For Me (Pt 1)

“Wait, hang on,” Lauren said into her phone. “Are you serious? You want me to wear this thing?”

“Exactly,” the stranger’s voice said on the other end of the line. “It’s either that, or I release the photos.”

“No!” she yelled. “Just… just give me a minute.”

Lauren stared at the object lying on her coffee table, a dissonant, incongruous item within the rest of her perfectly styled apartment. She pulled her terrycloth blue robe a little closer together, as if she could make this situation go away, as if she could reverse time, not pick up the phone and… not do other things.

“Is it,” she began, then paused, unsure what to say next. “Is it safe?”

A soft chuckle. “Safe? Yes. It’s safe. If I wanted to harm you, don’t you think I could have?”

She shuddered. The voice was deep, rich, cold. Male, maybe, but oddly disaffected. It had to be artificial in some way. “It’ll come off again, right,” she said. “There’s no, like… glue inside or something?”

The chuckle again. “No.”

The object had black hair, which had to be real, she was sure. The hair was attached to a floppy, inert pile of flesh, which when she’d first seen it, she thought was a human head.

In fact it was a mask. Of her best friend’s face. Anna’s face.

It had arrived in a fucking Amazon box, of all things. She’d been expecting a delivery, but not this. When she’d opened up the lid, for a split second she thought a literal human head was inside. The shock was enough to send the box tumbling from her hands, the ‘head’ spilling out onto the floor.

When she dared look at the thing, the lack of blood and the smooth, even nature of the “skin” made her realize it wasn’t human. It was a human replica. She turned it over and got her second shock; the face she saw was her best friend, Anna. An uncanny, perfectly detailed imitation of her, like she’d been frozen in space and time, hollowed out and packaged up for a fucking Prime delivery.

“I’m waiting,” the voice in her ear said.

“And I’m thinking,” Lauren said, irritated.

“What is there to think about?”

“Whether I want to do this! It’s, it’s – it’s fucking weird, that’s what it is.”

The chuckle turned into a laugh. “Is it? It’s just like putting on a new piece of clothing. Nothing more. Where’s the harm in that?”

“How do I know you won’t release the photos regardless of what I do?”

“You don’t.”

She shifted in her seat, just enough to get a different angle on the mask. Part of her wondered if somehow it was going to come to life, revealing that Anna was concealed beneath her coffee table, head sticking through a hole. Maybe some idiot with a camera was going to jump out any second.

Cautiously, she stood and moved towards the table, and the mask on it.

“You just want me to put it on,” she confirmed.

“And take a selfie, yes.”

“Wait, a selfie? What are you going to do with that? Release it?”

“No. It’s proof you did this.”

“What if we did a video call?”

“I’d rather remain anonymous.” A slight pause. “Lauren. Time is ticking.”

She leaned down and picked up the mask, surprised at how heavy it felt. The thing shifted and moved like she was holding liquid. “I’m looking at it. Hang on.”

Placing the phone on the table so she could use both hands, she turned the mask around to allow it to ‘face’ her. It was creepy as hell, looking at Anna’s face recreated in… what, latex? Rubber?

Tentatively, she poked at the mask. Her finger sunk in a little, the cold material surprising her. She turned it around, then held it upside down, looking inside for anything that she didn’t expect to be there.

‘Expect’. As if she did this every day.

“Still waiting,” the voice said impatiently, loudly enough to hear even without speaker on. She jabbed at the speaker button, allowing her to go hands free.

“What? I’m looking at it, okay! I told you, it’s fucking weird, and I need to get used to it before I… you know.”

“I’d say ‘take your time’, but I’m not that patient,” the voice replied. “Pick it up. Stretch out the neck. Pull it on. I promise you – it will fit.”

As far as she could tell, there was nothing inside the mask except air, and probably an unnerving sense of claustrophobia. Lauren knew there was no way she’d look like Anna in this thing. Anna had a different shaped face from her. She was going to look like an idiot in a rubber mask, like a Halloween reject.

“Fine,” she said. “I’m doing it.”

As requested, she turned the mask around and clumsily inserted her hands. For a moment she thought she’d need to pull the mask apart, as if she was separating something dough-like with her fingers. Then she realized it would be awkward to put the mask on with her hands palms-out; better for them to be palms-in, so those same palms would be against her cheeks as the mask went on.

That meant she had to push against the sides of the mask with the back of her hands, which felt strange, but she did it. To her amazement, the thing stretched like pliable rubber. She moved her hands back together and watched as it resumed its shape. It was fascinating, in a way.

