The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

Taming a Big Dog

Previously: "An Alpha of Your Own" 

"A date?" you squeak. "Who with?"

Chelsea titters. "He wouldn't tell us."

Well, I'll find out soon enough, you reflect to yourself.

Gordon is standing just inside the loft, scowling, and he glares mulishly at you and Chelsea as you step into the loft. The lights are off, and despite the glow of the late afternoon sun, shadows hang in the air.

Steve Patterson is sprawled on his back on one of the workout mats that pad the floor. His head lolls to the side, and his legs and arms are splayed akimbo, as though he's been flung unconscious to the floor. His eyes are open, staring, but vacant. His jaw is slack.

You edge around to look down at him. Even laid out this way, like a broken toy, there is an impression of strength in his frame.

If he does have a date, he's not dressed for it. He's wearing a gray sweatshirt under a light-blue windbreaker, and dark-red athletic shorts. Calf-length socks and canvas sneakers complete the look of a high school basketball jock on his way to a court date. But he was carrying a backpack, which sags near his hip.

"I guess you know what to do next, Will," Chelsea says.

"Huh?" Her voice jerks you out of your fascinated stare at your impersonation-to-be. "Oh, yeah." You look around. "Where's the, uh, stuff?" You mime painting your hand. "That we put in the masks?"

"Oh, in here." Chelsea hops over to the old, warped cabinets on the wall opposite the windows. She opens one of the door and pulls out the containers of the pastes that you've made. You take them and, for lack of a better place, set them on the dorm refrigerator.

"Well, I guess I'll get started," you start to say, but your voice dies in your throat when you see Gordon glaring at you. For a moment, you are convinced he's about to lunge and grab you.

Maybe Chelsea caught the same murderous gleam in his eye, for hurries over to grasp him by a brawny arm.

"We'll leave you to it, Will," she says. "Come on, pookie," she tells Gordon. He casts a last baleful look at you even as he lets his girlfriend usher him out of the loft. After they are off the staircase, you bolt over to the door and lock it.

That leaves you alone with Steve Patterson.

And there's not a moment left to lose, as you are on a deadline.

* * * * *

You flail yourself awake, rolling from side to side and striking out at the air. The world swims as you sit up, flattens out, then comes into focus again. You grind the heel of your hand across your face.

It is no darker than when you laid down to pull off Yumi's mask. But for the ache in your limbs, no time at all might have passed. But you feel as though you've been dragged from a long and deep sleep.

How much time do I have? you ask yourself with a hammering heart, and cast a fearful glance over at Patterson. He's still sprawled where Chelsea and Gordon left him, on one of the old mats. But there's a blue mask resting on his face.

That means you may have only seconds before he too stirs and wakes up.

As quickly as you can, while making as little noise as you can, you crab-walk on your naked ass—you pulled off all Yumi's clothes before lying down to pull the mask off—over to Patterson. With infinite care you pull the mask away, exposing his face.

He is staring straight at you. Your heart rockets into your throat.

But there is no twitch in his eye, at least not yet. You swallow your heart, look around for Yumi's mask—

It's ten feet away, back where you were laying. You whimper to yourself as you scuttle back to get it.

Maybe it's only nerves—your own horrified fright—but you think you see the muscles around Patterson's eyes twitch, and his eyes start to pull into focus, as you push Yumi's mask onto his face.

Then it's Yumi's eyes that shifting and focusing as she looks up at you.

"Oh, whoa," she gasps, and for a heart-cracking moment you are almost sure it is still Patterson speaking.

But when she sits up and looks around with a lot of un-girlish sighing and snorting, and gives you a vague double-take, you feel reassured. Patterson would have simply hit you, you feel.

"Oh, God," she says as she looks down, for she is wearing Patterson's clothes—you didn't pull them off him before pulling your own off. Then she looks up at you.

"So I guess we did the switch, huh, boss?" she says.

"Uh ... yeah," you say.

"You want me to get out of these?" she asks, and plucks at the sweatshirt that, tent-like, has enveloped her much more petite body.

"Uh ... sure."

Brusquely, she begins to pull the things off. You watch her uncertainly before asking, "So, what do you remember?"

She glances at you. "What do I have to remember?"

