For Me (pt 5)

“Well, shit,” Anna said, a massive grin on her face. She grabbed her glass, downed the remaining alcohol and sprang to her feet. “Let’s get this show on the road!”

“Wait, wait,” Lauren said, her hands up. “You always do this. You always run off without thinking about the implications!”

Anna laughed. “Yeah, and you always hesitate and that means sometimes you miss out. I’m ready, honey!” She doffed her leather jacket and dropped it on the couch. “Lead me to your closet, milady, I’m ready to go clothes shopping.”

“Wait!” Lauren said again, more strident this time. “Look. We have to define… ground rules. What are we doing here? Do you just want to go play dress up for a while, is that it? See how you look in my stuff?”

“Uh, hello, yes?” Anna said with an incredulous look. “At minimum! You know how long it took me to make your face? Heck, the nose alone–”

“Fine!” Lauren said. “You can dress in my clothes, okay? We can stay up all night and paint each other’s nails or whatever else you want to do.”

Anna picked up the wig cap she’d discarded and pulled it carefully into place over her hair, tucking black strands beneath it as she spoke. “I mean, that’ll do for starters,” she said with a broad wink. “Honestly, I was hoping you might be up for a bit more than that.”

“What do you mean?”

Anna scooped up the mask of Lauren’s face and turned it around, positioning it ready to be put on again. “Honestly, it’s fun to sit around and wear someone else’s face for a while. Honestly, it is. And I’ve seen your closet and it’s awesome, as it should be, but just getting to put on your clothes… fun as that is, it’s not really what I want.”

“Well then,” Lauren said carefully, very aware that Anna still had incriminating video of her. “What is it you really want to do?”

“Actually be you,” Anna said simply. “I think a few days ought to do it.”

With that, she spread out the neck of her mask and easily flipped it up and over, pulling it smartly over her head. Unlike Lauren she clearly had plenty of practice, because it took her mere seconds to get the mask down and into place, lining up the eyes precisely. Lauren felt a warm wave of excitement rush through her as she saw her own face stretching and molding over Anna’s; seeing her own image, the face she saw every day of her life, being manipulated, used… it was incredible to watch. Intoxicating, even; so intoxicating she barely thought about Anna’s suggestion of taking over her life for “a few days”.

Anna carefully smoothed down the neck of the mask, pressing it into place over her throat. “Testing, testing. Ah, crap.” Her voice still sounded like her own. She fished her phone from her pocket and tapped at it for a few seconds. “Hello there. I’m Lauren.” Her voice had changed to Lauren’s timbre with just a press of a button. She beamed over at her opposite. “Hi there Anna! It’s been a while! Good to see you!”

Lauren shook her head, partially because she could barely believe this, but also because what she was looking at was a person who was only her from the neck up. “If we’re going to do this, let’s do it right. Come and get changed with me. I really don’t suit that look.”

“You think?” ‘Lauren’ replied. “I think I like the punk look. Do you think Joseph will? Ooh, how about my dad, hmm?”

A slight chill went through Lauren at the implications of Anna talking to either her fiancé or her father, but she put it to one side. She wanted Anna out of her own clothes, and even if Lauren couldn’t quite admit it, she really wanted to get into them herself, to match her face.

“C’mon, uh, babe,” she said in Anna’s voice, halting at her style of speaking. “I have some things I’d love to see you in.”

///

Relatively speaking, what she had at the apartment was only a small selection of Lauren’s vast and rotating wardrobe.

The truth was, she rarely wore anything more than a few times except for the odd treasured outfit, and that was almost always for sentimental reasons. Between designers and manufacturers sending her outfits for free and her basically infinite credit line, she had a selection of fashion on hands at all times that matched almost every mood. As far as she was aware, items of clothing she didn’t wear any more went to charities, or into a warehouse, or something like that. She hadn’t given it a lot of thought. All she cared about was what was in the closet at that moment.

Walking briskly, she led ‘fake Lauren’ through the apartment, deeper into the back. Lauren had grabbed ahold of her luggage and brought it with her, a detail that Lauren had definitely noticed.

“Wow, I thought I’d seen the entire place,” Lauren heard in her own voice. “This is even bigger than I knew.”

“Yeah, we were getting a little cramped so we bought the unit next door,” Lauren said. “Knocked through. Gave us more bathrooms and a couple of spare rooms. I had one of them made into my closet.”

