He was not religious, but it was a pilgrimage nonetheless. No matter what ocean he was in, he returned for the festival and for the moons. The moons on this island were gorgeous at every stage and like the tide, they pulled him back. So did the slivery memory of the black cats that moused here. Memories needed to be replenished and he, too, liked mousing.

He watched.

She smiled at something and blew smoke into the air, suffering the attentions of those flocked around her.

Men are sentimental about their women, making them out to be virgin queens, immortal goddesses. Men set women on pedestals.

It would be amusing to topple her.

He abandoned his pleasantly dangerous fancies. There were too many witnesses here. Better to stay under the cover of the awning while the festival flowed through the streets. He would choose another.

A vendor selling masks stopped at his table. He gestured shortly at the mask lying near his drink. It was not a flimsy cheap thing the tourists bought and lost and bought again and the vendor nodded respectfully before moving on.

The masks were a necessary element of this festival. The bacchanal was what drew tourists to this tiny rock in the middle of nowhere and the guises offered anonymity as the partygoers did what they did while they were who they truly were. He found the idea amusing, wearing masks to remove masks.

He was drawn by something else. At the climax of the evening, when the paroxysm of the throng was greatest, the deception ended and all the truth was laid bare. The tourists removed their bought identities and picked up the fetters of civility again, but he…

He picked his mask up and examined it. It rested lightly in his hand, a testament to local craftsmanship. He ran his fingers over the smooth white face, tracing the red and black paint around the eyes and mouth. There was nothing flamboyant or dramatic in its design. He had bought it for its simplicity, as protest against the excess of sequins, feathers, and gaudy fake stones used to decorate the garish souvenirs others purchased.

He had considered buying a different one to reflect his new name, but the mask he had now was both a memento and reminder of his first visit.

There had been an alley and the company of an intoxicated young woman who'd been drawn away from her equally inebriated friends. The call to uncover had leaked into their hot little side street while they were occupied with each other. She'd grasped drunkenly at his mask, panting that she wanted to see who he really was.

Who he really was; he was a man who had no gods but still found reason to offer sacrifice, who ordered sangria because it resembled a pitcher of blood in the lantern light, who had walked through the masquerade enjoying the secret knowledge that they had no idea...

He answered the call from the streets. When she reached for his mask, the charade had dissolved in a red fog.

That night he learned the difference quantity and quality and for weeks afterwards, he could feel her body trapped between him and the brick, feel her throat contracting between his hands. Even now he could revisit the memory; the faint scent of decay in the alley, the last threnodious gasp, and her final mask cast in shock and fear.

He contemplated the painted mouth's smile. Every year, it was the same stage and plot; only the details varied. Now he worked with the baggage that waited for him harbored and concealed on the other side of the island but his men were accustomed to his requirements and did not ask him what he did when he disappeared for a night.

The air was heavy with humidity and fragrance and he enjoyed the simple pleasure of breathing. It was never so leisurely on the ship. In the midst of a skirmish, there was no time to breathe or to enjoy the last breath.

He watched.

The man with the masks was at the long table occupied by partygoers but they too already had purchased theirs. The woman held hers up; it was a peacock.

Weren't all women a bit like birds, living life with their wings clipped by something or another - family, tradition, themselves? Many of them flew here to this festival, hoping to find a bit of freedom in the fete, hoping to lose themselves for a night in the atmosphere, the intoxicants, and in others. He wondered what she was hoping to lose herself in this night.

Too risky, he reminded himself, now forcing his concentration on the task at hand. Time was creeping away like the vines that covered the century old trees, and he had game to find before the call to unmask. He wouldn't be the only one taking his privilege this evening; pickpockets and prostitutes would be out in force. The predilections that would be indulged in would pave the way for forgetfulness and negligence that begged to be exploited.

Even as he decided that he would have to search for a more fruitful hunting ground, he found his eyes wandering to the woman. She looked weary of her cage of men.

He determined what drew his thoughts to her; it was her pride. If in the midst of it all, he were to tell her who and what he was then anger would grace her features and the sweet sting of humiliation from the realization that he was far worse than the casual libertines that roved the streets tonight.

He let his mind stray. The climax would come as he wrapped his fingers around her white neck and whispered into her ear. There would be a muffled chirp; she would die with his name as her last words, a final benediction…

Chairs scrapped the patio stones. In twos and threes, the group at the long table dispersed into the throng that haunted the limits of the restaurant.

One man lingered at the side of the woman, but she said something short and curt. He left, throwing a look over his shoulder that was both resentful and distressed. Her companion had most certainly been dismissed.

She stood and watched the crowd, deciding what to do next. The circumstances had changed. Perhaps the outline that had been haunting his mind would have the chance to solidify.

His eyes narrowed with pleasant surprise when she approached him. She indicated the empty chair at his table. "May I?"

"Certainly." Some would call this lucky, but he knew there was no such thing as luck. There was only well executed design. What was her design on him? And how could he twist hers to serve his?

