Page 4 of Wells

I walk past it to make coffee. I walk past it to not make dinner. Tomorrow, I tell myself. I'll open it tomorrow, and every tomorrow the same, while the savings number ticks down at the back of my skull like a meter in a cab I can't afford to be riding in.

On the fourth day, the third company finally answers. They have decided to go in a different direction. They're always going in a different direction, and the direction is never mine.

So I open the box. What the hell? Trying it on to see if I really can conceal my identity doesn't mean I'm going to do it.

The wig is softer than I expected. I pin my own hair flat and pull it on at the bathroom mirror. The platinum, blunt cut swings against my jaw, and a stranger looks back at me. I paint my mouth red, clumsy the first time and better the second.

I prop my phone against the soap dispenser and follow a tutorial through eyeshadow I have no business attempting. As instructed, I start with a neutral base, smoky outer corner, and a dark line hugging my lashes.

The first pass makes me look like a glamorous raccoon. I blend it back from tragic to almost intentional, drag liquid liner across each lid in unsteady little dashes, and by the time I finish, the eyes do not quite match. It doesn't matter. Neither of them looks like mine.

I've never worn contacts, but there's a first time for everything.

I pull the first one from its bubble pack and slide it over my eye, and it stings like sandpaper until I blink the tears back. When I look up, one eye is brown and one is a deep ocean blue.

"Holy shit," I whisper at my own reflection. It takes me several seconds before I can steady my hand for the second.

Finally, I press concealer over the small mark above my lip until it vanishes, until the last familiar thing about my own face is gone.

Then I tie on the mask.

The strangest thing happens. I brace to feel exposed, and what arrives is the opposite. I feel hidden, and hidden, it turns out, feels a great deal like safe. The woman in the mirror is not two months from broke. She never got a lowercase apology on a sticky note. She doesn't get left or get used until she is empty, and then set out with the trash.

This woman holds every card, because no one can find her, and no one can know her, and no one can take a single thing from her that she hasn’t chosen to hand over.

I think I could get used to her.

I carry her to my desk, open the laptop, and finish setting up the account Locke started last week on my sofa.

I type it slowly.

Masked_Maiden is born.

Out past this screen is a whole city of strangers who will hopefully pay to want her, and not one of them will ever reach me.

I hit "go live."

TWO

Wells

The Domino: The domino is a hooded cloak and mask worn to erase a person entirely, the shape and the voice swallowed until nothing identifies the wearer. He runs the whole thing from inside it, a figure in the dark that answers to no name.

The screen glows in front of me, the only light in the room. My side of the feed is a flat black rectangle. Hers is full-frame, color, every sharp detail of her in her black mask and red lips.

She shifts, adjusting the camera angle, and the mask catches the light.

The black lace with tiny rhinestones around the eye openings is hot as fuck. Silk flowers cluster over her right cheek, softness trying to hide danger. The molded nose dips low, covering most of her face and leaving only her mouth and chin bare.

That mouth. Fuuuuuck, that mouth.

Her white-blonde hair falls straight just above her shoulders, too perfect not to be deliberate. Her blue eyes stay fixed on the screen through the cutouts, obedient, exactly where I told her to keep them.

Good girl.

"You're quiet tonight, Midnight," she says.

Her voice comes through clear and warm, with no hesitation. She leans back against the headboard, her knees drawn up, one hand resting on her thigh.