The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Your Two Faces

Previously: "Pretender to the Phone" 

You stare at your doppelganger with bulging eyes. He stares back.

He's skinny, with bony shoulders and arms, and knobby elbows and knees. His eyes crinkle up with pained embarrassment beneath stiff, straw-like bangs, and his mouth twists up into a rictus-like grin; his lips seem to entangle themselves with big teeth. He hunches on the workout bench with his hands folded over his crotch. They seem to rest casually \, but you're sure that if you tried to move them, they'd rest stiff as stone there.

"Okay, this is hilarious," Jessica drawls. "Almost as hilarious as when Mike and beta-Mike met for the first time." Eva shoots him a baleful look. "But if you wanna get on with it, Will—"

"Er, yeah," you croak. "What do I do now?"

"You can start by giving him your clothes. Unless you want to send him back to your house naked."

You twitch. Take off my clothes? you think. You shiver—and it's not from the air conditioning. If I give it my clothes, it'll put them on. And then it really will be ... me. So your limbs are stiff and numb as you toss your ball cap into the corner of the room, and pull your t-shirt off over your head. In a minute, you are as naked as the beta that is hunched and shivering on the workout bench. It hasn't said anything all this time, but only turned green as it watched you.

"Now tell it to get dressed," Jessica says. "Come on, Will, this should all be obvious."

So you tell the thing to get dressed, which it does, and then you and he make an awkward dance as it stands up and you sit down where it had been. This is what it saw when it woke up, you think as you stare up at the thing that is a perfect copy of you, from the sloppy, dirty-white ball cap down to the boat-like sneakers. It saw something that looked just like it, and which was ... living its life.

Right: It's going to live your life.

So as Jessica opens her mouth to speak again, you preempt her with orders for the beta. "Go home," you order it in a voice that growls with anxiety. "Um, be me. Do what I would do." The thing's eyes dart uncertainly. Eva says, "Don't you got anything special to tell it?"

Your life isn't that full, but lamely you add, "Go do your homework. My homework," you correct yourself. "Don't get in trouble with, uh, Dad. Go to school, and hang out with—" You swallow. "Caleb and everyone else. You know. Just ... be me." You feel your eyes watering. "Can you do that?"

"Yeah?" it says, sounding slightly incredulous. Jessica rolls her eyes and plucks at its elbow.

"Come on," she says, "let's go introduce you to the other guys." She and Eva smirk over their shoulders at you as they lead beta-Will away. From outside, Eva points at the crate where the other mask is laying.

"Just put that on," she says, "and come find us after you're dressed. Don't put it on while standing up, though," she adds. "Lay down." You nod, and she pulls the bay door down with a thump.

You suck in a deep breath. Okay, that was creepy, you think as you wipe a sweaty palm on your bare thigh. Looking at myself, seeing myself, seeing that ... thing. But at least I'm—

And you are suddenly cheered. Or, if not cheered, your spirits spark back to life. Because I'm going to be Cindy Vredenburg! You lever yourself to your feet and hop on numb feet over to the crate where the mask sits. It seems to burn in your hands as you pick it up. The outer surface is shaped like a human face, with eyes (but no holes for them), a nose, cheeks and cheekbones, lips, chin and forehead. I just have to put this over my face, you think, and—

You turn it over. Glowing blue letters seem to float over its inner surface: CINDY CYNTHIA VREDENBURG. So I guess her middle name is Cynthia. I wonder what else I'll find out about her when I'm her. The thought causes you to gulp. There are a lot of secret, mental things about yourself that you wouldn't want anyone else finding out. A hard shiver runs up your spine. I'm going to find those things out about Cindy!

Except you won't, not as long as you keep procrastinating. And why are you procrastinating? Isn't this what you wanted, what you arranged, what you risked being straight-up murdered by Seth, to get?

Your cock is rising like a drawbridge as you hobble back to the workout bench. You sit, then lay back, straddling the bench, and hold the mask at arms-length over your face. You slowly lower it. Halfway down, you clench your eyes shut, and hold your breath as you lower the rest of the way.

