For Me (pt 4)

“Got any booze?” Anna asked as she casually walked into the living room and sat on the couch, putting her feet on the coffee table, where a mask of her own face had sat just a little while before. She was dragging a set of travel luggage, as if she was about to stay over, which Lauren realized might be her exact plan.

With the glaring exception of her incorrect face, Anna looked totally normal – which meant to Lauren’s friends, Anna looked like a bad dream. In amongst their preppy elite circles, she was the one that stood out, the black sheep, the runt of the litter. And she loved it.

Anna dressed about a decade younger than she should, favoring combat pants, Army boots, leather jackets and spiked dog collars. Admittedly, that was outside of work; because she was a respectable enough lab researcher during the daytime, there her rebel image was limited to punky lapel pins and the occasional ripped t-shirt.

Her face, however, still told a story. There was the oh-so subtle tattoo over her right eyebrow, a tiny black lightning bolt that she claimed was from her “Harry Potter phase”. Under her left jawline you’d find another tattoo, a set of chains that intertwined in an ‘infinity’ loop; Lauren wasn’t too sure what that one meant, if anything. Finally, of course, were her piercings – which due to the day job were actually all fake. Nonetheless every night she clipped in a nose ring, multiple ear and eyebrow studs to make sure anyone outside her job knew she meant business. All of this signaling was topped off by her jet black hair, a dye job to be sure, but cropped in a short, neat bob cut.

As she thought of Anna’s usual look, Lauren realized something; the mask of Anna’s face that she was wearing wasn’t perfect after all. There were no tattoos. While it wasn’t a huge deal, as they were small enough to be missed — and Anna frequently covered them with makeup — it irritated Lauren for some reason, just like her incorrect eyes.

She had nothing to base her frame of reference on however, as tonight, Anna wasn’t Anna. She still wore her black combat pants, ripped white t-shirt, black leather jacket with gleaming studs and dog collar ensemble, but above the neck it was all different. No tattoos. No piercings. No short black bob cut. Instead, as she removed her baseball cap, a cascade of styled blond hair fell about her shoulders; a perfect match for the woman who usually occupied the apartment.

This eerie double looked up at Lauren and grinned her grin. “Like the look?”

Lauren nodded, then frowned. “Wait a second,” she said, as she realized something. “How come you don’t sound like me?”

“You’re catching on already,” Anna said in her own voice. “Yeah, normally I’d sound like you, but I changed the settings so my own voice is coming through. Figured it’d be easier.” She picked up a hard candy from a bowl Lauren kept on the coffee table, unwrapped it and popped it in her mouth. “Whaddya think?”

“About… what?”

“About how I look, to start with. I took a lot of time to get this right, you know.”

More than happy to check Anna’s appearance as her, Lauren leaned forward, her heart bouncing in her chest. The video image she’d seen earlier had been good, it was something else to see her own face independent of a mirror, lit by the soft glow of her living room. She took in every detail, noted every crease and every line, as Anna continued to smile at her with a Lauren-like grin. Above that grin, Lauren noticed, her eyes were the exact right shade of gunmetal grey. Her impersonation was ahead of Lauren’s own.

“You look incredible,” she said after her inspection. “I can hardly believe it.”

“Thank you!” Anna said, grinning Lauren’s grin. “I really appreciate that. But you look good too! You have to tell me about that as well – how you feel wearing my face, how it felt to put it on. Gimme the details, girl.”

“It’s… it feels…”

Lauren sank into a seat opposite the couch, pulling her robe tighter about her. Where was she supposed to start? Did she really want to skip past the fact that Anna appeared to be trying to blackmail her? Was this supposed to be a friendly girl’s night, or a confrontation? Besides that, she really didn’t know how she felt about wearing the mask. Excited? Turned on? Weirded out? It was a mess of emotions, and she needed time to process them.

Which is why she stopped talking, took a moment, cleared her throat and then spoke as evenly as she could.

“You sent me one photo,” she stated. “Do you have more than that?”

“Sure,” Anna said casually, grinning.

Lauren’s heart broke a little at the easy way Anna admitted it.

“It’s a still from a video,” Anna said. “So yeah, I’ve got the whole thing. Wham-bam, thank you, man.” She chuckled. “A good night for Team Lauren, am I right?”

Lauren bit her lip, imagining her father, her mother, her fiancé and friends looking at that image, knowing what she’d done. Tears were welling up in her eyes as she said “Are you going to do anything with the footage?”

Anna leaned forward a little, seeming to sense her friend’s anxiety. “No, no — I’m not. Don’t worry about that.” She shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe she’d caused this. “I know it might not be obvious, but stupid as it sounds, threatening you with blackmail? It was to motivate you.”

“Motivate me?!” Lauren nearly screamed.

