Paper People

“We are all paper people,” she said, “living in a paper world.”

“Very nice,” I said, “but a bit thin, don’t you think?”

Caroline tossed her head at me, irritated. “Try to look beyond your petty bourgeois pre-conceptions, Phil. Focus a little.”

“All right, if you want to get philosophical,” I said, a touch nettled myself. “Paper people in a paper world. We all hide our true selves; we show the world a paper-thin mask of what we think the world wants us to be. We don’t realise that everyone else is doing the same thing, that the whole world is nothing but a vast sea of masks. Right?”

“Hmph.” She stared at me for a moment, eyes slightly narrowed. “That’s a little better, but only just. At least you’re thinking now. I say again: look beyond your petty pre-conceptions.”

“What, then?” I demanded. “You’ve obviously got something in mind, and it’s easy enough to call anything else a ‘pre-conception’. It’s also pretty cheap. So are you going to let me in on the big revelation, or are you going to keep me guessing all evening?”

She let out a sigh of exasperation. “If I just tell you, you’ll never accept it. You need to realise it for yourself.” She saw my expression and shrugged, her lips curling into the familiar, faintly superior smile that never failed to drive me up the wall. “All right, then; if you insist. Here it is:

“The world you see around you is an illusion, paper-thin. It is a comforting shell—a mask, as you put it before—over a reality that is so strange, so powerful and so terrifying that you, like almost every other person on the face of the planet, could never hope to confront it without going mad. You live instead in this paper reality, going about your humdrum life, scarcely dreaming of the wonders and the horrors that surround you. And dreaming still less that there is another you, hidden under an equally paper-thin mask, that belongs to the true world, and could be a true part of it—if only you could open your eyes and see.”

She came to a halt and sat back, watching me with that smile and waiting.

“And is this the point where I should choose the red pill, and escape from the Matrix?” I asked.

Caroline’s smile, if anything, broadened. “No pills,” she said, “and no Matrix. Nothing so—“ She paused. “So safe.”

I raised my eyebrows. “That almost sounds like a threat.”

She laughed. “How can it be a threat, when I’m clearly off my head and talking nonsense? Make up your mind, Phil.” Before I could think of an answer, she stood up, slim, graceful and elegant. “In any case, it’s getting late and I ought to go.”

“Oh, come on,” I protested, rising myself. “You can’t just go off and leave that hanging in the air. I’ve got to have a chance to prove you wrong.”

“It’ll have to be tomorrow,” Caroline said. “I really do have to go. Good-night, Phil, and thank you for a promising evening.”

While I was still trying to decide what she want by promising, she blew me a kiss and let herself out my apartment door. I heard her heels clack-clacking away down the corridor.

They stopped suddenly.

It hardly registered at first; I was picking up the coffee mugs to take them out to the kitchen. But subconsciously I was listening, as one does, for the footsteps to resume: either carrying on away from me, or coming closer. But there was nothing. Just an arrogant silence that filled my apartment as effectively as her arrogant self had done, moments before.

I went to the door, opened it, and looked out. The corridor down to the elevator was reasonably long, and I knew I would see her standing there, perhaps smiling or pointing at me with a gotcha! look on her face.

But the corridor was empty.