I tapped a button on my laptop, then swung my head in time with the music that began to play in response. A soundtrack from my favourite game, and I hummed along, singing to myself as I clicked fire from the hob and poured oil into a wok.
*Where have you been~ Been searching all along~*
I flipped over the bowl of chopped vegetables, dumping them straight into the pan. Sizzling filled the air, along with the smell of onions, peppers and garlic. I tossed the mixture, let it settle, repeated the process until everything browned. A dash of soy sauce, a splash of sherry; the sizzle became a bubble, the smell more complex. Perfect.
“Jake!” I screamed. “Dinner!”
He didn’t reply, so I turned down the heat, drained the noodles and set off upstairs. Jake had been quiet of late. To tell the truth, I’d barely seen him. Not that we knew each other well, we’d only been living together for a month. He liked sports, running around, outdoorsy things; I liked videogames and sewing. As far as I knew the only things we shared were financial troubles and a need for a new housemate. Even so, I’d noticed that as of a week ago he’d started spending more time alone in his room. Cramming, maybe. Or an internet girlfriend. No reason to miss dinner.
I knocked on his door, got no reply. I knocked again, and heard a voice. Hard to make out, but it sounded like ‘come in’, so I opened the door and stepped through.
Jake was sat on a chair in front of his computer, naked, stroking himself. The chair tilted back, setting his body at fourty-five degrees, a position that perfectly showed off his well sculpted chest. His cock was flawless, exactly the right size, and his face enraptured in a way I could stare at for hours. And I looked past it all, to the vision on his screen, more shocking than everything else put together.
Me.
Naked.
Touching myself.
“Coming, I’m coming, I’m cum-”
The voice I had heard was my own.
Jake’s hand continued to move and he started to cum, a thick squirt of white liquid shooting onto his chest. The image of me shuddered as well, my mouth wide open beneath a red panther mask and a wig of long blonde hair. I turned my face, slowly, and he did too, our eyes meeting as he continued to spurt over himself.
“OhmygoshsorryImstupidbye-”
My words flew out and I slammed the door shut, adrenaline surging through me. I never reacted well under pressure, and my mind was a blur. I shook my head, trying to concentrate. He couldn’t know. I always wore a mask, faked my voice up a pitch. He’d never mentioned anything. And hundreds of people watched my videos. Thousands. He didn’t know. Everything was fine.
I took a deep breath, waited a moment until I judged Jake would definitely be finished, and knocked again.
“Don’t come in!”
“I won’t!” I replied.
“Why did you-”
“I thought I heard you tell me to!” He didn’t reply, so I followed up before he thought I was blaming him. “Look, my fault. I’m sorry. And dinner’s ready. I’ll… I’ll see you downstairs?”
“Sure… gimme a second.”
I set off downstairs, thinking about what had happened and what to do. My gut was telling me to put it from my mind, never mention it. That’s what I did, with anything like this, ran away. The less you talked about things, the worse they seemed to feel. It still beat facing them.
But… that had been me. He’d been stroking himself to me. It was selfish, but I wanted to know what he thought. I got messages, of course, like everyone else who did what I did; offers and threats, demands and insults. But I’d never had chance to ask a real person about my work.
Maybe I should bring it up, just this once. Raise the subject immediately, then we could laugh it off, enjoy dinner. We’d barely had a chance to speak since moving in, so why not? Like an icebreaker. Clear the air. Yeah, that sounded good.
Decision made, I returned to the kitchen, picked straight back up singing along to my soundtrack, and started to prepare the meal. The soft notes relaxed me, and I grabbed a couple of bowls and divided out the food, sticking a pair of chopsticks into each mound of stir-fry. I was about done when Jake came downstairs and into the kitchen. I tapped pause on my laptop, turning around to see what he would say. He looked sheepish.
“Looks good.” Small talk. Comfortable. Nice.
“You have an incredible cock,” I replied. “I should know, I’ve… *seen loads*.”
