The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

One Fire Lights, Another Goes Out

Previously: "Caleb Johansson Returns" 

Caleb says nothing for a very long time. You keep very still. His eyes leave yours, travel about the room, drop to the floor. He shifts on his feet. "Javits would have to take my place," he says quietly.

"He's an asshole, but he's not a dummy. You have some classes together already, right?"

"Statistics, yeah. He wouldn't be able to handle my calculus class."

"Would you be able to handle Chelsea Cooper?"

He looks up at you. His eyes are watering.

"And it gets you up in the fuck room, man," you continue. "Up there with Chelsea. Hell, what I heard this afternoon, Seth is already up in the fuck room, Patterson gave him a key, him and Cindy are probably up there right now—"

Caleb groans. "Stop it! I can't throw my life away just for—"

"For a week. Maybe ten days, that's all it would take. Chelsea— Chen, I mean, he just wants Seth to break up with Cindy and hook up with, uh, with him. So we swap you in for Seth. You give Cindy one, maybe two days of hard, hard lovin'. You know, memories are made of this." You thrust your hips. "Then you dump her. Chen wants it done viciously, smash her heart and all that. Then you hook up with Chelsea. She gives you lots and lots of loving, sets you up as Gordon's replacement at the top of the pyramid. Then after ten days—" You shrug. "That's all we need. You swap back out, go back to being a sad little virgin, and Seth, with a dopey look on his face, finds himself up in the fuck room, his cock up Chelsea's cunny, Chen's got himself—"

"Shut up, just shut up!" Caleb clenches his eyes and covers his ears. He breathes heavily. He grabs a desk and kicks it hard and methodically. "Alright, I'll do it. At least long enough to set up this—" His face contorts. "This thing."

"Attaboy." You draw him into a bro-like hug, clap him on the back. "You'll see, man, gonna be sweet, you're gonna be fuckin' and fuckin' and fuckin'—"

He pushes you away.

* * * * *

Caleb leaves soon after that, and you follow him out shortly thereafter, winding up at Kirkham's. For two hours you studiously do your homework—

It's the weirdest thing about these two, David Kirkham and Gary Chen. They're thugs, drug dealers, douchebags, and terrorizers of everyone smaller than them and many people bigger than them too. But they do take some hardcore classes and work doggedly at them. They're both in AP math classes—Kirkham in Calculus, Chen in Statistics—and in complementary science classes—physics and chemistry. Both of them play instruments. Chen is only competent at the viola, but Kirkham plays cello in the school's elite Chamber Orchestra group, and he helps Chen out with some of the finer points of dealing with a stringed instrument; Chen repays him by helping Kirkham in his Asian Alphabets class.

And yet the two of you, while bending over your math and science homework, will compete as well with elaborate fantasias about how you would satisfy your frustrated sexual urges upon various female classmates. Not even the arrival of the pizza that you ordered interrupts you.

But by ten o'clock you're finished, and you've also practiced the viola in harmony with his cello. With a clear conscience you return home.

You are met at the door by a loud, wordless wailing, punctuated by the occasional Chinese epithet. All the blood rushes from your limbs, and you stand frozen in the doorway. A moment later Mrs. Chen charges in, looking far more harried and grim than she had a few hours ago. "Go stay with a friend," she barks. "Spend the night. Go out." Her purse is sitting on the small dining room table; she yanks it open and from it gives you two twenties.

A guttural cry rises from the next room.

You scramble backwards out the door, and try shutting the noise from your memory.

You think about returning to Kirkham's house, to crash there, but you don't often have this kind of a chance for privacy. You drive out to the old highway and check into the deeply dilapidated Donna Motor Court. The room stinks and the bed is soft and saggy, but it's quiet and there's no one to interrupt you. You jack off twice before falling asleep, once again when you wake in the middle of the night, and a last time when you wake in the morning with wood.

* * * * *

Wednesday. One of your busy days. You wake late in a strange motel room and barely make it to school on time.