“Okay, fuck! Jesus, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to scare you,” Anna said. “Look, what are the odds that if I sent you a random mask of my face you’d just put it on? For real, they’re probably zero, right? I needed something to convince you to do it, because I figured you’d see the mask, freak the fuck out, tell me to fuck off, and that’d be that. So when you told me about your, uh, ‘fun night’, I came up with the idea to, well, push you a little. Which meant I needed to get something on you, so I kind of… hacked into your security feeds.” She smiled, half apology, half gloating. “You kind of gave me what I needed, though. If you hadn’t—”

“You don’t need to remind me,” Lauren snapped. “It was a one-time thing.” She sniffed, pulled a tissue from a box on the table and blew her nose. “And you don’t know. Maybe I would have been okay with wearing the mask. You could have even brought it over and showed me yourself!”

“Yeah, but if I did that and you had freaked — which I was convinced you would — you’d think I was some crazy person. Who needs that, right? Look, even with the blackmail thing I thought you’d tell me to get fucked.” She grinned. “Guess that didn’t happen.”

She stretched out a little, putting her hands above her head, her breasts – slightly smaller than Lauren’s – pressing against her t-shirt. Through the no-doubt strategically placed rips in the fabric, Lauren was fairly sure she saw bare skin. Anna grinned as she brought her hands down. “Honestly, I know you’re worried and everything, but to be honest I liked looking at you fucking the dude. It was hot.”

“It was only a one-time thing,” Lauren repeated, but Anna held up a silencing finger.

“Don’t worry about it. Your secret’s safe with me. Considering we’re going to be sharing a few more secrets, what’s one more?”

Lauren wasn’t immediately convinced, but her curiosity about the mask, the process, what was next — she had to know. “Okay, tell me. How are you doing this? Did you make these?”

“Mmm-hmm,” Anna said smugly, her grin on Lauren’s face widening. “Took me a while, too. Wasn’t too hard to make myself, I mean, all I needed to do my face was a mirror. You were a little trickier though.” She pinched her cheek and stretched it out slightly, far enough to make it clear she was wearing artificial skin, then let it go. It snapped back into place. “Remember that time I slept over last month? We went out, got a little tipsy…”

“I remember,” Lauren said. “What did you do?”

“Nothing that weird,” Anna said, scoffing at Lauren’s concern. “I mean, sure, I took a 3D scan of your face and stuff while you were sleeping – but what are friends for, right.” She chuckled. “And yes, I had a little snoop in your closet, too, I admit it. I wanted to see what I was going to wear. Honestly I was getting a little ahead of myself; there was no guarantee you’d go for it.” She winked at Lauren. “Now we know though, huh?”

Lauren felt increasingly self-conscious wearing the Anna mask, especially as she knew the real Anna was right in front of her. She slid one hand between the folds of her robe, looking for an edge, ready to remove it – but Anna immediately spotted her move.

“Hey, what are you doing? Don’t think about taking ‘me’ off, girl,” she said, half-standing, like she was ready to leap out and grab Lauren’s hand. “There’s only one Lauren in this room right now, and it’s me.”

“You don’t look anything like me,” Lauren said, to which Anna shrugged.

“Only from the neck down,” she said. “That’s easily fixed though, right? All we have to do is swap clothes. Wanna strip off?” They’d seen each other naked plenty of times, so it wasn’t that outrageous a suggestion.

“But,” Lauren began, then faltered. “Why” didn’t seem to cover everything she needed to ask, not now.

“But why? That was what you were gonna ask, right?” Anna said. She shrugged. “Does there really need to be a reason? It’ll be fun. Isn’t that enough? C’mon Lauren. Haven’t you ever wondered what it’d be like to be someone else for a while?”

“I mean, I guess,” Lauren admitted, although she’d never considered Anna to be that ‘someone else’. “Everyone has, right?”

“Sure. Difference is, you are going to get to do it.”

There was a gleam in Anna’s eye. She pushed herself off the couch and moved over, sitting herself next to Lauren, the two of them squeezed into one cushioned seat.

“Just imagine,” she said. “You can dress in my clothes. When was the last time you wore something like this, huh? You can sleep in my bed. Heck, you can fuck my guy, if you like.”

“What? No, I’d never—”

“Ahh, cut it out,” Anna said, laughing. “I wouldn’t say you could if I was worried about it. The two of us have a real ‘open’ relationship anyway. When we want to fuck each other, we fuck each other. When we want to fuck other people, we fuck other people. If he fucked you, it’d be like he was fucking someone else, he just wouldn’t know it.” She casually moved one hand onto Lauren’s thigh, turning her body into her. “It’d be fucking hot too, am I right? Hah — the ‘fucking’ would be fucking hot. I love it.”

