The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Party of Five, Chapter 10

Previously: "Party of Five, Chapter 9" 

IRONEYES CROUCHED IN THE HILLSIDE BRUSH and peered through the leaves and branches. It was almost ten o'clock, but no one left the cabin yet.

Mickey had told them where it was, and Ironeyes, having woken early and feeling restless, had slipped from the caves and gone down to confirm for himself. Besides, he didn't put it past Mickey to try escaping alone, in his new identity, without the others.

For four hours, since just after sunrise, he had watched the cabin. Only once had someone come out: a muscular, blonde kid, dressed only in pajama bottoms. That had been the wrestler Mickey told them about, Ironeyes figured. Mickey, while pulling on the clothes that went with his new skin, had told the rest of them a little about the people whose skins and faces they were going to steal. They were high school kids, four of them seniors (which was good; Ironeyes hadn't liked high school, and didn't want to spend any more time inside it than was absolutely necessary), all of them except for one "dweeb" in the bunch being popular and good looking. Three were girls, two of them (not the one whose skin he had taken) being sisters. Of the guys, one was the dweeb while the other was a wrestler trying like crazy to get his raging boner up inside the older of the sisters—getting him and the girl into bed together, in fact, had been the main reason these five had come out to the island for spring break.

Anyway, there were five inside the cabin, same as there were five inside the cave. If they could get their skins—and Mickey was laughingly confident they could—they could drive off the island right past all the roadblocks, and slip easily and invisibly into some very comfortable lives.

Not that Ironeyes had any regrets about the life he was aiming to shuck off. It had been a good life, up until the moment he'd hit that old man during a convenience store robbery, and got sent to the Woodson Super-Max facility for second-degree murder.

Up until then, for twenty-two of his thirty-eight years, he'd had fun—"fun" being the kind of thing he'd settle for if it meant he got to indulge his fundamental laziness. So after he'd given up on "ambition" because that meant a boring-ass job with an education and training, he'd settled for stickups and living mostly out of his car, interrupted by the occasional manual job. He'd flitted around the country, one step ahead of local law who, once a trail cooled, turned their attention elsewhere. He'd sleep with hookers (and a few women who weren't hookers) when he needed to get it off, and once came real close to getting married before a creeping restlessness helped him beat the temptation.

And he was quick and hard-hitting in a fight, so that no one ever called him by his given names—Francis Marion—but only by his last. Which fit him because he had eyes the color of steel plate.

The sun was starting to ride high in the sky when the slap of a wooden door snapped Ironeyes out of a reverie. The wrestler had come back out, but this time dressed in jeans, a red t-shirt, and a blue, long-sleeve shirt unbuttoned and flapping loose. He was followed by ... Well, that could only be the "dweeb": a scrawnier kid in khakis and olive-green shirt rolled up to the elbows but buttoned to the collar. He wore heavy-framed glasses and a greenish-brown, tweed flat cap.

The dweeb paused at bottom of the porch stairs as the wrestler charged on ahead toward the SUV, waiting and looking back for ...

Oh my God! Ironeyes almost broke cover and rose to his feet when she came out.

She was lithe, with small but visible breasts under a gray t-shirt, and an ass that filled the back of her jeans without blowing them out. Her legs were tapering. But it was the face and hair of the girl that made Ironeyes gulp.

Most of her face was hidden behind a pair of slanty glasses that slid halfway down her pert nose. Her mouth and jaw were small. But somehow they all came together to give her a foxy appearance. "Sexy librarian," Ironeyes thought with an excited growl as she pushed her glasses up her nose. The whole "fox" look could only be confirmed if she'd had a bushy tail sprouting and swishing from the back of her jeans. But she had managed it in another way, by tying her long, tawny brown hair (save for the feathery bangs that framed her face) back into a sporty ponytail that bobbed high on the back of her head before drooping to touch the base of her neck with its tips.

Ironeyes chewed on his thumbnail and felt his eyes watering as this girl climbed into the passenger seat of the SUV and belted herself in, and he stared after the SUV after it backed out of the driveway into the street, and drove off in the direction of the cove.

