The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Masks and Rough Play

Previously: "The Stage, Your World?" 

You creep into the row behind the person with the cell phone, grimacing at each squelching step you take. But your target seems oblivious, bending his or her head over the cell phone screen.

Looks like a girl, you decide when you're right behind them, for they seem to have long hair. But of course that doesn't settle the matter conclusively.

You set your bag down and softly unzip it. The mask rattles against your books as you pull it out. Still, the person in front of you doesn't stir. You lift the mask, then hesitate. Can you just settle it on the back of their head? It doesn't seem likely. So you palm your mask in your hand and you reach around to take them from the front.

Too late they lift their head. With a jarring blow, you grab them from behind and slam the mask into their face. Your heart goes into your throat as you find your hand pressing against warm flesh, and you leap back into your own seat.

For a moment nothing happens. Then the person in front of you sags and flops to the side. Sweat pops out on your brow, and on the palms of your hands, as they slip down in their seat.

There's some activity on stage now, but you ignore it to hustle around to join your victim, who is now bonelessly sprawling sideways across two seats. It's still too dark to make out their features, but you put your ear close to their face to listen. You're relieved to hear soft breathing.

But where's the mask?

You gingerly paw around over and around them for it, but you can't find it. (On the other hand, you do feel a pair of taut, well-shaped boobs, so that settles that it's a girl.) You feel about under the seats, but the floor, though slightly sticky, is also bare. With mounting fear and vexation you kneel on the floor and peer and peep for it, and you take out your own cell phone and use the light from it to scan for the mask. But it is nowhere nearby.

How could it have bounced away without making a noise?

* * * * *

Minutes and more minutes pass as you search for it with trembling hands and shortened breath. You cuss to yourself. How could you be so stupid? You're playing around with something you don't understand, and you fucked it up, and you must have fucked up that girl, because it's like she's in a coma! For sure, no one could just sleep through it with you pawing them from the neck to the knees, tripping on their feet, and pushing and pressing them as you search for the mask on the chance that it has slid under them.

And as you work, you cast terrified glances back at the stage, fearful that someone will notice what's going on in the back of the auditorium. Thankfully, they seem to be preoccupied with the rehearsal. And that girl Elle, you notice, has come back.

You're slumping in the chair next to your unconscious victim, trying not to hyperventilate, and wondering if you should just bolt for home, when your eye is caught by a blue glow on her face. For a moment the front of her head goes waxy and blank as it shines with an inner light. Then the light winks out, and you hear something fall with a soft thump into her lap. You put out a hand and find the mask resting there.

Score one for Team Prescott! You stifle a yelp as you grab the mask and leap over the back of the seats to the row where you book bag is. You snatch it up and, at a loping run, gallop for the door.

* * * * *

"Hi Mom, be up in my room!" you shout as you run past the kitchen on your way in from the garage.

"You're late getting home!" she calls after you.

"Stayed at school, talking with guys, working on a project!" you shout as you thunder up the stairs. Your breath is coming in quick, short puffs, and your heart feels like it's about to explode from excitement.

Your little brother steps out of the hall bathroom directly in front of you.

It's like hitting a deer on the highway. Your backpack flies from your hand and explodes against the far wall as you trip and knock him and you both to the ground. He squawks and yelps as the carpet rises to meet you, and you grunt as something bony punches you in the chest.

"Son of a bitch!" Robert yells. "Get off me!"

"Hey, stop kicking!"

"Get off!"

"Well if you'll get your fucking knees out of my—!"

You claw and struggle and finally disentangle yourselves. Robert, who isn't much shorter than you, and whose brown hair seems to spit electricity from its curled tips, glowers at you. For a moment you think he's about to rush you or sucker-punch you, and you hunker down to receive him.

Feet sound on the stairs, and your mother appears, brandishing a spatula. "What is going on?" she bellows.

"Will came barreling up here and he knocked me down!" Robert howls.

"I was going to my room and you jumped out in front of me!"

"You ran me over like a bulldozer!"

"Quiet, both of you!" your mom barks. "Anyone hurt? Any bones broken? Bruises, teeth knocked out? Good!" she says when you both murmur a negative. (But you've a sharp pain in your side, as though a horse tried kicking your ribcage in.) "Then pick yourselves up, go to separate corners, and I don't want to hear from either of you till it's time for supper." She waves the spatula at you both, then turns and marches downstairs.

"Motherfucker," Robert mutters at you after she's gone.

"Cocksucking little brat."

"Cunt."

"How'd you like me to push your teeth in?"

"You and what—?"

"You better be cleaning that mess up!" your mom hollers from downstairs. You bend over to start picking up your books and pencils.

Also the mask, which has fallen out. Your heart goes into your throat as Robert grabs it. "Hey, put that down!" you yell. "Give it here!"

"Jesus, I'm just trying to help!"

"Do I have to come back up there again?"

"I don't need your help," you hiss at Robert as you snatch the mask from his hand. "Just go to your room and let me handle this! The sooner you fuck off, the sooner—"

You don't have to say any more. He stomps into his room and slams the door so hard the pictures on the walls jump and rattle.

One of these days I'm going to kill him, you swear to yourself as you stuff your things back in your pack.

* * * * *

Inside your bedroom you study the mask for marks of damage, but you can't find any. No nicks or scratches or flakes knocked from it.

But you discover one change. It now contains a face.

At first you take it for a trick of the light, which streaks and pools and puddles in the depths of the mask. But as you turn it this as and that you notice that some of those streaks don't shift even as others scatter. Then, like when the random shapes inside a magic-eye puzzle resolve into a picture, you see it. There is a face inside the mask.

It is the shape of a face only, and it is hard to make out, for its features line up almost perfectly with the mask's curves, so that its nose is partly obscured by the nose of the mask, and the mouth is blurred by the mask's mouth. It has no color, either, so that they are lines and shadows only that suggest a forehead, eyes, nose, cheekbones, lips, chin and—blanketed beneath what looked like curtains of hair—a pair of ears. You don't recognize the person, but that might only be because it is so hard to get a good angle on the image.

But confirmation that the magic has worked comes when you open the grimoire to find that an oval-shaped stain has appeared on the page with the spell. Your heart is in your throat as you lay the mask atop it. You think you hear a slight click, and feel a thrill of electricity through your fingertips. You pick the mask up again, and the page beneath flutters. You pull at the corner, and turn the page.

Is that the way that it works? you wonder. Finish a spell, then touch the completed item to the page to turn it?

Well, whatever. Eagerly you pore over the rest of the spell, now revealed. As before, you have to use an online translator to make it out, but when you've finished ...

* * * * *

"Why don't you boys find a project to work on together?" your dad asks at dinner. The meal has been mostly silent thus far, with only the clink of silverware against the dishes, and some noisy chewing from your brother.

It takes you a moment to realize that your dad is addressing you and Robert both. You're sure that Robert's stare of horror is a match for your own when the penny drops.

"I'm serious," your dad continues, though neither you nor Robert has said a word. "Your mother tells me the two of you got into a fight this afternoon."

"We just bumped into each other is all," you protest. Robert, for once, nods in vigorous agreement with you.

"That's not what she said it sounded like. There's too much friction between you two lately. It has to stop."

"Then why do you want us doing a project together?" you exclaim. "If we do that—"

"If you do that maybe you'll learn how not to get up in each other's noses. You have to live together," your dad says as he dollops a great pile of mashed potatoes onto his plate. "You can either cooperate, or kill each other. I'd rather it not be the latter," he dryly concludes.

Next: "Help! There's a Girl in My Bed!" 

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