The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

Man in a Mirror

Previously: "The Boy with Two Brains" 

Yeah, the safest way to lay your hand on those chemicals would be to go in and take them while pretending to be Sean; that way if anyone caught you there'd be no awkward questions.

Except that Sean would be around, too. Would there be some way of getting him out of the way? Or of going in when he's not around?

"Will!" It's your dad's voice.

"Yeah?" you shout back.

"Don't 'yeah' me, mister. When I call, you come down."

You rush downstairs. Your father stands glowering in the living room, and you gulp to see that he's holding the thick binder of work-related material you were given to study. "Have you even looked at this thing?" he demands.

"Uh, a little."

"Okay, let's see how much you absorbed." He jerks his head, and you follow him into the dining room with a sinking feeling.

Twenty-five harrowing minutes later he pushes the binder away and stares at you in frank disbelief. "You picked all that up just by looking at it a 'little'?" he says.

You shrug. "Mostly it seems like common sense," you improvise. Thank goodness you still had Sean's mind band on, and that he's an expert on Salopek's many policies and warnings.

Your dad shakes his head. "And yet your school work just seems to bounce off you."

* * * * *

That near-escape, though, stimulates your imagination. How can you get Sean away from Salopek so you can get in while disguised as him? Lure him away. And what kind of bait could you use? Without realizing it, you'd gotten the answer earlier.

Sean is very shy about his body-swapping kink, and it was a huge relief his freshman year when he discovered online communities of people who had the same itch. True, he was a bit of an oddball in those communities as well, for his kink was for "MtM" transformations rather than the far more common "MtF" kink, but at least he now knew he wasn't alone in the world. Only one thing could have been better than finding those websites, and that would be finding someone in real life—someone in Saratoga Falls—who shared the same kink. If Sean got a DM or email or private message from such a person, he'd ditch class and work both for a chance to meet up with them, you're sure.

But Sean writes under a pseudonym online, and he has never (so far as you can remember) referred to his real self or where he lives. That means you (under a pseudonym) can't DM him asking to meet, because how could you know he lives in Saratoga Falls?

No, the only way to score a meeting with him—to lure him away from work without leaving any footprints of your own—is to post something that gets his attention, and then let slip that you live in Saratoga Falls. Then he'll come to you.

But what would get his attention, and get him so stirred up that he'd skip work for the chance to meet this new online buddy?

You spend a good few minutes tugging your lip and questioning the little Sean clone you've got romping around in your head. When the answer comes, it puts a devilish grin on your face.

You don't even hesitate, but leap over to your laptop and fire up the word processing document. It's scary, because you've never written a work of fiction before, but you've got Sean to help you. And as you work deeper into it, and as more ideas come, you get more and more excited, and more and more squirmy with sputtering desire. When you've finished the first chapter you have to sit for a very long time at your desk as Sean's spun-up kink slows and finally dies. It starts up again, though, as you're brushing your teeth, because Sean's instincts (which you have taken for your own along with his memories) are excited by a face in the mirror that is not his own.

And when you jerk off that night, it is explosively good, because it feels like a new body that you're doing it with.

* * * * *

You wake early the next morning with wood, but instead of spending yourself into your jerk-off sock again, you hustle to get ready for school so you can have some time on the computer. You only got through a first draft of the first chapter of your planned novella last night, but as you glance through it, you decide it's good enough. You load up stories.net, where Sean posts his own fiction, and make a new account under the name "astonmartin707"—a moniker that will be sure to catch the eye of a car fanatic like Sean (and which as a bonus includes your own middle name). Then you navigate to the "Swapmeat" sub-section where the transformation fiction gets posted (and which Sean checks out almost every day for new stories), and post that chapter.

You're trembling with excitement when you're done, and there's a hard buzz in your head as you finish getting ready for school.

Next: "Party of Five, Chapter 1" 

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