The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Party of Five, Chapter 15

Previously: "Party of Five, Chapter 14" 

TANYA WAS ON THE LAPTOP when Mickey came out of the bedroom. Dougie was lounging on the sofa with a beer.

No fucking way I can get the girl up to the well, Mickey thought to himself. The faggot in the Hawaiian shirt, though ...

"Hey Scarlett," Tanya said when she looked up and saw Mickey. "Did you and Susie read up on those caves before you went in?"

Mickey—who had just finished a long session playing with his bare boobs—did a quick mental readjustment.

"Pfft, no," he said with a gargling laugh. He settled on the arm of the sofa and tried to catch Doug's eye. "Like I'm gonna do research before I—"

"They have a really creepy history. They're called the 'Skinwalker Caves.' As in, like the old Navajo legends."

"Uh huh." Mickey tried to keep a smile on his face as Tanya continued" "There's legends that people who go in can literally come out again as someone else!"

"Sweet," Dougie said as he sipped his beer. "Maybe I could go in and come back out as Chris Hemsworth."

"No, seriously, it says there used to be rituals up there to change people, to literally change their skins!"

"How do you change your skin?" Mickey asked. His laugh sounded forced even in his own ears.

"Well, that's what the ritual's for," Tanya said. "The guy on this website here says that he had a cousin who went into the caves as part of this, like, Satanic party, and when he came out he was all different, had a totally different personality. Like he looked the same, but he acted like someone else. Someone a lot worse."

Mickey laughed. "Drugs'll do that to you."

"Sounds like the plot to an 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' story," Dougie said. He pushed the glasses up his nose. "You know, if I was on the run from the cops and was looking for a way to escape—"

"You guys have been watching too many movies!" Mickey laughed. "Stop it before you give yourselves nightmares! Anyway, I'm going to go check on the two lovebirds!"

He started for the front door, then ducked back into the bedroom to slide on some flip-flops. If he was going to have to have a serious talk with Randall and Ironeyes, they'd have to hold it far from the cabin.

As he stepped back into the hallway, he heard Dougie say, in a low voice, "Do you think I have a chance with Scarlett?"

"Oh, honey," Tanya replied, "Scarlett is just a tease. She just wants attention. Don't make yourself crazy."

Mickey smiled to himself as he adjusted his prodigious boobs to better effect, and thrust them out as he swayed casually back into the living area. He smirked at Tanya as he passed through, but all his thoughts were upon the boy. I'll give you give you every "chance" you want with Scarlett, you limp-dicked cocksucker, he thought as he gave Dougie a trailing stare and smile. If you'll just follow me up to the caves.

But first he had to talk with the others.

"Hey guys, I wanna go for a walk," he groaned as he stepped onto the porch. Alfie and Susie, who were lounging in the lawn chairs, squinted up at her. Alfie was shirtless, baking his hard-muscled torso in the sun, while Susie, in jeans cutoffs and a bikini top, curled up next to him.

"So take a walk," Alfie said. "Just be careful not to run into any fugitives from the Super-Max," he added with a smirk.

"So come with me, help them keep them off," Mickey retorted. He shot a meaningful glance back at the cabin, then stepped off into the yard, rocking slowly on his wide hips.

A moment later, Alfie and Susie had caught up.

"Your 'little sister' is getting real smart," Mickey snarled to Susie in a low voice. "She's on the internet now, reading up on the caves. Skunk didn't say anything about them practically being a fucking tourist attraction."

"The fuck you mean?" Alfie said. "What kind of tourist attraction?"

"I mean those fucking legends about that well and skin-stealing and all the rest. They're all over the internet. Oh, and Alfie's little weasel friend is already doing the fucking math. 'If I was trying to hide from the cops and I knew where I could skin someone and put on their face—'"

"Fuck," Alfie spat. "So we need to do something about them."

"So we take them up to the caves," Susie said. "That was the plan—"

"That was the plan till you took this dumb ox out there." Mickey poked Alfie with a sharp fingernail. "If you'd got Tanya up there first—"

"You heard the way she was talking. Besides, we needed to take care of Alfie, he was the only dangerous one. And Francis—"

"I told you to knock it off with the 'Francis' shit," Alfie snarled.

"Alright, Alfie," she retorted.

