Chapter 9 – Husks

Darkness. Blackness. Unmitigated emptiness. That was all Seth felt at first, along with a headache which radiated over her skull. It was bad enough she expected to see dancing colors and strange blurs but nothingness was all that surrounded her.

She was glad for the pain because it told her that, on some level, she still existed. Where and how, she didn’t know. Reaching out in the all-consuming night barely even told her she still had hands. Her jaw seemed to move too slowly to form words and the rest of her body just floated. But the pain was ever-present.

After a long, disorienting spell in the void, Seth finally started to pick out bits of light in the dark. They appeared first as stars cast off from the strangest of night skies, but she watched as they loomed larger with each passing moment. Eventually, they resolved as unblinking, colorless eyes. They swelled more and more, less like drawings than black-and-white renderings of real eyes approaching her.

Along with the eyes came a sound, halfway between the rolling of a stream and a cluster of static, which resolved into background whispers. The great mass of people whispered all around, pressing at each point of pain in her head. She couldn’t clutch the parts that hurt. She wobbled. It felt like she was dissolving again, each sound a small but cumulative chip in her.

Before they became a cacophony, Seth managed to scream out, “STOP! STOP IT RIGHT NOW!”

All returned to ear-ringing silence and the eyes blinked out. Panting, she could feel herself breathing and had a sense of her body, whole and clear. Looking down, she could even see herself, despite the blackness she was floating in. There was just one problem, she was seeing Marisa’s body, dressed in the bartender’s outfit.

Softly, she asked, “Marisa?” An instant later, Marisa answered, “Yeah? Is that you, Seth?” The moment bewildered them both because, while they had each spoken, they had done so with the same voice and in the same body.

Seth expressed, “What the heck…am I you or are you me?” A wave of confusion washed over Seth and she thought the words Marisa was about to say and they both said, in sync, “I don’t know.”

They both staggered back and offered together, “Freaky…” They stumbled over the thoughts of one another, “What…we…thinking…together…” Seth raised her mental voice and offered, “Please! How about we agree to go one after the other? You first.”

It was a struggle for Seth to get that out and even harder for Marisa not to speak as she paused a moment and said, “I felt like I was thinking your thoughts. I know it’s the same for you. I think.”

Seth took her turn and realized that Marisa’s body had been replaced with her female form one. “I…oh…that was weird.” She felt her hands and noted, “I have no idea how I can see anything. Maybe it’s all mental…”

Each gave a quiet pause before letting the other speak. As Marisa spoke again, the ideal body and the bartender outfit returned for both Marisa and Seth. Marisa spoke a bit of what Seth was thinking, “That’s so very jarring. Like having two, split personalities.”

Then a thought rose through them both, which Seth took a turn to speak, “Two…just two. So, if it’s just us, then where is Marley?”

Fear swelled for a moment before a rush of a shy shiver enveloped them. They were Marley now, with her broad hair swoop and demure feelings as she attempted, “I’m here…I just…I didn’t want to make things worse.”

Seth’s comments of, “It’s okay, Marley”, along with Marisa’s matching thoughts, brought out a quiet wave of contentment from Marley which washed back over them. Seth continued, “It’s like we’re all joined at the brain.”

“Agreed!” The others commented in a flash of each presence which left them dizzy. Marisa offered a Marley-like, “Sorry…”

The headache was getting better for Seth, but she still felt like there was a tingling acid bath all around her brain. Whereas before she had just one female body to deal with and try to comprehend along with all that had happened to her, now she had a twirling vision of three which momentarily each felt like her own until she was dislodged into another. She commented on this as, “This is making me feel dizzy in a way I never thought possible.”

Once they had each settled into a bit of calm over their strange situation, the next question became, “What do we do here?” Marley asked with a bit of Seth’s tone but soon apologized for assuming it. Seth gave a slight laugh at her apology and said, “We might as well just assume things, like we’re conjoined twins sharing a mind.”

Marisa immediately chirped, “I have a massive crush on the both of you. A huge, sexual one.” That left Marisa in charge of their body for the moment. She added, “And I see in your heads that I was a boy at some point when we first met. But I’m a girl now. And it’s still my anchor…especially in a moment of confusion like this.”

That expression of feeling had an odd, lingering effect that Seth described like, “Something tingly poured over my face.” It was an encouraging feeling because it was different and it made Marisa feel more distant from the other two, in a way that it felt almost like she had her own body again. She remarked, “I feel less tossed around. It could be that affirmation is helping us separate ourselves.”

Marley assumed the speaking role and bowed her head to consider a distinction. She offered, “I’ll try…for me…I’m also a girl but I’m someone shy and sensitive. That may sound bad for some but it’s how I feel. I also like big booms.”

The others offered their faint smiles as their presences reassumed control one turn after the next. Each split felt stronger, like a truly different person was speaking. Seth chimed in, “It seems to be working!” It was her turn now and there was really only one thing to offer, “For me, I have a brother. He teased me and I can only imagine he’d tease me again if he were here, but I feel…I know he had a deep and unquestioning love for me. My bro.”

