The Masks of M.S. Irani

Was this the street? So many years since, he, a frightened boy, so timid and uncertain, had stumbled into this cobbletone corridor, pushed along by the surging color and chaos of carnival. The shop half as narrow as its neighbors, and hidden beneath climbing vines of bougainvillea, had beckoned to him with the tinkle of small bells as he tripped, falling into the fragrant floral embrace of the shop’s front facade.

He reached for the pewter door handle, glancing up to a sign that read, The Mask Shop of M. S. Irani. He remembered thinking it was an odd name for such a shop. If in that moment he had only known that he was stepping across the threshold of the universe, and past the illusion that sustains reality and into the beyond the beyond.