Chapter #39How to Make a Temporary Minion by: Seuzz   "You're not making any sense," you tell Connor. "How did I lose a day, and what are you talking about with—?"
"We'll talk about it on the way to class," Connor says. He swings his legs up onto the table, and before you can stop him he's laid back and settled a mask onto his face. You'd like to throttle him, but it would look like you're throttling Caleb, and that wouldn't give you the same satisfaction.
* * * * *
"It's that new spell," says the guy in the passenger side of your truck on the way out to Westside. It looks like Caleb, but it's actually Connor.
"You already said that," you grumble.
"Yeah, it turns people into minions. But only temporarily."
Turns people into minions. And he used it on you. You jerk the wheel violently, cutting off traffic in the other lane as you dive into the parking lot in front of a convenience store. "I thought you said we weren't going to use spells like that any more," you tell him sharply after you've pulled to a hard stop.
"It only does it temporarily," Connor says. "It doesn't hurt them or kill them. Like you did to—"
"But you used it on me!"
"And it didn't hurt you." There's something slightly off about his grin. It's sort of like the shit-eating grin that Caleb puts on when he's feeling particularly gleeful, but there's something missing inside it.
"So tell me about it."
"I'm trying to. Come on, we don't want to be late to class."
"I'll fucking turn this truck around and we'll miss the whole day if you don't start—"
He sighs, and relates it from the beginning.
As you'd noticed, the new spell uses almost all the same ingredients as the spells that make minions, only it makes up a kind of paste that you put inside a mask. "It's like putting a minion inside the mask," Connor explains. "And it turns whoever puts that mask on into a minion. The minion of the person whose hair is in it. At least we think it's the hair that does the trick. It's the hair that works in the other sorts of minion, but we should run a few experiments just to be—"
"Just tell me what the fuck you did to me?"
"Well, we tried it on ourselves first, not you. We got our masks—the ones of Justin and I, you know—and we put the paste inside it. We used Justin's hair inside his mask, and my hair inside mine. We tried our own masks on at first." He snaps his fingers. "Oh, we found out something real interesting when we did that. It turns out that if you put your own mask on, it's like it downloads all the memories into your own brain, so that you, uh, remember all the stuff that the mask was doing if it was out riding around on someone else. So, for instance, Justin went to class as you yesterday. If you put on your mask again, you'll all the memories of what he did."
That sounds convenient, but it's hardly the most important thing you want to hear about right now, and you snap your own fingers impatiently at him.
"Okay, so we put on our own masks, and nothing happened except we got some new memories. But then Justin put on my mask, and he turned into me. But he turned into a minion of me. I mean, he was me, but he was also my minion, and he didn't remember being Justin. He thought he was me, and he only remembered the stuff I remembered, and he totally had to do the stuff I told him to do. I took it off him, and after he woke up he didn't remember anything that he'd said or done. It was like he was asleep under the mask."
"So if you tested it on yourselves, why did you test it on me? And without warning me," you add through gritted teeth.
"Because you deserved it after all the fuckups you've done recently. And we wanted to do a safe, dry practice run for what we're going to try doing this weekend."
"What's that?"
"Like what we did with you. Justin hit you with his mask yesterday, which turned you into his minion, and you went around and did all the stuff he told you to do. You went to work, and you came home, and you did some shopping and helped fix meals—"
"Jesus!"
"—and spent the night and came out here this morning. And when I took the mask off you—" He laughs, and it doesn't sound like Caleb laughing. "You didn't even know any time had gone by and still thought it was Wednesday morning!"
You press a middle finger against his cheek.
"So we're going to try doing that with someone else this afternoon or tomorrow. Take 'em out of action, slip into their place, get a mask of Kelsey, then let them back out to wonder if they somehow missed a day somewhere. That's why I'm asking if you want to try using one of the Garners if you want to use Karl Hennepin."
You're coming up on the school, so you don't have a lot of concentration to spare for this very weird question. You're not sure you understand it. "So, you're saying I'd—We'd kind of push these people out of the way—"
"For a day. Maybe less."
"And I'd play them, use them to get a copy of Kelsey?"
"Right. You wouldn't have to worry about running into anyone, because the real person would be out of the way."
Whoa. This is a little more intense than a slumber party. This is like full-on identity theft. Bodily identity theft. For only a little while, but a lot more intense than just getting together quietly somewhere with just friends to screw around.
Only one thing puzzles you: "Why aren't you and Justin doing this yourself? Why are you putting it onto me?"
"You don't want to do it? Justin and I'll do it, no trouble. We just thought you'd want to take a first crack at it."
You don't answer, being in a bit of a daze. Getting to be someone else. In public. With their friends. More than that: Getting to be one of the popular kids, the ones who sail around like they're too cool for you. Which they are.
"If you want us to handle it for you, Will—"
"What are my choices? I mean, who are my choices?" Your heart beats rapidly.
"The people you got masks of. Except for Geoff Mansfield, unless you want to try faking your way through without that mental metal thing in the mask. The Garner sisters, plus Marc. That girl Marc was with. And Karl."
You can rule out Hannah. She was fun, but she doesn't have anything to do with Kelsey. Karl—her secret boyfriend—is an obvious one to try using. That's why you copied him. Marc moves in Kelsey's circle, but Eva and Jessica are actual friends of hers. Insofar as Kelsey has friends.
Oh my God, and they're cheerleaders, too! You could get into the girls' locker room during cheerleader practice and—
The honk of a horn brings you back to the present, and you swerve back into your lane. Your palms are sweaty. "Giving it some thought, huh?" Connor says in a sly tease.
But you're now glaring at the car that honked at you. It's a black muscle car, at least twenty years old but in very good shape. Not content to honk at you, the driver has pulled into the lane in front of you and slowed down to about half the speed limit, forcing you to slam on the brakes. You're crawling along now, being tailgated by the car behind you and cramped in by the one in front. You fume, and even though the school is coming up fast on the right, and there is traffic in the left-hand lane, you risk a wreck by jumping out to the left and roaring past the obstruction.
Or you try to. The asshole leaps forward, cutting you off and forcing you past the turn-off into the student lot.
Connor grabs onto the console of the truck and says a couple of bad words, which you can't make out through the roar of angrified blood in your ears. "Calm the fuck down, Will," are the first of his words that you make out when you're rational enough. "Just circle around—"
"Circle around where?" you yell.
"Christ. Make a left up here at the next subdivision."
You mutter foul imprecations against the cocksucker who forced you into this maneuver. After that you have to make a left turn into the student lot, and wait for almost five minutes before the line of cars turning in thins enough that you can leap like a rabbit across the opposite lanes. It earns you the blast of a horn from another car, and now you don't care, and lean across Connor to flip that other person off while guiding your truck with one hand. "Take a fucking valium, Prescott," Connor growls.
And that black muscle car is waiting for you in the lot. It swings in behind you and crawls along behind as you look for a parking place. Now the ice begins to flow into your blood. You don't recognize your persecutor. There are a lot of assholes and bullies who it could be, and you circle the student lot twice while trying to figure out how you might handle them. It depends a great deal, of course, on who it is. Finally, you park. Your pursuer dives into a nearby space the next row over. You watch carefully out the window to see who—
Its door opens and a dark-haired figure gets out. Terror grips your anus briefly when he turns around, showing a hard face. Then you bark a relief of laughter when he jerks his chin at you in jaunty greeting.
It's Joshua Call. Your minion.
And that gives you another datum to consider in weighing Connor's proposal. You'd only be playing this person for one day or less, but during that day it would be much easier to talk to Call—if you needed to talk to him—in the guise of Karl Hennepin than as one of the Garners, or as yourself.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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