The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Who Will? Chelsea Will!

Previously: "Guys Into Dolls" 

You are pleasantly drowsy when you wake, and you stretch your limbs and arch your back with a grunt and groan. It takes you a few seconds to place yourself, even though the smell of dust, cold metal, and grease instantly tells you that you are in the old school basement. But why you are there ...

With a sharp gasp you remember, and a pang of dread and anticipation ripples through you. Oh my God I put on that mask and I turned myself into—!

Well, into what?

Your noises have brought the other two over: the two girls who are Caleb Johansson and Keith Tilley.

Both of them look Hispanic, with light brown complexions and manes of soft, dark brown hair. But the resemblances end there. Caleb is shorter and her features smaller. There is a smug, watchful expression in her dark, narrow eyes, and her lips compress with amusement. Keith's features are bigger and coarser, especially about the eyes, which have a slight frogginess to them. Her mouth is wide with prominent lips. She too looks amused, but there is another look there as well—a kind of veiled sneer.

"Well, come on, Will," Caleb says, and puts out a hand. "Come look at yourself."

You nearly faint with excitement as you let her—yes, Caleb is most definitely a "her" at the moment—pull you up. You feel off balance, and it's a shock when you realize it is from the shifting weight of your chest. You glance down at your t-shirt, and jerk in shock. You've got boobs! Instinctively grab and steady them as they slide around.

"Yeah," Caleb drawls. "We're gonna have to get us a couple of tit-slings, if we're gonna dress up like this very often."

Your shoes fall off as you swing your legs off the table, but your shorts cling to your hips, bunching up uncomfortably. With one arm tucked under your breasts to support them, you totter and reel your way over to the mirror where you've all been taking turns studying your transformed selves. You catch your reflection out of the corner of your eye as you approach, but only have an impression of blondness before you shut your eyes, for you want to get the full effect in one blow. You take half a dozen more small steps before you feel Caleb pull you to a stop.

You suck in a deep breath, and open your eyes.

Chelsea Cooper looks back at you.

Okay, it's not Chelsea Cooper exactly. In fact, the longer you look at your new face, the less of Chelsea you see and the more of yourself. But you can definitely tell who the girl was you merged your face with. She definitely improved your looks, and you also wouldn't say that you ruined hers.

The biggest difference is in the hair. It is as blonde as Chelsea's—a bright, shimmering gold—but there seems to be less of it, and it is a lot shorter, being bobbed at the bottom of your neck. Otherwise: your face strongly resembles hers, but seems to be a little longer and a little narrower, with stronger bones. Your complexion is lightly splotched with soft freckles. There's a furtiveness about the eyes, even when you smile, and the smile seems a little toothier. All in all, it's a more mature face—the kind of face you could imagine Chelsea having when she reaches her mid-twenties.

Caleb seems to have been thinking the same thing, for she says, "You look like her cousin. Or her older sister."

"What about the rest'a ya?" Keith asks.

She and Caleb weren't shy about stripping to their boxers, so you do too, peeling off and tossing away your t-shirt and squirming out of your cargo shorts. Your heart beats in your chest, with a mix of excitement and disappointment.

Disappointment, you'd have to admit, because you haven't got the soft, sculpted, and perfectly squeezable body that you know (or imagine) Chelsea Cooper to have. You are taller and leaner. (If Caleb's mask squashed Maria's proportions, to make her more exaggeratedly female, this mask seems to have stretched Chelsea's, making you less feminine.) But at least you have large and well-shaped breasts, and your stomach curves inward to make a flat washboard through which it is easy to feel (though not see) the abs. Your hips are also narrower than Chelsea's. But your thighs and calves are strong though slim, and when you go up on your toes, to see the effect of high heels, you'd have to confess that not only are the legs your best feature, they are an awesome feature! You are going to have to wear short skirts and heels if you go out in public.

"I miss the hair," you say as you pat and touch your 'do.

"It keeps you from looking too much like Chelsea," Caleb says.

"And that's a good thing?"

"If we go outside, it will be."

"Are we going to do that?" You look between Caleb and Keith.

"Eventually," Caleb says with a shrug. "Don't you want to?"

"Well ... sure, but— We'd need clothes, right? And makeup?"

"We could do it without the makeup. As for the clothes, we can borrow some."