His face went white, then red, then I went red too, completely unused to being forward about anything. My heart hammered out of my chest and I started to splutter, my instincts telling me to apologise and pretend nothing had happened. I felt awful, I hated myself, I wanted to die. Then Jake burst out laughing, and I joined him, obliterating the tension in a storm of hysterical chuckles and snorts. I handed him a bowl, and he pushed me towards the lounge, still giggling.
“I really am sorry,” he said, sitting down in the armchair. I took the sofa, and a big bite of food.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, around a mouthful of crunchy vegetable. “It happens.”
“Can’t believe I forgot to lock the door.”
“Well,” I said, “At least now I know what you’ve been up to all this time.”
The faintest touch of colour in his cheeks, then he blew out a breath and it disappeared.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“It’s cool. As far as housemates go, quiet and invisible is pretty close to the top. I thought you’d met someone online. Though… I guess you kind of did?”
“You could say that,” he laughed. “Stupid.”
I pulled my knees up onto the sofa, wondering if I was going to risk pushing this, deciding that the answer was yes. I needed to know.
“So what’s she like?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“The girl you were watching? What’s she like?”
“Seriously? We’ve barely spoken in a month and now you want to know how I get off”
“Why not? Icebreaker, right? And women watch porn too, you know. Maybe I’ll look her up.” I struggled not to fall over my words. Conversation was hard. Jake waved his hands in reply, chopsticks included, through the air in a gesture that was halfway between submission and a question about my sanity.
“Fine, the answer is I don’t know. She’s secretive, always in costume. Usually a hat, pink blouse, purple gloves; like an old-school comic-book thief or one of those opera phantoms or something.”
“Like a phantom. Or a thief.” He hadn’t recognised my favourite character? Really? I’d put so much effort into that one.
“Not always. She mixes it up. A red catsuit with a blonde wig, some sort of neon frog-girl. One that looks like a maid outfit, but all in black with a slit in the skirt. She always wears a short white wig with that one, and a black blindfold thing.”
“A maid. With short white hair and a blindfold thing.” I tried not to be disappointed. I mean, okay, maybe the others were niche, but he didn’t know 2B? This man clearly had no taste.
“Yeah, a blindfold. There’s always something like that, the only thing that never changes, every costume has a mask. She always wears one. It’s kind of her thing.”
“Really.” That’s what he took from this? The masks, that was my thing. Not the painstakingly detailed, perfectly accurate, hand crafted outfits. The masks.
“Yeah. She wears a mask, dresses up in costume, touches herself, tells you what to do. Gives you instructions, orders you around, you know? Calls herself ‘the Masquebator’.”
“Clever.”
“I thought so too,” he said. Damn right it was clever. Took me ages to come up with that one. “So that’s that. She’s clever, wears the sexiest outfits, her voice is amazing, she’s witty, smart, gorgeous. She’s almost perfect. And yeah, maybe I spent a little too long watching her videos recently.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, trying not to glow with the praise. Now we were getting somewhere. Smart. Witty. Gorgeous. Why yes, of course I was all of those things. Wait. Hang on. “Almost perfect? Why almost?”
“She’s so natural, but some of her videos she takes it too far, saying things like ‘yeah, cum in my pussy’. It sounds fake.”
“Well maybe she knows that,” I snapped. “Maybe she hates those videos too but she needs the money and those are the ones that get requested or commissioned. Maybe she thinks it’s totally stupid to say shit like ‘yeah, cum in my pussy’.”
Jake froze. He lowered his chopsticks, placing them flat on top of his bowl, then put the entire thing onto the coffee table, staring at me the whole time. I realised, when I’d spoken that phrase, I’d used the voice of my masked alter-ego.
“Say that again,” he said.
“No.”
“Go on.”
“I refuse.”
“You sounded just like her.”
“Did not,” I said.
“You’re the same build too. Same auburn hair. Same pale skin.”
“Coincidence.”
“Same eyes.”
“Me and half the population,” I said. I put my bowl down too, started to stand up. My heart was hammering again, my hands shaking. I felt lightheaded. “This is silly.”
“Not the colour. The shape. And you’re acting weird. Fuck me. She’s you, isn’t she? You’re her.”