Mickey was wearing the skin of the girl who didn't have a sister, so that had to have been one of the sisters. (Yes, after an effort, he confirmed that the logic checked out.) But which sister? The one the wrestler was trying to bang? That would make sense, given that she'd driven off with him (and the dweeb). Or was that the younger one?

He'd have to find out. He'd have to find out which one she was, and if she had a boyfriend with her. That was the skin he had to have—her boyfriend's—and he'd kill anyone, even Diller, to get it. The thought of shoving his hard and throbbing shaft deep into the loam of that girl's body left Ironeyes gnawing his fist with furious anticipation.

It was in this attitude that Randall found him, and Randall found him only because Ironeyes was so preoccupied that Randall was upon him before he could flee. As it was, Ironeyes was rising in alarm when Randall, skittering through the bracken, came upon him. The two escaped convicts stared at each other with bulging eyes, so shocked were they to have found each other and not islander or—worse—a cop.

"What are you doing out here?" Randall hissed as he scrambled the rest of the way down the slope to where Ironeyes was crouched. "Everyone's out looking for you! Killer's—"

"I came out to watch Mickey," Ironeyes growled back. "In case the fucker got any funny ideas about running off without us."

"So we'd just find some other skins," Randall muttered. "Fuck these high schoolers he found us, I wouldn't mind you and me going one direction, and Killer and the others going another."

"I know what direction I want to go in," Ironeyes said. "There's a girl in that cabin." He trailed off again as he thought of her.

"Yeah?" Randall said.

Ironeyes shot him a hard glare.

"For you," he said. "Her skin," he went on, gulping around the words. "On you. And me—" He held Randall's eyes.

The other's gaze fell.

Then he winced slightly as Ironeyes gripped him by the arm.

"You said you wanted us going off together," Ironeyes said. "So that's how we're going off together. You in her skin, and me in—" He wavered, then took the plunge. "Me in her boyfriend's."

"Sure," Randall said softly. "If that's what you want."

"No, 'cos that's the way it's gonna fucking be." He stared hard at Randall even as the other looked past him through the bush at the cabin.

Then Randall's hand shot out and grabbed Ironeyes's shoulder. "Is that her?"

Ironeyes twisted around again, searching for the SUV. But it was two girls who had just come out of the cabin. Both were dressed in jean shorts and loose-fitting button-up shirts that were several sizes too large for them.

That one's Mickey, Ironeyes thought to himself after the dark-haired girl had turned her face in his diretion. So the other one is the other sister. But the older sister, or the younger one?

She was blonde, but not a golden blonde like the wrestler, but a dirty blonde with streaks of brown in her long, soft hair. Her face was more open, with larger features and bigger eyes than the foxy one who had left earlier. Her breasts were bigger too, and her hips wider. Ironeyes felt a dreadful premonition that this was the older sister, the one being chased by the wrestler. How much more convenient it would be if he was chasing the one that Ironeyes wanted!

Well, fuck it, he decided after a moment's agonized wavering. Randall was going into the other girl's skin, he'd see to that, and he himself would claim the skin of the wrestler or the dweeb, he didn't care which, and inside that skin he and Randall would continue on the outside as they'd done inside Woodson. He needed to have that girl, and Randall—weak, yielding, frightened Randall—would fit inside her like a hand inside a glove.

"Looks like they're heading for the cave," Randall whispered in Ironeyes's ear as the dark-haired girl pointed toward a trailhead that led up the slope of the hill. The two men ducked and did their best to bury themselves inside the bushes as the girls passed close by. Then, when the girls' voices had faded, the two men rose and hurried up the trail after. Once Mickey had the girl inside the mouth of the first cave, Ironeyes and Randall would make sure they couldn't come back out.

* * * * *

It's been almost a week since you started publishing "Party of Five," but Sean hasn't left any kind of comment yet. It makes you wonder, because Sean usually comments on the ones that he likes.

So before going to bed, you give him a poke.

Hey great as always, you comment on his most recent ("Packed and Jacked"). First time commenting and just wanted to say I love your stuff and you are inspriation to me start writing. Thanks for everything.

If he's seen "Party of Five," maybe that will break the ice. If not, maybe it will push him into looking at it.

Next: "Party of Five, Chapter 11" 

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