The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Concussing Keith

Previously: "My Friend the Guinea Pig" 

If Caleb is a junior scientist type, Keith is like the guinea pig the scientist likes to torture.

And once that metaphor suggests itself, you realize that Keith, not Caleb, is the perfect test subject for that mask.

So you go looking for him at his locker.

* * * * *

He's not there, and you fidget and fume while waiting for him to show up. Finally, you give up and turn back to your own locker.

You manage to shove yourself ten feet through the smelly mass of students before you bump into Keith. "Where the fuck were you?" he demands over the rumbling mutter of the crowd.

"Waiting for you at your locker. Where the fuck were you?"

"Looking for you at— The fuck do you want?"

"Guys!" a hoarse, female voice hollers. "Can you keep the fucking cursing to a fucking minimum?"

You look over your shoulder. It's Mrs. Wendt, one of the Health teachers. She's short and she's pudgy, and she's grimacing hard as she tries to squeeze her way through the churning student body. You step aside to let her pass, and she doesn't even glance at you, let alone thank you.

"Come on, I wanna hang out with you this afternoon!" you holler at Keith.

"Cool! I love being popular!"

* * * * *

You wind up over at South Creek Park, between the municipal athletic fields and Stewart's Hole, which is a large manmade pond with ducks and geese and fish and small woodland back behind it. You and Keith amuse yourselves by chucking rocks into the water. Your friend bitches about Caleb some more while you look for an opportunity to tell him about the thing you're carrying in your backpack.

Finally, you just shoehorn it in. "Oh hey, I got something I wanna show you," you say as you squat to unzip your pack.

"Is that why you were carrying that thing around?" Keith asks.

"What are you talking about?"

He shrugs. "You see me carrying my backpack around? I was wondering why you brought yours out."

"So why didn't you ask what I brought it out for?"

He shrugs again. "I don't give a shit."

You roll your eyes and pull out the mask. "I, uh, found this thing at the hobby shop," you improvise, for at the last minute you decide to shy away from telling him that you made it. (It would lead to too many questions.) "You know, Halloween's coming up and—"

"No it isn't. It's like four months away."

You do a rapid mental calculation. "Six weeks."

"Close enough."

"Shut up. But what do you think?" You brandish the mask. "For Halloween?"

"Psht. It's like six months away, what are you worrying about—?"

"Just try it on, jerkwad. See what you look like in it."

"Okay."

That kind of acquiescence is the the absolute last thing you were expecting. Still less were you expecting him to grab the mask from you and lift it to his face. But that's just what he does. "There," he says. "What do I—?"

Then he pitches forward like a felled tree. At least you manage to grab him as he falls, but he drags you to the ground with him in a heap. "Boowph!" you gasp as his elbow punches you in the diaphragm.

You scramble back and blink down at him. His face has gone slack and his eyes are vacant. His limbs are boneless. You glance all around, looking for the mask. And when you can't find it, you scramble to your knees and roll Keith over to look under him.

It's gone.

And Keith is out cold.

And the magic gives you a very long time to panic about what it all means.

* * * * *

So it takes your brain who knows how long—minutes; hours; days?—to whirl and gyre uselessly around the few plain facts you can grasp.

One: Keith is lying flat on his back, as limp and staring as a dead fish. He is breathing, though, and he has a slow but steady pulse. But no matter how you pinch and poke and smack him, he won't respond.

Two: The mask has vanished. It didn't fall to the grass, and it didn't roll down the slope into the pond.

Which leaves you in a very public pickle. You have the pond bank to yourself for fifty yards in either direction, and only occasionally will a jogger or a power-walker or a fat lady with her dog go striding along the nearby bridle path. But you're sitting on the grass with a friend who looks to all the world like he's dead, and the thingummy that did it to him has disappeared.

And once your brain has fully processed these facts, it shuts down. All you can do is sit on the bank, staring at Keith, and hoping that some miracle happens before someone stops to ask you what's wrong.

That gives you plenty of time to look at Keith, and to wonder what's wrong with him. There's a lot to go over.

