The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

The Needle Skips

Previously: "An Overwhelming Question" 

You are just putting your hand on the door handle when a blow like a thunderclap sets your skull ringing. You fall against the swinging door, and tumble to the hard floor of the room beyond. Something hits and bounces off the tiles with a hard, rattling clatter.

For a very long time (it seems like) you lay in a daze on the floor, hardly thinking, and only vaguely aware that you are conscious and that your eyes are open. It is as though you lack entirely the willpower to move, and can only wait, like a broken toy, for someone to come along and scoop you up.

It's the sound of muffled voices that finally gets you to stir. You lift your head, and twist your neck, then turn over onto your back to sit up with a soft grunt. You are completely naked, but somehow this comes as no surprise to you.

You listen with some trepidation as the voices approach, and pass, then fade. After a moment's stillness, you glance around to take in your surroundings.

You are in a bedroom. A boy's bedroom, you would guess, from the brown and blue color scheme, and the general untidiness. It's a large room, big enough to hold a king-size bed, a couple of dressers, an L-shaped desk holding both a laptop and a desktop computer, and walls hung with pennants; there's also a long, low bookshelf, topped with glinting trophies and statuettes of gold and silver, sitting under a large bay window, through which gray, faded light seeps like a dull fog. Opposite the window is a door, which is firmly shut. You yourself are sitting in another doorway, this one leading into an en suite bathroom.

You blink. You feel no puzzlement, for of course, you remember coming into this room, just as you remember stripping your clothes off just a minute ago.

Speaking of which— You glance back into the bathroom, and there's your discarded clothes in a jumbled pile where they fell from your hand when you had that ... attack ... or whatever it was. An acrid stink is rising off them—

And that stink recalls your mind to the barn, and what was happening there just a little while ago.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"You fucking smell, bro," Robert snorts after you step back from the burning bowl. It is sitting on a makeshift work table made from a sheet of plywood resting on two sawhorses, standing in the middle of a cold and dreary barn. The barn doors are shut, but enough wintry afternoon light filters in from windows high overhead to light the space.

"How can you smell from there?" you demand, for he's perched on a hay bale on the other side of the worktable. He swings his leg, kicking at the bale jauntily with his heel.

"I can smell you from here."

"It's not me, it's that shit." You point to the bowl out of which a noisome smoke is boiling.

"No, it's you," smirks the blonde girl who is perched next to Robert. She, like you and your brother, is dressed warmly against the chilly day, but her jeans and sweater bind themselves tightly to her curves, and the hair that spills from under her blue-and-black ski cap shimmers softly like spun gold. But there is nothing soft about her jeering glance. "That shit's all got in your clothes," she adds.

"Well, fuck me," you growl. "If we weren't playing this stupid game with the matches—"

"Just pour the shit out, Will," Robert says. "That's what we brought you along for."

"You're not my boss," you remind him, but step back up to the work table. The smoke from the bowl has thinned, and the bubbling liquid is quite cool as you tip it over a hemispheric, convex mirror sitting nearby. The liquid instantly hardens into a shell, which you peel off the mirror and toss to Robert, who catches it and lays it on the hay bale beside him.

"Next!" he calls, and you pick up the second bowl of powders, and lay it onto the open pages of the book where the first bowl had been resting. As you look up, Robert is already striking a big, old-fashioned match against the matchbox he's been playing with. With a grin he tosses the flickering flame at you, but misses, and you quickly pat out the flame where it hit the work table, joining the dozen or more burnt matches already scattered there. But Robert is already flicking another match at you. This one—it's the "game" you're playing—you try to lightly bat into the bowl, but you only succeed in knocking it away to the ground, to join the two dozen or more other burnt matches scattered in the dirt.

"Come on, Will," Robert jeers. "Be a better backboard."

"I wouldn't have to be a backboard," you retort, "if you'd just come the fuck over here and—" You block another flaming match, and this one just misses the bowl as it bounces lightly off your knuckles. "If you'd come light this shit yourself. Or let me light it for you."

