This choice: Try taking the mask off the old man • Go Back...Chapter #37Strip Tease by: Seuzz   The old man's eyes narrow as you hop from the cab. "You waiting for someone," he growls.
It's going to be awkward, but you have to try anyway. You lean in to grab him behind the neck with one hand while grappling at his face with the other.
However awkward it is for you to seize him, it's more awkward for him to resist. He flails and curses at you, and your fingers slip a little as you grasp his brow. But after a few seconds you feel that same subtle "tearing" sensation, and you straighten up over an unconscious Joe Durras. Rudely, you shove him into the passenger side of the convertible and get behind the wheel yourself. You drive along the country road until you're out of sight of the house, then you pull behind a thin screen of trees. Bad enough that you looked like Joe when Frank regained consciousness; it would be a lot harder to explain to Joe himself the resemblance.
You close your eyes, chant that magical phrase, and pull at your own face.
* * * * *
You feel yourself being manhandled when you wake. You're face down in the grass, and your pants are being pulled off your legs. You flip over, and Joe grins brightly at you. "Aren't you glad it's unseasonably warm today?" he chortles.
He's already got your shirt and socks off you, so now you're down to boxers. "What are you doing?" you gasp, as though it's not obvious.
"Getting my things back. Now, if you don't wanna try running back home with all your shortcomings hanging out, you'll tell me what's going on."
"Oh, Jesus!" Where to start? "It's a really long story, Joe."
"Longer than 'Ben Hur'? Awesome. We'll get popcorn and you can tell me. But first, where's Frank?"
"At the Straussler's. It's just around the corner—"
"I know where we are, I've been out here before. But why?"
"It's where the doppelgangers are. They moved from Westside into Eastman—"
"Ah, and grabbed themselves Johann Moneybags and Pater. I see. You managed to stay alive, though." His smile sharpens. "How'd you do that, Prescott?"
"By being stupid and naïve?"
"Good man, always play to your strengths. I still don't get how I got here, but—"
A phone rings. Joe pulls his cell from the pile of clothes he took off you. "Yo." He listens intently. "Uh huh." He paws through the clothes again, and pulls out a mask. He peers closely at it, and frowns briefly; then he breaks into a grin. "Whatever you say, Frank," he says in a subdued tone entirely at odds with the mischievous glee of his expression. "Wait, hang on! The gate's opening! There's a little sports car! It's him! I—! Awwww!" Joe doubles up with suppressed laughter. "I fucked up, Frank," he moans. "That old guy got away. You want me to chase him?" He falls onto the ground and covers his mouth. "Alright, I'll hide the truck and see you in a few minutes." He drops the phone and winks at you. "Never mind, Prescott, I just figured out what I need to know. Get those shorts off, and we'll finish swapping out. Stars, why did it have to be you and not Becky Torres in my underwear?" Another ring tone sounds, and now he plucks a phone from a jacket pocket, but this one he chucks into the bushes. "Well, come on!" He starts to pull off the ill-fitting suit he's wearing.
* * * * *
The suit doesn't fit you any better either, and you feel terribly exposed in it and the convertible, even though it's still hidden behind that screen of trees. Joe has left you with strict orders not to move. "Your luck's held out so far," he told you. "But that just means you're saving up snake eyes for when you don't want 'em." Glumly, you think he might have a point.
Well, this is a fine fix, you think. Somehow Joe's gone from knowing a lot less about what's going on to knowing more. And you can't help wondering if you've done the right thing by letting him and Frank loose. Now, for instance, you're worried about what Bredon will do to you when he finds out what you've done. And are Frank and Joe even okay inside the Strausslers'? There were a lot of doppelgangers there when you had it under recon, and Frank and Joe went into this house with even less info than when they went to Westside last week, and look how that turned out for them.
But above all there is this: So far no one you've tangled with has seemed your idea of a "good guy," and you're becoming ever more convinced that Carson was right. You and he need to lay hands on that magic book for yourselves. It may be the only way of staying safe.
