The Golden Mask
Key art
Filed beside the screening
The picture is The Golden Mask.
Scenario
2:57 · 16:9
A golden mask hangs on a shrine wall and weeps a slow thread of gold onto the stone beneath it. There is no face inside the metal. There is no strap waiting to hold a face there. Spirals and infinity marks worked into the cheeks have been worn nearly smooth by grit. A keeper stands opposite the mask, palms already dull with gold that dried on them earlier. The thread from the eye is thin and continuous. It does not splash. It joins a small bright pool and the pool does not run yet.
He watches the thread for a while without touching. The shrine stone behind the mask is streaked where older threads dried. The empty hook's shadow is only the hook. Minutes pass as gold leaving the eye at the speed of a slow leak, and as his dull palms not being wiped on his coat. No one else enters the corridor. The mask does not turn on its hook. The worn infinity marks catch light and lose it as the thread swells and thins.
He touches the lower rim. Fresh gold runs over his fingers and dries there within a minute, losing its wet shine. He reaches to the inside of the mask. His knuckles meet the shrine wall, not a hollow he could wear. He lifts the mask free of its hook and sets it on a stone bust in the corridor. Gold pools at the bust's base and creeps along the grout toward the next slab. The creeping stops at the slab's edge and does not cross. A heavy drop leaves the mask's eye and joins the pool. The stop at the grout follows the move from the wall. The empty hook behind him is already streaked and bright.
The weeping slows and does not stop. He opens both hands and does not wipe them on his coat. The worn infinity signs catch what light remains in the corridor, and the shrine stone behind the empty hook stays streaked and bright. The pool at the bust thickens. The thread from the eye is slower and still a thread. Dried gold on his palms stays dull beside the wet gold on his fingers.
The mask keeps weeping on the bust. The pool stays on its own slab. His open hands do not close, and the empty hook on the shrine wall holds nothing where a face was never waiting.
Grout at the next slab stays dry. The bust under the mask is plain stone, no features of its own, and the gold does not draw a face there. The keeper's coat remains clean of any wipe. Dried gold on his palms cracks in a fine web when he almost closes his hands, and he stops before the fists finish. The thread from the eye lengthens by a drop and the drop joins the pool without a sound. The empty hook on the shrine wall keeps its bright streaks. No strap appears. No hollow opens behind the metal for a face to occupy.