The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

The Emerging Backstory

Previously: "Four in the Dark" 

It's embarrassing—mortifying!—to have to confess that you know and can remember everything that Adam Dortch knows and could remember, when it becomes soon apparent that he can't say the same about you.

"What do you mean you don't, uh, know anything about me?" you stammer after he has as much as told you so. "You— you're in my body! You've got my brain!"

"Do I not fucking speak English, cocksucker?" he retorts. His manner is very hostile, and his eyes—eyes that were once yours—burn with anger. "How the fuck do you know about my car and what's in it? What the fuck else do you know about me and my shit?"

Only everything, you think with a wince. Unbidden, images of Adam's house, his family, his friends, come flooding in.

"Look, we can argue about this later," you tell him. "If we can go back inside, find the asshole who did this to us—" You lick your lips as you look between Adam—clenched with anger—and Laura—who looks bewildered—and wish you hadn't said anything.

"No, I want this out now!" Adam hisses. He springs forward to grab at the collar of your shirt. But Catherine is still clinging to you, so he can't fully grapple with you, and you manage to push him off. "The fuck do you know about all this?" he yells, "and how come the fuck you don't want to talk about it?"

"I do want to talk about it!" you holler. "But I also wanna catch—!"

"Stop it! Both of you!" Laura screams. She then wheels and runs for the red sedan. Beside you, Catherine moans.

Adam thrusts a finger in your face.

"I'm'a giving you ten seconds, motherfucker, to explain the fuck you're up to, and then I'm gonna—!"

* * * * *

But you can't explain yourself. You can only insist that, yes, you know a bunch about him, including (when he asks, through grinding teeth) "private things," but you're at a total loss to explain why he doesn't know the same about you. Catherine only shakes her head violently when you ask if she knows anything about Laura (but it also seems like she's hardly able to think at all), and Laura, when you talk to her through the rolled-up window of her car, also says she doesn't know anything about Catherine.

Adam doesn't follow through on his threats, though. He only yells and hisses and glares murderously at you. And he point-blank refuses to go back into the theater, not after accusing you of wanting to lure him back into the dark so you can "fuck me up some more!"

You are at last able to get him to calm partway down—or maybe you just outlast him—by repeatedly asking what he wants to do now, what any of you can do now. Even then, he only paces and wheels in place, acting like a pot that's violently boiling under a heavy lid. Eventually, from the way he keeps glaring first at you and then at Catherine, who insists on binding herself to you, you realize that at least part of his anger is due to seeing his girlfriend curled up in the arm of the guy who is now inhabiting her boyfriend's body.

"Hey," you say to her as you try to pry her off. "Catherine." She doesn't want to let go of you, and her eyes are wide with terror when you at last succeed in unclamping her from your arms and torso. You have to hold her by the arms to keep her from reattaching herself to you. "I know," you start to say, then catch yourself. "That's Adam over there," you tell her, and nod at the guy who now looks like you. "I know I look like— But he's the one who—" You can't finish the sentence for the horrified look she gives you.

"Hey man," you call to Adam. "Can you please come—?"

That's all the invitation he needs, and he bounds over. She flinches and bats at him, but he holds onto her, and you do too.

"Listen, just go talk to him," you urge her. "He's the one— You know what's going on. He's the one you need to be with."

Catherine blinks at you, and tears of confusion and hurt show in her eyes. Then something like realization seems to break there, and with a gasp she turns to Adam. He holds onto her, looking deeply into her face. "Catherine," he says softly, "it's me." Then he draws her off a little ways.

You turn, but are still watching them from the corner of your eye, when you're startled by the sound of a car door slamming. You look around to see Laura advancing on you. But for a brief moment you don't recognize her for who she is, for she is in Catherine's body, and in that moment you are Adam Dortch looking at his girlfriend.

Her cheeks are tear-stained, and she looks dirty and unkempt and frazzled. But her expression, though melancholy, is calm.

"God," she says as she watches the other two as they draw off. "This has got to be just awful for her!"

"How are you doing?" you ask.

"Better than her. Jesus!" She twists around and looks away.

