The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

A Prank Present

Previously: "The House at the Center of the World" 

You try finding the page indicated by the first choice, but your thumb slips and the pages flutter, and then you can find neither the page you were looking for nor the page you were on. You seem to have landed in another "Choose Your Own Adventure"-style story, though.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Hey Eric! Hey, wait up, you fuck!"

You gun the engine and grin as your best friend, Tim Ryan, hurls himself across the parking lot toward you. As he grabs at the frame of your Jeep, you pop the clutch and he jumps back with a glare as the car jackrabbits forward a foot. You laugh.

"Asshole," he mutters as he clambers in. "Just for that I ain't gonna give you your present.".

"You got me something? Gimme!"

"The park," he says, and he jams a paper-wrapped package under his leg. "Give it you there."

"That and a blow job," you retort. But Tim just drops his sunglasses onto his face and relaxes into the passenger seat with his feet propped up on the dashboard.

* * * * *

It's a blazing day in late August—the kind of day where asphalt softens and the air bubbles with humidity. That doesn't stop you and Tim from chasing each other and a soccer ball across the municipal athletic fields until you're so sopping with sweat you might have climbed out of a swimming pool. You've thrown your sodden shirts on the grass and are plucking and hurling grass at each other when Tim remembers your "present." "Is that why you were late catching up?" you ask.

He nods and lays back on the grass. Even now, at the end of the summer, his skin is almost fish-belly pale, for with his red hair and Celtic coloring, he burns and peels without ever tanning.

"What is it? A ring? A necklace?"

"Thbpt! What am I, your girlfriend?"

"You got a mouth made for sucking me off."

"Seriously, why the fuck would I buy you a ring or a necklace?"

"So I can give it to Melanie. Dur!"

He raises his sunglasses long enough to give you a heavy stare from under his lids. "Girls like that kind of shit," you explain to him.

"Then you can fucking buy her some of that shit yourself."

"I don't know what she likes."

"Go fuck yourself, man."

"I don't got any money, neither! My dad cut me off!"

"I don't got any money either, asshole, you expect me to carry you?"

Yes. So when gets to his feet you throw yourself onto his back. He throws you off.

"Here," he says when you're back in the Jeep, and he hands you that package. Greedily you tear it open, then gasp in disbelief as your "present" falls into your lap.

It's a book. "The fuck am I supposed to do with this?"

"Read it. Maybe it's educational."

"Goddamn it, I'm'a gon' have enough books at school! Jesus!"

"Read it and give me a book report."

"Go fuck yourself!"

Tim chuckles in nasty way, and you fume all the way to the Dairy Queen. But not even a Dilly Bar will console you.

Who the fuck does Tim Ryan think you are, that he'll give you a motherfucking book as a present?

* * * * *

You forget about it for the few days, and you forget about Tim, too. Instead, you spend those last blissful days of the summer before your senior high school year in the hammock in the ratty little yard behind Melanie Saxon's trailer. You spend them with her, with her shorts and underpants around her ankles, and with your shorts and underpants around your ankles, and with your bare, bony ass humping at the sky as your straining cock plunges into and probes her hungry pussy.

When you first came on to Melanie, at a Fourth of July party by the river, it was almost a joke. Sure, Melanie in her tank top and short-shorts gave you a hard boner, but your line—"I got some fireworks for you, baby, in my shorts"—was just a bit of dirty talk. But she taunted you about your "rocket" and you bragged some more about it and everyone there laughed but nothing happened.

Then she asked you out the next day—she texted you—and you wound up back at her trailer, where you kissed and slurped at each other on the living room sofa while her mom was away, and you even took your clothes off so you could touch each other in all your most sensitive spots. Your second date (the next day) she took you into the hammock and held onto you until you creamed your shorts.

After that, she let you cream yourself inside her. No protection, either. Sometimes you do it in the living room, sometimes in her bedroom. Most often, though, you do it in the hammock.

You keep your hands off her, though, when any of her friends are around. The way Brianna and Genesis and Philippa glare at you, you think they might bite your arm off if you put it around her.

You find yourself wondering lately, though, if you want to keep on seeing Melanie. Sure, she's available—man, is she available!—but there's still a whole school of girls to explore after classes start. Even after three years at Westside High, you've probably only talked to ... sixty percent of them?

Besides, even you are starting to get a little nervous at the way Melanie blows you off when you suggest that maybe you should put on a rubber.

* * * * *

School is to start on Thursday, so on Monday your mom—Jesus, bad enough she gets on your case about your room!—orders you to clean out your Jeep so it will be "fresh" for the new year. Amid the pile of curdled and browning fast food bags you find that book Tim gave you. You settle back long enough to look at it.

It's a thick book, and big. It's bound in red leather with with gold lettering and a gold pentagram on the spine. You open it, and find a series of stylized faces drawn on the end papers.

You sniff over it. Fucking Tim. He gave you an old-fashioned encyclopedia like your grandmother has!

* To examine the book, turn to page 5.
* To put it in the garbage: "Of Pranks and Punks" 

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