costume party
Alice stood in the corner wondering why she’d come to this place filled with masks and math and prettied-up people.
Packages. That’s the word that kept winding through her mind, down dark hallways and out open windows. Packages.
She wanted to tear into them, rip through printed paper and agendas and falsehoods. She wanted to see their eyes, what they were made of, what lived below the surface. She wanted awkward honesty, or shy (mis)demeanor.
But no one ever tells the truth at a party, and secrets echoed through the room like a barely-there smell, perfume left behind from a visit three days ago, or mold climbing the wall in one corner. Fear, perhaps, and history, closed up too long in a closet of possibility.
She held her breath for a moment and stepped inside the circle.
There were cookies.
.
.
.
September 15th, 2015 at 2:10 pm
“There were cookies!” Oh, you girl!
September 16th, 2015 at 12:26 am
your last line made me smile. it takes effort to rip open the packages. i wonder if the contents are really worth it. not all hide away, though. there is that 🙂
September 16th, 2015 at 4:35 am
To feel outside, to feel alive among the masks and packages. I so recognize that feeling from when I was young… cookies what an excellent way to change a party like that.
September 17th, 2015 at 10:32 am
Ah, certainly no one ever tells the truth at parties, the masks are too tight for it to sqeeze through. and I love the inclusion of math which spins off into angles, and unknown variables –
can I have a cookie now, please?
enticements like that are surely dangerous.