It is strange to see how, so often, the smallest artifice can conceal the obvious. It may be nothing more than a change of clothes, a wig, a pair of glasses—and the trick is done. Identity blurs, like barnyard eggs whose shells are cracked open so the yolk and albumen can be lapped up. And it is even easier for those with enough audacity: they can hide in plain sight, right under the noses of fools, the blind, and the inattentive alike, relying on posture, on mannerisms, on affectations—however blatant and garish they may be.

For human beings enjoy being deceived. They enjoy deceiving themselves.

The theater, sleight of hand, stories told by the fireside… humanity revels in falsehood; it loves to wallow in the muck of illusion. Its reality is one of trickery. Its way of thinking stems precisely from this: facts cease to be facts once they pass through the prism and sieve of the mind; they become narrative blocks from which individuals fashion their own stories, subjective and steeped in falsehood. They use them to explain their urges, justify their mistakes, construct a face behind which to hide—a pleasant mask they display in order to better conceal their true nature.

Many fail to realize that identity is a costume they sew for themselves. They drape themselves in ideas and strut like roosters. They have replaced instinct with reason, without realizing that reason itself is a stratagem. Instinct, by contrast, never lies. It does not lose itself in frills or pretense, in inane chirping or baroque convolutions. Instinct is pure and simple. It is musk and fangs, life and death.

In its squeamishness, humankind stitched me a garment, made me don a costume. It does this with everything around it, spinning fables and fabrications. It made me what I am: a bogeyman.

And truth be told, I lick my chops at it.