By Anik Dasgupta
I am the world’s greatest actor.
Do you hear me? The GREATEST.
The god of lies, the saint of sin.
You think you’ve seen the truth of me,
But darling, that’s a role I played.
You’ve only ever met the mask.
Every word I speak, every gesture I make,
Every smile I stretch across this self-mutilated face
It’s all a LIE, and YOU love it.
Do you know how easy it is to make you love me?
To make you clap like obedient little seals
You smile at the mask.
You worship the mask.
Lies. Rot. Chaos. Me and the mask.
Oh, the crowd, they cheer, they scream my name,
Each clap, a spark, that fuels my flame.
It hurts… DAMNIT, IT HURTS.
But I can’t stop.
So clap, Clap, CLAP for the lies I sell,
Smile wide as I burn thee in my private hell.
Because I am the world’s greatest actor.
Hence, the show must go on.
Bow down, my little fools~
Kneel for the one who rewrites the rules.
Bleed. Break. Bask.
As the mask smiles back.
Bow down, worship this grinning face.
You made me your god in this wretched place.
Every clap is a scream, every cheer a plea,
But you’ll never escape a fraud like me.
I am the world’s greatest actor,
And I loathe every second you look my way.
You think you’ve seen me smile?
No, no, no,
That’s not a smile; it’s a rictus,
A corpse’s grin stretched too tight,
The flesh splitting, the blood pooling behind my teeth.
Bow down.
BLEED.
Break your hands on my altar.
Look at me!
No, LOOK.
Do you see the cracks?
The blood seeping through?
No? Good.
That’s how I know I’ve won.
I’ve fooled you all, haven’t I?
You clap while I carve my soul into pieces.
You cheer while I drown in your adoration.
I want to hate you.
I long to kill you.
NO! Not now. Not yet.
That would end the show too soon.
Do you know what it feels like to bury yourself alive?
To shovel dirt onto your own screaming body?
Because that’s what I’ve done.
The “me” you might have known,
The “me” who once existed—
I slit their throat and buried them long ago.
And now there’s only I and the mask.
The perfect, smiling, ever-grinning mask.
But I don’t just wear the mask.
I’ve become the mask.
And the mask hates me.
It whispers to me at night,
Tells me to do things—
Things I can’t repeat here because,
Well, you might stop clapping,
And we wouldn’t want that, would we?
No, no, you need this performance. You crave it.
You’ve been eating my lies for so long,
They’ve become your sustenance.
And I’ve been spoon-feeding you poison,
One saccharine smile at a time.
For I am the world’s greatest actor,
And my performance has just begun.
I tried to strip it, clawed it raw,
But the mask won’t budge, it’s the final law.
I am the mask, and the mask is me—
For I am the world’s greatest actor.
I’ll eat your love, one guttural cheer at a time.
The mask loves your cheers.
The mask drinks your claps.
While I—I’m nothing without it.
Do you hear us laughing?
We whisper. we command.
“Smile.” We say, “Entertain them.”
For we are the world’s greatest actor.
And we hate you for making us this way.
We are not like you. We never were.
You— You fragile, pathetic creatures with your soft hearts and weaker minds.
You cling to your truths like lifelines,
But we. We rejected the truth long ago.
Truth is ugly. Truth is weak.
The lie—the lie is power.
And we have mastered it.
But before the curtain falls,
We want to share a little secret with you.
Lean in close. Closer.
Good.
Here it is:
We hate you. We loathe you.
Every last one of you.
You, with your bright eyes and your mindless devotion,
You made me like this.
You handed me the mask,
You cheered when I put it on,
And now, you just can’t stop watching.
But don’t worry— The grand finale is coming.
You’ll get what you paid for.
The lights will dim.
The applause will rise to a deafening crescendo.
And we, the world’s greatest actor,
Will take our final bow.
And as we do,
I’ll plunge my hands into the mask,
Twist it, tear it, shatter it,
Until there’s nothing left of us but raw, screaming chaos.
And you’ll all watch, wide-eyed and rapt,
Because you can’t look away.
You love us too much.
Even when we finally show you what’s underneath—
Even when we pull you all down with us—
Lights out. Curtain falls.
The mask laughs while I bow.
But you? You’ll still be clapping.
I’ll be free.
But you? You’ll never escape.
Because we are the world’s greatest actor.
And we have made you all part of our show.