Chapter #39Wearing Eric by: Seuzz   "Cool, yeah, I can get in a lot of trouble with cheerleaders!" you exclaim. "Where they hangin' out?"
"Coffee shop somewhere, I think they said," Beta-Mike tells you. "Flying Saucer?" he asks Beta-Carlos.
"Crystal Cave," he replies. "Yeah, go meet them there," he tells you. "Anyway, you need to stay away from Eric's friends."
"How come's that?"
He gives you a look. "So you don't blow your cover before you get his memories and personality. You know I'm pretty sure we explained all this to you before."
"Well, I'm kind of distracted, you know? New brain, new body." You look down at yourself. "Jeezum Fuck, I'm kinda hung, huh?"
"I'm trying not to look. Oh God!" Beta-Mike cries out when you flap it with your hand.
"Hey, I aim to do stuff with it. Aim it and do stuff," you chortle. "Hey, can you guys get yours up?" You look around the room. The beta's eyes have gone wide with what might be horror and what might be shock. "I mean, what's that line they talk about with sexbots and stuff? Are you fully functional?"
Your own beta covers his face with his hands. Beta-Mike turns a very peculiar color, one you don't think you've ever seen on a human countenance before, because it's like green is trying to invade his ruddy cheeks and forehead. Beta-Carlos turns purple under his Mexican tan. He advances two steps on you. "If you want to play with us, I guess we could find out."
"Whoa! Whoa!" You leap back. "That's okay. Just curious. Hey, but if I was gonna run off and see your originals, you know, I thought maybe I could tell 'em you were having all kinds of fun."
Beta-Carlos jumps at you, but you jump back and sprint halfway down the hallway on bare feet before looking back to see that he's not pursued you. Then you quietly scamper back into the weight room to retrieve your clothes. From the other unit you hear low voices but can't make out the words. You creep over to try eavesdropping, but when the voices abruptly cease, you backpedal and run all they way down to the entryway. There you pause long enough to pull on underwear and shorts and shirt, and to jam your bare feet into your shoes. Outside, you scratch deeply at your scalp and squint up at the sun before slapping on your cap and sunglasses.
Then into the Jeep you swing. The key -- its red lanyard dangling almost to the floorboard -- is still in the ignition. You flip the car on with a roar, reverse-jackrabbit out of the space, and drum the steering wheel idly as the front gate drags itself open. Traffic on Twentieth is at a lull, so you leap leftward onto the northbound lane and punch the accelerator, rattling and bouncing along like a tin can that's been kicked hard. Only at the next light do you pause to buckle yourself in.
* * * * *
Half the city separates the Top S(h)elf Storage Complex from The Crystal Cave, but by treating yellow lights as green and just-turned-red lights as yellow, you make it out there in only ten minutes. There's no one inside, though. Okay, that's not true. There's the baristas and a couple of cute college girls, and a couple of dumbfucks studying in the corner, but no one who answers to the description of Eva Garner, Jessica Garner, Maria Vasquez, or Cindy Vredenburg. You wait anyway in case they show, perching on a stool near the front door with a good view of the street while sucking down an iced frappuccino.
Not that you need the sugar. You're vibrating all over, and you jog first one leg and then the other when it can't stand being still anymore. It's like you've huffed a bag of powdered sugar, even though you -- Eric Murphy -- haven't had a candy bar since yesterday evening. But you've got the jitters so bad it's like you can't even think, and not until you catch yourself scrolling through Eric's call list looking for someone to phone or text do you close your eyes and try to get a grip.
What the hell is the matter?
But that's just it. It doesn't seem like anything's the matter. When you stop paying attention to what you're doing and thinking and just do what comes naturally, the fidgeting feels completely normal. And, like, even when you do think about it, what's weird about sitting in a cafe, fidgeting with a frappuccino --
Man, you really need to figure out how to make these things, you could probably make a small fortune if you got permission from Sagansky to sell them at school. Like, there's those guys who sell band candy, maybe you could piggyback off of them. Hey, there's an idea! They could get permission from the school to sell frappuccinos around, and they'd buy them from you and you could make some money that way!
