The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Donuts of the Damned

Previously: "When a Body Meets a Body" 

Keith Tilley's face is a mask of confusion when you charge back into Don's Donuts.

"Dude," you exclaim as you slam his phone back on the counter. "I have just had the fucking weirdest exper—!"

"Tsh! Will!" Keith goes very rigid, and his eyes dart back and forth. "I'm at work now, and there are customers, and I really wish you'd watch your language."

You wheel. The place has a dozen people scattered about the tables. At the nearest, an eight-year-old boy is gazing up at you with rapt astonishment. His mother is leaning over and hissing hard as she tries to wipe the chocolate off his face. You can tell by her expression that she'd much rather be washing out your mouth with lye.

"Oh, dammit! I mean—" A sweat of embarrassment breaks out on your back. "When you get a minute," you mutter at Keith, "come talk to me." You throw yourself into a chair by the pane-glass window up front and try to make yourself inconspicuous.

* * * * *

It seems like ages pass before Keith comes over to talk. Every time you look over, he is either serving a customer, or cleaning a countertop, or filling an urn, or checking his cell phone. Mostly doing the latter. You flash him dirty looks—which he doesn't notice—for you can't help wondering if he's texting with whoever has your cell phone.

Which is who?

It's a funny thing about being bored, which is what you are now. The longer you are away from the complex, the less freaked out you feel. A world that seemed very funny (peculiar) when you were staring at a person who could have been your long-lost twin comes to seem very ordinary when you're sitting in a crummy little donut shop on a grimy commercial thoroughfare at nine-shitty-three in the morning. The more you think about it, the more stupid your reaction at the complex feels.

So it was just one of those weird things where you run into a guy who happens to bear a startling resemblance to someone you know. (In this case, you.) He was probably as freaked out as you were. Check that, he was freaked out, because he jumped back inside the complex.

That's all it was, right?

Then you remember that he had your phone, and that he thought he was texting Keith, and from the way he was talking, it sure sounded like he was trying to pretend that he was you.

But after you remember that, you notice that the sun is shining and that the car wash across the street is doing gangbusters business, and that if you went outside you could smell the oil from the Lube-n-Go shop next door. And it seems ridiculous to think that ...

That a pod person was growing inside the Top Shelf Storage Complex, and that it achieved sentience during the night, and that it was using your phone to insinuate itself into your life ...

You shiver hard when that story takes its final form.

* * * * *

At a little before ten, Keith finally flops into the chair across from you.

"Okay," he says. "We got the place to ourselves, and the fresh donuts are on their way to being day-old crust. What the fuck happened to you when you ran off? Taking my phone without permission, I may add."

"I was trying to find whoever had my phone."

"And did you?"

"Not exactly. I tracked him down to the Top Shelf Storage Complex, though."

Keith frowns. "Carlos's place?" You nod. "And?"

"And he saw me coming and he ran back inside one of the buildings. The one where Mike and Carlos make their videos in."

Keith stares at you. "Is that's all?"

"Isn't that enough?"

His lips compress. "Not enough for you to come running in here yelling a streak of cuss words that's gonna get me fired."

You glare. "I did not yell a string of cuss words when I—"

"Dude, you were all, like, goddamn this and motherfucker that and—"

"I was not!"

He crosses his arms. "You might as well have been. You know who that was sitting behind you when you came in promising to assfuck the universe?" You answer with a glower. "That was only Mrs. Murray."

"Who the fuckity fuck fuck is Mrs. Murray?"

"She and her husband own the Agape Christian school."

"Well, fuck Mrs. God-humping Murray and her God-humping husband and all the God-humping little fucks who—"

"Jesus, shut up!" Keith bolts upright, and his eyes bulge from his head. He stares behind you as an electronic bell on the door goes gwdonnggg. You look over your shoulder, and do a double take of your own.

Even after the Warehouse and the shopping trip to Nirdlinger's and the photo session at the school, you will probably always react that way when Cindy Vredenburg is close by.

She's in a crisp, sleeveless blouse this morning with a short skirt and brown, calf-hugging high-heel boots. Her hair is shiny and straight, and her complexion blushes with health. Her teeth gleam and so do her eyes as they light on you.

