Photo credit Sarah Whiley

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Every day for the past eight months I stare at my empty mask with a sense of elation. I am no longer its prisoner, no longer its slave. I am free.

Of course, freedom always comes at a price, usually a very high one. After the accident, anyone looking at my face, even if they were kind and never meant to, always registered a certain revulsion. Well, who could blame them? I was absolutely hideous. Wearing the mask was marginally better. I still received their stares, but more out of curiosity. Naturally, I would never have the affection of a woman again, especially since my dearest wife was killed in the accident that made me a monster.

Now everything is about to come to a conclusion. The person who took my sweet wife from me and did this horrible thing to my face will be visiting my small hamlet in a few days. Then I will exact my revenge upon him. He will never know it is me for the same reason I am free of my mask. He will never know it is me for the same reason that men no longer cringe and women and children never cry at my appearance.

I have learned to become invisible.

I wrote this for the Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Photo Challenge #455. The idea is to use the photo above as the inspiration for a poem or piece of fiction.

I based my story on an episode of the 1950s UK television series The Invisible Man, specifically the show Behind the Mask. The story is pretty straightforward, and I thought of it immediately when I saw the photo.

To read more stories based on the prompt, click on Mister Linky.

To read more of my published works, try Ice. It has supernatural “gods,” pirates, sailing ships, dinosaurs, mysteries, murder, and a terrible secret at the bottom of the world that is without ice.