To dear Mrs Claude:

　　I hope all is well with you.

　　recently.I read in the newspapers that you and Claude were blessed with a son.motherhood is an extraordinary thing, and I'm sure you'll be a great mother because you're so loyal and dependable, both to your friends and to your family. But I'm sorry you didn't invite me to the baby's christening, I think that must be because the exhaustion of pregnancy and the torture of gestation has made you a bit mentally weak and so you forgot about me as an old friend, or more probable, you simply didn't want to have too much to do with me as an ex-boyfriend who had given you betrayal. In either case, I understand your feelings and am still here to send you my best wishes and gifts.

　　I know that the arrival of this letter must have confused you as to why I am using the almost modern and obsolete method of communication of postal mail when I am living not far from your home. Please press on with your misgivings for the time being and read on, and I assure you that all these questions will be answered later.

　　Celine, please allow me to address you as such. Throughout the years, as a mutual friend of you and your wife, we have always maintained a relationship that is neither close nor distant, and as you have always avoided being in the same room with me out of concern for my reputation, I have always addressed you as Mrs Claude. When was the last time you were called by your maiden name?

　　Brussels? Henk? Dronne? Or maybe it was even earlier, long before you met Claude, when we were young, almost fifteen or sixteen, and I remember the first time I met you, when I rode past you on my bike while joking about you, and then I fell and my knee bled profusely, and without saying a word you ran over to me and stopped the bleeding, and, Celine, I can still remember what you looked like at that moment. Why didn't you leave me alone? I've bullied you a lot. If you're so kind, why didn't you keep it up, you know? It was your forgiveness that gave me the illusion that even if I made a mistake I would have a chance to make it right, but that wasn't the case at all with you back there, you didn't hesitate to leave me after you found out that I cheated on you with someone else and never gave me another chance to salvage the relationship, I hated your stubbornness, I despaired of your determination, and I even thought about planting nails on your way home to make your bike fall off the mountain, and then to rescue you as a Saviour to save you, or put a neurotoxin in your drinking water to make you delirious day by day, and then take advantage of the neighbourhood's righteousness to take care of you ------ Please don't feel afraid, Celine, these are all things of the past, it is not a crime to imagine, and everyone has a desire to commit a crime, I'm just more honest than the norm, or maybe, I just don't want to continue to hide it any longer.

　　I'm sorry, I can't help mentioning more about the past, you're probably so bored that you're going to throw the letter away, so I promise not to ramble on about what's coming up, let's get right to the point.

　　It all started that afternoon, a global flu, to prevent infection, I went into the pharmacy and bought a mask to put on first, when I was about to pay, I realised that I had forgotten to take my wallet out, so I had to awkwardly ask the clerk if I could have credit, I didn't really have any hope, after all, the clerk seemed a bit difficult to deal with, but he agreed, and I should have noticed something was wrong, but didn't really. I should have noticed that something was wrong, but I didn't.

　　When I got to the door, I ran into Valerie again, she and I had a little conflict over a small matter, this time we didn't talk for more than a couple of sentences, I casually said a request, and this time Valerie actually did it, which was impossible in the past, and I began to realise something at this time, I tried to say a few words to her again, and she did as I wanted without any contradiction just like the shopkeeper. If you're smart, you should be able to pick up on that a little bit too. Me too, I couldn't help but pull off the mask, when Valerie suddenly blushed and was back to normal in no time, and that's when I realised the truth of this superpower - as long as I wore the mask, everything I said would be unconditionally obeyed.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

　　I don't know if this is an ability I was born with or a potential that was stimulated later in life, I tried asking my parents about it, and as far as they can remember, it seems that I wore that thing a few times when I was a kid, but I don't remember anything special happening back then.

　　Celine, I wonder what you would do if it was you who suddenly had such a skill? Use it to help further your career? Or to help yourself fulfil a wish you couldn't achieve? I closed my eyes and thought for a moment, and I remembered you once telling me that "once a desire starts, it never stops", and I thought the most likely thing would be that you would never wear a mask again from now on, you're such a restrained person.