"Will!" she cries as she comes over, and she wraps her hands around your head so that you—literally—get an eyeful of her boob as she crushes your face to her bosom. "Omigod, didn't we have so much fun last night?"

"Mrgf. Yeah." You avoid Tilley's eye as she releases you.

"It's so lucky I ran into you here! We were going to call you later. Eva and Jessica and me. We're all getting together at my place to watch a movie, and we wanted you there too."

"Yeah?"

She beams at you. "Say yes." She looks at Tilley. "Tell Will he should totally come over."

"You should totally come over, Will," he tonelessly repeats.

"Yeah, well, um, sure," you stammer. "But listen, I got a little situation right now—"

Cindy grabs your hand and pulls you to your feet with a laugh. "You said yes. You promised. We're doing it now. Like, I came over here to get some donut holes—you'll comp us on those, right?" she brightly asks Keith. "And if you don't come over, Will Prescott, I swear we'll never talk to you again."

So numbed are you by this outburst that not until it's over do you realize that your cock is straining toward her. "Sure, but listen, there's this—"

"Thirteen donut holes," Cindy tells Keith, who has already shuffled behind the counter. "They say thirteen's unlucky, so we never eat the thirteenth. Will, where's your truck?"

"Out there, but—"

"I'll just get these, and you can follow me out. Do you know where I live?"

"No." Your tongue cleaves to the roof of your mouth as Cindy smiles at you.

"Then I'll have to show you, so you can find your way out anytime you feel like visiting. Thanks, Keith," she says to Tilley, and sure enough, she doesn't give him any money and he doesn't ask for any. "Coming?" she says to you, and sways out the door.

"You should totally go with her," Keith mutters. "Just watch out, because whatever it she wants you out there for, it's bad news."

But that's the song he's been singing since all this began. Naturally, you turn to follow Cindy out.

That's when you almost impale yourself on your own erection.

* * * * *

Cindy lives on the far side of town, in a nice but not irritatingly rich subdivision, in a two-story house. With a wave she summons you up the front walk, where she's waiting, to the front door.

Inside: "Just take these upstairs," she says as she hands you the sack of donut holes. "End of the hall, turn left, knock on the door. Eva and Jessica are waiting. But wait for them to say 'Come in' before you open the door." She grins. "We were all trying on each other's clothes earlier."

You almost swallow your tongue.

Up the stairs you go. The hallway is dark, and all the doors along it are closed. You round a corner into a short, connecting corridor that ends in a door. You knock. "Eva? Jessica? It's Will. I followed Cindy over, and I brought donuts. Holes."

That's what you were saying when you were rushed from behind. Something hard and cold smashes into your face.

* * * * *

Something hard and cold is still sitting on your face when you wake. At first you're not even sure you're awake. Only when you notice that you're stifling do you fly up with flailing arms. Something slides off your face and bounces off your leg. You look around.

You're in a bedroom, and judging by the decor it's a girl's bedroom. White, lacy curtains on the windows, and baby blue and pink wallpaper. Shelves are lined with trophies, and there's a desk with a laptop and a Barbie doll that's been mounted on a small plinth; it's been posed with its arms over its head, and its vacant smile is either expressing the thought Hooray for me! or the boast Hey! I shaved my pits! You are seated on a quilted bed under a four-poster canopy. Everything is pin-neat.

The only bit of untidiness is the thing in your lap. You pick it up. It's a ceramic mask, like a classic "tragedians" mask. You blink at the name that glows on its inner surface: WILLIAM MARTIN PRESCOTT.

Well, that is you.

Voice sound nearby. Slowly, with a crinkled brow, you get to your feet and creep to the door. You open it.

It's that corridor you came up earlier. You look to your right. It's that door you were knocking on. The voices are coming from behind it.

You walk up to it, knock, and this time you barge right in.

Four girls are in the room: Eva, Jessica, Cindy, and a girl who looks like an older version of Cindy. They are frowning down at a man-shaped, man-sized whitish lumpy thing lying on the bed.

Eva does a double-take at you, and her eyes widen. She wheels on Cindy.

"God damn it, Tilley," she hisses, "we told you to keep an eye on him!"

* To continue: "The Magical Transvestites, Part 1" 

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