Mask

Ever blithe, she is as smooth as the salt flats beyond the Silver Island mountains she calls home. 

A polite smile, a gesture of goodness, is given freely as she quietly enters the wide room and takes her seat.  She knows her work will be unusually crawling this day so she begins by visiting her favorite website. The opinions, oh how they flow! There again—there he is. Socrates he calls himself. How could he? He is as foolish as a peacock this braggart. Ever pluming himself on his clever phrases, he strokes his ego as he denigrates all who dares cross his path. Few do.  Meletus does though. This is the name she has taken. She has decided that it will be an appropriate cloak.

As she begins to type, her anger grows---is he really that simple? He pretends to be so wise but he is just a fool. “Professing to be wise, they become fools” says the scripture verse. She will put him in his place.

Her typing grows more furious as she goes and finds herself beginning to curse. “If your brains were dynamite, you wouldn’t have enough to blow your ##^&$ hat off!!” She continues with a flourish and slams enter.  

Satisfied that the old peacock has been properly humbled, she rises from her seat and casually strolls down toward the office kitchen.  “Let your speech be seasoned with salt…” she remembers the passage with delight.

“How are you today, Angela?” her good-natured co-worker asks.  “Fine, just fine”, Angela says as she enters, her demure smile ever present.

As he casually returns to his desk he glances at the family pictures alongside the Easter cross on Angela’s desk and thinks, “What a wonderful Christian she is!”

 “Manicured grave plots, grass clipped and  flowers bright, but six feet down its all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. People look at you and think you’re saints, but beneath the skin you’re total frauds.” --Jesus