This choice: Pretend that you're still Will Prescott • Go Back...Chapter #36Three In One by: Seuzz   It's probably panic, more than anything else, that decides you to keep your mouth shut.
You have a hard time thinking—let alone thinking clearly—as you glance frantically around for some clothes to put on, and it takes you a stupidly long time to remember that you don't have any of Will's clothes here, and you are loathe to put the mask of Mrs. Welch back on. You wind up tearing a pair of track pants—probably belonging to Mrs. Welch's husband—out of a dresser and pulling them on.
That's as far as you've got before you hear someone calling from downstairs, but your heart is beating hard in your throat, choking off speech. "Honey?" the someone calls in a faintly mocking voice.
"Up here," you gasp out. "In the bedroom!"
You also start to shake violently as footsteps approach.
The door falls open and a man steps in. He's got neatly trimmed brown hair and a supercilious gaze behind his round glasses, and his lips are plumped up in a smug smile. He looks at you in surprise, and you stagger back a step before your befogged brain can put a name to him: Stephan Welch, the husband that Will Prescott's friend Caleb is pretending to be.
You put a hand on the dresser to steady yourself.
"Why'd you take Shannon's mask off?" the man asks.
"Huh? Oh!" You glance at the bed, where the mask sits atop a clump of discarded clothes. "I— Uh— Uh—" You rub your forehead. "I was— Um— Trying out the— Uh— The thing we made." You flash him a terrified grin.
His eyes narrow. "You mean with the new spell?" You nod. "Who'd the Meerkat find for us?"
"The meerkat?"
He blinks. "Barbara Meek."
"Oh! Right. Um. Just a, um, a freshman." You swallow hard.
He purses his lips. "So you put it on?" You nod, and swallow. His eyes narrow some more. "So what happened?"
"Nothing! Just, um—" You close your eyes and pinch the bridge of your noses. Think, man, think! you urge yourself. What would whatsisname— Will! Right, what would he say?
"It just, um, worked like the other one we made. The other ones. For, um—" You point at him, then at the mask on the bed. "Just like those."
"Uh huh." He is watching you very closely now. "You seem really freaked out, Will."
* * * * *
Thank God he called you "Will" just then. When you looked back on it later, it seems like the shock of the name was what helped you to find your feet.
"Well, the kid was kind of freaked out, you know," you said. "I just now got it on, was just waking up when I heard you coming. That's how come I'm— Jesus, you know how these things hit hard. I was just, you know, 'membering who I am and where I am when you came busting in." You made a face at him.
"Huh," he said, but still looked and sounded skeptical. "So you got the guy's memories? Who is he?"
You hated the question. Giving him your name felt like coming out from a hiding place.
"Oliver. Oliver Kelly," you stammered. "He's a, uh, freshman at school. We don't know him."
"So why'd the Meerkat pick him?"
"I dunno. Um." You chased desperately after your memories of the day. "He was in, um, his algebra class. Which is ... second period? Anyway, she called him into the office. Something to do with his grades in there. She called him in and put him a conference room in the office. And then she called ... me."
"So she had business with him anyway?"
"Yeah, he, uh, he's getting bad grades on his homework, and Mrs. Nestor was talking to him about maybe getting some tutoring."
"Awright. So it's just a new spell for making the same old thing?"
"I guess. Yeah, I don't get it either, but that seems like what it is."
"Fuckin' waste, then," he snorted. "You sure it's just the same old thing? Because you really do seem freaked out, Will."
You forced out a sigh.
"I told you, man, I just woke up with this freaked-out kid in my head. I'm fine."
"Well, let's get him out of you."
He reached for your forehead. To your own astonishment, you punched his hand away, hard. His eyes popped.
"Sorry, man," you gasped. "It's just— Don't touch me, okay? I'll take care of it."
"Well, get it taken care of, Will," he snapped. "This Oliver kid, or whatever his name is, he's fucking you up."
"I'll take care of it! Just— Give me some privacy!"
