The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Party of Five, Chapter 1

Previously: "Man in a Mirror" 

Hey guys, you wrote for the "About" section that prefaces each story at stories.net, newbie here with his first story be nice ok lol.

Not totally original to me like I say I'm a noob at writing and plots are kind of hard for me so I'm working from plot from a webcomic I love, kind of adapting it and adding to it give it more lore and description. It's based on webcomic by chronicstuss over at deviant art but he deleted it but I saved a copy so I hope its okay? Anyway don't mean to plaigarize just wanted to save and share this really killer story by a guy whose work I love so much but putting it in story form. Also, I guess maybe this is kind of practice for writing? I dunno maybe I should also call this fanfic. Anyway its based on this webcomic called "The Five" like I say by chronicstuss and you should totally check his stuff out if you don't know it. This one starts with MtM and there's other MtM in it lol but don't worry keep reading because theres MtF in it too cheers.

The story itself you have titled "Party of Five."

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"HOW DOES IT WORK?" Diller demanded. He scowled at the dark pool that lapped at the lip of the well. Its surface glistened like oil in the light of the torch that flickered and bloomed in the iron bracket on the cavern wall. That light gave the water—if it was water—a nasty sheen.

"It doesn't 'work'," Skunk retorted.

"What?" Diller glanced up sharply.

"It doesn't 'work'," Skunk repeated. His tone was stony. "It's not a machine,."

"Well, what the fuck good—?"

"Killer." Finn laid restraining hand on the gang leader's brawny shoulder. "Skunk just means this is a sacred place."

"I don't care if it's a fucking whorehouse." Diller twisted out from under Finn's hand. "He hauls us up here with some cock-and-bullshit story about—"

"Skunk," Finn said as the other three men—escapees, like the rest of them, from the nearby Super-Max facility—looked on anxiously. "Killer's just asking what we do now. You know." He nodded at the pool, whose surface was shivering like the skin of a living thing. "Now that we're here."

Skunk crossed his arms and scowled. His Navajo features—high cheekbones, narrow eyes, strong jaw and mouth—always seemed set in a grimace of rock-like imperturbability. But now they looked carved from granite. His long, sleek black hair fell in straight sheets that framed his face.

"The Well of the Skinwalkers is not sacred," he said. "It is not holy. It is the watering place of the yee naaldlooshii." His eyes darted. "We should not have come."

"It was your idea," Diller growled.

"Yeah, it was your idea," Finn more gently agreed. "You said we could hide in the caves." He glanced around the cavern they had reached after tracing a tortuous path through narrow, twisting passages with pebbly, uneven floors, with only that torch to light the way. "And you said we'd find the Well here. And that we could use it to—" He broke off.

"We could use it to get us some new faces," said Mickey. He was a red-head, usually voluble and good-natured, despite the deep scar that folded his left cheek inward from the ear to the chin. But like the other three, who had escaped with Diller, Finn and Skunk despite not being part of their gang, he had grown more and more quiet the deeper into the hillside they had plunged.

"Yeah," Diller said. "So how does it work?"

Skunk glanced darkly at Finn, who sighed and let his shoulders droop.

The Navajo pointed at the pool.

"You put him whose face you would claim into the pool," he said. "In only his skin, still living, you put him into the pool. You push his head under the surface. Then, holding him there, you draw the knife across his throat. You must cut deep. As deep as the bone at the back of the neck." He drew the side of his hand across his own throat.

"What knife?" Diller asked. "Were we supposed to bring one?"

Skunk glanced around, his eye roving over the wall behind the pool. He froze. Then, leaning across the corner of the pool while being careful not to touch the water with his booted toe, he braced himself with one hand while with the other he groped about a shadowy shelf carved into the living rock. Again, he froze. Then from the shelf he drew out a cruelly curved knife. Its blade was forged of dull iron, and its handle was yellowed bone.

Finn shuddered when he saw it.

"So is that it?" Diller took the knife from Skunk, and casually examined it. "Seems sharp enough for the job. What are these scratches on the blade?"

"Spells, probably," Finn said when Skunk didn't answer. "To make the magic work. What comes next?" he asked as Diller, seemingly fascinated, closely examined the knife by the torchlight.

"Then, in only your own skin, you lower yourself into the pool with the gore of him whose skin you claim. You cover your own head. Then—"

He fell silent and watchful.

