In which I ponder

Considering my sudden burst of updatingness as I lay abed yesterday, it occurred to me that this journal might well be a very good place to archive those musings of mine which do not seem to have anywhere else to call home. Musings of a fictional nature were one of my concerns, although when publishing those one runs into the problem of being accused of plagiarising from oneself. Although this may very well be possible, especially when one's mind is split into quite as many facets as that of yours truly, it is something of an irritating impediment. Furthermore, having created quite so many tags in the post below, it seems a shame not to use them.

However, it would be exceedingly boring were I only to write on the subject of LGBT and trans issues, and so I think that a healthy balance between these more political and social topics and the aforementioned fiction is the best way forward. With this in mind, I present the following three small selections for your reading pleasure (although I am not sure much pleasure can be gained from them, I must say. For your consideration, perhaps).

MASK

I saw the moment your mask broke.
That perfect curve of a porcelain cheek cracking across, blackness like spiders-webs across the empty white of that ivory face.
Your face, crumpling, twisting, blanching as you stared.
A tear, trickling over cold artificial smoothness, blood-red, leaving a trail like a gash behind it.
A tear-track, then another, then another, and you cried like a child, helpless, angry, hating yourself for doing it and me for seeing you.
That eggshell perfection falling away, exposing the imperfect humanity beneath.
Your front slipping, raw emotion ripped from you in a torrent of words and tears and pain.
The mask shattering on the stone floor, face turned to shards of nondescript clay, beauty to...to rubbish. To trash.
You, sitting, curled against the wall, focus turned inwards, front and display and impression abandoned to show only the truth, the naked, raw, animal truth, crying and raging against the unfairness of it all.
I saw the moment that mask broke.

SCREAM

A scream.
That was what started it.
One single scream, ringing through the cold air and echoing down deserted streets until,as if by chance, it came to the ear of a man standing in a doorway.
It reached others, too, of course. Another man, also standing in a doorway, who dismissed it immediately as nothing to do with him and nothing of interest, seeing as he hadn't caused it. A woman, who paused in the act of undressing, shivered, and vowed to take her children somewhere safer, as soon as the man in the bed stumped up enough money for the journey. A child, leaning out of the window, who decided then and there that despite the reassurances of its parents, monsters were indeed real.
But this man is the one we are concerned with. Because he alone discovered the cause.The man tilted his head, trying to establish direction, location, originator and cause. He was what you might call a connoisseur, and he prided himself on being able to pin-point any sound of pain almost exactly. Within moments he had it: North, three streets away, adult male, and...
And here he stopped, puzzled. He knew what he ought to be hearing, but this scream did not fit any of the five hundred and forty seven categories that he had discovered so far. Had not even come close to fitting them, in fact. No, this was something very different.And, to the man, that meant something inexcusable. A gap in his knowledge. Something he would have to remedy.And so he set off to do so.

SPEECH

"Talk," he says.
He shakes his head, motioning to the wide-open gash that splits his throat and gifts him with a neckscarf of sticky red.
"Talk."
Another headshake, and his eyes are watching the beetle crawling across the floor, black and shiny as his boots.
"Talk."
An angrier headshake, and he draws one hand across - no, through - the gash, presenting it, bloody, to the other.
"Talk."
His head comes up at that, eyes blazing, mouth set in a thin, white line.
"Talk."
The bloodstained hand whips across the other's throat, leaving a copy-echo of its owner's wound. Unfazed. "Talk."
And finally, through clenched teeth, and almost inaudible: "I...can't."