"Motherfucker," he fumed. "I swear I'm gonna get a new nickname for this guy if I have to beat it into people—"

"Shove it, Francis," Mickey said. "You won't have a chance to, not if those two back at the cabin figure things out before we can skin 'em. And that's assuming Killer's gonna gonna go along with being Susie's little sister or that cock-muncher."

"Calm the fuck down, man," Susie said. "Killer's not gonna have a choice. He might not like it, but between that and going back to Woodson—"

"We could always leave him," Alfie said. "him and Finn. Fuck, that's what he'd do in our place. Tanya's hot to get out of here anyway, we could totally drive off and— Christ!" He shut his eyes, and his face briefly flashed purple. "Tanya. I gotta nail her, and I don't care if—"

"Forget what Tanya wants," Mickey said, "she ain't going nowhere unless we let her, and we're not letting her until it's someone else in her skin. Hers and Dougie's. Trouble is, I don't know how we're going to get her up there, not with her head full of ghost stories about witchcraft and skinwalkers."

"Can you get the doorknob up there?" Alfie asked. "I guess I could talk him into—"

"Oh, I got Dougie all figured out, don't worry. I can get him up there and back before supper. But you two need to think about Tanya. She's your sister, 'Susie'!"

"Alright," Susie grumbled. "But there won't be any trouble after we get Doug, right? I mean, we could just haul her up there, the way we hauled Scarlett's skanky ass—"

"That should work," Alfie said. "And maybe before that, when it's just us and her in the cabin, I could—"

But Mickey had came to a stop, distracted, for Randall's words had brought it all back, brought back the memories of being grabbed by an ugly, red-headed escaped con with a viciously disfiguring scar running down his cheek, and of being hauled, writhing and yelling, up the hillside into a dank cave, and of being thrust into a pool and held there as a knife gouged at his throat.
That was the hell of having the memories that came with the skins: you got to remember the change from both sides.

It had been bad enough that he'd bolted the cavern when Randall half-pushed, half-carried the screaming Susie to the well, and he'd crouched in the antechamber as it happened, hugging his knees, even after a babble of voices told him it was over. Not until Susie, a queer, half-crazed smile on her face, emerged from the inner cave, did Mickey scramble weakly to his feet. His skin—Scarlett's skin—had crawled and itched the whole time they were clambering down the hillside, and he'd had the queasy feeling that the person next to him wasn't Susie, and that it wasn't Randall, either. That it was a bag of filth, animated by bugs and vermin that, if it fell against a sharp rock, would split open, spilling a mass of millipedes and spiders and cockroaches and scorpions that would scurry away like a living carpet. Not until they were back at the cabin, and the two of them were in the bathroom and he could feel the girl's warm skin against his as they showered together, did the awful hallucination fade.

And now he was thinking about taking another victim-to-be out there. He'd managed to miss Alfie's "baptism." But he could guess how contemptuous Killer would be if he ran out on Dougie's.

"Well, if we're gonna do it," Alfie said, startling Mickey from his reverie, "instead of just bugging out without Killer and Finn—which I still think we should do—we better get started. Never mind the two back at the cabin figuring out what's going on, the fucking cops are gonna make a sweep of the cave if they haven't already. Which, if we're lucky, they've already done, and we won't have to even worry about Killer and Finn."

"Okay, then let's go back," Mickey said. "But first—" She stopped Alfie with a hand to his chest. "Lemme have the car keys."

"The fuck for?"

"For the way you been talking. If I'm gonna take Dougie up to the well, I don't wanna come back with him and find that you two 'lovebirds' have bolted back to town and left the rest of us to the cops. Especially since Finn says you just need the knife and a good grip to tear these skins off someone."

Alfie glowered but dug a hand into his front pocket and pulled out a set of keys. He slapped them into Mickey's hand so hard that he winced.

"Fine," Alfie said. "But you get right to work on that little dick fluffer when we get back."

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A PM from Sean is waiting when you log in to post Chapter 15.

Whao! he writes in answer to the side chapter you sent him. That was great! Did you write this just for me? Thanks if you did. You should include it or adapt it and make it a story of its own.

Glad you liked it, you write back. Just something to tell you thanks for all the inspiraition you give me here.

You smirk after sending it. He's definitely hooked now!

Next: "Party of Five, Chapter 16" 

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