He only unmasked himself in this way when he was feeling particularly sure of himself, for he did not like to expose his eyes. His eyes were large and pale, with long, fair lashes; huge eyes, that blinked and stuttered in the light like shy children. His delicate, pick-pocket hands dealt gracefully with his glasses; such pretty, pink-and-white butterfly hands. But they were extraordinarily, deceptively strong; Morris had once seen him tear a telephone directory in half with his pretty hands. They were dirty, though, and there was a hint of something rusty in the fingernails, rusty like dried blood.
[...] In the flickering blue light, Honey's long, pale hair and high-held, androgynous face was hard and fine and inhuman; Medusa, marble, terrible. A little wind through the door blew about his flame so that the light seemed to stream from the ends of his whipping hair. She gaped up, baffled, wondering; like the Virgin in Florentine pictures meeting the beautiful, terrible Angel of the Annunciation, she all heaped upon the ground, her slack mouth opening and closing soundlessly. Then Honey, possessed by some personal devil, darted forward spreading his billowing white sleeves like wings, emitting a high, piercing scream, a spectre, a madman, a vampire.
Angela Carter, Shadow Dance
