The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Maker's Marc

Previously: "More and Merrier" 

The pressure in the room is overwhelming. Do it, Prescott! everyone is saying, even if it's only with their eyes and grins. Do it, do it, DO IT!

Even Marc, you sense, secretly wants you to do it, though he protests.

"Yeah, alright," you say, "but only if—"

Cheers and laughs drown out your conditional—"only if Marc's okay with it". Marc turns a shiny red, and buries his face in his hands.

"Okay! Okay! Hey!" Laurent shouts. "Shut up, you cocksuckers!" The hoots and hollers fade to snickers and snorts. "So, I guess we get to try this thing out." He pokes Marc in the shoulder. "And you get to be our guinea pig."

Marc's eyes widen. "What? No!"

"Don't be a chickenshit, man. Will knows his stuff." Laurent winks at you, and you feel your own eyes go saucer-wide. "Rest o' you fuckers, outside! Back yard! Give us some fuckin' room to work here!"

The others—Brownie, Ratliff, Lepley, and Nieves—haul themselves to their feet and swagger off, clapping Marc on the shoulder and laughing as they go. When they're gone, Laurent pushes Marc onto a sofa. Your own buckling knees carry you down into an easy chair opposite. "So, how's this doohickey work?" Laurent asks, and waggles the metal band at you.

"Um, the book doesn't say," you confess. The color drains from Marc's face. "But I'm betting it works like the mask? You put it on him—forehead probably—and then—"

Laurent looks down at Marc, who has gone a chalky color. "No," Marc says as Laurent pushes him onto his back. "No!" Your own stomach heaves as Laurent sits on Marc's chest and lays a palm across his forehead. The soccer player jerks once, then relaxes. His eyes go vacant, and his jaw sags.

Laurent stares down at his friend. "It looks like that when you do the mask," he observes, mostly to himself, "so I guess that looks normal." You'd conceded it does, if "looks normal" means "looks like a drooling vegetable." "I hope it doesn't take too long to make the copy," Laurent continues. "Garner's a bird-brain, but I assume even bird-brains take time to copy. Okay, now it's just you and me." Laurent fixes you with hard stare.

"You don't fuck around, man," he tells you in a don't-fuck-with-me tone of voice. "You're just going in to cover for him. You're not going in to screw his girlfriend or screw things up for him. You get out of here without fucking anything up with his parents or family, you take his girlfriend out for food and talk and a little light petting." He stabs at you with a forefinger. "You keep her fucking happy with her man, and that's all!"

But what if she wants her man to fuck her? you wonder miserably to yourself. Still more miserably: What if she wants her man to take her up the ass?

"You be a gentleman with her," Laurent continues. "You know, the opposite of the rest of us." He allows himself a quick smile. "Then you come back here. Rest of us'll probably be out with Marc all night, so you'll have to cover for him tonight and in the morning, too. We'll text and fix up a way of switching you guys back tomorrow. Oh, and are you gonna be alright staying out all night?"

You hesitate. This is the point where you can say "No," by pleading a tight curfew and a hard-ass dad.

But that would disappoint Laurent and them. "I can fix it up," you say.

Laurent nods. "Boo-yah. I guess that's all. Don't worry, man, you'll have fun." He winks. "Garner always does."

You gulp.

* * * * *

It's twenty minutes before all the copying is done, for it takes ten for the metal band to reappear on Marc's forehead, and another ten after that for a blank mask—brought by one of the other guys; it appears that since last night they all got treated by a car buffer—to copy him. During that time you text Caleb and badger him into "agreeing" to let you sleep over at his place. You then send your mom a text telling her of your plans. She accedes to them, but with the warning that you'll need to be back home in time for church tomorrow. (You promise you will, even though you're pretty sure you won't.) Marc is still unconscious when Laurent hands you the mask and metal band, and with a clap to your shoulder points to the stairs and tell you which bedroom you'll want. Your feet are very heavy as you haul yourself to the second floor.

