The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

A Man of Two Minds and Half Out of Both of Them

Previously: "Bagging a Thug" 

You don't have to turn yourself into Gary Chen. But it's probably best to try controlling him from the inside rather than the outside.

* * * * *

Which is how, nearly half an hour later, you find yourself scowling at Will Prescott's face in a mirror and fighting the urge to punch it. So this is what it's like to be a gweilo, you growl to yourself.

Hair, blonde. Skin, pale, even under the fading summertime tan. Hazel-colored eyes. No stubble, but give it a couple of days and there'll be some stiff, yellow whiskers on your chin and cheekbones.

You cuss softly as your glare hardens into a wince. With a face and a body like this you could walk through school without getting any of those sidelong looks, those little smirks, those darting, needling little glances people give you because you're not one of them.

Fuck yeah, you could pass yourself off as a white person.

If only it wasn't this body. Skinny, no muscles, no poise, a face that instinctively curls up into a cringing squint.

And it's not like anyone respects this little fuck. You're pretty sure that also goes for the cocksuckers in the next unit over, the ones that tricked you out here and are trying to turn you into someone else. No, check that. Those cocksuckers who are trying to turn someone else, this Prescott fuck, into you.

Yeah. Those motherfuckers.

You wheel at the sound of squelching footsteps just outside the unit. Jessica Garner steps, gives you one quick look, then whirls to put her back to you. "Jesus, man," she snarls. "We gave you some pants to put on!"

Yeah, Chen's canvas trousers are puddled on the floor by the weight bench.

You woke to find them draped over your naked crotch—your male crotch, Jenny's mask having come off so they could implant you with Gary Chen's mind and personality. His pants had slid off when you—shocked at finding your real legs replaced with some pale, hairy, skinny imitations—rose and lurched over to the mirror to star aghast at your transformation, taking it at first as the transformation of Gary Chen into someone else, and then (with a feeling of horrified relief) remembering that it's a waypoint in the transformation of yourself into Gary Chen. Neither of you paid much attention to the pants as you lacerated your eyeballs with a body possessed by (or half-possessed; maybe "steeped in the hot water of" would be the best way of putting it) the wrong kind of mind.

And now here's Jessica, to bitch at you as though any of this is your fault. "You got anything else for me?" you ask.

"No." She keeps her back to you. "Are you putting the pants on?"

"Where's the rest of it?"

"Your clothes? I'll bring 'em in when the mask's ready."

"I'm talking about the fucking mask."

"Don't cuss at me, Will." She turns her head fractionally. "Or is that Gary who's acting like a douche?"

You catch yourself before you can loose a string of bad words at her. Down, boy, you tell Chen, but his personality only snarls and snaps back at you.

"Yeah, I've got him in here with me," you reply. Your chest feels tight, as though closed up with metal bands. "He really wants to punch something."

"Yeah? Hey Maria! Guys!" she yells. To you, over her shoulder: "Put the fucking pants on, man."

"Like there ain't nothing down here you ain't sucked long and hard on, bitch," you mutter, but cross over to snatch up Gary's trousers. They hang loose on your skinny hips after you get them on.

When you turn around, the two Garner girls and Maria Vasquez are studying you from the doorway. "Does the memory unit work?" Maria asks.

Memory unit? Fuck. "If you're asking, can I think and act and talk like Chen, I think the answer's yes, God damn it." You squeeze your head between the heels of your hands. "Fuck. It's like a wrestling contest up here."

The girls exchange quick, shifty glances. "But, um, you know who you really are. Right?" Jessica asks.

"Fuck you. Yes. And I know who you are too, asswipe." You drop your hands. "And I remember last year, man," you continue. "Montoya. When you came sucking up to me looking to score a little weed. Remember what I told you?"

Jessica's cheeks crimson, so you drag Gary back down again. "Fuck. Sorry." You dig at an eye with a knuckle. "It's just that my temper's about this short"—you press your thumb and index finger together—"on account of I'm having one fuck of a time holding this asshole back. He is really not happy."

"Maybe we should take the unit off of you, then," Maria says.

