The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

In Bed as a Stranger

Previously: "The First Mask" 

According to the instructions, the stuff you made has to be applied to the inner surface of the mask—brushed on, like paint. You're in the garage, searching for a brush, when the door goes up and your dad slides the family SUV in. By the expression on his face, you can tell he wants to talk to you, and you can bet what it's about.

"I talked to Caleb," you blurt out before he can say anything. "He's got something else lined up, so he's not going to apply for that job at your work."

"And you?"

Damn. Time to improvise.

"I also talked to Keith," you say. "He said that it looks like there's going to be an opening at the donut shop where he works. I think I'd rather work there."

Your dad stares. "A donut shop?"

"Well, it's something, right?" You flush. "Anyway, the way you talked about it, the job out at your work is—" You veer away from the phrase a lot of scut work as your dad's lower lip turns down. "Like, mail delivery and stuff, right? Manual work? And I know Keith, I'd be working with him."

Your dad snorts. "Salopek would look better on a resume." He turns away with a frown, then turns back and takes out his wallet.

"You'll need a haircut if you're going to work in the service industry," he says as he takes out a bill. "Get yourself one." He hands you a twenty.

Sweet! That's twenty dollars toward your next purchase!

Then, on the way back up to your bedroom with a small paint brush, it occurs to you that your dad will want to see results from that twenty dollar investment. Which means you will have to use it on a haircut, not on magical supplies.

* * * * *

You're called into the kitchen to help with dinner before you can get any more work done on the mask, and after eating you decide to be a good boy and get your homework done. Besides, you suspect that you won't be able to do anything—not anything really fun—with the mask until after everyone has gone to bed.

So you struggle through your Calculus homework and push deeper into the selections from The Iliad for English. For Career Planning you go online to visit a couple of corporate websites as part of an assignment, then get distracted by YouTube.

But your eye never wanders far from the mask resting atop a pile of books at the corner of the table, or from the bowl of sealant atop your dresser. What will happen when you seal the mask? Probably nothing. What will happen when you put it on?

You've dodged experimenting on yourself thus far, and briefly you consider ambushing your brother with it and forcing it onto him. But there are too many risks there. Seriously: The only thing worse than if it fucked him up in some magical way would be if it worked perfectly, for then you'd have to explain to him—wouldn't you?—how you managed to turn him into a twenty-something female P.E. coach. Or, at least, gave him the face of one.

So your pulse races while you do your homework—which itself might be a first—as you try not to think about the experiment to come.

Finally, at around ten, when you've finished all your homework and exhausted the possibilities for goofing off online, you pull the mask and the sealant toward you. The latter goes on quickly and smoothly when you apply it to the interior of the mask. It clears as it dries, so that the luster of the mask is undiminished.

Then you hide it in your sock drawer and search for other ways of wasting time. You make a couple of trips downstairs, ostensibly to check the refrigerator, but really to keep an eye on whether your parents seem headed for bed.

But even after the downstairs lights are off, you hold back, for Robert's light remains on under his door. You wait quietly in your own room for almost half an hour before you hear him in the hall bathroom, brushing his teeth.

Not until well after eleven do you make your own trip to the bathroom, to brush your teeth and clean your pores. Even then, to your mounting irritation, you see that Robert's bedroom light is still on.

So it's not until midnight, when you make another quiet trip to the bathroom, with the pretended intention of getting some Kleenex to blow your nose, that you're satisfied that the house is entirely quiet. But maybe not asleep? You watch some videos on your cell phone until an alert tells you that it's twelve-thirty.

That's when you get up and retrieve the mask from your sock drawer.

You haven't given any thought, up till now, about where you would test the mask out. Here in your bedroom? In the closet? Locked in the bathroom? Now that the point has come, you decide that under the covers is the place to try it. There's a locked door between you and the rest of the house, and it's dark. But even though blankets and sheets are little added protection, you'd be glad of an additional veil.

You climb back into bed with the mask and nestle under the covers. At the last moment, you twitch your boxers off, in case they interfere with the transformation.

At this very late moment it occurs to you: If this is a full-body transformation, you're going to lose that very important organ you keep down there. For a moment you hesitate.

Ah, fuck it. You pull the sheets up over your head and bring the mask up to your face. You're already stifling under the covers, and when you slide the mask onto your face it's too much. You suck hard at the mask— trying to pull oxygen into lungs that are suddenly starved for air—and reach for the mask. But your arm is paralyzed, and so is your chest. You feel your eyes bugging from their sockets.

A great weight seems to drag you down.

* * * * *

Then you seem to bob to the surface again. You suck in a hard breath and bat the sheets away. You sit up, your heart hammering in your chest.

Of course the room is unchanged from a moment ago. A distant streetlight casts its milky glow through the curtains on your window, and your desk and books are a humped shadow in the corner. You kick at the sheets and blankets and try to get your bearings.

The mask. You put it on, and you almost suffocated. Where is it? Did it slip off? You glance around, blinking into the dark.

A lank limb, like a hairy tentacle, falls across your face.

You shriek and bat at it, and bounce off the bed. Things like fingers, but soft and limp, grope weakly at your shoulders. You tumble to the floor and scramble across the floor, trying not to scream, and bang your head against the corner of your dresser. Stunned, you fall to one side and catch your breath.

How long you lay like this, you're not sure. But at some point it penetrates your addled brain that there's something heavy resting on your chest—a weight that is trying to slide off. It's when you look down, and notice that your breasts have swelled up into great, fleshy balloons, that it finally sinks in what has happened.

Your body has changed. You've acquired a bosom.

And when you reach up to your head, you find that those tendrils—those hairy tentacles—are locks of thick, bouncy hair.

My God! Breasts? Long hair? You put on a mask that copied Coach Schell and now you've got—

You swallow hard.

You scramble back into bed and feel about the sheet. The mask is gone—you must be wearing it, somehow—but you find your cell phone. With trembling fingers you turn the camera on yourself.

Even by the dim light of your twilit bedroom, you recognize Coach Schell's face on the screen. Her eyes are wide—but so are yours—and she breathes raggedly through a mouth that hangs open—but so do you—and her hair drapes in her face, as it does in yours. You push your hair back, and so does she. You swallow again and compose your features.

You have her face. And you have her hair and bosom.

And even before you check, you are certain that you have her—

You shift the camera to your left hand, and slowly put your right hand under the covers. You grit your teeth as you explore, down the side of your stomach to the place where your legs meet your hips. There's a patch of hair there, which is to be expected, but it feels shorter and curlier. You wince as you probe further down and in and—

There's nothing there. No shaft, no member. A cold sweat breaks out all over you.

But as you probe and push you find something else. A slit.

Oh, Jesus! The phone slips from your hand. You're Coach Schell all the way down and inside and out!

You rub the spot, but it is cold and unyielding. Aren't those tissues supposed to be soft and tender, aren't they supposed to burst into life when they're touched?

Or maybe it only works that way when their owner isn't freaking out. And you are most definitely freaking out.

* * * * *

For a very long time you lay in your bed, gently touching and stroking yourself here and there. Mostly you hope to stimulate yourself into something pleasurable. But part of you, you can feel, resists. Maybe it's because you're in your own bed, and are terrified of being discovered. Maybe you're just mortified by what you're doing.

But after half an hour or so, you decide that you've learned enough of what the mask can do, and that it's best to beat a retreat. You put on the desk lamp and—while trying not to look down at yourself—you retrieve the grimoire. There's an incantation that you have to recite to get the mask off.

And when it comes off again, you know nothing more until morning.

Next: "A Magician and His Money Woes" 

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