The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

A Gang of Your Own

Previously: "A World of Possibilities" 

You drive out to Spencer's apartment, but the lights are out in his windows, and no one answers the door when you batter at it. You've forgotten everything you knew about him when you were under his mask—thank God!—except that his guardian is also his landlord. You knock at the downstairs door.

The man who answers is even more repulsive than Spencer: fat and unshaven with a tangle of dark, wispy hair on his balding head, clad only in a muscle shirt and boxers. He glowers at you. "I'm looking for Jeff Spencer," you stammer at him. "Can I leave a message?"

He glowers some more at you.

But when you pat at your pockets and come up empty, the man withdraws with a growling sigh and shuts the door. A moment later he returns with a grimy scrap of paper and a little pencil like they have at the miniature golf course. You scrawl your cell number on it along with the note "Call me -- Your boss."

"Can't guarantee he'll get it," the man mutters at you, and shuts the door before you can reply.

You weren't sure what you were going to do if you found Spencer, but you had the two completed masks in the truck with you, and that proves a blessing as your lackey texts you just as you're pulling up to your house: whostheis

Ur boss r you at home?

dontgotbos

are you at home?

No reply. You turn the truck around and drive back up to the bombed out neighborhood where Jeff Spencer hangs his underwear up.

* * * * *

The lights are on in Spencer's apartment when you pull up, and there's a red car parked in front of the storage trailers. It's probably cherry colored in the day; now, at night, it looks the color of dried blood.

You've got all your masks and supplies in the pack on your back as you mount the squeaking wooden stairs. You're still not sure what you're going to do, as you don't know who is here, or how many of them there are. Even worse, you're not sure you're in control of the lackey. Spencer seems barely smart enough to understand the concept of "obey", and not even intelligent enough to obey more than just the most basic sorts of commands. On top of that, the way he refused to answer your texted questions or to acknowledge your "bossness" leaves you wondering if something more serious has gone wrong with the magic.

You pause outside his door, and listen. There are no sounds from inside. You hold your breath and put your ear to the door. After a few seconds you hear hoarse mutters, as of people talking in low tones.

It's impossible to tell how many are inside.

Taking your courage in one hand, and a blank mask in the other, you bang your knuckles on the warped and faded door.

The floor on the other side groans under heavy footsteps. The door opens. Jeff Spencer peers out at you with a dull expression.

Then his eyes widen with recognition. "Who am I?" you ask him.

"Nng-ghn," he says. The tip of his tongue seems stuck between his teeth, but he steps back.

You don't follow him in, not yet. "Am I your boss?" you say.

His jaw falls open a little, and a gleam that could almost pass for intelligence comes into his eyes. "Yeah," he says.

Then another figure steps into view. It's Joshua Call. There's a pale, fell light in his eyes, and he raises his chin at you. His meaty hands bunch up into loose fists.

He doesn't say anything though, not even when you put your head through the doorway to take a quick look around the apartment. Except for these two lowlifes, it's empty.

So you point at Call and look Spencer right in the eye. "Grab him," you say.

"Nghuh?"

"Grab him!" You mime a football tackle.

Call just has time to let a look of alarm wash over his face before Spencer grabs him around the chest. The two lunkheads, who are built like slabs of beef, stumble backward and bang into a refrigerator. You fly at them, and smash the mask into Call's face. He slumps.

But Spencer hangs on to him until you tell him he can let go. He glances between you and Call with a puzzled expression as you shut the door, but says nothing even after you've crouched on the floor by his friend and started to unpack.

* * * * *

"Thank fuck you're smart enough to get it at least," you mutter at Joshua Call a quarter-hour later. Unlike his fellow lackey, who has to concentrate when asked to pick his right foot up off the ground, lackey-Joshua responds quickly and accurately.

You just wish he didn't stare at you quite so balefully.

It worried you, at first, when you put his fully treated mask back onto him. After it came out, you had sealed it, then had added a layer of that new paste—the kind that uses a few chemicals, your hair, and a pinch of graveyard earth—to its inner surface. Would it work as promised? Would it work at all? Would it make a difference that you were putting a mask of Joshua Call back onto Joshua Call?

