The Year's Best Horror Stories XXII

MASQUERADE by Lillian Csernica

Closing night. Thank God.

My hand hit the solid wood slab of the women’s dressing room door. I shoved it open. The lights on the makeup mirrors stabbed my strained eyes. I headed for my usual seat in the back. Streaks of red, green, and gold dodged aside. The chorus girls were smarter than they looked if they knew enough to stay out of my way. I flattered myself thinking that. The actresses always ignored me. I was just a lighting technician, just another girl backstage. The audience never paid to see me. I sat up in the loft and lit the stars with the follow spot during their solos. That bought me the right to walk in here and watch the show I came to see.

I dragged an empty chair into the corner and sat down. The wood was hard and cold, but the fluffiest pillows couldn’t have been more of a relief after the hours I’d just spent crouched in the loft. With a sigh I leaned back and rubbed a hand across my eyes. Something gummy smeared my skin. Blue-green sparkle streaked my fingers. I now had eye shadow all over my face. Must have put my hand in some on the way to my chair. At the moment I was too tired to do anything about it.

I listened to the clack-clack of high heels, the giggling, the constant slams of the heavy door. The room reeked of too much hair spray and cheap perfume. The girls sat in front of their mirrors, checking their paint jobs. Their eyes were lined an inch around with black, green, red, and a silvery blue. They looked like rejects from a Mayan death ceremony. It didn’t surprise me. The woman who did the actors’ makeup was always done up that way. She had to be a surrealist at heart. The last time we did “Don Giovanni,” the star looked like a Kabuki demon stuffed into Italian court dress.

The girls were still bright and bubbly, still in character. An actor once told me their art was a learned schizophrenia. For each role they split their personalities again to build the new character. When a show closed, did they keep the leftover parts in some mental freezer? That question drove me to come in here and see what really lived under all that makeup and fancy dress.

If magicians used mirrors to create illusions, then actors used them to create their own realities. Each night I watched the girls strip off their stage makeup. These was one naked moment before they put on their everyday paint jobs. The faces that stared back at them then were something to see. I focused here and there, shining my follow-spot eyes on each of them.

*Robin* Nice little Robin was one big smile. Cold cream stole her lipstick, wiped away her smile. She stared into the mirror, twisted her lips up, sideways, down. Naked-faced, she couldn’t get that big smile back. Her reflection put its fingers to the corners of her mouth and pulled them up into that big smile. Robin laughed.

*Luanne* She posed like a queen on her throne. We were the same age, but she never got carded. Her reflection looked out from its glass prison, unlined and innocent of paint. She studied it as though it weren’t hers. It stared back, eyes grave.

*Chrissie* She played the go-go dancer in her white boots and spangled leotard. Off came the leotard like a million-dollar fur. With tender care she laid it over the back of her chair then pulled off her boots. She stood naked of more than paint before her mirror, wearing only fishnets and goose pimples. She shivered. Her reflection struck a pose, thrusting out its breasts and shaking back its blonde hair. Chrissie giggled.

I watched, out of the mirrors’ sight. I never needed a mirror. Grubby clothes and sturdy gloves were all the costume a light tech wore. I didn’t need makeup, either. Six-by-nines, lekos, and follow spots looked only at the actors on the stage. I was a line in the program, a few words on paper nobody read. You saw me everywhere in all the preplanned lights and shadows, but you noticed only the actors moving through me.

I suddenly felt glad to have my job. Actors lived for the attention of the audience. From where I sat, the real audience seemed to be the one looking back at them from the mirror. Robin slicked her lips a screaming red and brought back that showboat grin. Luanne added lines and shadows until her maturity was intact. She’d drink and dance and go where she pleased with all those borrowed years. Chrissie wriggled into a red lace bustier and leather miniskirt. Presto! The dishwater blonde became the vamp, the party girl, the one the boys all wanted.

Now they were ready to play whatever thawed-out leftover parts made up their real selves. One by one they left for the actors’ parties. The door banged shut. I was alone. Alone with all the mirrors.

I used the chair as a crutch to push myself up. My thigh muscles yelped. The dressing room was quiet. The low hum of the mirror lights whispered to me. Piles of mascara wands and blush compacts littered the long tables. Peacock eye shadows winked at me.

