Chapter #5Try to possess Joshua. by: Seuzz   You gesture Joshua over, and he hops up eagerly onto the bed. Casually, you reach around his shoulders and pull him close. Then you press the worm you've hidden in your palm against his nose.
He tries twisting away, but the worm is already scuttling into him. The nasal membranes are very soft, and they quickly give way, letting you sink inside his head. His eyes glaze over and he sags over onto his side, staring vacantly at the wall. You watch him carefully, and a little fearfully, as a little light froth foams from his nose. And then a strange feeling washes over you: numbness and warmth, as you'd felt when taking over the wolf and Caleb for the first time. But now it is coming from outside your current body. It's an unlocated sensation, but it gradually settles around Joshua's frame. And then you feel yourself in control of Caleb's cousin.
It's even stranger than when it was just you and the worm. You have four arms and four legs and two heads, and in a kind of double vision you are looking at the pale bedroom wall even as you are looking down at Joshua. With a jerk of the neck, you turn your new head to look back at Caleb. You almost faint: the vivid sense of three-dimensionality, of looking at the space between your bodies from two different directions, is shocking, but it is also intoxicating. You raise Joshua's arm, and Caleb's, and touch fingertips.
Working two bodies at the same time is difficult, but you sit Joshua and Caleb up on the bed, cross-legged, and rest their hands on the other's knees. It becomes easier when you close their eyes, so that you can concentrate solely on their bodies without the distraction of competing visual fields. Then you raise Caleb's hand and set it to tousling Joshua's hair. Again, it feels a little odd: you feel as though you are stroking your own head, but you can also tell that the arm belongs to a different body, to Caleb's. With Joshua's tiny hands you untie the laces of Caleb's sneakers and pull them off his feet.
For the next little while you keep the boys' eyes closed and continue practicing different tasks. You occasionally falter, but it's not long before the possession of two bodies feels as natural and organic as the possession of one; you find it helps if you actually do think of yourself as having one body, but a body that is discontiguous. After you've done this for awhile, you find you have no problem associating sensations (including a sense of location) with your different bodies.
While keeping Joshua's eyes closed, you open Caleb's and get off the bed, to walk around and casually straighten up the room. You then get fancy: you open Joshua's eyes and close Caleb's, and use Joshua to guide Caleb around the room, picking up and setting down books and papers. Easy. Then you walk Caleb's body outside the bedroom and into the kitchen, where you pour two glasses of orange juice. You falter a little when you try pairing this task with Joshua's attempt to type at the computer, but no disasters result. When you return Caleb to his bedroom, you drink down two glasses of OJ meditatively.
While doing this you've also been probing at Joshua's mind. It's not as open to you as Caleb's was when you possessed him, and you figure this must be because Caleb had been asleep when you took him, while Joshua was awake. You find that with conscious searching you can call up memories from inside him, but there is nothing like the sense of an open mind waiting to be explored and swallowed: in fact, you have the sense that Joshua himself is still awake and alert somewhere beneath your control. And yet, at the same time, you have the feeling that his mind is open to manipulation. You lay his body back on the bed and start stroking at his consciousness. He becomes very relaxed all over; though Caleb is as awake and alert as ever, you feel Joshua becoming very sleepy. Your grasp on him becomes hazy and indistinct ...
In a flash, you lose contact with all the sensations associated with Joshua's body. Two other things happen simultaneously. The first is that Joshua suddenly sits up and stares at you in open-mouthed shock, then leaps off the bed and runs from the room. This would panic you but for the second thing: Though you can no longer see through his eyes or feel through his body, his mind opens up, to reveal the same kind of mental constellation you'd initially glimpsed in Caleb. And so it takes only a thought from you, and Joshua crashes to a halt in the hallway. You tweak his will and drag him back, almost (but not quite) willingly, into your bedroom. He stares at you haggardly.
You only smile back. "I think we need to do something about your memories, kiddo," you murmur. (It's the first words you've spoken aloud in almost an hour.) You look at him speculatively as you rummage around his head until you find his memories of the afternoon. To your delight, you find it takes only a few small tweaks to make him forget all about your possession of him. When you release him, he just blinks at you blankly, and wanders back calmly into the living room to bug his mother.
After he's gone you fall back onto the bed. You still sense Joshua's mind, and you are already expanding to fill it and swallow it, just as you had done with Caleb. (You've no great interest in Joshua as a host, but he does make a good test subject.) It will be hours yet, you know, before you have made him a part of yourself, but you're curious to see how easy it will be to control him—to be him—once you're done. You are almost overwhelmed by possibilities your chance discovery has disclosed: so overwhelmed you can't even really think through them clearly. You get up, change into some shorts, and go for a hard run around the neighborhood just to work off the excitement that has built in you.
* * * * *
On Sundays Caleb and his mother usually go to church, but this Sunday, through some unspoken mutual consent, she goes by herself, leaving you at home. Or, rather, your Caleb body stays home; Joshua gets dragged along with his family. The kid was entirely yours by bedtime on Saturday, and you are immensely pleased that your complete absorption of his mind and personality has greatly eased the problem of controlling two separate bodies. There are no difficulties now, in fact, and you have no problem doing Caleb's schoolwork even as, with Joshua, you laugh and play with friends in the church yard. It's even easier than trying to read and listen to music at the same time, since the part of you inside Caleb can concentrate entirely on his work while the part of you in Joshua is completely absorbed in Joshua's antics. When services are over you seek out Mrs. Ryerson and beg to go home with her so you can see Caleb again. She looks a little askance. "I think Caleb wants to be alone," she says, but you wheedle and plead until she and Joshua's mother give in.
"How was church," you grin at the little rugrat when he runs into the bedroom.
"It was boring," you groan, and sag melodramatically onto the floor.
"How about we take a walk, then," you suggest. So you eagerly leap onto your feet and, holding hands, head out into a sunny but chilly day.
"So, what are you going to do now," you ask once you're out on the street, strolling along.
"Well, I don't need you anymore, you little brat," you say jocularly. "It's fun being seven again, but I've got more grown up things I'd like to try."
"Like what?"
"Well, I haven't totally figured that out yet," you admit. "I could be anyone I want. I could be lots of people, in fact."
"I like Caleb," you say, and put an arm around the waist of your teenage body.
"I know you do, squirt, but what you like isn't going to count for much longer."
"Don't you like Caleb? Being Caleb?"
You grunt noncommittally. Caleb, actually, doesn't interest you so much anymore. Being inside him feels like a dead end. At the same time, a residual sense of loyalty—mixed, though, with a lingering resentment over his behavior at the base—leaves you reluctant to abandon him completely. He's not a useful puppet, except as a conduit for getting inside other people, but he is a puppet. You reflect that a lot of the anger you'd felt toward him has been transferred to your other, so-called "friends," like Matt and Kevin. It would serve them right if you took over their lousy meat sacks, and Caleb is well placed to do that. Or you could just drop them and go make Caleb some new and much more popular friends—that would be another way of getting back at them. And maybe you could just move out of Caleb completely and take over part of the "A" crowd at school. You were never popular as "David Johnson," but as Kyle Lakewood or Ian Carpenter (or as lots of others) you could be the center of the school social scene.
"I think you should take over some people with hot girlfriends," your little Joshua body chirps.
"You're too young to be having thoughts like that," you chide.
"You could be a hot and sexy girl," you continue.
"It's even more frightening to hear you say that," you reply, but you still smile at the thought.  | Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
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