Work Text:
Russian roulette is her favourite game. There are six chambers, one bullet, and ten million faces that will vanish after the curtain’s call. All of them are at her disposal to use and take, place upon her face and let spin into the kaleidoscope of emotions. Would she be happy today? Would she be sad? What part will she play? Every single day is a new role in this play called “life”.
The strings eventually get tangled up in one another in theatrical nonsense, the longer that one stays alive. The more time she dwells on this miserable plane of existence, the more roles she has to play. The more that she comes to face that fact with each person she meets brings a different facet of herself to perform. She is everything, yet absolutely nothing, all at once – for she is a different person to everybody that she meets. Through their eyes, her image comes to life and she is reborn in their retinas.
If this world is doomed to be so sad and agonising, then why not add some spice to it? If this existence is to be so sorrowful, then why should she not take it upon herself to be happier? A joke or two here can’t solve everything, of course, but it certainly doesn’t make everything worse. It’s her duty as a person to enjoy the pain and mourn the joy, to appreciate the life that she lives and to take it upon herself to play as many roles as she possibly can. She has let go of morality, let go of her perception of humanity and everything that she held dear – abandons everything for the stage, the show, the praise.
Sparkle. What a pretty name – so joyful, yet so superficial.
The mirror in front of her isn’t real, none of it is. It’s all nonsensical, the way that she reaches out to touch it. There’s a thousand faces in a thousand places, all surrounding her, all crowding her lungs and her brain. There are so many parts to play and so many places to be, all at once, that in her pursuit of elation, she has managed to lose herself. All of it doesn’t feel real, anymore, because the person she is offstage doesn’t matter.
Sparkle.
What a pretty name – so bright, yet so fake.
Sparkle, the owner of a million masks, while all the bodies of the identical versions of her pile up in the back of her mind, drowning in the rivers of vermillion. They used to be veils, they used to be mirrors, always something to hide beneath. All those different suits of warm flesh, smiles, and sobs used to be her solace.
In the end, though, a suit is just a suit – something to be discarded after the show is over. It’s something that traps you, something that shows you a life that can never be yours.
Does it matter, though? She can taste a life that isn’t hers through that mask, feel it, breathe it, and see it. Does it matter if it’s not hers if she can live in it, only for a second?
The masks, the suits — they are all suffocating. They all stare at her from the inside of her closet, laughing, jeering, crying, wailing, and screaming.
Sparkle will be smiling as she closes the closet and leaves them all to die.
There are many parts to play onstage, of course, but there are even more to play offstage. There are so many Sparkles in her mind that she’s lost track of all of them. They hang from their necks around her room, in her mind, in the closet, in her fingertips, and in the mirror—
Sparkle stares back.
Who is Sparkle?
Sparkle is a mask that used to be her beloved companion, but now, it’s starting to feel like some sort of trap. If the world is a stage and she wants to leave it to go backstage, with the world before her yet another stage to perform on, doesn’t that just lead her down a never ending path? If there are only more stages behind more stages, then does this mean that everything she does will always be another performance?
Does it matter?
She still feels joy. She still laughs and cries and screams and dies.
Those emotions aren’t hers, though. Those are Sparkle’s.
Who is Sparkle?
Sparkle is–
A crying orphaned girl, huddled in the middle of a street–
An empress of her own country, cruel and harsh–
A hero, embarking on a new journey–
A storyteller, seeking revenge–
Sparkle is everything and everyone. Sparkle can be anything and everything. Sparkle is whatever you want Sparkle to be.
Sparkle is–
Dying amongst the piles of corpses, suffocating in a tower of carcasses, screaming for help, reaching out for somebody, anybody to take her hand. Sparkle is–
The best actress that you’ve ever seen. So good at her craft that she’s lost herself in the many acts she has gone through. She vies for attention like a lost child, deprived of the praise that she should have had in her youth. Sparkle does not have a name, yet at the same time she does have multiple – she is a walking paradox, a mirror for the lives of everyone else. She is everything the poor little children could never be, she is what Kings and Queens alike envy.
Sparkle is a girl who wants joy more than anything else.
Sparkle is a girl who wants a smile more than anything else.
Sparkle is a girl who is ignoring the millions of suits, bodies, masks, and faces in the back of her mind as they all reach out towards her, prying eyes and red ribbons wrapping their greedy, human hands around her artificial body.
Sparkle is living her best life and dying, all at once.
Who is the real Sparkle?
She doesn’t know either. No. Don’t give her that look, Mask number three hundred and seventy two. She can see you and the way that you peek with sad, round eyes into her room at night. She can see the way that you pity her with nosy eyes, waiting to know her own backstory, her woes, her real self, waiting to know more.
Everybody always wants to see the next act when she’s performs, after all.