Eye shadow. I still had to get that off my face. Necessity forced me to a mirror. I sat before it, in Luanne’s place. The mirror showed me good cheekbones and a nose from my father’s German peasant blood. Lines of weariness aged me. Fatigue painted circles under my eyes. I shook my head. Heads shook all around me. I jumped. Then I realized it was just me, reflected in all the mirrors. They had no mercy in showing me exactly how wretched I looked. The bright sparkle of the eye shadow only made it worse. Beneath that false glitter I looked horrible, not in one mirror but in them all. Was this what upset the girls so much? It wasn’t a great face, but I knew it for my own. I never wore any other.

Then it hit me. Night after night they changed their faces, split their selves apart to fit their roles. How many shows did these girls do in a year? How many roles, how many faces? After a while they might forget what their real faces looked like! Then they made up new ones out of the bits they remembered. Robin’s smile. Luanne’s age. Chrissie’s sex appeal. They remembered what the mirrors showed them.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” I asked my reflection. “You keep their faces for them.” I knocked on the mirror’s cold glass surface. “Anybody home?” I laughed at my own silliness.

The dressing room’s acoustics were bad. It sounded like my reflection kept laughing after I stopped. I shivered, the same way Chrissie shivered. I jerked the top off Luanne’s cold cream jar and slapped some across my face. I ripped Kleenex from her box to scrub off the eye shadow then threw it into the trash can. I sprang up out of her chair, ignoring the pain in my legs.

The reflections sprang up with me. Now the one in front of me grinned. I put my hand to my mouth. I wasn’t grinning. I shut my eyes. Long night, no dinner. I was getting loopy. All the hair spray was probably poisoning my brain. I turned around. The reflection in Robin’s mirror waved. It wore another nasty grin. Good thing my hand was still over my mouth. I nearly screamed.

I glanced up and down the row of mirrors. Every reflection face me. That wasn’t right. Some of them should have faced other angles. Every one stared right at me, wearing that evil grin.

“This isn’t funny.”

They all glanced at each other, then back at me. Those evil grins opened. They laughed. I backed up toward the door, trying to keep all the reflections in sight at once. Chrissie’s mirror showed me myself in that bustier and miniskirt. Somehow both fit. I stopped, startled. Could I really look like that? This had to be a hallucination. I walked over to Chrissie’s mirror and stared at the reflection there. I’d never had long nails or a flat stomach. Yet there I was, every bit as trashy and gorgeous as Chrissie. I wondered what it felt like to wear an outfit like that. The mirrors were only glass with painted backs. Harmless. I touched my fingertips to the cold glass.

A hand with long red nails thrust out of the mirror and grabbed me by the wrist. It dragged me toward the mirror. I yanked back against its grip. Chrissie’s teasing comb lay on the table. I jabbed its pointy end into the reflection’s hand. We both yelled, I dropped the comb.

“What the hell is that?” I hauled back even harder. More of the reflection’s arm came out of the mirror. I didn’t know what I’d do if I had to drag her whole body out of there. “Are you mad at me because I guessed what you can do?”

The reflection nodded. Behind it crowded others, the ones from all the other mirrors. More hands popped out to claw at me. I looked around for another weapon. Robin’s jar of cold cream sat on her table across the aisle. I reached toward it straining my arm, my hand, and every finger to their full length. The reflections dragged at my other arm. I gritted my teeth against the pain and stretched as far as I could. My fingertips brushed the jar’s lid. I grabbed another comb and used it to push the jar within reach. In the mirror above it something moved. I glanced up. My reflection appeared. Its hands thrust toward me. I lunged forward that last inch and grabbed the jar. The reflection’s fingers scrabbled on my sleeve. I lurched backward before it could get a grip. Right then the reflection holding my other arm threw its weight back. My sneakers slipped on the tiles and I fell toward the mirror. I threw the jar ahead of me. It and the mirror shattered. I ducked the flying glass. Cold cream sprayed across my face, blinding me. All around me echoed screams. The grip on my arm fell away. I staggered down the aisle, bumping into chairs and shoving aside the hanging costumes. Behind me I could hear the flash and pop of mirror lights blowing out. They were angry. What happened to a reflection caught in a shattered mirror? I hoped it hurt.

My hand hit the door. I sagged against it and wiped the cold cream out of my eyes. The reflections glared at me. Some beat their fists at the inside walls of their mirrors, demanding to be let out. Not a chance. I put my finger on the light switch.

“Good night, ladies.” I clicked the switch, killing the lights.