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Lights flash.
Center on him now.
The sea of people just under the balcony shifts, thrumming with barely contained energy.
His face sets on his warmest, biggest grin, blue eyes crinkling merrily at the corners, hands outstretch to the sides invitingly. He announces graciously:
"Welcome to the Masquerade!"
Music bursts in, and confetti gets in his shining, illuminated blond hair as he bows, but he just straightens and laughs. The sea of bodies is moving now, yelling, laughing, chanting already, but it will be another few seconds until they will be swept by the hardly decent fire dancers and jokers and gigantic mechanical toys and color and adrenaline and sheer volume of it all until he can stop laughing.
It's all in the contract.
He steps behind the scene and gives himself exactly four seconds to rest his facial muscles. The easy slip of the familiar mask doesn't make him feel smug anymore. The even easier recovery doesn't exhilarate him. It used to.
Long before the contract.
Why had he signed that contract, again?
He walks through the small, empty, dust-filled room. It's quiet in here, but he knows better than that by now.
The door opens, and he finds himself on the moving platform - it's at the head of the procession, and he's momentarily blinded, deafened, shocked, scared, vulnerable, but he laughs merrily, loud, gracious, encouraging. The mass of bodies, completely eaten up by madness already, hears him, and so they scream - shrill, ear-splitting, mad sounds, they roar, climbing, marching, chanting it. He remembers their faces, his wish to protect them, to be acknowledged by them.
He's their Masquerade Host. He's their Sun, their God, their enabler. Their damnation. They are the animals on the loose, their adoring eyes never really focusing on him.
Oh, he can taste the failure alright.
He's pretty sure he shouldn't have a heart anymore - but it hurts and stumbles somewhere near his non-existent stomach.
(He doesn't remember when he ate last, but it only makes sense that he remembers and misses the feeling clearly.)
And as he stands there, he sees a small body moving against this madness, spiked black hair giving away its owner. He knows this man. He loved this man. That's what he knows, what he remembers - odd things, strong feelings, but not even his own name. Not this man’s, either.
As he laughs, as he sees the man running around in this chaos, peering into the masked faces, he knows clearly that it's his fault that the man is here, looking for him, running, yelling himself raw with his name, fighting, crying, panicking, suffocating with loneliness and despair and fear and pure agony, but never, never seeing him on that platform. No matter how he yelled, no matter what he did.
It's all in the contract, too, isn't it?
As he watches, his laugh becomes just this bit hysterical, and he's chocking on that non-existent heart that suddenly swells right in his throat.
He can't really choke on it, and he sure as…yeah, fuck it, sure as Hell can't suffocate, but it feels awfully like it.
Fucking demon sadist.
He feels the madness approaching its highest, the breathing, swaying, laughing mob of people turning self-destructive in uncontrollable joy, stomping on fallen brethren instead of pavement, scratching and hitting, eager to get closer to the platform, splashes of blood sudden and terrifying on the crazed-happy faces, screaming for it. The noise level is unbearable before it's suddenly quiet.
He knows better than to think it's the end of it.
He disappears through the door, while the stilled mob breathes harshly and irregularly. He can't spend a second in the room, but as he steps on the scene - there's a composed, happy smile on his face.
Lights flash.
Center on him now.
The sea of people just under the balcony shifts, thrumming with barely contained energy, breathing harshly.
His face sets on his warmest, biggest grin, blue eyes crinkling merrily at the corners, hands outstretch to the sides invitingly. He announces graciously – damned if he won't let his favorite people feel happy and cared for for even a second of this in their crazed minds:
"Welcome to the Masquerade!"
And he watches again, as he always did, and how he will for the next eternity, as it unravels under him, his own personal Hell, how the people he loved are driven rabid, mindless, fanatical puppets under his childish wish. How the only love he had is killing himself on the street without him, because the man is so lost, so broken, so alone when he's right there!
He takes the next four seconds to compose himself. It doesn't help, but there's never any tears - they say crying makes grieving easier, don't they, and that just won't do - just that broken mask of a beautiful smile.
The nine-tailed son of a bitch knew his stuff, after all.
He wasn't sure anymore what he sold his soul for, really - but he knew, just knew it wasn't worth it.