He looked annoyed, but left the bedroom.
You sat on the edge of the bed, collecting your wits and your thoughts.
* * * * *
You're starving once you're back inside Mrs. Welch's mask and her clothes, but you can't resist the temptation to surreptitiously touch your breasts and hips as you straighten out the blouse and skirt that you put back on.
Stephan is just slipping his phone back into his jacket pocket when you enter the living room.
"I just ordered us some takeout," he says, and he sounds annoyed with you, as though it's your fault there's no dinner ready. "You sure took your time up there."
Indeed you did. Forty-five minutes from the time he left you to the time you rejoined him.
"I needed to get my head on straight," you retort. "I've been jumping in and out of these things all afternoon. You try it sometime."
In fact, you've got three psychologies jostling inside your skull, for try as you might you simply could not bring yourself to pull out that metal band that Will Prescott copied off you. What if it pulls my soul out of this body? you wondered in a sweaty panic, but it doesn't put me back in mine? You shivered at the thought of falling into some kind of inky, empty void because your soul had no body to inhabit. So you put Shannon Welch's mask back on. When you woke, you still had your memories along with Will Prescott's, but now you've got hers as well. It took you twenty wobbly minutes before you felt balanced enough to come downstairs.
"So where's the thing?" Stephan asks. He snaps his fingers and puts out his hand.
"The what? Oh! The ... thing."
"Yeah."
You make a face.
"I put it back on," you admit.
He flinches. "You what?"
"I wanted to see what would happen! If I could, you know, wear it while also wearing this mask. You know, that's something we haven't tried yet. Sticking more than one brain into ourselves at a time."
"You haven't even got half a brain of your own, Will. Well, how's it working?"
"Okay, I guess. Kind of tricky. I can ... I guess I can act like whoever I want to. Me or Shannon Welch or ... Oliver Kelly."
"What use is that?"
"I dunno. Might be useful."
"For what?" he repeats.
"I don't know! Just let me hang on to it. There's no point in your putting it on, if that's what your so hot to do!"
"I think you should take it off anyway."
"Should I take off Mrs. Welch's mask too? Just go around like my goddamned self?"
He purses his lips.
"It's making you all jumpy, Will."
"Lemme just practice with it! That's what this is all about, isn't it? Experimentating?"
"I thought it was about fixing your dad," he says dryly.
"Yeah! But we can experiment too. Just—! You get to live with me being Mrs. Welch. I think you can live with me being, um, Oliver Kelly too."
His eyebrows go up.
"Would Oliver Kelly like to give me a blow job?"
* * * * *
No, and you explain to him that you—Will Prescott—wouldn't like to give him a blow job either. But he insisted on fucking you again after you went to bed, which you could barely get through. Those mind-tricks his friend Will was using to enjoy it, they don't work for you.
At least he forgot about the metal doohickey, and didn't ask you again to take it off. You're not sure what excuse you could have come up with. In the morning you'll just have to pretend that you took it off while getting ready for bed.
But what happens if he asks to see it again?
That's the challenge that preoccupies you as you shower the next morning. It's too late to confess to him what has actually happened. Do you just continue to bluff through?
Or—and this is a wild and horrible idea—do you double down on the crime of soul-snatching?
Because you could make another one of those things, and put it onto one of your friends like they put one onto you, and then put it onto Will's partner. Then it would be you and your friend, instead you and Will's friend. Together, you could research a way to put yourselves back to normal.
Just like these too cumsuckers were researching a way to put Will's dad back to normal.
As for who it could be: You've got your pick. There's your best friend, Owen Smith, except he's as dumb as you. Nathan Casillas is smarter than Owen, but he's kind of a spazz. If you wanted a smart guy, you should probably pick Patrick Bryce, except he's more friends with Nathan than with you. And he's kind of a prick.
There's also a girl in your class who's a Harry Potter fangirl. She would probably be excited to help you out, even after you trapped her inside a dude's body.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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