"Is that all?" Diller asked. "When you come back up—"

"The skin of him will have bound itself to you," Skunk said. "You will have his face, his form, his eyes, his mind. All he was and all he had—"

"His mind?" Diller said sharply. He and Finn exchanged a glance. The other said to Skunk, "You didn't mention that."

"What do you mean, you get his mind?" Diller said.

"All he had is yours. You are him. So you have ... all." Skunk spread his hands. "But you are yourself still. Inside. Beneath the skin." He drew a sharp fingernail over the breast of his prison work shirt. "You wear him like a skin. You wear his mind like a skin. But your soul—"

"Alright I get it," Diller said. "Mighty convenient," he mused. He glanced over at Mickey and Ironeyes and Randall, and there was a glint in his gaze. "Can you change back?"

"You only wear the skin," Skunk said, truculently. "You can always tear it off."

"Can you put another skin on after that?"

Skunk shrugged in a way that was plainly affirmative.

"Mighty convenient," Diller said again. "If it was just the skin, I'm not sure it would be worth it. I mean, getting out of this place, looking like someone else, that would be fine. We could walk right off without the cops being any wiser. But having to start over again with no ID or anything, with a face that belonged to someone else, having to pretend to be them—" He shook his head. "That would have worried me. But if we can just step in and take over ..."

He ignored the stony glower that Skunk was boiling him with, and strolled over to where Mickey and the others were hanging back. "Let's talk about this, boys," he said.

Finn, left alone with Skunk, put his head close to his friend's.

"This is on the level?" he asked. Skunk nodded imperceptibly. "Because if we grab someone and do this to them, and nothing happens—" He licked his lips. "Well, that's another killing. And we're stuck out here, on this island, with police blockades going up. And Killer, he's—" He licked his lips again. "He's not going to be happy with you."

He and Skunk held each other's gaze. A cunning light came into Skunk's eyes.

"So, there's campers and other people on the island," Diller said as he and the other three joined the other two beside the pool. "After it's dark, Mickey and Randall'll—"

"I lied," Skunk said. "I lied about the well. It's just water."

"You lied?" Diller didn't sound surprised. "Why?"

"To bring you here, to hide. I was scared to try the highway, I—"

"So you made up a story about this cave and this well?"

Skunk nodded.

"And this knife?" Diller held it up so that the torchlight glinted off its edge. "You lie about this too?"

Skunk swallowed, then nodded.

"Now, that's funny," Diller said. "Because I think you're lying now. I think you were telling the truth before. Boys."

There was a fractional pause, and then Mickey, Randall, and Ironeyes rushed Skunk. There was a brief tussle—which put Finn on the ground with a bloody mouth when he tried jumping in—and then the other three had Skunk by the arms and waist. The prisoner chuffed and snorted like a tethered stallion.

"Put him in the pool," Diller ordered. "Get him out of his things and put him into the pool."

"Killer!" Finn exclaimed as the other three forced Skunk to the pool's edge.

"I don't need any smart guys trying to outsmart me," Diller said as he squatted beside the panting Finn. "You smart enough to understand that?"

"But it's Skunk!" Finn protested. "He's the only one knows how it works!"

Diller shrugged.

"Look at it this way," he said, and his tone was almost pleasant as he held up the knife. "If he's right about how it works, then whoever gets his skin will also know how it works. So we haven't lost anything. On the other hand, if it doesn't work, well—" He shrugged. "We haven't lost anything."

Finn stared, then glanced sidelong as the thrashing Skunk, now stripped of pants and shirt and shoes was forced into the pool by the other three. When Finn turned back to Diller, it was with lowered eyes.

"That's right," Diller said. He held the knife out to Finn. "You do it."

Finn gasped. "M-me?"

"He was your friend."

"That's right!"

"You want someone else wearing his skin, wearing his face, being him? Think you could stand to look at ... Skunk ... knowing it wasn't your friend?"

Finn gaped, and lost all the color in his face.

"Better make up your mind before they drown him," Diller said as the sloshing in the pool grew weaker. "Or before I decide that I'll have to be the one to scalp—"

Finn grabbed the knife from Diller, and crawled over to the pool on his hands and knees. The others made room for him.

The hand that gripped the knife was palsied as Finn plunged it beneath the inky surface and felt for the throat of the Navajo.

Next: "Party of Five, Chapter 2" 

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