　　And I'm not. I wasn't loyal enough, I wasn't moral enough, I wasn't restrained enough, I knew how important focus was to a relationship but still betrayed you, overshadowed your first relationship and still tried to hurt you after that, and if there really is a God in this world, and why would he give superpowers to people like me and not to you - A really good girl in the secular sense, I can't understand. After all, in every sense of the word, you are more deserving of a genuine, unblemished relationship that gets everyone's blessing.

　　Rather than kneeling at my feet on the eve of your wedding, lax pupils, sucking my fingers on command.

　　I know you must be consoling yourself right now, thinking that this might be one of my pranks to sabotage your marriage, after all, you had no hope for my character ten years ago, but, Celine, let's put it this way, do you remember the day of your wedding, when the lingerie buttons of your gown snapped off the straps? You'd obviously hung it nicely on the rack the night before, but when you tried to wear it that morning, didn't you realise it was broken?

　　Yes, Celine, I went to see you the night before your wedding, when we hadn't seen each other for many years, and you were still very wary of me, which made me very sad. And your marriage to Claude made me very sad too, in all fairness I don't dislike Claude, he is indeed a gentleman and a very nice person, and if his wife hadn't been you, we might have become even better friends. I didn't want to hurt innocent people, I didn't want to ruin your marriage, and I didn't want to make you weep with sadness at the loss of your happiness, and yet I did find it hard to bear the thought of being without you, and so I had to do something to extricate us from this painful situation.

　　So that day I begged and pleaded and said all the nice things I could to get you to open the door, then I put on the mask, and what followed is a sweet memory, I'm glad that you and Claude kept to your beliefs and traditions and didn't step out of line during our relationship, and by the way, you looked so charming in your wedding dress.

　　I know you must be distraught at this point, anxious to find out exactly what I did to you when I gained this ability. You should now understand why I use letters as a vehicle for communication, if I were in front of you right now, you would be grabbing me by the collar of my coat and gritting your teeth and questioning me, and I'm not sure that I would be able to finish things with a single thought to you like that, instead of kissing you on the cheek without being able to help myself. But I was not in front of you, and all you could do, even if you were annoyed, was to read the letter on.

　　Have you spoken to Claude about our past? It seemed as if he should have known something about it, and when I came to the door with brandy as a gift to give my newlywed blessings, he acquiesced in your burrowing into the kitchen to minimise the chances of a positive exchange with me, but he didn't need to. At the dinner table, I've heard him talk about your pregnancy, and whether in your happiness you were tinged with some unspecified confusion as to why, despite all the measures you'd taken every time, you'd still slipped up. I've seen the supplies you keep in your bedside table drawers to keep you safe, those I never use.

　　Remember the gift I said I wanted to give you at the beginning of this letter? That there was the whole truth about your life.

　　So you can probably see how I feel now, I'm looking forward to this baby just as much as you are, and watching you happily rubbing your belly and talking about when it's due and whether it's going to look more like you or Claude gives me an unspeakable thrill, what kind of look would you get if you knew it was mine? I thought about it all the time.

　　But I finally decided to leave the surprise to come today, because I was starting to become insatiable, I was starting to not be able to stand having someone else come between us, I was starting to not be able to stand the cold frosty face that you gave me every time you came to your senses, like you told me a long time ago, "Desire, once it starts, doesn't stop". The more you have, the more you become a prisoner of your desires.

　　In the same way, dear Celine, if you don't want to lose everything, your marriage, your relationship with Claude, your dignity in front of everyone. Then now, Celine, put on that silk nightgown in the bottom left corner of your wardrobe and go downstairs and open the door and greet the real father of your children as you greeted Claude.

　　This time, I will not be wearing a mask.

　　Wish the smile rest forever on your face.

Love you. Alex Finch.