Two Can Keep a Secret

"Really? An alley? Drama, much."

The girl - he never caught her name - popped her gum, arms crossed and eyebrow arched. Alex tried not to glower too hard.

"I don't want any of my neighbors seeing me waving a wad of cash at some teenager. Can we hurry this up?"

She gave a slight shrug. "Sorry for the delay. Grandma's good, but she's only human, and you're up against something much scarier."

"You're telling me," he muttered. "Well? Where is it?"

With a sigh, she removed her backpack and unzipped it. Alex tapped his foot as she reached inside and pulled out the mask.

"Jack Porter," she said. "56 years old. The mask is made of pig skin, but the hair and eyelashes are his. You can have his face for 9 hours, which means you'll be on your own after 3 a.m."

He gritted his teeth. "Nine hours? Is this some joke? I'm paying you-..."

"Not enough," she stated. "Grandma gets 85%, remember? You have no idea how much this took out of her. You want a full night, you gotta cough up enough to make it worth the brain damage. So take it or leave it."

Alex ran his fingers through his increasingly greasy hair. The orange hues of the setting sun bathed everything in the alley – the girl, the sinister mask and Alex himself, rail thin, tired and so, so desperate.

"Fine, I'll take it."

"Money first."

Waving a wad of cash at some teenager in an alley would look no better to the cops than it would to his neighbours, but it was too late to think about that now. She started counting each note. Their shadows were growing longer.

"I'm running out of time."

"You and everybody else."

She finished counting and handed him the mask with an air of someone who did not expect to do business with him ever again.

He ran the way home. He shut the door on the last rays of sunlight and quickly drew the curtains. He was prepared this time.

With shaking hands, Alex drew the mask over his own face. It was no longer leather, he realized, but skin, thin and wrinkled - the face of an old man. He would be Jack Porter for the next 9 hours. It would have to be enough. He would be three towns over by the time it expired.

His bottle of whiskey was waiting for him on the coffee table. Alex stuffed it in a bag, grabbed his keys and took off.

There were fingers reaching down his throat, choking him. He shot up, coughing, hands swinging out against thin air. Something erupted from his throat, but it was too dark to see where it fell. He reached for a wall, a light switch, and after several strained, panicked breaths he found one. It made him long for those few moments of confusion.

He had driven here as fast as he could without getting pulled over, to this cheap hotel, and shut himself in a grey little room where he could drink the night away. And drunk he had, until he had passed out on the floor next to tge bed. The thing that had been choking him lay on the filthy carpet - his cigarette butt from earlier. This was a non-smoking room, too - now he was in trouble. He snorted to himself. And here he'd thought he was losing his sense of humor.

He ran a shaking hand over his face. He was still Jack Porter. A glance at his phone told him he had a minute before he went back to being himself.

He spotted the whiskey bottle near the foot of the bed, grabbed it and switched off the light.

Time's up.

Alex felt the face he was wearing loosen and peel off, once more made of leather. He listened to his own heart beat in the dark like a countdown. Three. Two.