Chapter #16Bully Shit by: Seuzz   As you sit by yourself in the cafeteria you realize the it will take some ingenuity to use Kirkham as a bridge into the alpha club: He's unpopular even with them, less because he's a bully than because he won't knuckle under to them and try sucking up, the way Dalton and Pozniak and a few of the others do.
You do make a stab at impressing them after school, though, when you find yourself near Lynch and a few of the other baseball players out in the parking lot. "Fucking Prescott," Lynch glowers as your replacement crosses his eye line on the way to his truck. "I'm gonna fuck him up, I swear."
"So what's stopping you," you taunt him. He glowers at you. "What are you, a pussy?"
"I'll fuck you up," he retorts.
"Promise to suck my cock and I'll fuck him up for you, you're such a pussy."
You see him ball a fist as his eyes blaze, but with a sneer you step to the side, turn and swagger off toward Prescott. "Yo, dipshit," you call; and you snigger as several people turn guiltily. But you concentrate on your doppelganger.
He hunches as you saunter up. "Kiss me," you softly order him.
He pales, unslings the backpack from his shoulders, and fumbles toward you. You grab his arm and bend his hand back, hard. He gasps and sinks toward the ground. "Not here, you homo. Take me home, and I'll make a whore of you." You push him away and follow as he slinks to his truck. You jump in the passenger seat.
"Who's my bitch," you call to Lynch, leaning out and grinning at him as the truck slides slowly past. He seethes, and you laugh softly to yourself as you reflect on the real identity of the person under the Prescott mask.
* * * * *
Blackwell's eyes shift between you and your replacement. "Who's this thug?" he asks, "and why is he defiling my domicile?"
"Charmed to meet you too, Professor," you sneer. "David Kirkham, thug, asshole, bully and all-around reprobate."
"I suppose you know your business, but I've nothing to teach you while you're in that form," Blackwell says firmly. "Pray restore yourself to a civilized state."
You shrug and shove Prescott, who compliantly follows you upstairs. There, in the bedroom, you undress, and remove Kirkham's mask and hang it on Blackwell's golem. Your back is to it as you slip into Jared's clothes preparatory to putting on Jared's face, and you flinch and wheel as you sense a malicious presence behind you. Kirkham glares at you but says nothing. "Come on, hurry up," you tell it, so eager to get out of its presence that you don't even put on a shirt, let alone Jared's face. Sullenly, it dresses and follows you downstairs, where Blackwell waves at it dismissively.
"Remove it," he says to your double. Prescott glances inquiringly at you, and you nod. "Go," Blackwell repeats, and Kirkham follows. After the front door closes behind them you hear a yelp and a squeal; your duplicate, you guess, is going to have a hellaciously unpleasant ride home.
"Not that I'm unhappy to see him go," you say, letting out your breath afterward, "but couldn't he have been useful around here?"
"How?"
"I dunno. Give him chores to do? Come to that, why don't you make up a bunch of golems to help out around here? Do the library work and scut work, like cleaning masks, while we do the real stuff."
"You mustn't come to rely upon golems too much, Will," Blackwell admonishes you. "It is true that they have their uses, but they can be extremely shifty, especially when they are imitating the treacherous and the base. I advise you very strongly not to lean too heavily upon your new assistant. You will find him a broken reed, and he will pierce your hand."
You remember the glowering looks Kirkham gave you upstairs, and nod thoughtfully. "But you could still make yourself an assistant—"
"Let's make that today's lesson," he says, and turns toward one of the bookshelves. "As you have now acquired a golem of your own, and have done so without going through the usual steps, let us study their nature."
You sag a little at the size of the grimoire he drops onto the table before you.
* * * * *
Upstairs, that night, as the house creaks and thumps in the most-midnight hours, you toss in your bed, straining to see a way through the problem. But it seems no use: the proofs, even after triple and quadruple checking, were quite clear. A golem obeys its master because it contains a little bit of its master's essence; and if the master makes too many golems and spreads himself too thin ... The results are nonlinear and unpredictable, and the consequences obscure, but if the golem-making goes too far it will result in a catastrophic collapse of control, with possibly fatal consequences to the warlock who made them. No magician has ever used golems to take over the world, for the very good reason that he probably couldn't make enough to take over a small university department.
You smile crookedly at the thought of how vexing Blackwell must find that.
You turn onto your back and drum your fingers on the mattress. If you could find a force-multiplier for one's essence ... Didn't Archimedes say that given a large enough lever and a fulcrum and a place to stand he could move the world? You smile grimly to yourself; magical essence, you suspect very strongly, is the most advanced possible topic there is. You'd likelier be more successful at turning your 12th-grade education toward mastering quantum theory.
You close your eyes and drift off toward more immediately practical aims, like using Kirkham's lean body to thrust your way into tight but yielding female flesh. Though you quickly fall asleep the fantasies must have continued, for you wake in a puddle of your own emissions.
* * * * *
"I take the bus to school every morning, fucker." Kirkham's tone isn't just insolent, it is gloating. "No fucking way I can make it out there to you."
You glance over at Blackwell, who with coat and satchel is watching you from the kitchen doorway with an arch expression.
"A little transportation problem," you mutter to him, and bring the phone back up to your mouth. "Well, can't you get a ride from someone?"
Kirkham laughs. "I can try. Call you back in twenty?"
You bite your lip as you slap the phone shut. "I'll get it sorted out," you tell Blackwell curtly without meeting his eyes. He hangs in the doorway a moment, then shrugs and leaves for the university.
You glance at the clock. Seven-fifty. Twenty minutes will be cutting it close as far as getting to school, and it doesn't even allow for changing into Kirkham's form. You loiter in the library for a spell, but the greasy atmosphere in that room just makes you even more jittery. By eight-fifteen you've still not heard from Kirkham, so you call him again. "Where the fuck are you?"
"I'm at school, douchebag," he replies. "Where else would I be?"
"You were supposed to come out here to Blackwell's!"
"I said I'd try, but fuck you, I lied. I even came a little afterward, it felt so good."
You ionize the air. "I gave you a direct order!" you scream.
"Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you," he replies, and he's very calm. "Why do I gotta do what you say? I'm not your bitch."
"You have to because--!" And then it hits you. The mask doesn't carry a golem seal inside it, and it is sitting on Blackwell's golem. That means it only has to obey him.
You slam the phone shut and sink down at the kitchen table. Well, it would be simple enough to call Blackwell and have him call Kirkham and issue the order for you. He can even change Kirkham's disposition so that he won't be so rebellious toward you. But it would be embarrassing to have to admit that you fucked up so badly on your first time out.
You look through the kitchen doorway, to the corner of the library that is just visible. Maybe you should just spend the day doing research. Blackwell won't be home until after you'd be due back from school anyway, and you won't have to admit what happened.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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