"What's wrong?"

"Look at her! She's such a lard-ass now! I was such a lard-ass!" she wails.

"No you weren't. No you're not." Instinct takes over, and you pull her to your side. Catherine's body feels very natural and comfortable there. "There's a lot of girls who are, you know— And you weren't one of them."

"I was too! Look at me over there!" She shudders. "I didn't know! I mean, I sort of did, I can look in a mirror! But looking at ... me ... from the outside—!" She shudders again. "That's why I say it's got to be so awful for her! She's so pretty! And now—"

"You were pretty too, Laura."

"I feel almost guilty."

"It's hard for all of us."

A pained silence descends on the both of you. Then she asks, "You really, like, remember and know all kinds of stuff that Adam knows?"

You can't help stiffening. "Uh huh."

"That's frigging weird, Will."

"I don't know why," you insist. "I mean, if I've got his brain— I mean, if I'm in his body, if I'm in his brain, shouldn't I—?"

"It's not the same thing!" Laura asks. She looks up to peer at you suspiciously. "I mean, if it's our souls that got moved around—"

"But if I got moved into his brain, shouldn't I remember?"

"Then how come I can't? Why can't he?"

"I don't know."

Her expressions tenses, and you can't help seeing the accusation—more doubtful, more reluctant, but the same that Adam had—forming there. Are you the one that did this to us?

So you pre-empt it. "You're the one who got us all to come out here," you remind her. "You're the one who set it up."

"I did not!" she protests in shock. "It was Christian—"

Then she whips around. "Where is he?" she asks. "Why didn't he ever show up?"

"Because that was him waiting inside the theater for us?" you grimly suggest. Now that she has mentioned Padilla, it all seems totally obvious. "Anyway," you assure her, "I only meant it was your idea that we all get together out here."

"But it wasn't," she replies even as she continues to look around with a preoccupied gaze, as though expecting Padilla to pop out from under a man-hole cover and shout, "Surprise!" "It was all Christian's idea."

"But you're the one who got the ball rolling. This morning at school, remember, when we met?"

Now she turns to look at you, puzzled. "When at school?" she asks.

"In the parking lot. Before class. You were waiting out there—"

"I was waiting at Salvation Donuts all morning for Elle to show up and she never did," she says. "This is the first time I've seen you today."

She winces as she glances you up and down. "And you don't even look like yourself anymore!"

* * * * *

After a little questioning, and some looking through cell phones, it all becomes clear. Laura was lured out to Salvation Donuts by "Meryle_Elle," one of Clover Mystery's accounts, and almost didn't get to school in time for first period. A little digging also discloses that the DMs you all got from Christian Padilla came from an account that was spoofing his. Laura is incredulous at your story that you saw and talked to her in the parking lot at school, for it sounds too much like the stories of meeting her and Elle and others where they insist they never were, but you retort that it's less strange than this "body swap" you are all now suffering, and she doesn't doubt that that has happened.

Adam and Catherine have drifted back by then. She looks very wan but is much calmer, and doesn't cling to him like she was clinging to you. (But she also doesn't look you in the face, and never addresses you, either.) Everyone in fact is much calmer, and after desultory talk it is agreed that you'll head to a burger place or somewhere more comfortable to talk.

You feel a little better once you've got some food in you—though you have to pay for your doppelganger's meal; but you're using his money so it's okay—and in the quiet, pained conversation that follows it is reluctantly agreed that of course you will all have to go home "as each other" for the night. Catherine and Laura withdraw to another table so they can privately explain to each other what to expect and what they should do. Adam doesn't need to explain anything to you, but you explain to him what he'll find at the Prescott house. Mostly, you advise him to go home late (just before ten) and head straight for his bedroom.

He is pale, and quiet, but baleful as he listens. "I didn't do this to us," you are driven to insist.

"That's what you'd say if you did," he retorts.

He clenches and unclenches a fist. "If I promise not to fucking kill you," he says, "will you tell me what you're doing and why you're doing it?"

Next: "Madam I'm Adam" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 5)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)"