Lauren’s heart was pounding hard. “You said you wanted a drink, right?” She stood, needing to put some distance between her ‘evil twin’ and herself.

“Sure. Anything that’s not lite.”

Lauren nodded and went to the kitchen, finding some vodka, glasses, ice and a couple of mixers. She returned to Anna, who had returned to the couch, sprawled on her back. She had a compact open and was peering into the mirror, rubbing at her lower lip, or rather, Lauren’s lower lip. It moved slightly, seeming to slide in an unnatural way. As Lauren entered, Anna removed her hand from her lip and snapped the compact shut.

“This is going to sound nuts,” Lauren said, placing the glasses on the coffee table, along with the bottle. “I’ve got to ask, though. Uh… how do I know that you are, you know, you?”

Anna laughed. “Great point! Totally fair. Let’s see. I guess I could do that thing they do in movies and you could ask me a bunch of dumb questions, but knowing me I’d forget ‘em all. Who can remember the name of their first pet anyway. Easier to do this.”

Sitting up, she reached behind her head and unbuckled the dog collar she was wearing, dropping it casually on the table with a dull thud. Then she grinned as she slipped her hand underneath the collar of her t-shirt. “This is gonna blow your mind, honey,” she said, as her hand grasped and pulled.

Anna’s chest seemed to grow in size for a moment as something was dislodged, and then with a grunt, she pulled upwards, the skin around her throat loosening. While keeping her eyes locked on Lauren, she continued to pull, the skin of her face rippling, distorting and finally coming free entirely. Her lips came away, the mouth becoming slack. Her eyes gave one last look before they also became open, empty holes. With a final groan, she ducked her head and pulled off the mask, long blond wig and all.

Anna grinned as she dropped the empty mask of Lauren’s face on the coffee table, bumping her glass to one side in the process. She was wearing a wig cap, as she had in the video, which she pulled off before running her hands vigorously through her hair, giving it life again. “God,” she said, her voice exactly the same, “I love wearing that thing, but sometimes it’s just like, clammy, you know? Kind of confining… but I got used to it. I even kind of like it now.” She smiled. “You will too.”

Lauren’s jaw, she realized, was hanging open. “It’s you,” she said.

Anna laughed. “Well of course it’s me, who’d you think it was going to be? It would have been quite the gag if it’d been someone else, huh? After the video? Wow.”

“Holy shit,” Lauren said, as if everything before this moment had been prelude, and now she was really seeing the possibilities of what could happen.

“I knew it’d blow your mind,” Anna said, reaching over to mix herself a drink. “Got any other questions like that? Or do I pass the test.”

“You passed,” Lauren said. She did have more questions, but she realized almost all of them were technical. How did the voice changer work? How did Anna make the masks? Did she have others?

In the end though, there was really only one question that mattered, but she thought she already knew the answer.

“Do you want to be me… because of my money?”

Anna didn’t answer immediately. She carefully finished mixing her drink, then settled back on the couch, picking up the discarded mask of Lauren’s face as she did. “That is a great question,” she began. “The answer is ‘no’. It’s not about your money. Don’t get me wrong, you being rich is awesome, but you’ve always been a great friend. I’ve always felt it was cool to hang out with you, or take part in stuff, even if some of your other friends love giving me side-eye. I get enough of ‘feeling rich’ just from being around you, to be honest. It’s like a halo effect. A fringe benefit.” She took a long sip on her drink. “Also, this isn’t some weird stalker shit. I’m not trying to ‘take over your life’ or anything like that. Like I said, I feel like I already know how it sort of ‘feels’ to be rich. But… I don’t know how it feels to be you, specifically. And I want to, you know, experience it for a while.” She sipped again. “It’ll be fun.”

“That’s it? That can’t be it,” Lauren said. “You’ve spent too much time, made too much effort. It can’t be as simple as that.”

Anna nodded slowly. “Okay. Fine. You’re right, it’s not that simple.” She paused, thinking, sipped her drink once more, then finally put it down to speak. “Truth is, I’ve always looked up to you, babe. Always. Ever since college. You were the one who was getting straight As, while I was the one scraping by. You were the one with the hot boyfriends, while I was the one at home alone on Friday night. Now, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t envy you, if that’s what you’re thinking, even with all your money! I also didn’t want to date those guys, and as long as I passed, I didn’t give a shit about my GPA. You were always going to be the best, and I was always going to be less than that, and that was okay.”

“Last few years though,” she continued, “it’s started to wear on me, you know? Like, the road not taken, all that sort of shit. I’ve got a job and it’s good enough, and I’ve got a guy and he’s good enough, but it’s all… sorta same-y. I keep thinking about making a change, like, selling all my shit and moving to the Maldives or something. But that would mean I’d have to sell all my shit, which would be a major hassle, and who knows if the Maldives are even nice? Probably be underwater in five years anyway. So, I started to kind of, experiment. With my life.”

