Mother of Masks

The sun is a burning pumpkin in the sky as Prisha drives home with groceries in her passenger seat and an unconscious body in the back. Her deteriorating Buick reeks of old tobacco and chugs thickly like a smoker’s perpetual cough. Just above the metallic clamor and the backseat woman’s snores, a pop song fades out from the car’s speakers, prompting a DJ’s cartoonish voice to chime in.

“For any of you listeners who have been living under a rock for the past two decades, that last track was ‘Candy Boy’ by Gloria Miller, arguably the hottest party song of the 90s. Gotta love Gloria, man... even after all these years, you better believe I’d still tap that! Alright, alright, next up on the queue we’ve got–”

Prisha switches off the radio. Passing house after humdrum house, she scoffs at the lazily hung scarecrows and deer-chewed jack-o’-lanterns that litter her neighborhood.

“Everything’s so goddamn pale and dry,” she starts, scowling. “Like raw footage before you crank up the saturation. You know what I mean?”

There is no response. Prisha continues.

“And fall was always my favorite season, especially when I was your age— all full of sugary lattes and apple pie that I didn’t have to worry about showing up on the scale the next day. And the candy...” Prisha trails off. Her face goes blank, as though reset to factory settings. “The candy. The magic. That’s what I miss the most. But everyone has to grow up at some point, right?”

Prisha glances in the rearview mirror to meet a set closed eyelids in the back, slathered in glittery shadow and false lashes.

“And hey... I’m sorry things weren’t exactly smooth in terms of getting you here.” Prisha gulps, faltering in her contact with the woman’s lids. “It’s just that people kept looking at me funny, like, what’s this 34-year-old doing on a college campus?, and that just ticks me off.”

As the car pulls up to Prisha’s modest, one-level home, it rolls over a gaping pothole in the driveway, causing the limp woman’s head to fall forward.

“They just don’t get it. They couldn’t possibly know that feeling I got in my gut... driving by, noticing your face, and knowing that I couldn’t let you slip away.”

Prisha turns the key, shutting the engine. She slips one shopping bag onto each of her caramel arms, then strains awkwardly to unbuckle the unconscious woman from her seat. 

Pausing for a breath, Prisha pulls out her wallet. From within its leather folds, she removes an aged magazine clipping of a half-naked woman clutching a microphone and beaming confidently, with teeth as blinding as her fair hair and skin. Prisha holds the photograph, torn at the edges, near the face of the woman slumped in her car’s backseat. She looks back and forth between the two.

“Your nose is slightly off...” Prisha mutters. “A bit too arched at the bridge. And you don’t smile quite like Gloria. But then again, who could?”

Prisha grazes her thumb over the photo’s signature – reading “GM” in flowery lettering. She refolds the poster, wipes some drool dangling from the comatose woman’s lip, and smears it onto her own paint-speckled jeans.

“I think you’ll do.”

Sweat is soaking Prisha’s dense black hair as she finally manages to lug the woman into her home and onto her wine-stained couch. Prisha positions the body to sit upright so that the woman’s manicured hands rest on the fishnets of her thin thighs, then props her head up using a deep-plum pillow. She is meticulous in the placement of the woman’s head, working around the hard bump that is beginning to bulge from the back of her skull.

Across all four living room walls hang dozens of painted portraits of Gloria Miller in a vast array of art styles. Prisha’s tremendous collection of pop-star merchandise is strewn amongst face-paint palettes, tubes of fake blood, and crafted prosthetic wounds. Pieces of botched costume masks are scattered across the floor and overdue library books flood the shelves, some on human anatomy and others practical effects.

The required materials are already laid out and ready for use on the coffee table, including a large tub of plaster which has leaked slightly onto a newspaper below. A few drops taint the face of the newspaper’s cover star: a young Gloria Miller, grinning in grayscale at a Grammy Awards Ceremony. Beneath some sculpting tools is another newspaper sheet, this one from 1995, the headline of which reads, GLORIA MILLER REDEFINES POP MUSIC ONCE AGAIN! Another loose page on the floor features paparazzi-taken photographs of Gloria kissing a man on a yacht, stating, WHO IS GLORIA’S MYSTERY HUNK? READ ON TO FIND OUT!

Prisha situates herself on a wobbly IKEA stool and addresses the motionless woman seated across from her on the couch.

