Chapter #10Insides Out by: Seuzz   You boggle at the sight, and fight to keep from fainting dead away.
You are staring straight and level into the bathroom mirror. But your head (as you can see in the mirror) is thrown back so that your face is turned up at the ceiling. Your swollen throat bulges and ripples. And from out your wide-stretched mouth rises a blue pseudo-pod, thick and boneless, like a tentacle.
It glistens with an oily sheen, and highlights from the vanity lights play over its surface. It swells and pulses lightly, and its tip wavers in the air, as though sniffing. And when you gingerly edge to one side, to see around it, it ducks to the side, like a serpent.
That's when you realize, to your fainting horror, that you are seeing with it, looking at yourself in the mirror with it, like a periscope. And when you shiver, it shivers too.
You grip the edge of the vanity with your fingers to keep from toppling over.
Can I get rid of it? you think in a panic. Can I vomit it out? You concentrate, feeling your brow lower, and in seeming answer to the command, the pod slides out of your mouth and throat by another foot.
Panic seizes you. What will it do once its out? Will it turn on you and try to strangle you? Will it try to get back inside you? Will it escape, slithering under the door?
But the horror of it is too much, and with a stifled moan and a thrust from somewhere deep in your chest, you push it and it slides forth another foot. It flops onto its side, and your vision goes wonky, and then you are staring at the tile floor of the bathroom, and the bathmat. Another push, and—
You feel yourself hit the floor with a plop, and scramble away, slithering face first over the tile into the corner of the room, where you turn and coil up and cower from the—
From yourself!
A human boy, in boxers and a t-shirt, is standing still at the vanity, holding onto it. His head snaps downward and his eyes open, and he turns to look down at you with a very steady look.
That's when you realize where you are. You are looking up at your own body from level with the floor. And when you raise yourself up a foot and look down, you see the iridescent blue body of the thing that you expelled, and which is attached to you.
Which you are.
Strangely, you don't feel faint, and you don't feel horror. You feel nothing except a mild, intellectual surprise. Here I am, you think. And also there I am. You look up at your body, which looks back down at you with a cocked head, and wonder what it will do.
How long you would have held this stare-down you don't know. But it ends with the sound of footsteps in the hall, and a soft knock at the door.
"Zachary," your mom's voice filters through the door. "Are you okay?"
You are struck not by fear, but its deracinated cousin. Tell her you're okay, you silently urge the boy at the sink.
And is it coincidence, or an answer to that command, that he turns to the door and says, "I'm fine, I'm just using the bathroom."
"I was just hearing noises—"
"I'm just using the bathroom!" he insists. "I'm on the toilet!"
"Alright," she says. After a hesitation, she shuffles away, and you hear the muffled thump of a bedroom door closing.
Pick me up, you think at the boy, and he instantly kneels and puts out his hands. You slither up into them, and as he raises up you glide up onto his shoulders and loosely fold yourself around his neck. He turns to the mirror, and you see him and you both: He with an expression of slightly bored docility, and yourself, coiled like a blue boa constrictor about his neck and head. It is no surprise—you were practically expecting it—when he lifts his hand and gently rubs the tip of your ... head.
* * * * *
At a silent command, the boy reaches over to flush the toilet, then turns off the light and pads back into his bedroom, shutting and locking the door behind him. You slither off his neck and onto his chest as he climbs under the sheets. He doesn't cover you, though, and lays quietly on his back as you twist around, taking in the room.
It is dark, save for the glare of a streetlamp filtering in through the curtains. But as you concentrate, the room brightens until it is perfectly visible, as though it were day. A day filtered through a purplish haze, but visible. You slide off the boy and plop onto the floor, and glide around the room: under the bed and up the leg onto the the desktop, then over onto your dresser. You attempt to climb the wall, but though you can get a purchase on it, your weight is too great to make it all the way to the top and you fall to the floor. In answer to another silent summons, you are scooped up again by a pair of hands and returned to the bed, to rest on the boy's chest.
Fucking hell, you think. What has happened to me?
* * * * *
You lay on the boy's chest most of the night, until you heard the stir of morning life outside the bedroom door. Then you twisted around and dove at his face. At another silent command, he opened his mouth and you pushed yourself into him. A feeling of warmth and strength gradually stole over you—the tactile equivalent of a visual "fade in"—and you sensed a body with limbs forming itself around you. When you opened your eyes and lifted your head, found yourself "inside" your body again, in total and natural command of it. You levered yourself upright, stretched, and got up to face the school day.
Things are much clearer to you now, but you avoid articulating them to yourself, even silently. Instead, you work on supposition and instinct. For instance, as you make the drive in to school, you imagine beaming out a telepathic message to Beth: Meet me at my locker at ten after eight. Then, to guard against coincidence, you correct yourself: Meet me behind the gym at eight-fifteen.
It is eight-fourteen, and you are absorbed in your phone, when you hear footsteps approaching the isolated station you are keeping behind the school gymnasium. You look up in time to see Beth come striding up.
"Hey," she says.
"Hey yourself. How was the rest of your weekend?"
"So so. Did my homework. You?"
"Goofed around. Are you mad at me?"
She doesn't answer, until you goad her with a silent prompt.
"Yeah, I'm still mad at you," she says. "But I'll get over it."
"I'm glad." You hold her gaze, which darts a little as you issue some silent instructions. You assume, rather than feel, compliance from her, even as with a soft snort she turns and shuffles off toward the nearest set of doors. You watch her go with a sense of satisfaction, then put your phone away, hike your pack onto your shoulders, and turn the other way toward your locker.
* * * * *
You knew it was going to be a weird day, but you had no idea how arduous it would turn out to be.
First period English went fine, because you talked before class with your friend Tyler, and you sit toward the front so that you don't can't really scope out the girls in there the way you would like to. So there were no distractions. Second period, though ...
The seating chart in English keeps you away from Summer Nguyen, a shy Vietnamese-American girl you share three classes with. (Including sixth-period "Introduction to Vietnamese," which you signed up for with the idea of getting closer to her.) But in second-period Statistics, you sit by her and Tina Branson both. And you've got a good angle on Jenny Taylor, the gorgeously athletic captain of the girls' soccer team, and Ann Sibley, a red-headed cheerleader who is an out-and-proud lesbian.
Tina, as you dreaded, instantly locks on to you and asks about Saturday night the moment you are in your seat: "So what happened with you and Beth Larter?"
You were probably number one on her To Do list for the day. Tina (and Summer) is a member of the "Rumorati," a group of girls who have taken it upon themselves to gather and disseminate all the gossip at the school, packaging it up into an official narrative. You've never really understood why they do it, except that it has something to do with "stamping out harmful rumors" and substituting the "real facts" for them. Of course, you assume they just want gossip to share.
"Nothing happened," you tell Tina, and turn around to indicate the subject is closed as far as you're concerned. But a sharp fingertip to your shoulder—from Summer, for Tina is seated too far away—hauls you around again. "She just got sick is all," you add with a growl.
"Not on you, I hope," Tina suggests with a smirk.
You lean across and mouth the words Fuck. You. at her, but she just titters.
"What do you want me to say?" you mutter. "That she was wasted and got carsick in the backseat of a car that that was parked on the street?"
"It's a better story for you," Tina observes, and a dimple comes into her cheek.
You glower at her, and your gorge rises.
Or is it your gorge? Is it not more probably that thing you are carrying around in your chest?
It suddenly comes to you that maybe you could put it inside Tina, the way you put it inside Beth. Could you ride around inside her? Could you make her a kind of puppet as you did with Beth?
But if you could, why would it have to be Tina in particular?   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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