"I mean ... Do you remember what's going?"

She pauses in the act of kicking Patterson's shorts off.

"I think so," she says slowly. "Um ... We were going to swap places with Steve. Right?"

"Yeah."

"Well ... Anything else?"

"You know what's going, right? I mean, you know that you're—" You lick your lips. "You're not really Yumi," you finish in a husky voice.

She gives you a look.

"Yes, boss," she sighs. "No need to rub in it. I know there's these magic masks, and that you and Chelsea have been copying people and—"

She stands up and, while pointedly not looking at you, quickly starts folding Steve's clothes.

"And have been going around pretending to be them," she finishes primly.

"Right." It leaves you feeling a little wretched to have this ... thing ... that looks and talks like Yumi talking about things this way. "So you know that you're, um, supposed to be helping Chelsea?"

She gives you another of those looks.

"Yes, boss," she sighs. "Secret agent girl, that's me."

Then she turns to give you a direct look. She holds your eye a moment.

Then she grins, looking like the devil herself.

* * * * *

As she dresses, she reviews her assignment with you, not only accepting your vague and awkward exhortations to work with Chelsea, but volunteering ideas for how to spread a little more mischief amid the anti-Chelsea faction on the squad. She's not lost so much of Yumi's own personality that she doesn't bitch a little about Chelsea, but her complaints are that Chelsea isn't going to tell her enough of what the scheme is in order to help out enough.

Then with a quick, Catch you around later, boss, Yumi's replacement marches from the loft and into Yumi's life.

And that leaves you—

You push your hands through your hair, and blow out a couple of nervous breaths as you stare with unseeing eyes at the folded clothes that she left behind for your new impersonation. The unsealed mask is resting next to them.

Unsealed ...

You shake yourself out of a sudden stupor, and wonder why you are being so skittish.

Steve has a date!

That's what Chelsea said. You wonder if that's why you seem so frightened.

You sit on the workout mat with the sealants and pick up the new mask. As you turn it over, you can't help flinching at the name that floats above the surface: STEVEN PERCEVAL PATTERSON.

That's when you understand. It's the guy himself—even locked up in a mask—who is daunting you.

Steve Patterson is one of the alpha-est of alpha-alpha dogs at Westside, right up near the top if not at the very top, along with Gordon. (That he has access to this loft is proof of that.) He is a star on the Westside basketball team—a team that this year everyone is expecting to go to all the way—and a guy who takes shit from no one, but who doles plenty of it out when he wants. He can inspire terror in plenty of your peers just with a look, for he combines his strapping physical presence with a granite-like confidence, all of which come into focus in his cold gray eyes.

You really think you've got the moxie to pretend to be him?

You set your jaw as you paint the inside of the mask with the two sealants, and burn some hair into it, but your hands still tremble a little. And when you are done, your heart flutters in your chest like a nervous dove.

Here goes, you gulp as you lay back on the mat and raise the mask over your face.

Then you freeze. You hold the mask over your face and stare at the name.

Fuck you, Patterson, you find yourself thinking at the name, and at the mask. Fuck you, I'm not afraid of you. Look what I got, I got you here, in my hands. I got you and I'm gonna wear you. Yeah, I'm gonna wear you like a suit of clothes, and I'm gonna be you. That's right, I'm gonna get right inside you and I'm gonna be you and you're gonna do what I say, it's gonna be me, not you, who's got your stuff, who is you.

I'm gonna be you, and there's fuck all you were ever going to be able to do about it.

You let your eyes close as you lower the mask to your face.

You feel it resting there a moment. Then you are overwhelmed by darkness and dragged down into oblivion.

* * * * *

You lay on the floor for many long minutes, gazing at the ceiling from under half-closed lids. You splay a hand across your chest—the broad strong chest matted with curly hair.

So was that all there was to it? you wonder. Fuck, man, you knew it all along. You knew it was gonna be this way, after being Yumi. You were a pussy for ever worrying.

With a light smirk you raise up, and lever yourself to your feet. The floor falls distantly away, and you have to duck to miss braining yourself on a rafter as you pad over to the corner where there's a mirror.

A naked Steve Patterson stares back from its depths at you.

Next: Coming soon! Check back!

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