You only share one class with Mendoza—soccer—and no classes with Evans, but you pop up and surprise them at their lockers throughout the day, testing their reactions. Evans jumps when you tap him on the shoulder after first, telling him you want to talk to him at lunch, and his eyes widen with alarm. Mendoza has lost the hunted expression he wore at practice yesterday; today he just looks vexed, even a little pissed off, but he rolls over easily enough when you remind him that starting next month he'll be buying more weed off you. Evans takes that news with worse grace when you tell him at fourth period lunch, and collapses when you grab him by the hair. It disgusts you, and it worries you at the same time: maybe Trantham—the victim struggling beneath the mask of Tanner Evans—isn't strong enough to sustain the pretense. So you leave him to finish his miserable lunch and go looking for other amusements.

You don't find them, so you just text Chelsea: Got a taker 4 job u advertised Tues. She texts back: Who? You reply: Y, 2C his face when he cums in you? She replies :o= and that ends the query. She says nothing about Andrea, but you'd already agreed to meet her again on Thursday.

You text Caleb once: Wait for it. You fear the reply will be "Never mind," but he texts back OK.

After school to Panda Garden, where you do a fast set of homework while slurping down fuel for the night. Then, more out of duty than hope, you go by the elementary school. The fire is out, and you toss another match onto it.

It doesn't catch.

You try again. Still, it doesn't catch.

* * * * *

With mounting excitement, you take out your lighter and try lighting various portions: the head, the feet, the chest, behind the shoulders, even the crotch (which thankfully has no representation of genitalia). Nothing. It will not relight.

You whoop and punch the air.

It has left a figure, maybe six and a half feet in length, that looks like a crudely carved megalithic representation of a prone person. Massive chest and arms that taper down to rude, mitt-like blobs at the end; trunk-like legs that taper to knob-like feet; a cabbage-like ball at the upper end. It's dusty, and you take off your t-shirt and wipe it down all over. Underneath that layer of fine, white talcum is a rough surface that is off-white in color.

You grin over it, though you have no idea what you've made.

The book, the book. You whip around, searching—

Shit, you gave it Dwayne Macauly for safe keeping. You take out your phone.

A foreboding comes over you as send him a text: Need case, please return by usual route. You haven't heard anything from him since you gave it to him: no demands for money for its return, or for information on what kind of a thing he's been holding. That could mean he's been content to leave the case locked. In Chen's experience, Dwayne—though a violent and tough-minded criminal—respects the boundaries, so there's an excellent chance he hasn't broken it open to see what's inside.

But then, he wouldn't tell you if he did. And if he pulled out the book, and started experimenting with it, he wouldn't tell you either, not after his excitement over it had had a chance to take hold.

Don't turn into a fruitcake, you tell yourself as you pace the basement. And why are you waiting to hear back from him? It's like watching a pot come to a boil, you'll just make yourself crazy.

Still, instead of leaving for work, you examine the new dingus all over, speculating on what it might be. It doesn't seem to be alive, and there are no switches. Your finger brushes something underneath the giant gargoyle, and with the held breath of trepidation you yank it loose.

Fuck your nerves. It's just that paper with the sigil on it. Totally unsinged, too. Well, it worked. Again, you've cause to wonder why the sigil for the brain bands was so troublesome.

But there's nothing more to keep you, so you turn to the stairs. As you put your foot on the bottom-most, your cell vibrates. Message from Dwayne: Deliver today, get it tomorrow. You let out a huge sigh of relief, though one that doesn't entirely dissipate the tension.

For now you have to trust that Dane Matthias—the hijacked Chelsea Cooper—can get it to you. You remember what happened the last time Dwayne Macauly gave "Dane Matthias" something for Gary Chen.

And so, with renewed foreboding, you return to your Jeep.

One last call to make, you decide, before turning the key. To Caleb, to tell him that the dingleberry is finished.

Or will you tell him? The dipshit tried quitting the project last week, and he wasn't too happy to be tempted back into it. Given all the cards in play, shouldn't you try keeping some of them back for yourself?

Next: "An Old Song with Swapped Singers" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 2)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)"