The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Guys Into Dolls

Previously: "Three Perfect Scores" 

"Okay, you're right," you tell Caleb. "We're supposed to be doing this like a science experiment. So let's, you know—" Get this over with before I change my mind.

Caleb looks surprised.

So does Keith.

"Dude!" he exclaims. "Why would you want to—? I'm not givin' up what I got here!" Again, he taps the mask, which is resting on the table top in front of him.

Caleb snaps his fingers at Keith and holds out his hand. "Come on, give it over," he says.

"No!"

"Keith," you say in a warning tone.

"You gonna mess up that mask of Chelsea?" he exclaims.

That was all the distraction Caleb needed. While Keith is staring, bug-eyed, at you, he snatches the mask up off the table. Too late Keith scrambles for it. "Give it back!" he yells.

So Caleb does. By smooshing it into Keith's face.

* * * * *

"Motherfuckers," Keith snarls in an undertone for about the twentieth time since waking back up. Only quick thinking on your part saved him from cracking the back of his skull on the table when he passed out on his feet. You caught him in mid-air, and fell under him to the floor, banging your shoulders and hips up bad.

"Oh, shut up," you mutter back at him. "It's for science."

"Fuck science. I—"

"If we give you another mask to play with," Caleb says, "will you shut the fuck up?" He is concentrating on sealing up the last of the three masks you have now finished adapting.

"Play with it how?" Keith asks darkly.

"However you want. Use it to get another copy of Lin. Or whoever."

"Chelsea?" Keith asks.

"Whoever," Caleb repeats.

You look between them, your mouth hanging open. Could Caleb possibly be serious about giving Keith another mask to play with? You've only got one more!

"Alright, here we are," Caleb says as he hands the mask to you. He looks around your group. "We gonna do this now?"

You all exchange glances. The grumpiness has evaporated from Keith's face, and now he looks wary and a little nervous. Caleb is calm. As for you—

The mask seems to burn in your hands, and you get a tingle up your arms to your elbows. Keith, when he woke, was hot with demands that he should get Chelsea's mask on account of the fucking bullshit way Caleb double-crossed him. Fucking assault! was what he called it. But Caleb (and you, of course), held firm that each of you should use the mask that you used up at school. And that means you are holding a mask that mixes your features with those of Chelsea Cooper.

"Yeah, I'm ready," Keith says. "Fuckin' waste that it is." Before you can react, he picks up the mask that is sitting on the table by his hip. He lifts it to his face and it vanishes there. Again, you and Caleb have to leap over and grab him before he can fall off the table and break his neck.

"I'm gonna fucking kill him," you mutter as you lower him onto the table top. "Or next time, I'm just gonna let him—"

Then the words die in your throat, and you have to swallow them, as you look down to see who it is you're holding.

It's Lin.

Well, not exactly Lin, but close. Her eyes are closed and her face is slack, but her features are feminine, and her dark hair is long and thick. Your gaze travels down the length of her body, and there's no missing the bulges under the plaid print shirt where her breasts would be. The rest of her is slim, but the overall shape is impossible to make out inside of Tilley's baggy jeans.

The sound of Caleb's labored breathing pulls you back to the present. Like you, he is bent over the unconscious body, staring at it closely. "Well, what do you think?" you ask.

He starts. "Huh? Oh. Well, um—" He points to Keith. "Another case of, um, it making turning out to be a girl."

"It looks a lot more like Lin than the other one looked like Jenny," you observe.

"You think?" Caleb says. He hovers his palms over Keith's forehead and chin, making a frame around his face. "Still looks to me a lot like Keith."

"Well, maybe."

"Best to wait for him to wake up."

"Yechh. You remember what he got up to with Jenny's mask."

"We'll hold him down if we have to." Caleb looks at you. "You ready to go?"

You swallow. "Sure, I guess." You look around for your mask—which you flung aside when you went to catch Keith—but then Caleb says, "Maybe we should wait for Keith to wake up. Do it one at a time."

"Whatever, man." You scoop up the fallen mask from the floor, and slump into a chair. Caleb glances around before taking a seat of his own. After fidgeting for a bit, you each take out your phones.

* * * * *

It's something about his eyes, you find yourself thinking as you study Keith's reflection in the mirror. And his nose. His mouth. Hell, it's just his whole face. It fucks up everything.