While Lauren was very much aware of her staggering privilege and wealth, something about saying those words in Anna’s voice made her feel the difference between her and her best friend even more acutely. While Anna had never significantly struggled growing up, coming from an upper-middle class family, it was a world of difference from Lauren’s elite upbringing. In many ways Anna was a metaphorical infiltrator into Lauren’s world.

Now, Lauren thought, she might be a literal one.

After walking through rooms filled with luxury items, a bathroom that looked more like a spa and down a short corridor with gallery-worthy art, they came to a pink door. Lauren liked pink. This room was really her sanctum, a place where she could really be herself.

The irony of the mask over her face was hard to ignore.

She stepped inside, the lights automatically flipping on as she did so. Just behind her, she heard her own voice softly say “Wow”.

“I know, it’s a lot,” Lauren said.

The room, approximately sixty feet wide, was divided into three different areas. Straight in front of them, the central area was dominated by a central dais, raised up a foot or so and surrounded by four full length mirrors, held vertical with industrial-sized gold plated tubes. Standing in the center would give someone instant views of all sides of their outfit.

With the exception of the ‘front’ mirror, which was faced away from them, the other three were set in front of massive closets that effectively created ‘walls’ on three sides, enclosing the fitting area.

To the left of the fitting area behind the closets was a vanity area, where Lauren did her makeup. At one end the wall held a huge circular mirror with lights surrounding the edge. It was set in front of a large vanity table that held a vast variety of makeup, although all of it was neatly stored and easily accessible.

Finally the right hand area was even more storage, with more closets plus several racks of clothing that could be moved around if necessary.

“This is nuts,” Anna said. “I’m pretty sure my apartment is smaller than this place.”

Lauren shrugged, a little uneasy as always to be flaunting her wealth in front of Anna. “Want to change? I’ll stay here and check my makeup.”

“Sure,” Anna said. “Does that mean I get to pick my outfit?”

“I guess so,” Lauren replied. With a yelp of joy, Anna left her behind as Lauren settled into the comfortable stool in front of her vanity mirror.

She stared intently into her eyes – hers, she knew, because they were her color, one more tiny detail that she hadn’t dealt with yet. Her eyes, the tattoos… part of her hoped that Anna had a solution in mind. Lauren certainly didn’t have a supply of colored contact lenses to hand. She could get some easily, of course, but still, it bothered her.

Her frown seemed wrong, frivolous, and she laughed at herself for a moment. She was worrying about how her eye color was wrong to ensure the mask she wore was a perfect match for her best friend.

“I should have my head examined,” she muttered, then burst into a fit of laughter at the ludicrous double meaning.

“You okay out there?” Lauren’s voice came from the other end of the room.

“I’m fine,” Anna’s voice replied. “It’s silly. Crazy, really.”

“What?”

“My eyes! They’re wrong!”

Now it was Lauren’s turn to hear Anna laugh as Lauren might. “Oh yeah! Well c’mon, can you blame me? I wasn’t sure you were even gonna wear the mask! Throwing in some contacts and fake teeth was probably gonna push it.”

Lauren gave an Anna-like smirk to the mirror. “Well, now I’m annoyed about it. My eyes don’t fit your face.”

“We can fix that,” Anna replied. “I’ve got what you need. Damn girl, you’re learning fast!”

Feeling strangely proud of Anna’s praise, Lauren examined her – well, Anna’s – reflection in the mirror, then picked up a brush to apply some contour powder. She was impressed with how well the makeup clung to the fake skin, and wondered if somehow Anna had made it that way.

“And then there’s your tattoos!” she added with a yell.

“You got me,” Anna yelled back. “Frankly I couldn’t be bothered to do ‘em. So fiddly. Couldn’t exactly take the thing to my ink guy either, so, there ya go, you’re already in full ‘don’t freak them out at work’ mode for me.”

“What if I want to be in ’Anna’s ready to party’ mode instead?”

Anna laughed once more, another uncanny imitation of Lauren. “I guess we’ll have to work on that! It could be done!”

Lauren wondered for a moment what outfit Anna might pick out. Their sense of style and fashion was so radically apart, she wondered if Anna even felt comfortable choosing from Lauren’s clothes.

“Are you sure you don’t need any help?” Lauren called out.

“I’m good. Almost done!” Anna yelled back.

