m aware.
ache1 (hoping to re-inflate a bubble she might yet subsequently burst): ..again.
all this being replayed in his absence, a god outwith the machinery of its own creation; that his part in the narrative has been replaced prompts
deleted name: ..being the exact sole reason I am telling you this.
deleted name: When I was in my early twenties I went to a Hallowe’en party all dressed up in a black suit, white shirt, black tie...
deleted name: ..and a, a a, a skull mask. The eh, the suit had actually been bought for my grandfather’s funeral not ehm, not that long before, my first suit
deleted name: it wasn’t, it wasn’t actually a suit, it was just, it was just a black jacket and trousers, but
deleted name: And the mask... it stank; it was some weird rubber thing which, like a full over-the-head rubber or latex mask, and it had a weird sort of synthetic... chemical smell; the longer you wore it you could really taste it on your breath.
deleted name: I kept it on for as long as I could. I think the, my original idea had been not to take it off at all, and it had a hinged jaw... mandible, but it didn’t fit properly, way too big for me, so whenever, I would have to manually pull down the jawbone whenever I had to speak, which I tried to keep to a minimum, just... for eh, for effect.
deleted name: Anyway, it all eventually got to me, the smell, the taste, just... sweating away inside this thing, so I did eventually have to remove it, but that left me just a guy in a suit.
deleted name: Not... and having already established this... persona, once they realised I’d had to... people would now come up to me and say “oh, you’ve taken the mask off” because having worn it for so long that had become a thing in itself, and whenever anyone would say that, I would look them straight in the eye, point at my naked face and say “No, this is the mask.”
ache1: I’m pregnant...
his response immediate
deleted name: I’m aware.
ache1 (hoping to re-inflate a bubble she might yet subsequently burst): ..again.
all this being replayed in his absence, a god outwith the machinery of its own creation; that his part in the narrative has been replaced prompts
deleted name: ..being the exact sole reason I am telling you this.
deleted name (the handset placed back upon its cradle): Et in Arcadia ego.