The resemblance to Lin didn't entirely vanish when he woke up and got up, but the figure who is twisting and turning and admiring herself in the full-length mirror looks less like Lin than she did when she was passed out. Only the softer, smaller bone structure in the face, and the thick, tousled hair keep you from just seeing Tilley in front of you.

Oh, there are more subtle variations. Take those eyes, for instance. Lin is Chinese-American, but Keith's froggy eyes have changed that. If you had to peg this girl's ethnicity, you'd say she looks more Hispanic than anything else. Her nose is fuller and flatter than Lin's, and her mouth bigger, with more pronounced teeth. In fact, her expression when she saw herself in the mirror—eyebrows shooting up, eyes bulging, mouth gaping—reminded you of a jackass caught in mid-bray. Hee-haw, lookit me, I'ma gur-url! it seemed to say.

But her hair softens her features. Give her some makeup, stop her from grinning, and she might even be attractive. She certainly has bigger, sexier breasts than the Keith-Jenny mix did.

And Keith is absurdly pleased with this look.

"Oh my God," he moans in a throaty but feminine voice as he grips and fondles his exposed breasts. "I could snack on these all day!"

"So you've said," you retort. "Just keep your hands out of your pants." And yet you can't resist sneaking a glance at his hips and his ass which, now that she has stripped down to boxers, reveal a very pleasing shape.

"When Johansson wakes up," Keith says, "you should take off, let him me have a little special time wi'ch each other. You know?" he snickers.

"Take that up with him." Yet you can't help wincing, for the fact is, the longer you look at this girl, the more stirred you feel. It leaves you jumpy, and you turn away to take another look at Caleb, who is still passed out on the old, banged-up conference table.

He wound up going second, laying himself out more carefully after Keith woke up. You know better, now, than to make instant judgements about the changes. But you're pretty sure that Caleb's transformation will be more ... successful ... than Keith's. As with Keith, the mask has given him a feminine form. But if he doesn't look much like Maria, he looks a lot prettier than Tilley.

"Hey," Keith says, "what're we gonna do for clothes?"

"What do you mean?"

"For when we go out?"

"Go out?" you echo, and turn to look at him. "You mean in public?"

"Sure! This's fun. But I wanna, you know, go out and be seen!"

You can't keep the smirk off your face. "Why, so some creep can hit on you?"

"No!" He looks offended, but then his expression turns thoughtful. "Although—"

"Forget it." You turn back to Caleb, who is beginning to stir. "This is just for science."

* * * * *

You were right that Caleb would turn out prettier than Keith, but also right to (mostly) withhold judgement. The girl who rises off the table is very feminine, but her face is animated by Caleb's quick expressiveness, so that you could almost guess it was him anyway.

"Jesus," she says as she studies herself in the mirror. She pushes and squeezes at her cheeks and chin with the palms of her hands. "I wish I knew what kind of algorithm the masks use to come up with these things. I don't see anything in here that looks like Maria. Or like me."

That is true: where Keith's mask blended his features with Lin's, Caleb's mask seems to have cancelled out their faces to come up with something new.

For instance, he and Maria both have large, prominent eyes, but this girl's eyes are small and narrow, and when she relaxes she looks prim and amused. Her mouth is large but her lips are small, so that they almost disappear when she sets her jaw. Her nose is small—another difference from both Caleb and Maria. All that remains of your friend is a dancing intelligence in the dark eyes; Maria is more fully represented by the light brown complexion, and the long, thick brown hair that falls to the top of her shoulders.

As for the rest of her: Well, again, it's odd. Both Caleb and Maria are relatively tall compared to their peers, but this girl is short. She seems to have retained all of Maria's other attributes, though: She's got big, fat breasts like artillery shells; her hips are wide; and her thighs and calves—which you get a good look at after Caleb has peeled himself down to his boxers—are very muscular. It's almost as if the mask retains all of Maria's attributes from the neck down, but has squashed and exaggerated them slightly. But, overall, there's no chance of her being confused with Maria if anyone sees her.

"Alright, dude," the girl who is Keith says, and you flinch when she touches your shoulder. "Your turn. Let's see how much you can fuck up Chelsea Cooper's face wi'ch yours!"

Next: "Who Will? Chelsea Will!" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 1)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)"