Chapter #17Black Ops by: Seuzz   Resuming the façade of Will Shabbleman, you amble to the unit next door and knock on the door. There's a scrambling noise, and the door opens slightly. It's a black man, tall and burly, and he gives you a hostile glance. "Yo, man, you got any drugs?" you ask him.
"The fuck?" he says.
"I'm serious, man, come on. Anything."
"Get the fuck outta here." He slams the door in your face, but you wedge your foot inside.
"Don't be that way, man. Be cool."
He hurls the door open, grabs you by the collar, and pulls you in. You smile up as he snarls, swings a massive fist at you. You jerk your head to the side, and as his fist flies past you reach up and press the mask to his face. He collapses.
Quickly you pull off all his clothes—black sweat pants, white wifebeater, sneakers—and gather up his belongings and hurl them into his small suitcase. You even gather up his toiletries from the tiny bathroom. There's not much, and you're able to stash them in your room and get back long before the mask reappears on his face. You pick it up and retreat into your room, and back into your own bathroom.
Behind two closed doors you swap out Shabbleman's face for the stranger's. The mask, of course, carries no memories or personality, so you only know the new face that stares back at you—strong and heavy-set and definitely not to be fucked with—as "black dude." You're in his clothes and have just snapped his watch into place when you hear your own front door burst open. "Yo, motherfucker!" a really pissed-off voice calls.
You smile briefly to yourself, then set your own face in stone before stepping back into the bedroom. Your victim—naked, of course—swings around when he hears you—
And freezes—
And to his immense credit does not faint dead away. But his features do sag, and the whites show around his eyes. "The fuck," he stammers.
"Yo, you lookin' for a little fun, cocksucker?" you jeer. "I got your fun right here." You clutch your crotch.
He takes two steps back and looks wildly around.
"Don't you wanna fuck, man?" you demand. "Come bustin' in here wi'out any clothes on. Come over here."
He's back at the doorway now. His eyes fall on his things, which are strewed out on your bed. Some kind of realization—though nothing like understanding—breaks across his face, and he takes another step back, into the still-open doorway.
You stare hard at him. "Get the fuck outta here," you tell him softly. "Before I totally fuck you up."
He runs from the room.
You chuckle to yourself after he's gone; ain't gonna be any fun being a naked black guy running down the street gibbering about shapeshifters, but you'll need to get away before anyone checks around. So you sweep up his stuff, find his car, and drive over to a motel two miles away and check in there; then you switch into Shabbleman mode, skulk your way back to pick up your car, and move it, too. By nightfall you feel safely out of reach.
Out of a sense of curiosity only you snoop through your victim's stuff: nothing but clothes, a true-crime paperback, and sundries. His driver's license gives you the name Theodore Benjamin Smith, of Little Rock. You wonder briefly what his business in Saratoga Falls might be. There's nothing to suggest he's anything other than a regular but impoverished citizen.
* * * * *
You wait until it's good and dark before venturing out, and then, having dressed in dark clothes, you drive out to Blackwell's. You park far down the street, behind a curve in the street, and make your way to the villa while avoiding the few streetlights out here in the countryside. The high wall that surrounds his house cuts off most of the light, but you can still make out a glow over its top.
Blackwell's car is the only one out front, but that doesn't mean he's alone. You skirt the wall around to the side that faces the library and lift yourself to the top. The curtains are open and lights blaze from the room. Blackwell sits alone at a table, surrounded by open books, reading and taking occasional notes. Quite often he sits back to stare thoughtfully, and more than once you shrink back in fear that he has seen you. But always he returns to his work.
Your vigil continues for nearly an hour, but no one else appears. And at the end of it, Blackwell rises, stretches and pads from the room. A few minutes later he reappears, and though he is quite far away and separated from you by glass windows, you can see that he has a mask in his hand. He turns off most of the lights in the library, and leaves.
You go back around to the front of the house and sneak onto the grounds close enough to peer through the living room windows. There is a glow that you recognize as coming from the TV, and the black blob near the window tells you that he is sitting on the sofa and watching it. He is almost certainly done with his research for the night.
You are deeply curious to see what he was studying; and you'd like to lift a couple of books off him. Probably you can sneak into the library fast enough to make off with his notes, at least, and maybe a tome or two. But maybe you should play it safe and just go back to the motel.
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