The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Making the Most of Your Friends

Previously: "Shadowing Sean" 

You have been diligently executing your plan for the last two weeks (almost), and you are impatient to launch it. But not so impatient that you lose all control.

So you spend a good chunk of Friday night reviewing your options and taking stock.

What tools do you have? Besides that copy of Sean's mind, you've got another metal band all prepared. You made it with no real plan, but you've a potential use for it now: If you want, you can copy the brain as well as the body of one of Sean's friends. But you could also keep it back in case some other use comes up.

You've also got three masks, but only two of them have been polished. One of them is for copying Sean; the other is for copying someone so you can approach him from under some other face. Again, that could be the face of one of his friends, but your original plan called for you to copy a couple of random people into it, making a totally new face.

So your choices aren't unlimited, exactly. But you've got a lot of slack you can play with.

You go to bed still undecided, and are still undecided when you wake the next morning. You know yourself well enough to know what that means: that you are going to play "the waiting game" over the weekend. Without much hope you log in to stories.net, where you find that views of your story have topped off in the low thirties (which is depressing), and that Sean still hasn't sent you a PM (which is even more depressing).

And on top of that, you have to work that morning at Salopek, where you will see Sean.

So you are not in much of a good mood when Caleb texts late in the morning—while you are still at work, in fact—to see if you want to get together with him and Keith.

* * * * *

"So how have you been keeping yourself busy?" Caleb asks after you and he and Keith are seated with your burgers. Normally you'd be at McDonalds, but Keith talked you into meeting at the Carl's Jr. on the east side of town instead. You never eat at Carl's Jr., but a burger is basically a burger, so you didn't kick.

"What do you mean?" you ask. There is a note of insolence behind his question, and it's a weird question besides. "I'm keeping busy the way I always keeping busy." You suspect he is making a veiled reference to your job at Salopek: the job that he wanted you to get for him.

"Just doesn't seem like we've seen as much of you as usual," Caleb says.

Keith suddenly jerks in his seat and says "Huh?" just exactly as though he'd been kicked under the table. "Oh, yeah," he says, and takes a bite from his juicy burger. "Lrkyv bn frdng S," he mumbles through a full mouth.

"I'm not avoiding you guys," you protest. "I've just been busy."

"With what?"

"Well, like with work." You lift your chin. "You still feeling pissy about that?"

Caleb's mouth twists into a sour smile.

"You also seem to be real busy getting into fights with assholes," he says. Keith stops in mid-chew.

It takes you a moment to pick up on what he's talking about. "Oh, you mean that thing I got into with Ryan Shuler?" You snort.

"Yeah. You know," Caleb drawls, "that's the kind of thing you'd usually rush over to tell us about. You'd be over at my house right after, all moaning like, 'Dude, I'm so dead, I did something real stupid, I got Ryan Shuler mad at me'."

You're not wearing that mental copy of Sean. But maybe because you've been wearing it so much recently, you feel your hackles rise, and you get a hot, queasy feeling in the pit of your stomach. "Pssh, I can handle him," you mutter, and shove half your burger into your mouth.

Caleb looks over at Keith, who is looking more and more uncomfortable. "Well, if you say, Will. But you know, after." He shrugs.

"After, what?"

He shrugs again. "Just after. I guess me and Keith will know when that is. I get the impression Shuler's not like Patterson. He doesn't know enough to not leave marks."

You drop your burger and lean back in your seat. The fuck are these guys going on about? you wonder. Caleb is looking prim and sour, as though he knows something you don't, but is too discreet to share it. Keith is looking pinched.

"Is this some kind of 'intervention'?" you ask.

Caleb's lip curls mirthlessly.

"Too late for that, right?" he says. "Maybe call it a pre-wake. We get to hang out with the corpse while it's still alive." He tucks back into his burger.

"Oh, fuck you guys," you mutter. You've lost your appetite, but you finish your meal anyway.

* * * * *

Though you're put off by their attitude, but accede when Caleb suggests the three of you go see a movie. There's nothing new at the theater, but it's been weeks since you've been to a show, so you don't mind seeing something that's been out for awhile. When Caleb suggests Cravenmoor, a horror movie that opened last weekend, you back him over Keith's protests that "Mike and Carlos" (whoever they are) said it was a piece of shit.

But then, you've got an ulterior reason to get your friends into a darkened theater, and you tell them that you'll have to run home first and that you'll meet them there.

They aren't in the lobby when you finally get to the Silver Cinemas, so you text Caleb, and he tells you they're already in the auditorium. You're tapping another text while waiting for your popcorn when you're interrupted by a gruff but amused voice: "Still alive, I see." You look up sharply. Alec Brown, in an usher's uniform, grins at you from the other side of the counter. He winks and moves over to help another customer; you frown after him. Fuck everyone, you think.

Caleb and Keith, when you find them, are sitting one seat apart, and after reviewing that geography you decide it won't do. So you plop directly down between them. "What?" you say when each of them turn to give you a look. They both sigh and look away, and for a moment you worry that they'll keep to their seats. But then Caleb suddenly moves over one seat, and Keith, after a fractional hesitation, does the same on the other side. You smile to yourself. Three seats now separate them. Even better: the auditorium holds only a few other scattered patrons as the lights go down. You've got lots of room for shenanigans now.

The movie itself probably wouldn't hold your attention anyway, but you're antsy and distracted as you nerve yourself up. After about forty minutes, you slide out of your seat, muttering "Be right back" to Caleb as you squeeze past his knees. You go out the doors, where you extract the bundle you smuggled into the theater under your shirt: one of the blank masks, which you swaddled inside another t-shirt. With it in your hands you go back inside and slip down the row directly behind your friends, who are seated too far apart to sense anything is going on with the other. When you're behind Caleb you carefully reach around to press the mask onto his face. It vanishes from your hand, and you find yourself pawing his face as his head lolls to one side.

The worst part now comes: waiting for the mask to reappear. At first you lean forward with your arms draped around him, so as to catch it when it falls out of him. But you pull back in alarm when the screen brightens with a daylight scene—Keith might be more than a couple of seats away, but he still might spot you if he glances over. After an anxious moment, you slip up a row to sit next to Caleb but on the other side, where Keith won't see you. Five, eight, ten minutes pass as you watch Caleb's face, and grab the mask when it appears there.

Then, with a heart that is trying to burst from your chest, you jump back into the row behind, and slip behind Keith. Now that you know what you're doing, it goes much more smoothly. You get the mask onto Keith, then huddle in the chair next to him until the mask comes out. Then you grab it and run for the exit.

But you pause before leaving, and glance around the theater. Maybe you should put a third face into the mask? Maybe the face you are holding will look too much like Caleb or Keith, so that Sean might recognize them, before or after you meet him?

Probably the smart thing is to do nothing, but you are feeling mad and light-headed with success. So when you spot one person sitting alone near the side of the auditorium, you do the trick a third time, and for the third time pull it off. You are almost giddy at your success when you finally scamper from the auditorium to the bathroom, where you carefully rewrap the mask with the spare t-shirt, and slip it back under your armpit.

You take it out to your truck and deposit it, but instead of returning to the movie, you camp out in the lobby with your phone, glancing up every few minutes for signs of Caleb and Keith. They are looking mildly vexed when they emerge. "The fuck happened to you?" Caleb demands.

You shrug. "I wasn't much into the movie. So I came out here and watched something on my phone."

"That was one ass-pensive movie ticket you bought, then," Caleb retorts, but you shrug, being too happy to answer.

For you found a PM when you logged in to stories.net, from Sean.

He has taken the bait.

Next: "Hook and Haul" 

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