The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

You, Himself, and Her

Previously: "Do As I Do" 

You wake with a grimace and a feeling like you've been folded up wrong and stuffed into a box. It takes you forever, it seems like, to untwist your spine and unfurl your arms. You blink and glare and sigh as you stretch and get comfortable.

Oh God, here I am in Jamie's body again, you think. You don't even bother to look yourself over.

You're still sitting in a quasi-daze as your bare skin itches and quivers when your phone buzzes with a text, from Jamie: Awake yt?

You don't bother to reply, but instead pluck up his t-shirt and start getting dressed. He left his underwear behind for you to change into, you notice, but you push it aside with a fingertip and leave yourself in your own boxers.

You are trembling slightly as you saunter over to the door to Room 106. You rap sharply at it.

The blonde woman who answers it gapes at you. "Hey," you say. You chuck your chin and smile down your nose at her.

Her face freezes. "Oh my God," she mutters. "Oh my God," she says again.

"So can I come in?"

"Uh, yeah." She grabs the front of your shirt with a claw-like hand and yanks you inside. She glances outside, then slams the door shut.

"So—"

But the words die in your throat as you look into her face. With her mouth hanging open, the whites of her eyes showing, and her blonde hair flying out wildly from the sides of her head, she looks utterly freaked out. "Are you okay?" you have to ask.

Still she stares at you. Then she shakes herself. "I'm fine," she mumbles as she brushes past you. "It's just— Well, it's fucking freaky looking at yourself!" She half-turns to give you a wondering side-glance.

"We did this before, you know," you remind him. "Me done up like this, I mean. Though you weren't— Say, how's the mask working?" You point to her face.

Her expressions turns guarded. "'S'okay, I guess," she mumbles. "I mean, the hooters are nice." She grabs a fistful of boob with each hand, then freezes. The words "Oh God" drift from the back of her throat.

After a fractional hesitation, she lunges at you.

* * * * *

It was extremely awkward, and it wasn't at all the way you imagined losing your virginity. Jamie—

And that was part of the problem. You kept thinking of the naked, blonde, thirty-something woman underneath you as "Jamie."

—pulled you onto the bed and opened up her blouse to expose a pair of wobbling breasts. They were big and a little soft, like overripe fruit, but they made a satisfying handful. She also opened up her jeans and pulled them halfway down her thighs, exposing a large, dark bush. But there was nothing like lust in her face as she gazed up at you. Instead, she had the frozen expression of a deer caught in the headlamp of an onrushing locomotive.

So you had to rely on your own instincts, which were of little enough use. It was the feel of the breasts, in your hands, against your cheeks, and between your lips; the caressing grip of her hands on your shoulders and back; and the tickle of your cock against her bush that gradually got you hard, and you hardly kissed for an unpleasant, metallic taste that was either in her mouth or in yours. (Or maybe it was in your imagination, for it kept coming to you that you weren't kissing Jamie, you were kissing a mask.) Even when you were finally erect, it was soft, and you grimaced as you tried to insert yourself into her. You didn't get much help, either, for it was like Jamie too didn't quite know how the bits were supposed to fit together. Eventually you did get inside, and then her liquid warmth fully stiffened you, but you had to dig and push and grind for a lot longer than you usually have to with your sock before you felt the familiar sting of rising sap.

On the plus side, judging by his gasps and gurgles, you did bring your partner to climax, and brought her to climax before you finally spurted. Afterward, you balanced yourself above her on your elbows, staring down with saucer eyes into her face as you felt yourself deflating inside her. She stared back with saucer eyes of her own. When the moment finally grew awkward, you pulled out and rolled off onto your back. The ceiling was as blank as her face had been.

Neither of you spoke, and she said nothing when she finally struggled out of the bed and tottered into the bathroom. After a few minutes you heard water running in the tub, and the splash of something large wallowing into it. You stayed in bed, paralyzed and a little torpid, to stare at the ceiling some more as the water ran and splashed. She wasn't in there long, though, before the gurgle of water told you she was draining the tub again. Still, it was another ten minutes or so before she came padding out with a towel around her.