"From who? None of us has a sister," you point out, "and I'm not putting on any of my mom's things!"

"Would you put on some of my mom's clothes?"

"Dude! No!"

"Well, we're going to have to put on some girl's clothes."

"We could buy some?"

Caleb gives you a look. Even on this new face, it is a look you know well. "That'd be expensive," she says. "You have the money for it?"

You grimace, then freeze when you catch the expression on your reflection in the mirror. It's ... adorable.

"Well, I don't want to put on any 'mom clothes'," you insist. "If we're going to do it, I say we do it right. Right, Keith?"

"Gyuh?" She looks up with watering eyes from your breasts, which she has obviously been ogling.

"Well, we're going to have to set some priorities," Caleb says. "How much money have you got?"

"Me? Twenty, or thereabouts," you admit.

"Dude!" Keith exclaims. "I can't believe you don't—"

"Well, how much've you got, jerkwad?"

"About a hundred," she boasts. "And I can get, like fifty more from my dad if—"

"What about you?" you ask Caleb.

She sighs and crosses over to sit on the conference table. She's still dressed only in boxers, so her breasts droop over her stomach as she slouches.

"I got a hundred or so. I gotta use it for gas money, though. I mean, if I started taking the bus to school, or if one of you started giving me rides—"

She breaks off and covers her breasts with her forearms. With a start, you realize you had been staring at them. It's chilly in the basement, and her nipples were hardening and rising.

"Sure, we could do that," you mumble.

"The point is," Caleb continues, "that's not a lot of money. And we got projects." She nods at the book, which is resting atop a nearby cabinet.

"Such as?"

"Such as, well—" She starts ticking off her fingers. "If we want a decent set of clothes to go with these, um, looks we made for ourselves, that's an expense. Also, if we want to make more masks. And there's the next spell in the book, it needs stuff we don't got and would have to buy."

"What do we need more masks for?"

"Pfft, dumb question," Keith sniggers. You shoot her a quick glare.

"Well, one thing we could use masks for," Caleb says, "is getting some more faces. But this time we'd start with guy faces, then put girl faces in second. To see if— I mean, I think we've pretty much confirmed that, usually, when you start with a girl face, you get a girl mask. That's happened four out of four times now. But we should also test to see what happens when we start with guy faces."

"We don't need to do anything like that," Keith sneers. "I mean, why would we?"

"For science," you say as Caleb gives Keith a look, even though you don't feel any more enthusiastic than Keith sounds.

"Well, so, we gotta prioritize," Caleb says. "What are we gonna do? Make masks, do the new spell, or buy clothes and accessories?"

* * * * *

Keith is all for spending the money on clothes, but neither you nor Caleb wind up expressing a preference, though you suspect Caleb wants to go on to the next spell. You remove the masks and part for the evening without coming to any decisions.

"I did come up with a wild idea while I was eating dinner," Caleb confesses to you afterward, when he calls you up while you're doing homework. By his tone you can tell that he thinks it's kind of a good idea, but wants to float it as a trial balloon before proposing it. "We show this stuff to some other people. Who've got money."

"Jesus, no!" you exclaim. "I kinda regret telling Keith about this stuff! And it could get outta control real fast if we spread the word around too much."

"Well, no one would say anything," Caleb says. "Especially who we show it to."

"Who?"

There's a very pregnant pause before he says, "Some adults."

"What adults?" you ask as your stomach plunges. You get this sudden vision of showing this stuff to your mom and dad, and trying to explain it to them. You'd rather be arrested for drunk driving.

Another pause. "I was thinking some of the teachers at school."

"Teachers?" you exclaim. "Are you out of your freaking mind?"

"Well, probably." He sounds defensive. "But hear me out." He coughs.

"I was thinking," he says when he resumes, "of some of the female teachers. The, uh, older ones. Don't you think they'd be interested in, um, renting or buying those masks we made? You know. For putting them on and going out and, um—?"

"Oh, God!"

"Alright," he sighs, "I can tell you're not impressed. Maybe it is stupid. Don't tell Keith I said anything about it."

You promise you won't, and instead ask if he's had any ideas about what to make a "priority." It turns out you were right: His instinct is to move on to the next spell.

Next: "Keith Finally Does It" 

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