Prey to these dark thoughts, you crouch down in the seat and drum your fingers nervously on the wheel. Slowly, an hour crawls by before—
You duck at the sound of a motor, but raise your head when it purrs to a stop nearby. "Hey, Prescott," calls Joe from behind the wheel of the sweetest Porsche sports coupe you've ever seen. "Get in."
You're still nervous as you crawl into the passenger seat next to him; the leather seats squeal and groan deliciously under you. Joe sets the coupe in motion, and the engine murmurs politely as he pushes it up to fifty in the space of a few seconds. "We're all wrapped up at the Strausslers'," he says before you can ask. "Now we need to start rounding up the others. I thought you'd like to go along, seeing as how you're having so much fun." He grins brightly at you.
"Wrapped up? What happened back there?"
"You mean with Frank, or when I walked in? Well, they were both a hoot."
"Could you start at the beginning?" You're conscious of the weird role reversal, with your having to ask Joe what's going on.
"Well, first I was born, which goes without saying," Joe laughs. "But to fast forward eighteen years and to temporarily cut to the adventures of a co-protagonist." From his pocket his tweaks a cigarette and slips it into the corner his mouth; his cheeks pucker, and the tip glows red without benefit of match or lighter. For a moment you think you're going to faint.
"So you got that mask off of Frank, which was brave and clever of you, and then you didn't tell him who you really were, which was brave and clever and butt-fuck stupid. Lucky for you, Frank has cement where his brains should be, and by the time he figured out that you weren't me, you'd shown yourself a friend to him."
"He—? When did he realize I wasn't—?"
"Oh, round about the first time you didn't backtalk him. But as I was saying, you helped catch that imposter at our place, and that turned out to be the key. So when Frank came back here—"
"How was that 'the key'?"
"You really wanna know this stuff? Fine. So it turns out that those masks have two parts. Oh, Stars, I can't wait until we lay hands on that book!" He arches his back and pounds his thigh with a fist. "But they come in two parts. There's the mask itself, which copies faces and bodies, but there's also this attachable metal strip, and that's what copies brains and memories, and you can mix and match them. So when those clever so-and-sos at Straussler's caught your friend Ioeger, what they did was take Frank's mask off him, and then they copied Ioeger's brain into one of those strips, and stuck it in the mask. Basically, they slapped Frank's body and Ioeger's brain together and bang! Their new doppelganger could now look and act like your friend. Perfect way to get a spy close to you and to Rick."
"About Rick—"
"Later, precious, I'm on a spree, and you asked." He tosses the cigarette out the window. "So, Frank got that mask off that guy, and what did he do then? Fuck me, but Frank's got more guts than brains. He put it on. Funny, the way you can disguise yourself as yourself, but I won't argue. Now he looks like himself, but because of that metal bit, he's got Ioeger's memories and he's got the memories that the doppelganger had while he had that mask on. So Frank could come out here, and—" Joe takes a deep breath. "It was Frank pretending to be a doppelganger who was pretending to be Ioeger who had been pretending to be Frank." He throws his head back and howls. "But it worked. He got out here and was all, like, 'Hey guys, I couldn't find Prescott' and then he got each of 'em alone—there were four of them there—and he punched each of them out before going for the rest. And then I showed up, which was sensational, as it always is when I show up, and I was pretending to be you pretending to be me— Ha! And I started off being all 'Whatever you say, Frank,' and 'Anything you want, Frank' but then I started dialing it up, and he kept giving me these looks, until when I finally called him a 'muffin-headed dussel', at which point he threw me across the room and I came clean about how you and me switched places." He sighs happily. "It's a wasted day when I can't prank him at least once, and I owe you a blowjob for letting me get him good."
This leaves you in a daze, but you don't ask for clarification. "So what are we doing now?"
"We're splitting up and going undercover to round up the rest of the gang. I won the toss, so I'm going as Straussler. But you've got a choice." From the back he pulls out two masks.
You blink to see two names floating on their inner surfaces: They are masks of Kyle Lakewood and Monique Travers.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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