The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Inside Information

Previously: "The Man in the Cindy Mask" 

There's nothing else to do with Shabbleman except bind him up. You drive far enough into town to find a hardware store, where you pick up a couple of locks and chains. Back out in the countryside you have to drive around for nearly thirty fruitless minutes before you find a lane screened by bushes where you can do the change-over. You have Cindy strip and climb into the trunk of your car, where you tie her up extra tightly with padlocks and bicycle chains. You then remove her mask and tie a gag around Shabbleman's mouth. He wakes as you do so, and he looks up at you with murderous anger. Naturally, he struggles, but you're pleased to see that he can barely move. You slam the trunk shut on him, and then climb into your car to change into Cindy.

You pause again as you look inside the mask. Those spider-web-like cracks, they can't mean anything good. You should be extra cautious, you shouldn't be putting a possibly broken mask to your face. But you're all ready to go.

It would be a heart-in-the-mouth moment when you hold the mask up to your face—if your golem body had a heart and a mouth for it to leap into ...

... And then you feel much smaller. But you still feel like yourself, albeit with Cindy's memories and personality laying over your own.

You are pleased to have carried out the experiment, for you have access to those memories she hadn't recovered, including her brief, post-capture conversation with Blackwell. It doesn't give you everything you want and need to know, but it's enough, you think, to let you bluff your way through a meeting.

* * * * *

"It's this girl's fucking boyfriend," you cluck your tongue peevishly. "My fucking boyfriend." You make a face. "I kept telling Prescott it was okay, that I was going to dump Seth's ass, but he still wouldn't do it with me. Wouldn't even let me suck him off." You toss your hair back. "I wonder if he thinks I'm pretty enough."

Blackwell grimaces as he paces the library. "I doubt that's the problem. Though, frankly, I'm now also beginning to doubt that story he spun last week about carnally taking a girl he barely knew." He snorts. "The boy he is currently impersonating— Well, let's just say he strikes me as little more than a lout and quite a bit more than a braggart, and Prescott has been channeling too much of his personality."

"I was breathing all over him, up and down," you whine. "He wasn't missing any signals. He even had to push me away at one point."

"Then he must be up to something," Blackwell muses darkly. "He called a little earlier, you know, saying he wouldn't be able to make his lesson tonight." He shoots you a sardonic look. "He said he was 'gettin' beezay' with a cheerleader. And yet here you are."

"Jerk. He must've called after he dropped me off at my place."

"He's been extra diligent in his studies up to this point," Blackwell mutters, more to himself than to you. "I wonder ..." He trails off.

"Well, assuming I can suck it out of him, how soon do I need to get his stuff to you, did you say?"

"His essentia? In normal cases, within the hour, but this is not a normal case. Indeed, he may not deposit any."

"What, you think there might be something wrong with Justin's equipment?"

Blackwell sniggers—an uncharacteristic and ugly sound. "That would explain a great deal, wouldn't it, and it would be just our luck. I suppose in that case we would have convince Prescott to switch hosts, and we would have to repeat the experiment again. Just to be sure."

"I'm not sucking him off more than once if I can't be sure there's a payoff."

"You will do as you are told," Blackwell snaps. "Your cousin has acquired keys that may unlock a great many mysteries. I am employing you—quite against my better judgment, I don't mind admitting—for the sole purpose of acquiring those keys."

"So what exactly are you trying to get out of him?"

"There may be no limit. But that is not your affair. I will pay you handsomely on the terms we agreed to."

"Even if there isn't a payoff? What happens if, like you say, he doesn't leave any cum inside this mask I'm wearing?"

"Then we will have to find some other way of extracting it from him. It's not like I can give him a magazine and a cup. Essentia doesn't pool. It inseminates." He rounds on you sharply and jabs at you with a finger. "And you keep that mask on. Don't take it off without getting my permission, or you'll ruin everything."

"How so?"

"Never mind." His voice is a snarl. "I had to specially prepare it as a proper receptacle. We can't have any seals broken until after you've acquired some of his emissions. And as I said, be sure to get out here with his seed within an hour of your tete-a-tete. The seed from a regular human lasts only that long inside a mask. He may only leave some of Roth's behind, in which case it will dematerialize much faster. And if it comes in any other form ..." Blackwell again trails off.

You don't know how much Shabbleman understands of essentia, or how Blackwell thinks their little scheme will work; after all, you only have the memories of what got said while he was wearing Cindy's form. But you decide to gamble on his ignorance: "What else could he leave except Justin's shit? It's not like there's a human being under that mask."

"But not a normal golem either," Blackwell says. "That is one of the reasons I am willing to gamble that he can transmit essentia through the usual means."

"You have other reasons?"

He gives you a hooded glance, and you worry you've miscalculated. But his reply suggests Blackwell only means to play coy. "As I said, he holds the keys to many mysteries. That is enough."

Your interview concludes shortly afterward, with Blackwell's exhortation that his confederate redouble his efforts to bring their object of interest to climax.

* * * * *

A most unsatisfactory interview, you reflect grimly as you walk out Blackwell's door. He wouldn't tell you much more than you already knew. He wants some of your essentia for secret purposes of his own. A mask is the only way of capturing it. A specially sealed mask, too. You lightly brush your cheek: those cracks—did you break that seal? Or did Shabbleman? Or do they have nothing to do with the seal at all? And why the skullduggery? Why won't Blackwell just ask you to squirt something into a specially prepared golem? As you slide into Justin's car—which you hid some distance away so Blackwell wouldn't see whose vehicle you drove out in—you glance in the rear view mirror. Maybe it has something to do with Shabbleman himself. It's pretty clear Blackwell isn't telling his confederate everything that he is up to.

Round and round you chase these thoughts as you drive back to that changing spot. You now wish you hadn't used the "gettin' it on with Cindy" excuse to back out of your previous appointment with Blackwell, for what will you tell him when you see him again? Probably better not to raise the subject.

You insert the key into the lock of the trunk, open it—

It's empty.

Empty! No Shabbleman. No chains, no padlocks, no gag. You grab the edge of the trunk as a wave of panicked dizziness washes over you.

Shit, Justin's stuff! You rush back to the passenger side of the car. His clothes are gone, as is his mask. Shabbleman must have taken them.

But how did he get out of a locked trunk? He shouldn't have even been able to escape his restraints.

Your knees weaken, and you have to sit down to think. Justin's mask isn't golemized—as you're a golem, there's no way to golemize a mask to be your slave. If he escaped, why didn't Shabbleman come into the house, either in or outside of Justin's disguise? You tremble. He must be playing a game of his own too.

Eventually you decide you've no choice but to go home. You ditch Justin's car in a remote location and call a cab to take you back to Cindy's—there's nothing else to do.

Or is there?

* * * * *

"I'm going out with Brenda tonight!" That's Lucy's voice, calling from downstairs. Mrs. Vredenburg says something, and Lucy says something back. Then you hear her pass your bedroom, and her door closes behind her.

It's clear that Lucy is also a fake—though how Blackwell got ahold of her is as murky as everything else. (But then, Lucy is a college student.) She may be a golem or she may be worse. The safe thing to do is to stay in Cindy's form, go to school, and see what shakes out. But you feel so many dangers pressing around you that you doubt that the "safest" thing to do is safe at all. Taking the mask off Lucy might reveal some vital clues. Wearing her instead of Cindy ... it would be a different hiding place, and you'd have Cindy back as a confederate after making the switch.

Next: "Secret Agents and Hidden Agendas" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"