Carol's Apartment. Thursday, 6:30 PM.

"Well...?" David asked again as the two sat together in silence while eating David's take out. Carol tried to avoid eye contact but his stare felt like it was boring a hole into the side of her face.

"Well what...?" she mumbled to herself. "I just needed some alone time these past few days. No texts, no calls..."

"What about Monday?" He asked pointedly as Carol let out a heavy sigh before stabbing her food with the end of her fork.

"Let me guess, you mean Peter?" Carol slumped herself over her elbow. David nodded back.

"Look, before I met you... he and I dated when I lived back in Seattle," she started to say. "And yes... I did meet with him at a Shake Shack earlier this week," she continued. "But I ended it with him because it felt... destructive," she finished while miming air quotes with her fingers.

"What did he want?" David asked as he leaned back on his chair.

"He..." Carol began to say but held back for a moment. "...wanted to meet someone that I knew." Carol looked past her boyfriend towards her fridge and saw an apparition of Cherry smirking in the reflection.

"Who?" David asked as Carol bit down on her tongue. She didn't know how to answer this without giving away too much.

"That story to the police..." she began to go off topic as she twirled her fork against the rim of her takeout box. "You mentioned something about an umbrella... that seemed oddly specific for a fib..."

"Did that really happen?" She asked. David directed his gaze downwards as he reluctantly nodded.

"Yeah, it did happen," she sighed as he folded his arms underneath his chest and leaned against her table. "A woman, I think, came into my apartment from my balcony," he quickly said while rubbing his arms. "And she came onto me..."

"Did you know her?" Carol asked in a tone similar to the officers minutes earlier. He shook his head in response.

"No, I've never seen her before but she was... strange," he looked up at Carol's ceiling as he recalled what he saw. "She had red hair, skin tight clothes and her face was unlike anything I've ever seen before... it was green like face-paint or a mask."

Upon hearing the cursed word, Carol's lips involuntarily twitched.

"Actually, if it was a mask it looked wildly lifelike and nothing like those cheap plastic ones around Halloween," he mused to himself as he lowered his gaze back to his girlfriend. "Anyway, she seemed familiar somehow."

"How so...?" Carol asked as she stared into David's collar.

"Well, despite wearing some sort of cosplay or getup, she reminded me a lot of..." David stopped himself and squinted his eyes towards his girlfriend. "Do you think that's the person the police were talking about?"

"Yeah maybe..." She mumbled to herself as she scooped up the last of her meal with the edge of her fork.

"Is she your sister?" David asked. Carol shook her head no. "A cousin?" Again, Carol shook her head no.

Carol's hands began to tremble as she took a long deep breathe before closing her eyes and bracing herself for what she was going to say next. "She's... me," Carol admitted.

"What?" He snapped as he blinked a few times in bewilderment.

"She's me," Carol repeated herself as she brought her hands together. "I vaguely remember coming on to you that night. I remember feeling a tad hurt from your rejection..." She pondered as she tried to give him her best puppy dog eyes.

David didn't know how to respond. For a solid few minutes, whenever he tried to say something he felt his throat catch fire and prevent him from uttering anything comprehensible. He paced around her apartment and drank several cups of water before sitting back across from his girlfriend and piecing things together. "But her hair was... and her body was... but your body is..." he continued to stammer as he fidgeted uncomfortably. "And the way she, I mean you, acted was like..."

Carol looked at her boyfriend, and admittedly herself, with a dash of pity. It wasn't every day that you come to find out that your partner was secretly a radically different person.

"So..." He began to say after calming down a bit. "...was that green face some type of skin paint or a mask..."

"Yes. It's a mask," she interrupted him as she folded her arms and leaned back on her chair. Carol looked past her boyfriend and saw a figment of Cherry who was visibly annoyed.

"A-And the rest?" He mimed at his head; pointing towards his hair. She nodded back.

"It's all real. The hair, that body..." Carol stopped herself as she felt a bit cringe by having to describe Cherry's alluring appearance. Even though she knew it was her she felt a tinge of jealousy jolt through her veins.

"I still d-don't believe you. No offense Carol, but you're…you and she was…" David stammered as he tried to get up from his seat to mime at her.