She sat down and said, "You aren't from around here."

Polite conversation, arm's length pauses. He reciprocated. "That's right."

Her eyes slid to his mask. "I thought you might be."

"I'm a returning visitor. And yourself?"

"My first time, but I wasn't expecting to arrive until after this" - she motioned towards the throng - "was over. Getting work done in this atmosphere is impossible."

"Then you're here on business?" he asked.

"Yes, business." She tapped her cigarette holder on the edge of the ashtray. "But I'm also making time for pleasure."

His mask stayed firmly in place as he brought the glass to his lips, giving away nothing. This was rich indeed. Never had he had to work so little to gain so much.

Their discourse was flecked with few words, but those were heavy with meaning. He catalogued her every gesture, piecing her together like a patchwork doll. Later he would to rip the stitches out, rending her asunder, scrap and shred.

She noted that the restaurant was getting louder as the evening progressed and suggested that they seek out a place more cordial to private conversation. He agreed and took his mask in hand.

She looked at the face of the painted bird on the table and at the crowd before reluctantly donning it. "An absurd custom."

They pushed through the press of people. He followed in her wake, not minding the crowd. On impulse, he captured a flower from an inattentive seller. He did this because women found meaningless gestures romantic and because there were many ways to view a plucked flower.

When the crowd thinned, he presented her with the gift. She seemed pleased, though not overly charmed. No doubt she was assaulted with flowers every day. As she allowed him to put the blossom behind her ear, he reflected that her loftiness would make the final ravaging that more gratifying.

She was staying in an older district graced with faded gentility. He followed her up the sprawling porch steps, through the empty lobby, and then on to the third floor.

She ushered him inside. The dark green shutters were thrown open to the outside and the air was pregnant with the scent of jasmine and chloroform, but the ghost-like drapes muted the sound of the revelry seeping into the surprisingly bright quarters. The white walls were mostly bare, the wood floors were dark, and the bed was an antique canopy.

He gazed with approval on the tasteful abundance, the stage for the final scene of the evening's farce. He wished he could be a fly on the wall when they found her here. He'd just have to read about it later in the papers.

And it would make the papers; he always made certain of that.

With business-like efficiency, she removed her mask and motioned for him to do the same. She set them aside on the table-board by the door and stepped towards him. The slick buttons of her suit slid through the holes, one, two, three, revealing white on white skin, all the more stark and naked against the contrast of the black cloth.

She took his hand and brushed his fingers over the lace. He could feel her heart beat against his palm, steady and slow. Later it would rattle her chest cavity, trying to get away from him.

The thoughts of the future and her nearness engendered tender pressure that he answered by pulling her close against him. Rather than startling her, a slow welcoming smile crossed her lips. She leaned in closer and whispered where she would like to go and how.

He took one hand off her waist to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

"You should get those fixed."

"So I've been told." He brought his hand to her throat and ran his fingers down her neck, committing the sensation to his memory now so he could compare it to the inevitable later.

He shepherded her towards the bed. It was nowhere near midnight so he was in no rush, but her brow furrowed. She was not amused with his phlegmatic pace. She reversed their positions abruptly so that it was the back of his legs that hit the high mattress and not hers.

The timetable to this play could not be altered, as it was a crucial part of the climax. Women on pedestals were not used to having their will thwarted, but if she thought that he would bend so easily, have his plans upended, then she was deceiving herself.

He stayed her pragmatic searching hand, provoked her with the deliberate way he slipped her shirt over one shoulder and then the other, then taunted her with the calculated unbuttoning of his own. She realized that she was being challenged and answered his goading with a slow smile.

The smile was mirrored on his own face. She thought they were on a level playing field and that she knew all the rules but like all the others, she had no idea.

She drew casual lines over his body with her fingers and her lips. He responded in kind, efficiently indexing the details that others would fall prey to - lips, tongue, hips, muscle and skin - crippling their power in the cold index of memory. Behind the mask, he was occupied with each snowballing artifice. In normal circumstances deception was an activity as natural as breathing but in the hot muggy air that shrouded them, disassociation was more of a task. It was an exercise in self-discipline, walking a knife's edge between control and abandon.

Their garb slipped off and around them and he slipped his hand between her knees, anticipating the path that would lead to the murder of her arrogance. He contemplated a sanguine epilogue when he murmured low words of promise in her ear. His shiver came from the anticipation of a future she could not see.

She pulled back and splayed her hand against his chest, slowly pressing him against the mattress.

"Close your eyes."

He indulged her, smiling at the secret knowledge of a game within a game. He wanted her to enjoy herself while she could, for soon he would take his leisure, showing her just how long one night could be.

She guided his hands up and over the poster and slowly wrapped his fingers around the grainy wood. He felt her hands glide around his own. Then there was pressure and a sensation that encircled his wrists. It reminded him of the texture of bamboo, supple and infinitely strong. That texture changed from smooth to rough cast iron.