“Experiment?” Lauren said. “With what, the masks?”

“Not at first,” Anna said. “At first I just tried different looks. It was like trying on a different person. One weekend I’d switch to like, a conservative housewife. Mom jeans, different hair, boring makeup, a rented minivan. One time I even babysat for some people so I could walk around a mall with kids and see what that felt like. Another time I went full ice queen? Went to this club with my hair all slicked back, black lipstick, faked a German accent. Some guys fucking loved that shit. Probably helped I had a latex dress on, but still.” She chuckled as she took sip. “Another time – and I admit, this was crazy – I made myself over to look younger, you know? Not like, crazy young, but young enough to be in college. I put on some team colors and went to a football game, cheered on some team I’d never seen before that day, got to be one of the crowd. Met this cute guy while I was there, even exchanged numbers. I never called him, obviously. But I could have.”

“Anyway, before too long I realized I was pretty good at this. I could do different voices, accents. It only took some good makeup, a wig and an attitude change and generally? People accepted the ‘new me’. I started to get greedy, though. I wanted to go further. So one time I went the other way; instead of young, I went old. Used a few prosthetics, got some false teeth made, bald cap, really thin white haired wig. Put on a dress I got from a thrift store. Then I went into this senior home and just hung out for the afternoon. At least, that was the plan. One of the care people clocked me. At first they just thought I was some patient who’d wandered in from somewhere else. I don’t know what I did to give myself away… maybe they just figured it out. One of them asked to see some ID and I booked it.” She laughed. “Don’t know what was funnier, the look on their faces when this hunched over old lady suddenly sprinted out the door, or when I sat in the car in the mall nearby and gave a blowjob to this fucking pervert I met on the internet who was into ‘silver haired sexpots’.”

“Wait, what?” Lauren interrupted. “You gave a – what did you do?”

“Ah, right,” Anna said, as if she’d just realized what she said. “I guess that’s a big part of it that isn’t obvious.” She picked up the mask of Lauren’s face and looked at it, pulling the features into a recognizable shape, fixing the hair. “The truth is babe… all of this shit really fucking turns me on. I didn’t realize it at first; escorting a bunch of brats around the mall isn’t exactly hot, and getting pawed at in a nightclub by a guy named ‘Klaus’ isn’t that sexy either. But… something happened, somewhere, and I realized when I went out dressed up as ‘someone else’, I’d come home horny as hell. I’d fuck the living daylights out of my guy after that… so I put two and two together.”

She paused, long enough for Lauren to say “And?”

“And,” Anna resumed, “I realized that if I was going to do this, I wanted to go all the way. I wanted to really be someone else, not just put on a wig and pretend I was someone. I wanted to be them, in every way, even if was just for a limited time. Which is why—”

“You made the masks. But why do you want me to wear one? Why all the blackmail shit?”

“Well, I told you, I didn’t think you’d wear the mask. And also, honestly? I was pretty embarrassed.” Anna’s face actually reddened as she spoke. “I mean, how am I supposed to tell my BFF that I get all horned up when I put on a wig and call myself a different name? We’ve shared so much over the years, I feel like I know you inside out and you probably feel the same way about me. So to bring this thing in, out of the blue? I guess I didn’t want to rock the boat.”

Lauren kept her mouth shut. She wanted to tell Anna that it would have been fine, that she’d have understood — but the truth was, she couldn’t be sure. Perhaps she would have thought it was weird. Maybe being ‘forced’ to put on the mask had made her accept, perhaps even understand Anna’s feelings.

She was about to say as much, but Anna wasn’t done.

“Also though,” Anna said, her voice growing quiet, “I was kind of hoping you’d be into it too, wild as that sounds. Gotta ask, right? But I knew I couldn’t just turn up with a mask in hand and say ‘Here, try this’. I know what I did wasn’t cool — but at the same time, it got you to put the thing on without me being there, you know? It meant if you hated it, your ‘blackmailer’ could have just said ‘Sure, I got what I want’ and vanished. But, um, you… didn’t.”

Anna had a smile on her face, but couldn’t meet Lauren’s eyes.

“I’m right, aren’t I? You liked it? Like… really liked it.”

Lauren didn’t want to confirm Anna’s question. Didn’t want to admit that seeing Anna pull her mask off, seeing her own face distort and stretch, was somehow intimately compelling. But she was in too deep. She’d said too much. Been too obvious.

And she wanted more.

“Yeah, I really did,” she said, half-whispering.

Anna didn’t reply, didn’t move, seemed to not even breathe.

“And yeah, I think I’d like to be you for a while,” Lauren said, surrendering herself to whatever was next.

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