"Nah, it's more fun this way. Besides, it doesn't work when you light the stuff on fire. We found that out, didn't we?"

"So why don't you come over here and—?"

"I don't wanna get the stink on me." His grin deepens into an impudent smirk.

So he keeps flicking lighted matches at you, and you keep trying to knock them into the bowl. At last, after another twenty or so tries, he manages to land a match in the bowl. A great plume of smoke blooms about you, and you fall back choking and gasping at the stink.

As you pour out a second shell onto the mirror, the barn door swings open and a raven-haired boy about your age steps in. "The fuck?" he gasps when he gets a lungful of the stench. "You trying to burn this place down?"

"You know what we're up to," Robert retorts as he hops off the bale. He swaggers over to take the second shell from you. "You were up to the same shit a couple of weeks ago, man. You and your friends."

"Yeah but—"

"Will needs to change clothes before we head back." Robert fixes the newcomer with a direct stare. "Take him inside and give him some of yours." He glances at you. "I think he needs a shower, too."

The newcomer sighs, then gestures you to follow him out the barn. Together, you trudge across the dead grass of a spacious lawn toward a big, rambling two-story house. The sky above is a low-riding blanket of pewter-colored clouds.

"It was more fun when I was being the boss," your host mutters.

"I hear you."

He shoots you a sharp, sidelong look. "When were you the boss?"

"Until this morning. And a couple of months back," you added after a pause.

"Shit," the other says, and freezes in mid-step as he's leading you onto the back deck of the house. "I forgot I came out to— Listen, you know where my room is? It's down the main hall, then hang a right and straight ahead. Get'cher shower or whatever, and I'll have some stuff set out for you when I—" He doesn't finish, but with another exasperated sigh trudges back off toward the barn.

You find the bedroom alright. (The only other doorways down that hall lead into an exercise room and a laundry room.) You close the door and push in the lock button, then with only a mild glance of curiosity about the room you pull off your fleece-lined jacket and kick off your shoes. You have just gotten yourself down to your boxers when the door handle jiggles, followed by a quick, sharp knock. You pull the door open an inch and peer out.

"Here," your dark-haired host says as he pushes a pale, muddy-colored thing like a misshapen dinner plate through the crack. "The boss wants you to take this home and polish it up."

"My brother? He's not my boss," you reply. The other blinks at you. "Anyway, he drove out with me, aren't we going home together?"

"Nah, he says he's catching a ride with Jenna and he'll see you back at your place. And he says you need to get all the stink off you."

You snort. "Anything else?" But he's turned away and stalked off. You shut the door.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

You felt no surprise when you looked down at the thing he handed you, and just tossed it onto the bed before pulling off your boxers and turning to the bathroom door. But, now that you think back over it all, you didn't feel much of anything. Not even when Robert mouthed off at you and you snarled back at him. It was like you were just going through the motions.

So why do you now feel sick and cold all over?

You hobble over to the bed, where that thing is still sitting on the corner of the bed. You pick it up and recognize it, though you have no word for it. It's a mask of some sort, the color of grayish mud and cast of a light ceramic. There are no eye holes, and the face is generic, having a brow, nose, lips, cheeks, and chin. You've seen lots of these things before, and memories comes back of polishing them with a buffer.

You pad back to the bathroom to collect your clothes, and there you are startled to find another mask resting on the tile next to the toilet. But this one is a deep and glowing blue, like a piece chipped from a clear summer sky. You frown at it and turn it over—and almost drop it.

The interior is the same mud color as the other mask, but a name seems to float over the inner surface. Your name. WILLIAM MARTIN PRESCOTT.

That nauseating chill deepens.

Then you leap when there's another hard knock at the door. You glance at the window, wondering if you can escape that way.

Then you wonder why you need to escape. You remember exactly what is going on. Surely you can fake your way through.

Next: "Boss and Un-Boss" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 2)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)"