Let all of the masks that she sewed together die with her, in the back of her mind–
They’re all painted with the blood of the girls who came before her, their dying last wishes turned into facial expressions, and she had been the killer as they begged her for a chance to live and bask in the limelight. Wearing them as her own, their insides are warm and comforting and red, alive, so alive. The urge to burrow herself into their beings is always there, and she wants to know the ins and outs of every character that she plays.
That, friends, is how Sparkle becomes everyone else. She knows them, she sees their very essence and then takes it for her own. They are all characters, after all, in one elaborate play – all simply pawns to be used for her own entertainment. Power? Greed? What a superficial thing to focus on. None of that will matter when you’re dead and gone, anyway. All that matters is amusement and enjoying the time that you have, isn’t that right?
That’s what she loves to tell herself, after all.
Sparkle, Sparkle, Sparkle – the owner of a beloved mask that mirrors, yet contradicts, yet dictates the person she is. A veil, a hiding spot, a burden – acting is everything. The essence of being an actor is losing yourself to the craft. Abandon all senses of the self in favour of the warmth that she can have when she’s nestled on stage, like a bird in a nest.
A face, staring at her, the audience, the universe itself, the Aeons, all of them are staring at her. Sparkle is–
Watched, constantly. The eyes of life itself on her, and she can never stop performing until the day that she dies. Even then, who’s to say that it’ll be a real death? All of it could be one elaborate lie, after all – perhaps the stories they tell of places beyond death are true or false. Perhaps they are meaningless, made up to calm the minds of the living, to make sure they don’t think too much about what happens next. To focus on the present, and yet–
So many dramas and musicals, they are focused on death, and how it affects the living and the dead. What happens to them after they die? What are the feelings that come with death? Perhaps Sparkle’s next performance should be about death, too – it’s always been such an interesting subject.
The stage… perhaps the offstage is the bigger stage that the Laughter, Aha, speaks of. Who’s to say? It’ll all come to an end, someday. So it’s vital that she enjoys what she has now.
She’s satisfied, right?
She has to be. This is the whole point of her existence – to love the things that she does, to enjoy the agony, the suffering, the rejections–
So where is this emptiness coming from?
Is it the lack of applause? Where has the audience gone? Why have the lights gone dim? Why is she… alone, suddenly, on stage?
Is that… her, in the audience? The lone audience member, staring back, in the seats of the theatre. The spotlight is no longer on her and under her feet – the wood has gone cold.
The Sparkle in the audience is holding a gun. The lights are all focused on her, the murderer and the culprit of the story.
Sparkle on stage pauses. Is this what she wants? For another death to happen right here, right now? Is it already time for her melancholic persona to die? Or would it be more interesting if she stood up here, right now, and made some sort of final stand?
Would it be more tragic if she allows another part of herself to die without restraint?
The Sparkle in the audience is moving towards her with a grin on her face.
Who is Sparkle?
Is Sparkle the girl with a gun to her head, right now, holding the murder weapon? Is Sparkle the girl who is standing almost alone, on stage, waiting for her inevitable death?
What will happen to this mask when she dies?
She can see it in her mind’s eye – an extravagant funeral, with cherry blossoms and weeping visitors…
Who are all wearing the same face.
The audience is always the same – just more and more Sparkles. They wear different expressions, weaving in between states, choosing their own identities in the moment before abandoning them. This must be some elaborate paradox.
The trigger is pulled.
Confetti goes flying in place of blood.
Her brain falls out of her ears.
The mask falls to the floor, the body collapses to the ground. It is a dramatic effect, playing this out in her mind – to see the way that she dies from an outsider’s and insider’s point of view. She’s dying, and yet she is the murderer, alive and dead, all at once. Every part of her body committing mitosis to rip herself painfully in half again, and again, and again. The blood is melting through the ground, swimming in everything, and she is being tossed into a pile in the back of her own brain again. Another discarded body in the grand scheme of plays, and yet, she knew this would be her fate from the moment she’d stepped on stage. Where there is a beginning, there must be an ending. That is simply how shows and theatres work.
It doesn’t hurt to die. Not when she is living through another proxy.
Sparkle is fine, obviously. She’s walking through a street right now, typing away mindlessly at her phone in the Xianzhou Luofu. She’s fighting an interstellar battle as a member of the Nameless. She’s a princess on Jarilo-VI, a member of the Family in Penacony.
Sparkle is everywhere and anywhere, all of the time.
Sparkle is still dead on the stage floor.
That brings us the question – is Sparkle the murderer or the victim? And the audience… Where is the audience? Where have they gone?
Who is Sparkle?
Ah.
I know the answer now!
Sparkle is whoever you want her to be. So it doesn’t matter who Sparkle is, as long as you enjoy what you read, right?
So tell me, my dearest reader, whom I’ve finally found. Did you like my show?