So you had Spencer sit on him before you placed the finished mask on him. After he barked a "Get the fuck off me!" you'd entertained yourself by ordering him to slap himself. Then, content with that performance, you'd put both lackeys through a set of easy warming-up exercises—lifting left feet and right feet, left hands and right hands—before administering the ultimate test: Ordering Spencer to take his cock out and ordering Call to suck it. It was an utterly disgusting spectacle, and you quickly cut it short—the spectacle, not Spencer's dick, though that was awful as well—but you are now convinced that these two assholes are completely enslaved to your will.

Caleb needs at least two hundred dollars if he's to pay back the guys you victimized, so you start by ordering Spencer and Call to hand over all the cash they have on them or in the apartment. It comes to fifty-four dollars between them. In a series of angry grunts, Call admits to having more money at home. "You got any pay checks?" you ask. "Cash in a bank? Use your ATM card to bring it all out here," you order him. "Leave twenty in the account."

Call departs. Spencer collapses onto his bed while you slouch in a broken-backed chair, your leg hanging over the arm, and cruise the internet on your phone while waiting for the lackey to get back. But in the back of your mind you're contemplating your next steps.

When Call returns he has a further one hundred and three dollars with him. "You know the Molester?" you ask Call as you sort out the money. "Pozniak," you clarify when he frowns. "Does he know where this place is? Then text him, tell him you want him out here. Tell him there's a poker game getting started, so he needs to bring all his cash." Call's jaw muscles work as he taps in the text. "Is he on his way?" you ask after there have been a couple of back-and-forths. "Then this is what I want you guys to do." You outline to your lackeys how, as soon as Pozniak comes in, Spencer should grab him like he grabbed Call, and how Call should jam the blank mask which you give him into Pozniak's face.

They prove quite adept, and you don't even stir from the chair as they take the Molester down for you. After Spencer lowers Pozniak to the floor, you snap at the gum you're chewing—your host had a few extra sticks laying around—then saunter over to peer down at your long-time tormentor. You wish you had a nasty little quip to hand that you could murmur over him, but you don't, and content yourself with kneeling beside him and slapping his piggy cheeks a couple of times while snickering.

* * * * *

"Alright, you assholes have paid your dues," you tell your "three Fucketeers" after you've got their money—two hundred and thirty-three dollars—counted, sorted, folded, and shoved into the pocket of your cargo shorts. "Tomorrow you start collecting, to pay yourselves back and to kick some up to me." You grin. "I want five dollars a day, minimum, from each of you." They glare murder at you.

Five dollars a day is nothing. You could easily get ten or maybe even twenty a day off each of them as they went around shaking victims down. But that might get too much notice, and you're not greedy. Five dollars a day from these three clowns will give you four-hundred and fifty a month, which would be more than you know what to do with.

But if your tastes get expensive, you'll think about upping your quota, or adding to the gang.

"Don't do anything that'll get you expelled," you continue. "Just get the cash. And leave Caleb Johansson and Keith Tilley alone. You don't touch them."

"Who?" Joshua asks.

"Never mind." You fix the Molester with a hard stare. "You know who they are. Lay off them. And lay off me."

You can tell that the Molester would like to say some very bad words, but when you ask if he understands, he only mutters, "Yeah."

* * * * *

Monday morning. Student parking lot. You spot Spencer loping across, and after glancing around to see if the coast is clear, you trot over to him. "Where's Call?" you ask him.

He blinks at you, then takes out his phone and sends a text. He blinks at the reply and shows it to you: dunjuns. "Where's that?" you ask.

Spencer sucks his lip, then gestures you to follow him.

To your alarm, he leads you into the gym, past the practicing basketball squad, and into the changing rooms. Down a corridor behind the showers he lopes, past a maintenance closet, and around a corner into a dead end. You're puzzled until he kneels and pulls a heavy metal grate out of the floor, exposing the top of a metal ladder embedded in the sides of a manhole.

Next: "The Dunjuns" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"