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A high school student finds a grimoire that shows how to make magical disguises. |
Previously: "In Search of the Perfect Hiding Face"  Your plan is to seed the high school with doppelgangers of popular, influential students, who will follow your commands. Popular, influential students like Chelsea Cooper, who you've already replaced. And you will command them from a position of relative insignificance: a nobody that no one will guess is the real puppetmaster of Westside High. But nothing in this plan says you have to start with the nobody. You could just as easily—maybe more easily—start as one of those doppelgangers-to-be, and then from a perch of relative influence pick out your ultimate hiding spot. And the more you ponder that idea, the more you like it. * * * * * You start by driving back to the old elementary school to take stock of your supplies. You've got one blank mask, good for copying someone's face and body, but you've got the stuff to make more. You'll need one to copy yourself, for instance, and one to copy your first victim. You should make a third, so as to have one on hand if another victim becomes available, and you might as well have a fourth ... Oh, hell. You use up all the supplies making as many as you can. You wind up with six new masks and seven of those metal bands, though the latter still need runes carved into them. After dinner at home, you drive back out to the school—telling your parents you're headed to the library to do homework with a friend—and return to work. You've barely got started with the car buffer when you pull out your phone to text Chelsea: R u busy? you ask, then give her directions to the elementary school along with orders to come find you. "Oh my God," she gasps when you open the basement door and guide her inside. "What is this place, your secret hideout?" "Basically. My supervillain lair." You rub her back, and she turns to smirk up at you. "I'm making more masks." You show her the fruit of the afternoon's labor, and how you're using the car buffer to quickly polish them. You also show her the memory strips you've made, and the glue that will attach them to the masks. Chelsea is impressed. "Whoa," she says. "What are you going to do with these?" "Make doppelgangers. Like I explained to you? You make a mask of someone, then you seal it up and put some of this stuff into it." You show her the tub containing the goop that enslaves mask-wearers. "Boom. Now you've got a fake version of the person, that has to obey you. Or, in this case, me." Her grin is bright and beguiling. "And me too, right, boss? That's what you told me. I could—" "Change of plans, Chelsea. You were the first one." Your heart skips as, without quite intending it, you find yourself confessing what you've done. "You're one of my doppelgangers." A light sweat pops out on your brow, because you're not sure how she'll take it. Her eyes vibrate in their sockets, like she's been hit in the face with a shovel. "What did you say?" "I said—" You hesitate, but there seems nothing else to do but confirm and lean into the confession. There's nothing to do but make it work for you. So you put your arms around the fake girl and crush her to yourself. "You're not the real Chelsea Cooper," you tell her. "You're a doppelganger." Make her like it, you think, so you bend to put your face to hers, and rub your nose against her cheek. "You're her replacement." Your cock stiffens and rises and prods at her through the front of your shorts. "You are the new and improved Chelsea Cooper." Fake-Chelsea catches her breath, and you hear her swallow. "That's kind of a surprise," she says. "I— Oh!" "What?" "Oh! Is that—? Is that how come I'm calling you 'boss'?" "That's right." You softly smooch her on the side of her nose. Her skin is silky and fragrant, and she rustles invitingly inside her clothes. "And you love it," you inform her. "You love being the Chelsea doppelganger." Chelsea groans, and hugs you back tightly. "Oh. Yes, I think I do," she murmurs. "You love being Chelsea Cooper, because Chelsea Cooper is an awesome girl to be," you tell her. You're not sure where the words are coming from, you just know that you have to do everything you can to make her content. "You never want the real girl to come back. You want to be her forever. And you want—" You interrupt yourself by giving her a long, slow kiss on the mouth. "You want to help me make more doppelgangers of other people." She shudders in your arms. "Oh God, yes, Will!" * * * * * It's all you can do to stop yourself from pulling your shorts down and tucking your cock into her panties. But you do manage to restrain yourself, for you've got things to do, and you'll have oodles of time later to prick Chelsea. So you show her how to use the car buffer on the masks, and how much and for how long they need to be polished, while you turn to the longer, slower, and more exacting work of etching runes into the metal strips you made. By the time you part for the evening, Chelsea has finished four masks while you've only completed one of the memory strips. You also set her to thinking about who at the school should be replaced. "Suppose you could pick only six people," you told her. "And you have to make each one count." And so, during the breaks after she had finished one mask and was getting ready to work on another, she shared her thoughts with you. * * * * * Wednesday morning. You wake early to the buzz of your cell phone. It's Chelsea. Instantly, you are awake. You should probably delete these texts and my number, reads the first text. If I'm really undercover I probably shouldn't be seen talking to you or texting you. Sorry! It's appended with a string of crying emojis. Here's the names I came up with last night, and some more I thought of after. The list that follows is at least twenty names long, and probably closer to thirty. Some of them you recognize, but a lot of them you don't. If you want to talk to me you should make d-thing of one of these people. At least the names on this list you all know: Steve Patterson, Cindy Vredenburg, Kim Walsh, Deanna Showalter, and Lin Pol. You blink at the texts, then reply with Ok brb. You hustle for the shower, hoping that the cold spray will flush away the last cobwebs of sleep. Back in your room, shivering with nothing but a towel around you, you shoot Chelsea another text: U got a fake number or sthing we can use to talk? Her reply doesn't come until after you're dressed. Dm me on twitter? she suggests. You grimace, as you don't remember the last time you used that platform. But after ten minutes of guessing passwords and getting a new one sent to you, you log into your account and DM Chelsea at the handle she provides. Still think u should send thru someone else, she replies. But you figure this will work for now. Your dad is surprised to see you up so early, but you give him a story about needing to meet someone at the school, and grab a frozen waffle to nibble as you rush out the door. You stop at the school basement to pick up all your supplies, so that you'll have them on hand at school, just in case. And it's a good thing you go in so armed. * * * * * Chelsea's text comes just as first period is about to start, and even more than the message, it's the fact that she texted you instead of using a DM that tells you there's an emergency. Help will gordon not doing what I tell him begin a dickhead to me. It takes you a moment to untangle her meaning. As the bell to start class is ringing you manage to get off an answer to her: When can u skip class next? Mr. Walberg glares at you as you check her answer when it comes a minute later, and you shut off your phone after glancing at the screen: 2 prd. "Jesus," Chelsea whispers when you catch up to her in the library next period. You're in the stacks, a bookcase between you, whispering between the shelves as you each pretend to be occupied in searching for a book. "It was like he was back to normal. 'I'm busy, Chelsea.' 'Can we talk about this later, Chelsea.' 'I'll talk to you at lunch about this, Chelsea.' I thought he was supposed to do what I tell him!" You don't know what the technical explanation is, but you can sort-of, kind-of guess what the problem is. Gordon is a doppelganger, like Chelsea, but he was supposed to obey the real Chelsea, the way this fake cheerleader is supposed to obey you. But the real girl is gone, replaced by a duplicate. If so, that means Gordon Black is in danger of going rogue. He was made by putting a mask of Gordon over the petrified remains of the original, and you figure it would be easy enough to fix if you put yourself under the mask, and that would solve other problems, like being able to talk openly with Chelsea. You're a lot less sure of what would happen if you put some of that doppelganger paste inside Gordon's mask and put it back on the petrified original. But Chelsea says that he's acting "like he's back to normal." That's okay for now, isn't it? Maybe you can deal with the problem later. Next: "As Seen from the Top of the Pyramid" |
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