Lauren then started to wonder exactly what she would wear ‘as’ Anna. Would it be what Anna already had on? She didn’t really have the components here to make up a new look for Anna. She’d have to look in Anna’s own closet, she realized.

The idea of entering Anna’s apartment, of looking at her clothing, stepping into her life, made her head spin for a moment or two. She tried to think back to recent-ish outfits she’d seen Anna in, but all the graphic t-shirts, leather jackets and tight jeans seemed to blur into one.

“Well?” Lauren’s voice said from behind her. “What do you think?”

Lauren turned to check out her double and, without even wanting to, gasped in surprise.

///

“Holy crap, you’re perfect,” Lauren said as she stared at Anna, dressed from head to toe exactly as she might for an evening out.

While Anna didn’t have the benefit of Lauren’s on-call hairdresser — not yet, anyway — she’d still managed to style the wig attached to the mask with a glamorous yet chic ‘up do’ that kept her long blond hair away from her face, giving her a more serious, business-like appearance.

Lauren’s recreated face didn’t have a lot of makeup on it, which they’d have to fix, but with the contacts and, Lauren assumed, some sort of fake teeth, she still looked exactly like the woman she was intending to be. Anna had even, somehow, managed to nail Lauren’s ‘look’, the kind of faraway, “I’m not so sure I want to be here” look that kept too many people from approaching her in public.

Beneath the face, Anna’s clothing choices had been impeccable. She was wearing a blouse and slacks, which started relatively fitted around her shoulders and neck, then became looser at her waist and down to her feet. There, she’d picked out a pair of heels, not too high, that Lauren knew probably cost more than a month’s rent on Anna’s apartment.

The clothing was good, but the accessorizing was also spot-on. Lauren saw jewelry she’d worn recently, diamond earrings that flashed as ‘Lauren’ turned her head, plus a couple of bracelets and a very expensive smartwatch which was thinner, lighter and tougher than almost any other on the market.

There was something off, though. The more she looked at ‘Lauren’, the more confused she got. What was it? What was wrong?

“You’re looking at me strangely,” the fake Lauren said, a phrasing that felt much more ‘her’ than Anna. “What is it?”

“I can’t figure it out,” Lauren had to admit. “Something’s… not right.”

Anna smiled Lauren’s smile. “I think I know,” she said. “I’ll tell you in a couple of minutes. First, let’s get you changed, hmm?”

She walked to Lauren — even her stride seemed familiar — and took her by the hand, leading her to the central dressing area. There, a small pile of clothing on the floor was the only sign that Anna had been there at all. Her travel luggage sat off to the side; Lauren suddenly wondered what might be in it, considering that Anna was wearing borrowed clothes.

“Okay, strip,” Anna said casually, pulling up a chair that Lauren’s fiancé Joseph sometimes used, or one of her designer friends, when trying on new items. She sat and crossed her legs very deliberately, adopting a stance that Lauren instantly recognized — her own.

“Right here?”

“If you want you can go and find a quiet corner,” Anna said, “but it’s not like I haven’t seen it before.”

This was true. They’d showered together at the gym, put on and taken off exercise clothes and more than once shared a room on some trip, despite Lauren being easily able to afford the best suites. Sometimes, she just liked rooming with Anna.

“Not like there’s much to take off,” Lauren muttered, loosening her robe and dropping it to the floor.

Now Anna could see that while she did still have on panties, Lauren’s breasts were uncovered. Proud, considerable and perfectly rounded, they were genetically all hers, and they were, as many men had suggested, “spectacular”.

There was a slightly awkward moment as Lauren stood there, the only two items she had on being her underwear and Anna’s face.

Hiding her embarrassment, she faked a cough and stooped to pick up Anna’s clothing — but her friend interrupted.

“Actually,” she said, “there’s something else you’re going to want to put on before all of that.”

“What, different underwear? I’m not really expecting anyone to actually see me in my panties.”

Anna shook Lauren’s head. “Better than that.”

She stood and moved to her travel luggage, laying the case on its side and unzipping it. With her back to Lauren, it wasn’t clear what she was doing, but after a few moments of rustling she picked up something, stood and turned around with it.

It caused Lauren’s second gasp of the night.

Anna was holding a full-length, skin-colored ‘flesh suit’ of some kind, without a head attached — but apart from that, it was very anatomically correct for one specific person.

“Jesus,” Lauren whispered. “It’s you.”

-------------

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