Nadine

It had been a harsh and bitter year for her. All the ghosts she stored in glass flasks in the cellar had freed themselves. Then the monsters she kept manacled in the attic also managed to burst free. It wasn't long until both groups had clawed their way through every locked door, taking almost full possession of her house. They crowded, shoved and overwhelmed her from one room to the next until she only had one room left that she could call her own. And it was in this room, in the late hours of the night, to drown out the sound of scratching at the door, that she would debate with her favorite mask as to which of them was the real person and which the disguise. Her mask often chided her that their argument would be unimportant once the ghosts and monsters clawed their way in. "Your sole hope," the mask would whisper, "is to destroy them before they break in; and you know the sole way to do that is to rip down your window's curtains and let in the light. The light alone can overcome them." "Yes," she muttered, "I knew that from the first room they conquered and I know it now. But that light behind my curtain, that strong, unyielding light, it frightens me even more than those things outside the door. For what shall I do if that awful, absolute light, that awful, absolute truth, should devour all the confusing shadows and reveal the dead things and grotesqueries aren't outside the door but in my own mind, in my own heart?" "What of it?" asked the mask. "The light would still dispel them and render you, at last, truly real." And with that she reached a trembling hand toward the curtain.