Carol reached over the table and grabbed his shoulder to lower him back into his chair. "I think you'd better just sit and listen. Trust me..."

Carol's Apartment. Thursday, 7:35 PM.

"So let me get this straight," he finally spoke up after being lectured for an hour. "That antique I sometimes see you carrying can TRANSFORM you into an entirely different persona when you wear it?"

"Basically, yes," she nodded back.

"Why does she…I mean you…act so differently?" He asked while folding his arms in his lap.

"Honestly... she's not as different as I'd like to admit..." She admitted as her voice trailed off.

"What does that mean?" He asked as he raised his eyebrow.

"When I put that thing on I feel... powerful, beautiful and in control," She said as her voice trailed from that last adjective.

"In control of what...?" David interjected as he felt little goosebumps form along his arm.

"Of me. Of Everything," Carol said in a somewhat ominous tone. "Everything that I ever wanted to do. Every secret urge... every suppressed desire or hidden thought and feeling just comes out of me."

"It explodes out loudly and often violently like a bomb," she stopped while humming a tune from her favorite song.

"Problem is..." she continued, "it kind of feeds on those emotions. So the more that's bottled up the less control I have when I have it on."

"And how often have you…?" David started to ask.

"A lot, babe," Carol interrupted as she looked down at the floor.

"It was my senior year of high school when I found it," she thought back to her hometown. "Go Tigers!"

"I found it during winter break and wore it probably almost every night for at least five years; up until grad school." David looked at her and saw a wistful look on her face.

"For a while it was great; like living in a fantasy... or a fan fiction," Carol said while a slight smile on her face. "I got even with all of my bullies, money was never an issue for me, and I could party forever with basically no consequences."

"And. There. Was. So. Much... Sex," she said slyly and chuckled to herself. "If there was a boy that I had a crush on or even had a little twinge of blush on me... odds were good that I'd be riding him by the end of the night."

David shifted uncomfortably against his chair while an apparition of Cherry, through a nearby mirror, smiled to herself and looked wistfully out the window.

"Okay, okay, I get it. But it sounds like some sort of monkey paw... why keep it?" David started to ask as she saw her face suddenly droop.

"At first it started out great; no consequences whatsoever. And it feels so damn invigorating that you typically don't think or even care about the ramifications behind what you do. But I eventually realized that I was hurting people; ruining relationships and destroying things in the process..." She looked out the window and rubbed the back of her hand as she recalled pieces of her memories from prior outings.

"Like what the cops showed... or what happened last week on the river..." She whispered to herself.

"If you know bad things happen when you wear it... then why continue to put it on at all?" David asked a pretty straightforward question.

"Because I get frustrated," Carol quipped back as she turned towards her boyfriend. "And I can't take any of this anymore.. For example, my boss is just a heartless SOB; bossing me around and sometimes punishing me for nothing and then taking credit for the work me and my team do. I just had it with her..." Carol took a moment to take a breath as Cherry's green eyes glowed in the mirror.

"That's what is so insidious about the Mask. It always starts with stuff you want to do... which is why she came to see you that night..."

"What!?" David quickly interjected.

"David, hon. I have needs. We've been dating for the last three months and the most we've done is just kiss..." She quietly said while twirling her hair with her fingers. "I've started to have dreams of us together but part of me is-s..." She let out a heavy sigh before staring right into David's eyes. "...afraid to act on those desires because of my past," she said in a sullen tone.

"So... you had dreams about me... uh-h... us?" He asked semi-jokingly. "At least my instincts were kinda on point; masked or not..."

Carol suddenly snapped as she stood up, "I'm NOT like HER!"

"What I'm saying is... I'm in love with you Carol. And if she's a part of you then I wanna get to know that part of you; sober or explosive," he mused to her as their eyes locked in on each other. "Heck, it might help you better control yourself to have me be a constant for you to anchor onto."

Carol's eyes began to water as her boyfriend's sympathy towards her hit her in an unexpected way. She suddenly grabbed him and held him in close while smiling for the first time in days.

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The Who's behind The Mask? series and cover art were imagined by possessionmask1994 on DeviantArt!