The mask is very warm on your face. For only a moment it rests there, with your palms hovering over it. Then it grows very heavy and very hot. You tiwtch—or you would if your limbs were still working—as you feel your face soften and melt. A great weight sinks down through the front of your skull, into your brain, and out the back of your head, dragging you backward with it into darkness ...

* * * * *

You're not conscious of opening your eyes; you only know that suddenly they are open, and the thought I'm awake springs to the forefront of your consciousness. But when was I asleep?

You are staring at a dull, beige-colored surface, and the only sound is the dull whoosh and roar of a ventilation system. You are very chilly, and when you clasp your arms to warm yourself, you discover that you are bare naked. That, at least, is enough of a shock to get you to swing upright and blink at your surroundings.

You're in a small room with tan-colored metal walls, barely furnished with a workout bench (on which you were lying), a couple of crates, a shapeless workout bag, and a footlocker. There are fluorescent lights in the ceiling, and a metal door, like a garage door, in one wall. Off to the side is a floor-length mirror, which you catch your reflection in. Almost unconsciously, you twitch your hair, pulling one long drape of it behind your head to hang over your other shoulder.

It looks very familiar. You should know where you are. I hope I know where I am, you think with a gulp, if I'm here naked.

But it takes only a moment to place it all. This must be that storage complex that Eva and Jessica asked me to come out to. Some guys had a studio set up inside one of the bays, that looked like this one. Is this another bay? What am I doing here? You feel anger and fear begin to well up inside. And where the fuck are my clothes?

But though you feel more certain of yourself, you can't shake that the feeling that you are forgetting something very important, more important than knowing where you are or how you got here or what happened to your things. You've been here, in this very room, before; and you remember—don't you?—laying down on that workout bench. You had something with you ... and there was someone else on that bench ... and you felt very sick about something ... something to do with something that had been on that crate over there ...

"Oh!" Almost you swoon, and cover your face with your hands. Your knees wobble, and you sink to the floor. "Oooohhhhhh!"

You remember now. The mask. And Cindy. And Eva and Jessica. Only it wasn't Eva and Jessica, it was Mike and Carlos. And they helped you make a mask and you put it on and now you—

You giggle, its sound muffled by the fingers that you still spread over your face. You giggle again, and drop your hands, and grin up at the ceiling. You push yourself to your feet and sway over to the mirror. Shyly, you nibble a fingernail as with watering eyes you study your reflection.

My reflection! you think. That's me! I'm Cindy Vredenburg!

And you are. You drink in your new body greedily with watering eyes.

Maybe her body—My body!—isn't quite as glorious as you fantasized, or led yourself to believe as you stared down at her earlier. She is very slender in the upper torso and shoulders, with ribs and shoulders that show just a little too clearly through the skin. But she has great, taut, firm breasts with big nipples prickling in the midst of half-dollar-sized brown tips; a firm, curved tummy; well-shaped hips and buttocks; and strong, shapely legs. You need to work on your upper body strength, her big sister has told her. And in your exultation you don't wonder how you know that.

You twist around and around, studying your new self from every angle, and scooping up fistfuls of hair to get it out of the way. The greatest discovery, so far as you're concerned, is that Cindy shaves her cooch, so that it is silky smooth and tender to the touch. But you get almost as much pleasure from just staring into your face with your big, doll-like eyes as a faint smirk plays about your lips. My face now!

At last, sounds from the next bay over remind you that you should finish up and join your co-conspirators. Mike and Carlos dropped Cindy's things in a corner, and as you bend to pick them up, you remember what Seth said when he picked you up: You're wearing that? to which you retorted, I'm not getting dressed up for Darren and Sophie! But aren't you supposed to not have Cindy's memories yet?

You told Seth that you'd meet him later at the restaurant, and you feel strangely certain that you could fake your way through the date. But it would also be easy to blow him off after the excuse you gave him over the phone.

Next: "Crushing It as Cindy" 

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