I am a ghostwriter. That is, I am a ghost who writes. I have wanted to write. It seems like such a human thing to do. But I could not even hold up a quill. Everything slips through my flimsy grasp. Undeterred, I begin work on a novel in my mind. I have to work fast, you see, because thoughts keep leaking out of my insubstantial head.

To-day I deploy the fur-trimmed and sequined lids over the paper eyes, I work the apparatus known as the “mouth”: How else am I to dispel us of the charade, Viewer, peel off the loveliest mask of you?