“Okay, let’s go,” she muttered, pulling her hands apart then lifting her arms up, the mask coming with them. She awkwardly flipped the mask up and over, then let it descend over her skull. At the last second she realized her blond, shoulder-length hair was going to get caught under the mask’s confines, but she couldn’t worry about that. She just wanted to get this over with.

The mask had considerable stretch, but still stubbornly wanted to reform to its original shape. She felt it constricting the instant she relaxed her muscles, seeming to bear down, to want to squeeze her head until it popped like a grape.

But as her hands receded, slithering out to leave the mask behind, she realized that instead of trying to crush her the mask was more… smothering her? In a good way?

The thing was tight around her head, face and neck, and she felt deeply relieved when she opened her mouth, breathed through her nose, reassuring herself she wasn’t going to choke somehow. The mask was clinging to every part of her head, and she began to pinch and pull it, feeling the material (Rubber? Latex?) slide around over her skull as it stretched and settled, somehow conforming to her. Unsure if there was anything else she needed to do, she smoothed down the mask over her throat.

The eyes and mouth of the thing had been out of place for a moment, but now had settled into place, as if they finally accepted her, a transition from “looking through” the mask, to being part of it. It felt like she’d literally stepped into Anna’s head.

With the mask finally on, everything felt very real. But also weirdly normal.

Anna’s hair was longer than hers, although not by much. The attached wig was not styled and hung loose, a weight she wasn’t used to.

“Well?” the voice said from the phone. “Is it on?”

“Yeah it’s on – hey, what the fuck!?”

Anna’s voice was coming from her mouth.

“What the hell did you do? Why do I sound like – what’s going on?”

There was that chuckle again. “Calm down Lauren. It’s a voice modifier that’s built into the throat of the mask. You activated it when it hit your skin. Clever stuff. But as you can tell, handy.”

She grabbed the phone, as if she could grab the stranger by the neck and shake information from them. “Why the hell do I need to sound like Anna anyway? I thought you just wanted me to look like her!”

“I want you to be her,” the voice said calmly. “You almost are. Have you looked at yourself?”

She suddenly realized she hadn’t. She opened her camera app and activated the front view.

On her phone’s screen, Anna gasped at what she saw, almost dropping the phone. “Jesus Christ!”

The stranger laughed, a tinny sound from the phone speaker. “Were you expecting someone else?”

It took a moment before she composed herself, before she could look at the screen again. As she moved the phone in front of her, Anna came into view, peering like she’d just seen her reflection for the first time.

“Holy shit,” Anna’s voice said in a near whisper.

She moved the phone closer to her face, moving it around to “inspect” the mask from all angles. Where were the seams? Where were the obvious giveaways, the ‘tells’ that this wasn’t someone’s face?

Curious, she pinched the ‘skin’ under one eye. “Ouch!”

Her fingers were pinching her own skin beneath the mask. Clearly it was thinner in certain places. More carefully, she ran her finger over the fake skin, trying to tug at it, to get some purchase. It worked; she pinched, and the skin below her eye socket stretched out slightly, exposing a gap between fake and real. “Holy shit.”

Even more curious now, she ran her fingertips downwards, pulling, dragging really, feeling the skin that covered her skin rise as she increased the friction, reminding her that this face wasn’t hers, wasn’t real. As her fingertips moved down her cheek and over her jawline, she heard a sound, a guttural moan, a voice that wasn’t hers expressing an emotion she hadn’t expected.

“Fuck,” she said, hearing Anna’s voice say it. “Oh – oh god.”

The phone was perfectly quiet.

“It feels….”

She couldn’t really express it, couldn’t really understand it. It was a piece of clothing, she told herself, something suffocating and confining, like wearing a plastic bag over your head – but the eyes were open, the mouth uncovered. It wasn’t a death sentence. It was something else. It gave something life, rather than taking it. It brought a new person to life. Not Anna, but Anna’s twin, her mirror image.

The phone screen wasn’t good enough. She turned and walked, almost ran, to her bathroom and the mirror there, big enough to cover half a wall.

Her friend Anna entered, hair flying, expression intense. She was staring at Lauren, eyes boring into her own, feelings clear.

Lauren took over, lifting her hands to her face and feeling it, just touching it, exploring with her fingers. The mask allowed her to feel every movement, every press of her fingertips, every subtle sensation. She watched as Anna’s expression changed and shifted, mouth opening, another moan emitting from her, a moan that lengthened and shifted until finally it was the beginning of a laugh.

Anna’s laugh. It echoed in the tiled bathroom, long and loud.

“This is amazing,” she said, still unable to believe she wasn’t saying that. “Amazing,” she repeated just for the effect. “My name is Anna. Ha! My name is Anna.”

She turned away from the mirror, steadied herself, then slowly turned back, anticipation rising.

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