Forgotten faces

I check my reflection in the bathroom mirror one last time before heading back to the club. Everything about my appearance is perfectly crafted in order to appear as attractive as possible to lure in my prey. Long brown hair, high delicate cheekbones , even the height was tailored to fit his taste in women. I sigh as I stare at the reflection of my current face. This isn’t  the kind of work I saw myself doing when I was younger, but even shapeshifters needed to eat, and rent wasn’t getting any cheaper. I shift my eye color to a slightly more vibrant blue before heading back into the lion’s den.

As I slowly stalk across the club, I make sure to keep my eyes peeled for any hostile or suspicious figures. Of course, this place being occupied by mainly gangsters and rich lowlifes, those descriptors could be used on almost everybody here. This club is like a hive for crooked business men and mobsters. a place made just for them and their shady dealings. There are cameras everywhere that get wiped nightly to avoid any chances of blackmail and every member of the staff is indebted to one of the families here in one way or another in order to avoid any chance of rats. It was shady as fuck and walked the line of legality like a high wire acrobat, but compared to some of the other atrocities that these monsters had committed, this place might as well be a church. I change my direction and saunter up to the bartender, requesting some fruity little drink with a high enough alcohol content to knock a golem on their ass. He nods and uses his upper set of arms to assemble my drink, using the lower pair to continue cleaning whiskey glasses. I quietly smile to myself at his lack of recognition. Despite having ordered this exact drink from this same bartender dozens of times, not once has he realized who I was. One of the few perks of being a shapeshifter, and also what made me so valuable to my boss. Most hitmen can only go back to the same place two or three times before their presence starts to become suspicious, but I can come here as many times as I need and no one will even know that I exist. Even if things go south, I can just change my face again and disappear into the shadows. Nobody can point you out in a lineup if you don’t exist.

The bartender slides over my deceptively pink cocktail, and after thanking him, I begin to head over near the little seating alcoves lining the far wall, swaying my hips in a flirtatious fashion. As I go I quietly empty my drink into various plants and empty cups that I come across. I mean of course I’m not going to drink that liquid liver killer, it’s just easier to get people to believe that my marks were with a drunk bombshell if they saw me order this absinthe disguised with sugar and strawberries. Besides, it’s easier to do my job when I’m not struggling to walk in a straight line.

After a bit of searching, I finally discovered where my next target is lounging.

 Mr Richard Noxwood. An insanely rich and equally attractive man as well as the sole inheritor of Noxwood Pharmaceuticals. His father earned the family’s blood money by developing a drug called Tractabillium. A mood modifier that made people more docile and complicit. It could turn even the most by the books cop, or pure hearted politician into gentle dopeheads who would agree to even the most corrupt suggestions. Though, I’ve talked to enough unfortunate women who were in the wrong place at the wrong time to know that it wasn’t all that this drug was used for. Like I said, nobody here is getting into heaven.

Normally The Noxwoods were on pretty good terms with my boss, but lately little Dicky here had been getting a little too cocky. He had been making deals with certain politicians behind everyone’s backs, trading insider secrets for protection and cash, and it was only a matter of time before the little bastard revealed something that would put a lot of people behind bars. If it were up to me I would have gladly let him get away with his little scheme. But, the boss man wanted him dead, and considering the fact that rent was due soon, I want exactly in a position to tell him no.

Once I get within the weasel’s line of sight, I slip into a new personality just as easily as I change into one of my faces. Adding a little drunken sway to my step, a tipsy smile, and an inability to keep my hand off my collar bones was enough to turn any horny bastard into butter in my hands. As I caught the clearly intoxicated man’s gaze, I saw a wide,  predatory smile cross his face before he called out and beckoned me over. 

“ What’s a pretty thing like you dancing all alone?”

He asks in a tone that tries and fails to be sexy. 

I respond with a giggle that makes me want to vomit before responding in a soft southern accent “Just lookin’ fer a fella ta show me a good time tonight, ain’t had a chance ta cut loose in far too long.” I flutter my eyelashes at this and bite my lip.