Oh, it's not like he's seriously handicapped in any way. Not even in the personality department, which is where most criticisms can be lodged. You like Keith. He's your number-two best friend, after Caleb, and stands a lot higher than whoever would be your number three best friend.

Because, let's face it, you don't hang out with that many people.

Still, if you hang out a lot with Keith, it's largely because not a lot of people will hang out with him, and you're conscious of the fact that he does come in a clear second on your own private hit parade. What's wrong with him?

Well, not to be shallow about it, but he's kind of ugly. Not mirror-breaking ugly. More like stupid-ugly. His dark hair is shorn in an unflattering buzz cut, and he has beetle brows and red-and-brown splotches on his face. He doesn't brush his teeth every day, either, and neither does he shave. But while it's true that you don't shave often either, your wispy facial hair is at least concentrated in the right spots: upper lip and chin. His sprouts out in all kinds of places.

He's skinny, too. Again, like you, but he's bony with big elbows and knees.

As for his personality: He's just dumb. He's always about five seconds too slow to catch on to what anyone says, and his slang is at least two years out of date when it isn't just hilariously misapplied. Nor is he book smart, as he's just skating by with Cs in classes that are no harder than yours.

And he has no shame about talking about horny he is, or about what kind of girl he'd like to do it with and how he'd do it with them. He openly gawks at girls that are way out of his league—and, let's face, that's a huge proportion of the female population.

In fact, the longer you think about it, the more depressed you get that you're friends with him and not with a better class of high school student. Because what does it say about you that you haven't got those friends either?

* * * * *

So you lose yourself in these reflections, which is better than panicking. And you're calmly studying Keith's complexion, and wondering how much oil it must be exuding for it to be so shiny, when his face turns blue and loses all its detail.

You almost shit yourself until you recognize what it is. It's the mask. It's now sitting on Keith's face.

You swallow your heart, which has tried climbing up the back of your tongue, and gingerly pick the mask up. Keith is still unconscious, but it looks more like sleep now, maybe because his eyes are closed.

So what happened? You've no time to figure that out before you're distracted by the mask in your hand. It is gleaming hard, and as you study it you realize that the rippling reflections of sunlight do not all move in the same way as you turn the mask this way and that. Some of them seem bonded to the surface.

You look more closely, and you gulp.

It contains a face. Like a ghostly 3D image, a face is floating inside the mask.

Not a generic face, either. It's the face of Keith Tilley.

You turn the mask this way and that. It is a 3D image, for it gives you a glimpse of the sides of his head, and under the chin, and of his crown. When viewed from the right angle, you can even make out his neck and part of his shoulder.

Holy fucking shit! This mask thing contains a copy of your friend!

At least, you assume that's what it is.

Keith still hasn't stirred when you shove the mask back into your pack and zip it up. Cautiously you slap at his face. "Keith. Keith!"

He mumbles something, and his brow furrows. He opens his eyes and frowns at you. "Mwuh?"

"You okay?"

"Why, what—?" He blinks, then bolts upright. He looks around wildly. "The fuck?"

"Sorry, man. The, uh— I think you passed out or something."

"The fuck?"

"Yeah. Maybe we should—"

Keith scrambles to his feet. You follow. He looks around, then locks a glare on you. "The fuck did you do to me, man?"

"I didn't do anything! I just—"

"Stay the fuck away from me, Will!" He runs off, hands and feet flapping like a gooney bird trying to take off.

Well, that's convenient, you reflect. Easier than trying to shake him off your shirt tail.

* * * * *

Later that evening.

It's been a good day's work, even if it left one of your friends pissed off at you. After touching the mask to the grimoire, you found that you could turn the page. On the reverse you found an explanation for what the mask does and how to use it, and on the next page you found a new spell. You got the ingredients together—you had to raid the garage for one item—and completed it, creating a kind of magical sealant.

If you seal the mask, you'll be able to put it on and turn yourself into a copy of Keith. If you don't, then you can create an entirely new "person" by adding other copies of people to it.

Choices, choices.

That's all for now.

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