They had each staked their claims to their personal reality. They could sense and feel themselves existing separately despite a continued sense of connection. Seth offered, “The boundaries are getting stronger. What else can we do?”

Marley quickly proposed, “Maybe affirm our individual bodies?” Seth didn’t mind being Marley for the moment but returned to her impression of her female body, as Jessica. She couldn’t gather as much enthusiasm for it as the others did for theirs, as they called out attributes to define, “This is how and who I am!”

Seth listened to Marley’s description of, “Cloak-like hair, quiet shyness, and a comfortable shape” and couldn’t help but imagine further and more specific details that made Marley so interesting to her. Marisa reaffirmed her imaginary ideal along with a yell of, “AND WITH DOGGED TENACITY!”

Seth had to snicker and offered herself, “I am the same person I always am, no matter my body. I am Seth.”

Following their affirmations, they felt a new shift. Marisa described it as, “It’s like we’re orbiting each other now. Weird.” They didn’t have as clear a sense of their bodies as they did when they were switching between one another, but they held onto their declared notions of self. More and more, it felt like they were flowing towards the edge of a space with an invisible wall just beyond. Marley noted, “I feel like we’re leaving…like we’re almost outside.” Seth encouraged, “Focus on that!”

It was like they were outlines in the dark, little more than pen sketches in negative outline of forms brought forth by some cosmic artist. Their lines were invisible to one another but they could tell they were there because of the certainty of their boundaries.

Seth clenched her eyes and said, “I am me...nothing can change that.”

An instant later, a voice whispered against her ear, “Prove it…”

The words jolted her like a shock through her skull. She felt woozy, tumbling backward through the intangible black ether until her body roughly found a floor much like the one they’d left behind. Looking ahead, she saw the black box from her perspective. The words were gone. With nervous haste, she clambered away from the box.

Panting, she realized with a frown that her hair was brown instead of the particular, reddish shade she’d just started to get accustomed to. The rush of optimism was short-lived as she knew she hadn’t been restored, due to the way her hair was long and fell like a curtain over her left eye. She brushed it back, but it kept settling naturally into the same spot. As she moved, she realized that her gestures had an unfamiliar character.

Folding her hands in her lap, she scanned around the room for the others. What she found was her male body, Seth, sitting up from the floor and feeling around himself. Beside him was Isaac, in a male version of her girly bartender outfit, looking down in confusion and annoyance as he fumed, “That ass turned me into a boy!”

The ‘ass’ swear rippled through Seth as she watched the two of them. Reflexively, she felt as though the sound had struck her. She had no idea why she had that reaction or what it meant but considering everything she saw in front of her, she had a wary sense of what she would see if she looked in the mirror. Fortunately, this version of the room had one nearby and it was not otherwise altered.

Standing, Seth saw Isaac fiddle with his new anatomy and grimace at the texture of his skin and the flatness of his chest as he remarked, “I feel nothing like before....Marley, are you okay?” Seth paid attention as Isaac’s eyes, imbued with a feminine body language which spoke through the rest of his demeanor, locked on her for that question. The other Seth, the male Seth, looked with a kind sense to his gaze which felt familiar and creepy, in that she never expected to see them from the outside.

Seth didn’t know whether to shake her head or nod. Several remnant, hesitant thoughts filled her and she softly offered, “I dunno. I just…need a moment.” In her thoughts, she knew how much she sounded like Marley without even trying. And, as she turned to look at the mirror, she saw what she knew from all those signs: She was in Marley’s body.

With a few deep breaths and restrained tears, she turned to answer, to try to offer some reveal to the others of what was happening. Male Seth approached her even though he was still standing across the room. Seth stared him down with explosive intensity cloaked beneath the surface of her gaze.

The double of male Seth approached her and, with nothing she could do about it, wrapped his arms around her, enveloping her in his embrace. Such a hold could’ve been full of kindness, love, or sympathy at the very least. This hold had none of those feelings. Seth stiffened at Sim’s touch. He clutched her and locked his fingers around her neck. He bent to whisper in her ear, “You are mine. There is no escape. You and the others signed your souls over to me for eternity. The sooner you accept it, the less I have to continue to remind you of what I can do. So…are you ready?”

Immediately, Seth-as-Marley shoved and smashed him in the shin. He didn’t waver but he slowly released her from his hold. She backed away and clenched her teeth. He added, “Well well...not yet. But you will be. Like everyone else, you have a limit. I’ll find it.”

And he was gone. Seth clenched her unfamiliar hands in front of her and crouched in the body of Marley as hot tears streaked the sides of her face. Isaac was the first over, sealing her in a vast, Marisa-like embrace and the other Seth crouched beside her and lightly touched her back.

She was with her friends and yet she felt more alone than she did in the cube where this all began.