His eyes opened, but she pressed two shapely, strangely heavy fingers to his lips before he could say a word. Her hair poured around her, obscuring her face, and she watched.

The bonds had trapped his hands firmly against the wood leaving him with only movement enough to tense and release his fingertips and the constraint was maddening.

It was the same sensation as the succubus that haunted his sleep. Nightly it sat on his chest presenting him with visions that never varied; that someday he would know iron on his wrists and find himself facing a sandy yard or a tall tree or high steps that led up to a platform…

Tonight there would be no chary kiss, no shadowed lids closing over eyes filled with shame, panic, pain, and no soft lips wreathing his name in silent curses as life flew out of the room and mingled with the perfume in the heavy air.

She had been faster than he had, removing her mask at the last moment to reveal the monster behind it. Whoever she was, she had the power of the Devil in her.

She removed his glasses and leaned down. Her feathery eyelashes brushed his temple. "Hina."

The fledgling. He was right. Women were birds.

"Say it."

Only he had forgotten that some birds eat flesh.

She didn't wait for him to do as she prompted. A languid stirring; and she coerced her name from his lips, half-hissed, half groaned, with a hint of a promise of what he would do to her if…

He had no choice in what she did, where she went, how she stretched and slid and traced. The scent of spice and the humid heat of the room, of their flesh intertwined, enveloped him. It was she who could and would drive him wherever she wanted, until he didn't believe he could stand another moment, and then she would sever all sensation.

He steeled his reason against the sensations, refusing to take pleasure from it but his body ignored his commands and his spine arched to meet her. He was yanked back into his body, time and again, aware of muscle, sinew, and tendon.

The revelry outside was reaching a crescendo, while inside his carefully constructed walls were razed; each hidden room and secret passage was sought out and explored.

The parts of his sum were divided and conquered individually. Strictly cultivated control was rent and torn under her methodical ministrations. The finely honed veneer of civilization was stripped away until he was left panting, sweating, and writhing on the rack that she built had him.

The cries from the streets flowed into the humid room. "Unmask! Unmask! Unmask!"

The face that he kept most hidden was revealed. He was reduced.

He was any other man.

But the sheen that glistened on smiling lips told him that she far from being done.

=====================

He watched.

When he was certain that she was asleep, he slipped into the bathroom. He used the weak moonlight as his guide and found the sink. He turned the tap on so that he could to tend to his misery. His hands and wrists were raw and sore. Their burning agony had only been relieved at the sudden absence of coarse iron; his bonds released with the press of her palms.

He looked in the moonlit mirror and pushed his hands under the faucet. His expression did not change as the cold water cast icy hooks of agony up his arms.

It was nothing.

Nothing like having one's plans routed at the last minute - to be taken by unawares - to find one's self at the mercy of another, another that did not comprehend what they were doing. That he'd been the captive of such ignorance only compounded his anger. He'd seen it in her eyes; she'd enjoyed herself and thought he had as well.

Loathing cracked the mask in the mirror. A part of himself that he'd killed years ago had been resurrected for a brief moment and he'd had no mastery over it.

He pushed his hands under the water further, the shooting sickles in his wrists clearing his mind, sharpening his purpose.

No mere businesswoman had power like that. Pirate or thief, she would learn that she wasn't the only hunter out this night.

The claw-footed bath pulled at the corner of his perception. He was fairly certain that her weakness lied only in the ocean or he would have filled the tub, dragged her into the room by her hair, and held her head under the water, drowning her then and there.

That meant the old-fashioned way; lancet on muscle, sliding through flesh until it marked bone. He hadn't brought his tools with him so he would be forced to improvise. His lip curled, cracking the mask again. He despised improvisation but he promised himself that by dawn her body would be a mess of tangled shreds like the sheets that were still lying on the floor.

Red haze clouded his vision. They would never get her blood out of the walls -

Something fluttered behind his reflection in the surface of the moonlit mirror. Hanging on a hook on the back of the door, a long white coat mocked him softly.

The shackles around his wrist, the wraith on the hook; that succubus beyond the door would drag him into hell if she had even a glimmer of suspicion. Reprisal and preservation warred within.

The decision was made when he adjusted his glasses and the air stung the raw red ghosts of the fetters.

The concierge did not look up from his work at the desk when he walked past. If the man had, he would have seen nothing unusual, perhaps only noted that the guest who was leaving had dressed indifferently, having forgotten to button the cuffs of his shirt so that they now flapped loosely against his wrists.

The streets were streaked gray with weak morning light and littered with refuse; paper masks, confetti, and beads. The night had been reduced to its basest form, leftovers for the garbage collectors to attend to.

He had left his mask in the room but it did not matter. He was never coming back here.

All he wanted now was a little peace.

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Author's Notes: This was a response to an unspoken challenge, reading too many works of magical realist authors in a short span of time, and because abnormal psychology is too interesting to be healthy.

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