Mask

Shane met Jake on a stool at the Pines. Ritzy motel, rat hole bar. Rat hole because oddly it mainly catered to the people who circled around the ones who actually paid for the opportunity to stay in a room. Cabbies, porters, janitors, they came because they got a discount for working there, or were friends with the right person who was in the cases of Shane and Jake.

Shane patted Jake on the back as he sat down.

Jake was well into a deep glass, and from the smell something harsh. He flinched at the gesture. Shane frowned. "You OK man?"

Jake looked around, and seeing no one nearby, "I met, I met this fare, she's staying in room 205? I hit it off with her from the airport right away, or she was into slumming or something. It's going good, I'm flirting, she asks me to carry her bags up to her room right?"

He emptied his glass with a long draw. "So things are going good, like the second I get in the room she closes the door behind us and grabs my ass. One thing leads yadda, yadda..." He shuddered.

"She was on top, and I did that thing, drives women crazy, I reach up, pull her hair from the back..."

He shuddered, and tried to find more booze in his cup.

"Her face."

"Her face pulled back too."

Shane barked a laugh. "Jesus, I hope she sues that surgeon..." he began, and saw Jake's face.

"Wasn't a fucked up face lift, it was a mask. I, I pulled, and her face went tight and I could... I could see under it. She had scales. Like a fucking lizard."

He took Shane's glass, the latter unresponsive to his action.

"Her eyes, they just fucking lit up, like, like pale yellow fire. She threw me a-against the wall, and then, then she jumped - It's a big room, the Ambassador suite you know, she threw me all the way across bedroom - she jumped all the way over to me from the bed."

"And she's hissing, I'm thinking, 'I'm dead, I died, and I'm in hell and I just fucked a devil.' Then she smiled."

"'Who'd believe you?' she said, turned away, then said, 'I'd leave if I were you' without giving me another look. Didn't have to tell me twice."

Fractal

What drives us; we creators, we artists? To be first. To be at the forefront. To push beyond what already is and see nothing in our way. We lunge forward at the infinite last step towards the ribbon always just out of reach, pressing our faces against the boundary of knowledge and expression, breaking it, and seeing virgin land untouched by man. The untouched forest and field, the unreached peak, the victor of muscle of sinew; these pale in comparison to the limitless reaches of our minds.

However, this I do not know; why do all humans strive for such a thing? Why do we press on to be where none have gone before? It is not for contest or conquest; these are easily sated in other ways.