“Nope,” I said, backing away towards the door. “No no no, got it all wrong.”
“Holy. Shit. It’s really you.”
“JustrememberedsomethingIgottadobye-”
I darted from the room, slammed the door and launched myself up the stairs. Fuck. My secret was out, not yet, but one person knew and it wouldn’t be long until he told someone else. I’d delete everything. No proof. Deny it all. Find a new job. Some real work, something else that let me pick my hours and stay inside, something lazy. Writing erotica, possibly. Anything that kept me away from people.
My brain began conjuring images of things I’d seen during the day, and an idea started to form in my mind. Maybe there was something else I could do. Risky? Maybe. Stupid? Definitely. Fun? Without a shadow of a doubt.
I closed the door to my room, locked it, and dived into my wardrobe, sorting through things while humming a tune to myself. Sure, *I* might be a flustered bundle of anxiety, incapable of dealing with this situation.
But I knew someone who wasn’t.
****************************************
“JustrememberedsomethingIgottadobye-”
My body didn’t move as Tara blurted a string of words in my direction and then rampaged her way out of the lounge. I was still too stunned by the revelation that my housemate was the woman I’d spent the last week jacking it to. It seemed impossible. Tara, awkward, nerdy Tara, was the Masquebator? I thought she spent all her time playing videogames.
Try as I might I couldn’t reconcile the two. We ate dinner together, once or twice a week, and other than that she hardly ever ventured out from her room. When we did speak she seemed quiet; shy, or preoccupied. Until today anyway, when she’d suddenly opened up to jokes about sex and more casual conversation. Even then, it was a far cry from the confident, dominant personality expressed through those videos.
Shit. The videos. What if she deleted them? What if she freaked now I’d unmasked now identity, nuked her account? I couldn’t let that happen. I’d keep her secret, of course, I wasn’t an asshole. But I wasn’t going to lose access to a treasure trove of such excellent porn.
I opened the door to the hallway and started off up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Should I download the videos manually, or fudge a script to get them in a batch? How long would it take her to delete them, would she do it immediately? I opened the door to my room, closed it behind me and sat down at my desk to work. They were still there, good. Now to-
There was a knock at the door. I froze.
“Tara?”
“No.”
That voice. It sent a shiver down my spine. I stood from my desk, walked towards the door, and opened it.
Standing outside my room was a gorgeous woman, clad in the strangest of outfits. She had a wide brimmed hat, a pink shirt, a waistcoat cut to show off her generous bosom. Puffy purple pants spread out over smooth black tights, fixed with a belt of grenades. She was wearing a mask.
“Tara.”
“No. Noir.”
“Okay… Noir?”
“Tara told me you were a fan?” A smirk touched the corners of her mouth.
I gulped. This couldn’t be happening. Most of my body was as confused as I was, with one singular exception. My cock was standing to rock hard attention, straining against my jeans, a pavlovian response triggered by the appearance of this costume and the voice that went along with it.
“Y-yeah,” I managed.
“She informed me that you had some strange ideas about my identity. I can’t have that. Not that it’s true.”
“N-no?”
“No. So you’re going to keep that to yourself, aren’t you?”
“Y-yes?”
“Good boy.” She reached up a hand covered in a soft purple glove, and trailed it over my cheek. “I knew an admirer of mine would know how to take orders.” She leaned closer, her face inches from mine. “Now sit down.”
I did.
“Wonderful,” she said. She started unbuttoning her outfit. “Of course, one would hardly dare to make such demands without offering a little in return, hmm?”
I gaped as the woman I’d spent the last week lusting after pulled open her shirt. She hadn’t been wearing a bra and she tucked the pink fabric out of the way, revealing first one breast then the other. I’d seen them before, so many times, and still, this felt like the first. Tara- No, Noir walked over to my chair, standing above me with a smile over her face.
“What are you waiting for?” said Noir. “Or do I need to instruct you every step of the way?” She bent forward, placing her hands on my legs, speaking in a tone that demanded obedience. “Take out your cock. Stroke it for me.”