”Oh I know exactly what you mean” He says, not once taking his eyes from my barely contained cleavage. 

“Hmm, do ya now?”

“Of course! Hell, I don’t remember the last time I was able to go out. Most nights I’m working late to keep my company up and running.”

This is a bold faced lie. He doesn’t do jack shit for his fathers company and comes here at least twice a week.

“But luckily for you, I have just the thing to help us both be free for the rest of the night.”

With that he whips out a small plastic bag filled with little purple pills from the inside pocket of his coat. 

Tractabillium, of course he’s the type to hand these out to girls.

”These little babies will make all of your worries disappear, and replace every little anxiety in your head with nothing but pure bliss.”

I hide my disgust at this cheesy sales pitch with another giggle. OK, maybe killing him wouldn’t be as bad as I thought.

 “That sounds like exactly what I need” I say to him as I sit down, practically on his lap. I am so close to him I can smell his designer cologne. Why do rich people spend so much money to smell like shit?

He hands me three of the little pills with a barely contained grin. ”Well, bottoms up” I say, pretending to pop the pills in my mouth. I make a small packet of skin in my hand to hide the nefarious drugs until I can get rid of them, and fake swallow under Richard’s hungry gaze. I look him dead in the eye and give him a flirty smile as I slowly lick my lips.

He smiles at me hungrily, not unlike a dog at a piece of meat. “Let’s get out of here” He says, gesturing with his head in a vague direction . He pulls me up and with one hand placed firmly in the small of my back he quickly guides me to the elevators that lead to the hotel above this establishment. So eager to get my out of my tiny dress that he doesn’t even stop to check that the drugs are actually working

Sometimes my job is just too easy.

*****

Forty Minutes later I find myself sitting on the hotel’s insanely comfortable bed, on the phone with my boss while my victim sprawled out unmoving behind me, face still a sickly shade of purple from his lost battle for air. The bossman lets me know that a cleaning crew is on its way to me now with my payment in hand as well as a change of clothes. I take a swig from the bottle of whiskey that I found in the room’s mini fridge right before thanking him and hanging up. I toss the burner cell next to the corpse formerly known as Richard and stand with a stretch. I’ve got about 20 minutes until the crew gets here, so I might as well get myself cleaned up while I wait. Heading towards the bathroom I take another drink of the booze. It’s not great, but at least it’ll get me drunk. Something that always makes the after part of this job a bit more manageable. You would think that my job gets easier with each mission, but if anything it just gets harder. With every life I take it just adds to the list of faces that haunt my dreams.  As I step out of my clothes and into the shower, I question what form I will take next. Any form of shifting takes a lot of mental and physical work, I have to decide every change from my height to exactly how much hair I want on my arms. Everything has to be meticulously plotted out, and molded to fit my liking. It took years of practice to be able to do it as quickly as I can. In reality, shapeshifting is nowhere near as glamorous as it appears in the media.

 It’s not just a quick change of skin from your original form to whatever you want. It is painful and physical. The stretching and squashing of bones, the rearrangement of organs, hell even switching genders is painful, having to grow whole new organs and stretching your skin into weird new shapes. It looks like something from a Cronnenberg film and hurts like hell. 

And that’s just the physical side effects. Another thing that all these stupid fucking superhero movies get wrong it the idea of a ‘true form’. 

We don’t get that. Or at least, no one that I know does. Once you shift into a new form that’s you, right up until the moment that you decide tobecome someone else. I’ve known countless other shifters who ended up taking their lives because they couldn’t figure out who they were. Hell, I can’t even remember anything about the way I was originally. Not my face, not my voice, not even my name. Every time I shift I lose a little bit more of the person that I used to be. I mean, I can’t even remember how old I am! All I know is that I have been alive for far, far too long. Longer than any normal person should have to live. If I ever get cancer or some other sort of physical ailment that often accompanies aging, I can simply shift that part of my body away, making me functionally immortal. 