"Hey," you said.

"Hey," she said as she sat on the edge of the bed.

"Thanks," you said.

"Sure," she said.

"It was interesting," you said.

"Yeah," she said.

"It didn't freak you out too bad, did it?" you asked.

She half-turned to give you another side glance. "Were you freaked out?" she asked.

"A little," you confess. "I mean, it was nice. You were good. I mean— Oh, Jesus." You rubbed your face. "I don't got no idea what to say."

"It could'a been better," she said.

"I was a little freaked out," you reminded her.

"No, the trouble was," she said, "I was, you know, expecting, hoping, I'd have, you know, Ashley's, like, reactions and stuff." She gave you another quick, sidelong glance. "I was hoping that, uh, she'd be turned on by, you know—" She swallowed. "Doing it with ... me." A blush came into that pale face.

You cringed sympathetically as his implied meaning sank in. "And she wasn't? I'm sorry, man, but you know, I don't think you, uh, you don't nothing to, uh, worry about. And like I said, I was freaked out, so I probably wasn't the, uh—"

"No, what I mean is," she interrupted, "I don't know if she was turned on by me!" She turned a worried face toward you, and pointed to her temple. "I don't got any of her, like, memories and stuff, the way you got with my mom!"

* * * * *

So although the afternoon wasn't a disaster, exactly, it was a disappointment. Jamie was hoping that he'd get to sleep with himself while playing the part of a hot MILF, and without said MILF's enthusiasm for her bedmate, you also had a hard time working yourself up to a full enjoyment of the experience. You are also (both of you) mystified and frustrated by the fact that the mask works for you but not for Jamie. That's what you find when you switch them out, with yourself getting into Ashley Wymer's mask long enough to wake up and search its interior. Almost instantly you are able to tell Jamie everything that he wants to know about her. But when he switches back into it, he is met with a blank.

But you don't have long to explore the puzzle, for each of you has to get home for dinner. Jamie, inside the mask again, checks you out of the motel, and takes "Ashley" home with him.

You're still puzzling about the afternoon, and wondering how to find out what the problem when, when the next morning in third period you feel a poke in the shoulder from behind. You turn around, and just keep yourself from quailing when you see that Nicholas Horner, one of Jamie's lowlife friends, has taken the desk behind you. He smirks down his nose at you. "So you're like Jamie's best friend now," he chortles.

You give him a long stare. Horner and Jamie are poured from the same mold—regular guys, but with a jeering attitude—and you idly wonder if you should give him the benefit of the doubt you've given to Jamie.

But then Horner has to go and say, "He's gay, you know."

"Who?"

"Jamie." His smirk deepens. "Are you gay?"

"No."

"Then where's your girlfriend? What are you hanging around with Jamie for if you ain't gay?"

Christ, you think, it's like being back in middle school. After your experience with Jamie, Nicholas Horner doesn't scare you but he does irritate you. "We're working on a school project together."

"A gay school project?"

You roll your eyes and turn back around in your seat. Horner pokes you again. "He wasn't gay before he started hanging out with you, you know. It's pissing us off," he adds when you just ignore him. "You turning him gay. Me and my friends, we're like—"

Mr. Peters calls class to order, so Horner doesn't enlighten you on what he and his friends "are like." But now you do feel a hard chill of fear. Horner doesn't frighten you, but other of Jamie's friends do.

* * * * *

"Maybe we should test it out, like, in pieces," Jamie suggests when you meet up with him that afternoon at the elementary school. "Like," he says, "just test out the doohickey by itself, see if that's where the trouble is."

He's playing with the spare metal band that you have on hand, and his suggestion makes sense. If he's "allergic" or something to the thing that's supposed to copy memories, then that would explain why he changed into Ashley Wymer's form yesterday but didn't get her memories.

But when you agree, he surprises you by holding the band out to you. "Put it on, so I can try it," he says.

Next: "A Slapfight Among Friends" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 1)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)"