"Don't touch me, man," you snap as she takes a step toward you. "Just get me the rest of the shit, the mask, whatever. I think I'll be better when I'm all one way or all the other. This being in between, not being one fucker and not being the other—" A hard shudder racks your body.

"You're just going to have to be patient, Will," Maria says. She pulls at the others' elbows. "Go back and take care of the mask when it comes out of Gary," she tells them. "Then get Jenny's mask onto him. If this is what he's like when Will's got control of him—" But she doesn't have to finish the warning, for the others have already scampered away.

She studies you, then steps into the unit. "Will," she says in a low, quiet voice. "If it's really that hard for you, maybe you should let me—" She raises her hand, then freezes as you jerk your head back. "It would only be until we get the body mask prepared," she says. "Then we would put both the unit and the mask onto you so that—"

"No, I can wait," you tell her. You draw a ragged breath, then drop onto the bench. "Like I said, I just feel like I'm half out of one skin and only half into the other."

"And when you've got all the way into Gary's skin?" she asks. Doubt sounds in her voice.

"I think I'll be fine. I was fine as Jenny, wasn't I? I mean, I could do her personality, and I think I could do it without really trying. But it was me, right?" But worry—fear, even—wells up in your heart when you see the grave frown settling onto Maria's face.

"I suppose," she says. "We didn't see that much of each other. And, to be perfectly honest, Will, I don't know you well enough to know what your real character is like. I don't know Jenny that well either. And Carlos and Mike told me—"

She bites her lip.

"Well, they told me," she says, "that you were so ... convincing as Jenny at school that sometimes they worried it really was Jenny who had come back. That you'd, well, disappeared inside her so completely that you weren't there anymore. But then you would," she adds as you feel your eyes widen. "How did it feel on your side of things?"

You rub your forehead, which is alarmingly slick with sweat.

"No, I never felt like I disappeared," you tell her. "I always felt like I was there, like it was me. It was just, you know, really easy for me to act like Jenny would act. People would talk to me, and it would be just like instinct to talk and act back with them. You know?" You furrow your brow. "Isn't it the same with you?"

"Oh. Well." She looks away. "I don't think I'd say it ever feels like instinct. I have to remind myself of who I'm supposed to be." She blinks. "I sort of have to hypnotize myself to go on auto-pilot when I'm around Maria's family. It's easier at school. Maria doesn't talk a lot, so I mostly just have to keep quiet when I'm in class." Her brow relaxes into a soft frown. "It's almost impossible for me to play her character," she says, "when I'm talking to someone who knows who I really am."

There's a silence between you for a moment. Then she says, "You seem to have calmed down, now."

And, instantly, Chen's fury boils up in your chest, and you have to jam it down hard.

"Well, I was okay until you said that. Maybe if you'd just keep treating me like Will Prescott and not like— Fuck!" You grab your head. You are almost overthrown by a ravening urge to scream at her. Cunt! Whore! Succubus! The words claw at the inside of your chest.

You look up at the sound of feet shuffling at the doorway. Jessica runs in, and stops short as you glare at her. She's holding a bluish object: a mask. "Are we okay in here?" she asks Maria.

"We're fine," Fairfax tells her. She takes the mask and turns to you. "Are you ready, Will?"

You fall back on the bench. "Oh, God, please," you mutter, and stare up haggardly as she looms over you. For a moment she hesitates, then turns the mask toward you. You shut your eyes and wince hard.

Something cold and hard touches your face. It holds there for a second. Then, with the weight of anvil, it sinks into your face and through the back of your skull, dragging your body in after it as it sinks toward the center of the earth, turning you inside out as it pulls you down in its wake...

* * * * *

You snap your eyes open with the feeling of having been slapped, and sit up sharply. Cold sweat pops out all over. You wipe your chest with an open palm—

You freeze. Your hand. It's a creamy brown, with tapering fingers.

And you've got a chest. Actual pectorals.

You spring up and in two strides are at the mirror.

Your face tapers from a broad forehead past high cheekbones to a narrow jaw. Your eyes are like scimitars. Dark hair is plastered to your eyebrows and the back of your neck.

Gary Chen stares back at you.

A grin, hard enough to shatter the mirror, breaks out across your face.

Next: "When Yumi Met Gary, Part 1" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"