Sure immortality sounds nice on paper, but nobody was made to live forever. I have seen countless people die. Friends and family turn into nothing but dust, with nobody left to remember them but me. I have seen civilizations rise and fall good leaders turn into corrupt tyrants over nothing more than greed and pride. I have worked for countless cruel people, from dictators to mobsters, who were frothing at the mouths for the chance to exploit my curse for their own means. 

These people don’t care about how much shifting hurts. They don’t care that I lose a little piece of my soul each time I change my face. Or that the people they ask me to kill stick to me like a fly in a trap. All that they care about is what I can do for them. All I am, and all I have ever been is just a pawn in someone else’s game. A tool that can be used and then tossed once I’m no longer useful. When you have the ability to become anybody, then you turn into nobody. And I will most likely remain nothing more than somebody’s favorite little toy right up until I decide to put a bullet through my own skull. 

As I step out of the shower and grab one of the hotels fluffy white towels I wonder what life old be like if I ever managed to break out of this cycle of employment. But even if I do manage to escape this life, what would I even be able to do? I am nothing and nobody. As far as anybody is concerned I don’t exist. I don’t have any forms of identification so it’s not like I can go out and get an job. And starting a family would bring nothing but pain. My spouse and children would all die long before me, unless I end up passing on this godforsaken curse to one of my offspring. God, I would rather work for a hundred more tyrants and kill a million more people before I would pass this on to somebody else.

So many people see these powers as gifts. Blessings from a god that decided to bless his creations with superpowers. Well, if there is a god, then they are by no means a kind one. What kind of god would give a child the ability to manipulate fire, but let them have skin that turns to ash from the heat. Or make a man be able to run as fast as light, but have the world around him move so slowly that existence itself is painful. Or give someone the ability to change their faces, but they lose their soul in the process. Whatever God there is, if he exists, he doesn’t care for us. We are nothing more than playthings in a giant dollhouse. Our existence is nothing more than entertainment for a malevolent being.

Good lord listen to me. I’m whining like a child. I know this is my lot. I know that this is all that I will ever be. I may not have wanted this life but it’s all that I am and all that I will ever be. 

Free will is for the rich and powerful, not for people like me. You’d think a lifetime of servitude would have taught me that already. I stare into the mirror at the face that I used as a lure to catch the dead man in the bed. Only an idiot would dare to dream of being anything else.

I hear a knock on the door, dragging me out of my depressing spiral.

”Room service!” Calls out the gruff voice of a man doing the most egregious attempt of a woman’s voice that I have ever heard. I quickly and painfully shift into the form of a taller white woman with different hair and eyes. I don’t have the energy for anything more drastic. I wrap the towel around my new body, and walk across the room to greet the ‘room service’.

Upon opening the door I see the cleaning crew my boss hired to take care of the body on the bed. It consists of two smaller men in overalls with scaled wings, and a much taller woman with burn scars running up and down her arms. 

As I usher them in, the shorter of the two men pushes a thick Manila envelope and a duffle bag into my hands. 

“From the boss” he says quietly before scampering over to the body. I watch the woman flinch as she calls fire to her hands and the two men move the man’s corpse onto a fireproof tarp allowing for an easier disposal of the ashes. 

Turning as they begin their disposal process, I open up the envelope to count the bills, trying my best to ignore them horrid stench of burning hair and flesh coming from behind me. 

In the envelope is $6,000 dollars in cash as well as a folder containing all gathered information on my next target. 

I sigh heavily as I look at the tan folder. I’lllook through that when I get home. I don’t have the energy to learn about the next life that I have to take in exchange for a paycheck. I unzip the duffle bag and swiftly change into the provided suit before stuffing my former outfit into the bag. The suit fits a bit loose, but I don’t care enough to change form to make it fit. 

I turn to see that the crew has finished their incineration process and are currently disposing of the ashes of the former drug prince as the woman nurses her fresh burns. I guess that’s my cue to leave.

As I head out of the apartment my mind drifts back to what life could have been if I had never been cursed with this ability. But those are dreams of a life that I will never have. And as much as I may hate my job and who it has made me become, I still need to eat. And it’s not like life is getting any cheaper.

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