“Now, I know what you’re thinking, but trust me, it’s not as complicated a process as it looks. Here,” Prisha says, picking up a hefty package of white powder. “This is alginate. You mix it with some water and it forms itself into a puffy, purple goo. Think of the dentist’s office; they’d press that sticky stuff onto your teeth and sure, it’d taste awful, but when they’d remove it, you’d be left with a mold that holds its perfect shape. That way, they could fill that mold with any material they wanted – say, plaster – and it’d create a to-scale model of your teeth. Fascinating, isn’t it? But what’s even more fascinating is that the fun doesn’t have to stop at teeth alone.”

Prisha carefully rubs globs of protective Vaseline onto the unconscious woman’s face.

“Don’t worry, though,” Prisha says, wiping her oily hands on a Gloria Miller beach towel. “I’ll be sure to leave slots for breathing— that’s a common concern of my clients.”

Prisha’s special-effects makeup portfolio is laid open on a shelf beside her, showcasing photos of local haunted house actors made up to be gruesome zombies or mangled ghosts. Beside the portfolio is a stack of handmade flyers with tear-off strips at the bottom, offering face painting sessions at $5 a pop.

“Well, we’ve certainly got our work cut out for ourselves before the sun goes down. Thankfully, I know just the thing to get us pumped up.”

Prisha approaches her boombox across the room, swiping an amalgamation of Gloria Miller pins off its top and revealing the player’s pink, metallic design. She pops open the rusty disc slot, removes her copy of Morning Gloria, and replaces it with Gloria Be (Instrumental Edition), the case of which looks like it has seen better days.

“Track 7, ‘You’re My Sugar’,” Prisha narrates, fingering the skip button. “The epitome of a motivation song. Without it, who would I even be?”

“You would be no one. Without this training, you would be no one and you would have succeeded in nothing.” Ashmita used a firm pointer finger to poke Prisha in the chest with each of her stressed syllables. “Tell me, do you know why we do what we do here? Do you understand how vital practice is to growth?”

Prisha’s eyes remained on her mother’s bare feet with 10 toenails so long, they could easily step in as a weapon if her vocal cords were to run out of ammunition.

“I’m tired of speaking to a brick wall, Prisha. I need you to prove to me that I am dedicating hours of my life to something worthwhile here. Now tell me, for the last time, do you understand?”

Prisha nodded weakly, keeping her gaze at her mother’s lower claws. Tears welled up in her cocoa eyes, but Ashmita’s aggression didn't falter in the slightest.

“Well, good,” Ashmita said sharply. “Let’s take it from the top, then. Your strongest track, instrumental.”

Ashmita skipped to the CD’s seventh track on the pink player, then faced Prisha with expectant crossed arms.

“Let’s hear it,” she pressed. “In the key of B, just like Gloria. I need to hear the vibrato in your voice this time. I need to hear the yearning.”

The melody crept in. First, a breakneck bass, next, some shrill percussion, and finally, a whirlwind of buzzing synths. Just seconds before Gloria’s vocals would have entered, a single teardrop escaped from Prisha’s eye, only making it a quarter-inch down her cheek before she hurriedly wiped it away.

“I love you, Mommy,” Prisha begged. Ashmita didn’t glance up from the sheet music.

“Don’t miss your cue, little girl. You know the reward.”

So Prisha opened her mouth with a tongue so small, and she prayed she might sing her way to the sweets.

Soiled paint brushes are scattered across the carpet, further dirtying the preexisting mess. After several hours, Track 7 still booms from the CD player’s speakers on a loop.

“Can you believe it? We did it! It looks just like her!” Prisha exclaims to the body on the couch, from which she has stripped all clothes and accessories. “Or just like you, I suppose, which is close enough... except for that unfortunate nose.”

The body’s personal items sit in a neatly-folded pile on the kitchen counter, distinctly far from any substance that could tarnish them.

Prisha admires her prized creation: a hyper-realistic silicone mask modeled from the unconscious woman, complete with an immaculate application of Gloria’s signature red lipstick. Its eyes are made from glass with teal irises; a shade so particular and so compelling, it pushed Prisha to order 14 sets of non-prescription colored contacts for herself in high school, hoping at least one might come close. Every minuscule facet of Gloria Miller’s face – from the heart-shaped birthmark on her left cheek to the lesser known scar along her jaw – is painted on the mask in excruciatingly fine detail. Attached at the forehead with superglue is a blonde costume wig, which stinks like a medley of unidentifiable chemicals, but it gets the point across.