You're actually trying to figure out whether it would be better to work through the band people or the sports teams, and it has just occurred to you that something fancy like a frappuccino would be perfect for the orchestra people to sell, since they should be dealing in something classy -- you're actually pondering all this in a fevered state of enthusiasm before realizing that you've gone spang off the rails again. Get a grip, Prescott!
This is not your native personality, which is why it's got you worried (when you pause long enough to worry about it). But it's when you slap yourself across the cheek and mutter that this isn't you, that another explanation occurs to you.
Is this Eric Murphy's personality?
It would make sense if it were. You've got his body, and you woke thinking his thoughts and dragging up his memories of arriving at the complex. You feel a shocking lack of shock at the things you said and did after waking in his body.
On the other hand, the betas did say it would take time for you to start getting that personality --
But then you feel it. Or, more accurately, you are suddenly and vividly aware of what has been there all this time. It's another person, and it feels like he's standing behind you, and he's got his arms draped over your shoulders, and he's put his head so close to yours that they're actually intersecting, so that his thoughts mingle freely with your own. You just have to draw him closer, like pulling a jacket more tightly around you --
You gasp, for he vanishes. But he hasn't gone anywhere. He's entirely inside you, but you're also entirely inside him. You hunch your shoulders and guzzle the frappuccino. Your cock stiffens.
You are Eric Murphy.
If you want to be.
You've got his body -- it's his hand resting on his knee, but it's you who flex the one and brush the other. And if this isn't his mind inside of you, his instincts taking over and driving you when you aren't looking, then you don't know what else they could be. You close your eyes and think of his friends -- Tim Ryan and Lee Reynolds and Connor Davison and Robert Vargas and Mark Szymanski and a bunch of other people that Will Prescott barely knows. But their faces are very clear, and so's the stuff he's done with them, like drinking beer at the old stone quarry and swimming in the river across from the country club. You think of his family -- his dad, a fifty-three-year-old Sociology teacher at the Saratoga Falls Community College, and his mom, the owner-operator of a housecleaning service. They're never around much, which gives Eric free rein to get in mild trouble whenever and with whomever he likes. You think of the Trig homework you need to do and the people you want to hang out with, and Goddamn it, why are you sitting around here instead of being out with people? You pound your knee and crunch down hard on some ice.
Well, you're here because some cheerleaders were supposed to be here, but it looks like you either missed them or they're not showing. You jerk out your phone and quickly thumb in a text to Carlos: thos grils not here wehre r they?
His reply, after a long delay, is much cleaner than your query: Nirdlingers shopping.
Oh, naturally that's what they'd be doing. You slam back the last of your drink and heave it into the trash basket as you trot out the door. Into your Jeep you swing and jam the key into the ignition. Your phone bleeps again.
This time it's from Tim: video thing done?
You chew on your lip and tap at the screen with your typing thumb. You'd told him you thought the whole "video thing" was just a planning session, and you'd hang out with him afterward. You can tell him that it's still going on, and that you can't meet him tonight, and then go out to that department store where the girls are.
You slump in your seat, for the sole purpose of giving your cock room to run. Shopping does not excite you. But shopping with a bunch of girls? With cheerleaders? With Eva and Jessica Garner, and Maria Vasquez, and with Chelsea Cooper and Cindy Vredenburg, probably? You close your eyes and rub your face and let the fantasy stiffen you some more. You picture yourself sitting in a chair and watching as they come out one at a time from the dressing stalls, giggling and showing off the clothes they're trying on and asking you if they look hot and if they're turning you on. That would be so fucking sweet!
That's what Eric would race off to do.
But since your little think-through you are much less prone to being stampeded by his instincts. You know who you are, and though you feel Eric Murphy sticking all about you -- as though his mind were a giant cobweb you'd blundered into -- you also know where he stops and you start. You doubt it would play out that way.
There's a good chance they'd yell at you for ... well, for something.
True, you were cautioned to stay away from Eric's friends, for fear of mucking things up. But it would be very out of character if he stayed away.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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