Smoke and Mirrors

86

Cynthia Gardner was dressed in clean clothes, still bound, and lying on a king-sized bed, watching mesmerized as the man who’d kidnapped her peeled away in ragged pieces what she had believed until that instant was the actual skin on his very unattractive face. As he scrubbed the adhesive from his cheeks, he became another person entirely. He wasn’t bad looking, but he wasn’t male model material either. And thanks to the tight spandex underwear he had on, she could see that he was built like a gymnast. Sure, he was sort of old, but every muscle was as perfectly defined as anybody her age.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” she asked him.

“In school,” he said, frowning thoughtfully in the mirror at the sight of his irritated skin.

“Makeup one-oh-one?” she asked.

“Are you feeling one hundred percent yet?” he wanted to know.

“Yes. Thanks for the shot.” Asshole. I could have died. I almost did, I bet.

“Now you are completely out of insulin. So the timing was perfect. By the time you need another shot, you’ll be at home, safe and sound. You have some at home?”

“Yes, I do. You know, I really thought you were going to let me die,” she told him.

“Don’t be silly, Cynthia,” He turned to look at her, smiling. “Do I look like a murderer to you?”

“I’m not really sure what a murderer looks like.”

He said, “Let’s hope you don’t ever find that out.”

“So how long till I go home?”

“Tonight. Around nine.”

As Cynthia watched, the man reached into a cardboard box, lifted out a mannequin’s head, and placed it on the dressing table. All she could make out from the backside was a hairpiece. After applying adhesive from a bottle to a section of latex he’d removed from the head, he pasted the section on his own forehead, patting it down in places.

“So how long does this usually take you?”

“Takes as long as it takes. It’s the painting of the latex skin that takes the longest, and I do that first. This one took longer because of the amount of texture in the panels. It has to be accurate to hold up under close scrutiny. But it’s more than looking right. You have to have the subject’s movements down, and the voice pitch and patterns have to be perfect.”

“So who are you going to be when you finish?” she asked him.

“Well, little sister,” he said in a totally different voice, “just watch and you will see.”