Marc's room is almost stereotypical for a high school jock. Besides the unmade bed and the dresser piled over with books—which are probably standard for high school guys—there's a soccer ball in the corner, under a shelf that displays half a dozen trophies of various sizes, and three framed photos showing Marc surrounded by teammates. On the walls are pinned posters of half-clad women in provocative poses with come-hither expressions on their narrow faces. A musty odor of sweat and dirty clothes hangs in the air.

You plop onto the bed with a feeling of disbelief. In a minute I'm going to turn myself into the guy whose room this is. It will be only the second time that you've put on one of those masks. But you won't just be playing around with a foreign body, as you briefly did with Maria's mask, and as Laurent and his friends have been doing. You will be impersonating him. With his family. And with his girlfriend.

You shiver. That's funny enough to think about. But sitting in this room, on this bed, breathing in the odor of one of your classmate and raking your eyes over his trophies and pin-ups, makes it all the more vivid.

You kick off your shoes and fall back on the bed to stare at the ceiling. You hold up the metal band. It changed after coming out of Marc's forehead. The runes are still there, but now there's a name to go with them, in glowing blue letters that seem to float over the surface: MARC DAVID GARNER.

You close your eyes and lower the thing onto your forehead. Not until the warm metal touches your skin do you think, I should have Laurent up here watching, in case something goes wrong.

* * * * *

You wake with a start, and come halfway off the bed before you catch yourself. I overslept! Then: What a fucking weird dream!

There was a dream, wasn't there? But what was it? You stare and blink and try to remember. I was downstairs with Laurent and Brownie and those guys, and we were all laughing and having fun because Maria and this other girl were—

Your head spins, and you have to put out a hand to catch yourself from falling over. You feel the memories approaching, like an engulfing tsunami, even before they hit you. And when they do crash over you, they shatter your mind, leaving it broken and clogged with the flotsam of another personality. You curl up into a ball, clenching your eyes against the pain of having your brain torn out of one shape and wrenched into a new one. You are left numb and gasping on the other side. When the world stops spinning, you flop onto your back and stare at the ceiling.

That's your ceiling. It's Marc's ceiling, but it's also yours. Because you're Marc Garner. Well, half of you is him. And half of him is you. It's like clasping your hands together and twining your fingers together. Two people, completely mixed up with each other.

Or like looking at the world through your left eye, then through your right. Now I'm Marc Garner looking at the ceiling. Now I'm Will Prescott looking at the ceiling. You sit up. Now I'm both guys looking at the room.

The result really is like having stereo vision. The room looks and feels deeper, somehow. You see it as a strange and unfamiliar jumble of surfaces. At the same time, you see the depth of its history. The dresser that once belonged to a late grandmother. The trophies picked up in middle school and high school soccer. The vintage Elle Macpherson poster that is half ironic and half jerk-off bait.

Oh God! You pale as you remember where Marc keeps his jerk-off rag.

The strangeness intensifies when you lift your hands and study your fingers. They're long and skinny, exactly like your hands but also not at all like them. Your forearms are far too skinny but also just as skinny as they've always been. You pat your chest, and nobody doesn't regret the absence of muscle mass.

Well, we know what we can do about that, tell yourself as you pick up the mask. This time, though you know you should worry whether it will work, you are quicker to put the thing on. Not because you have any real confidence in Will Prescott, but because Marc Garner doesn't worry nearly so much about sticking his fingers in things to find out what's in them.

* * * * *

Yeah, that's looking pretty good, you tell yourself as you admire your form in the mirror. Hannah will like it too. This is her favorite shirt of mine.

You're dressed nice and casual in clean clothes from Marc's dresser. Stiff, tight Levis, and a red, short-sleeve polo over a white t-shirt. Hiking boots. You flex strong biceps and rub smooth but meaty forearms. Your short, spiky hair is freshly stiffened with a dab of gel.

Marc's cell phone buzzes on the bed again. You woke to find it by your side with a text from Hannah, asking what you wanted to do tonight. Yor call babe, you texted back. You stiffen with anticipation as you pick it up to see her reply.

Your face falls when you read it: Howbout warehouse

Next: "Hitting the Marc" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"