He entered an area of his apartment reminiscent of a Broadway star’s dressing room. It was his makeup room and workshop. Special recessed lighting covered the ceiling. Multiple mirrors with their own special nonheating bulbs ringed the room. Two padded reclining leather chairs sat in front of two of the largest mirrors. The chairs had casters which allowed them to be rolled about the room. Innumerable photos were neatly pinned to cork bulletin boards on the walls. Jackson was an avid photographer, and many of his subjects were the basis for most of the identities he had created over the years. Both full wigs and hairpieces, neatly separated into toupees and falls, lined one wall, each hanging on special cotton-covered wire. Customized wall cabinets housed dozens of latex caps and other body pieces along with acrylic teeth, caps, and molds, and other synthetic materials and putties. One massive storage unit contained absorbent cotton, acetone, spirit gum, powders, body makeup; large, medium, and small brushes with bristles of varying rigidity; cake makeup, modeling clay, collodion to make scars and pock marks; crepe hair to make beards, mustaches, and even eyebrows; Derma wax to alter the face, creme makeup, gelatin, makeup palettes; netting, toupee tape, sponges, ventilating needles to knot hair into net or gauze for beards and wigs; and hundreds of other devices, materials, and substances designed solely to reshape one’s appearance. There were three racks of clothing of all descriptions and several full-length mirrors to test the effect of any disguise. In a specially built case with multiple drawers were over fifty complete sets of identification documents that would allow Jackson to travel the world as a man or a woman.
Jackson smiled as he noted various articles in the room. This was where he was most comfortable. Creating his numerous roles was the one constant pleasure in his life. Acting out the part, however, ran a close second as his favorite endeavor. He sat down at the table and ran his hand along its top. He stared into a mirror. Unlike anyone else looking into a mirror, Jackson didn’t see his reflection staring back at him. Instead, he saw a blank countenance, one to be manipulated, carved, painted, covered, and massaged into someone else. Although he was perfectly content with his intellect and personality, why be limited to one physical identity one’s whole life, he thought, when there was so much more out there to experience? Go anywhere, do anything. He had told that to all twelve of his lottery winners. His baby ducklings all in a row. And they had all bought it, completely and absolutely, for he had been dead right.
Over the last ten years he had earned hundreds of millions of dollars for each of his winners, and billions of dollars for himself. Ironically, Jackson had grown up in very affluent circumstances. “Old money” his family had been. His parents were long dead. The old man had been, in Jackson’s eyes, a typical example of those members of the upper class whose money and position had been inherited rather than earned. Jackson’s father had been both arrogant and insecure. A politician and insider in Washington for many years, the old man had taken his family connections as far as he could until his decided lack of merit and marketable skills had done him in and the escalator had stopped moving upward. And then he had spent the family money in a futile attempt to regain that upward momentum. And then the money was gone. Jackson, the eldest, had often taken the brunt of the old man’s wrath over the years. Upon turning eighteen, Jackson discovered that the large trust fund his grandfather had set up for him had been raided illegally so many times by his father that there wasn’t anything left. The continuing rage and physical abuse the old man had wielded after Jackson had confronted him with this discovery had left a profound impression on the son.
The physical bruises eventually had healed. The psychological damage was still with Jackson and his own inner rage seemed to grow exponentially with each year, as though he were trying to outdo his elder in that regard.