A moment’s hesitation while I worried I was dreaming, then I flew into obeying her words. I don’t think I’ve ever unbuckled a belt so quickly. I tore it open, unzipped and freed myself from my boxers. Noir smiled. I wrapped a hand around my shaft and started to move it up and down.
Noir ran her hands up my thighs and to the rim of my T-shirt. She lifted it upwards, up to my chest, then waited while I stopped pleasuring myself long enough to raise my hands and let her remove it entirely. As soon as the garment was off I went back to stroking, my attention focused on the breasts hanging inches above my cock.
“You like these?” she asked, supporting them with her hands. I nodded, then reached out a hand. She batted it away. “No touching. Not unless I tell you to.” I nodded again.
She shifted forward, straddling me, easing herself down to sit on my thighs. One of her hands reached into her baggy shorts. I’d seen under them before, to the tights and the well placed hole in their material. She raised her eyebrows at me, then bit her lip and let out a soft moan, letting me know exactly what she was doing with her fingers.
“How many times have you watched me touch myself?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t counting. Lots.”
“And I’ve never seen you cum. So unfair.”
I considered telling her that she’d seen me cum half an hour ago, then my brain caught up with the hint. That was Tara. This was Noir.
“No, you haven’t,” I said.
“Let’s change that.”
She broke into a wide smile and placed her free hand on my chest. It traced a path over my collarbone, my shoulder, down my arm. Her fingers wrapped around my wrist, and she pulled my hand to her chest.
“Touch me,” she said.
Her breasts were incredible; large, soft, yet just firm enough. I cupped each in turn then settled on one, squeezing it while still stroking with my other hand.
“Fuck,” I said.
“Getting close? Going to cum for me?”
I realised I was. I’d been lucky to last this long, even with it being my second time in short succession.
“Y-yeah.”
Noir tilted her head to one side, thinking. Then she started to push herself forward, shimmying up my thighs. My cock and the hand stroking it disappeared beneath the puffy fabric of her costume. She adjusted herself for a moment, I felt her hand against my own, nudging me slightly to one side. And then wetness.
She didn’t push down, didn’t let me enter her. I stroked myself against her entrance, her juices coating my tip. She started to speak words of encouragement, telling me to keep going, to speed up, that she was going to cum too; things I’d heard before in her videos, things that felt totally new. I started to shudder, my cock twitching with imminence. Noir placed her hand on my wrist, stopping me from stroking and leaving me perched on the edge.
“Who am I?” she said.
“Noir.”
“Say it again.”
“Noir.”
“Don’t stop.”
“Noi-”
Noir tore my hand aside and sank down in one smooth motion, enveloping my cock to the hilt. I started to cum, calling her name again and again, hugging her towards me, burying my face in her chest, spending myself deep within the character she had become. She moved her hips in time with my shuddering, teasing it out, making sure I released every last drop.
I sank back into my chair, gasping and unable to form a coherent thought. Noir towered above me, smug and serene. I was still inside her. She waited until my breath had slowed, then stroked my forehead with one hand as she started to speak.
“Correct or not, trying to uncover someone’s identity can have terrible consequences.”
“Yeah,” I managed. Even that much was a struggle.
“Good. I’m glad we know where we stand. I’d hate to destroy my outfits. Oh, and don’t mention this to Tara.”
“I won’t.”
Noir started to rise off me, and I sighed as my cock slid out of her. She took a moment to straighten her skirt, then turned to leave.
“Hey, um, Noir?”
“Yes?”
I suddenly felt very, very stupid. But this was how she wanted it. And I had to ask.
“Will I see you again?”
She turned around, grabbing the brim of her hat and striking a pose.
“*Certainly*. But only when I want you to. I *am* a Phantom, after all.”
With that she spun around, strode out of my room and back into hers. I relaxed onto my chair, still covered in cum and sweat, processing what had just occurred. Music began to drift from behind her door, a character theme I’d heard her singing before, and for the first time I listened to the words.
*I’m a shapeshifter~ What else should I be? Please don’t take off my mask~ My place to hide~*
Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/ht55cb/beneath_the_mask_a_short_story_about_discovering