“It’s like she’s in the room with us,”  Prisha squeals. After a few more moments of ogling, she shifts her attention back to the nude woman, still seated upright. 

“I’ll be right back, don’t move a muscle,” Prisha says, grabbing the pile of clothing on her way out of the room. “I’m just a little shy— it’s nothing personal.”

Prisha enters the bathroom and locks the door behind her, triple-checking its security before removing her ragged t-shirt and jeans. She replaces each layer that comes off her body with an article from the stranger’s wardrobe: a lacy red corset top, a dangerously revealing mini-skirt, and tights that gain a few tears in the try-on process. There is a sizable chunk of drywall missing in the spot where a vanity mirror was once mounted, so primping is a lost cause.

Now spilling out over the hems of the woman’s clothes and stuffed halfway into her heels, Prisha reaches for the final piece of the puzzle. She gazes at the mask one last time, running her finger down the sleek slope of its powdered nose. Mindlessly, her finger rises to her own nose, rubbing the angular bump that hooks out from the space between her eyebrows.

The neck opening of the mask stretches over Prisha’s scalp and slides down the length of her face, engulfing her head like a backwards birth, but a birth nonetheless. Prisha’s breath reverberates against the silicone confines, composing a quick-tempo, shallow melody. The warm air bounces around without an option of escape, save for two tiny pupils holes and a small nasal opening. She brushes away thin blonde strands that obscure her view. No more knotty weight piling at her shoulders— just easy, airy whiteness.

To appease her curiosity, Prisha rummages through the woman’s Gucci purse, and is initially unimpressed by its gaudy, overpriced contents. However, just as she is about to zip the bag back up, Prisha notices something shiny settled at the bottom, nestled between an organic tampon and french-vanilla roll-on perfume. When she picks up the silver rectangle and inspects its label, her hand muscles tense up so intensely that she nearly drops it into the toilet. Zombielike, she exits the bathroom in her new getup, never taking her eyes off of the object between her fingers.

“I found this in your purse,” Prisha says quietly when she returns to the woman on the couch, her words muffled through the mask. “It’s chocolate, isn’t it? I recognize the brand name from old commercials, but Mommy only ever let me have what was on sale. And of course, only when I nailed it.”

Prisha begins opening the foil as she speaks, careful not to create any tears.

“I don’t know how to phrase this exactly,” she starts, then clears her throat. “But I was wondering... could I...” Prisha hesitates. “Could I possibly have it?”

The chocolate is fully unwrapped, melting languidly into the creases on Prisha’s hand.

“You can say no, you really can. I just thought... well I just thought that maybe I did a good job. You know, on the mask, on finding you, on planning this whole thing out. I thought that maybe, just maybe, I was a good girl this time.

The body’s head twitches and a slight groan escapes its mouth. Prisha gasps.

“Is that... is that a yes?”

Prisha holds the candy between two eager fingers and her eyes flutter shut as she brings it to her mouth. However, there is an unexpected squelch when the creamy chocolate makes contact with the impenetrable barrier of red, rubber lips. She never accounted for a mouth hole.

Prisha takes a good look at the person sprawled out on the couch. The woman’s porcelain skin is textured with goosebumps from the unforgiving October chill seeping in through the window, and there is a blue-violet splotch creeping its way across her frigid lips— her open lips. Prisha’s head sinks into her shoulders and her face flushes.

“On second thought,” Prisha says, her words doused in shame. “You might be the one who earned it.”

Prisha looks at the chocolate, smaller now, as it has left a brown puddle in her palm. She leans down and inserts the treat right into the woman’s open mouth. It makes a gentle plop and leaves chestnut lines on the outer corners of her lips. Prisha heads for the front door.

Waiting right in the center of her doormat is a hollow, plastic jack-o’-lantern with a nearly pleading smile. Prisha grabs its black arched handle with one hand and the cool metal of her doorknob with the other, then turns to the woman once more.

“I realized, it might be hard for me to eat all of the candy they’re going to give me with this new mouth I have. If you wait around, I can bring some back for you, and we can share. You can eat the pieces with nuts because I can’t stand them, and I’ll take anything sour. But if you want any, you’ll have to be here when I come back. Promise that you’ll stay?”