Chapter 7 - Seven Short

The assurance was rather lacking. 'Safe', to me, meant she put them in a six-digit safe set into a wall or kept them in a drawer by her computer. Or in the attic. Any of those alternatives felt better than dropping them in a bowl and hoping we don't forget to remove them before serving out the candy for the night. Not that I wanted to experience Halloween night like this.

Especially since there was one night, several years ago and during a lull in college, when it was just going to be her and me here because she couldn't stand Riona and our grandparents were helping out somewhere.

Lacy was a practically-dressed pirate with a little bit of flair, short pantaloons, and bare feet. I had on a pale, cream-toned suit a la Fantasy Island without being more fantastical. Late into the evening, after some spooky movies that had gotten to me far more than they had Lacy, the little kids stopped coming and it was the shrieking high schoolers and adults who were just aching to start something.

Some guys in skeleton tights, like something out of the original The Karate Kid, came to the door and lingered. I hung out on the couch, waiting for Lacy to get back, assuming she was just having a friendly chat, or she knew the guys. When her frazzled voice came out, I bolted from the couch and loomed behind her. In my ego, I would like to believe my presence scared them, but my suit probably invited ideas of avenging pastors or villains or maybe even God Himself.

She closed, locked, and bolted the door after that until the howler monkey level of whooping had settled into the background. She said they claimed to be guys from up north, in the big city. Ready for fun. One of them locked eyes with her feet the whole time. Lacy twisted and turned back and forth between saying that she could take them like the "little bitches" in school and wondering if they were just flirting and she was overreacting. Ultimately, she both wanted to make sure I was alright and wanted to be left alone to watch another movie. We both made sure it was a silly one.

No matter what, it was clear to me that I had the look of Lacy but not the resolve to deal with something like that. I barely had the resolve to survive the one guy scoping us out and the receipt checker at the Walmart.

That resolved the bananas though, but what about all those clothes? I questioned her and she fussed with a phantasm of her hair while trying to adjust to how my parts didn't line up with hers.

After a few sighs, she admitted, "I really wanted to get them for you. So you have something maybe you like, and which isn't too crazy. But I was also thinking, maybe I could try them and be me and maybe not me. I know which ones I didn't put on, so maybe they're just like blanks. Or whoever tried them on before or made them. But that would be someone else and at least she would fit my other clothes, so I won't have to waste money on new stuff. But I wanted to get some clothes that would make you smile...one way or another."

Her answer was a massive but familiar download of thoughts that whizzed by me as they zoomed out of her. All said in my now-weird-sounding voice with Lacy's inflections and mannerisms. Being outside my voice brought a visceral, harshly-skeptical urge like trying to smash a pop-up game critter with a padded mallet so hard that they never came up again. What saved the aching cringe inside was desperately ignoring how I sounded from the outside compared to any place markers of audio recordings.

Instead of trying to pick apart her reasoning, especially to the tune of spending nearly $100 in the same breath she said she wanted to save money, I just offered up a resigned nod and urged her to go show me the bananas, so we could put them in a more permanent storage place.

Before we left the bathroom, we both approached the other halfway en route to a hug. Then, we both seemed to realize that the size and feel of one another would be vastly different. Despite the space station docking-like tentative shiftings of our unfamiliar forms, we managed to get our arms around one another in a way which felt more comforting than concerning.

My smell on the clothes and form of another man felt just as weird as Lacy's aroma emerging from my insides. But the hug did its job and we slipped out of the bathroom.

Lacy led me over to the side table, where the bowl had been in preparation. I could tell something was wrong before she stood over the table, with her hands sliding across the wood. She'd slowed and found the closest version of my look of concern. The kitchen only had the rest of the chicken and what hadn't been put away yet. Lacy's legs and shoulders went slack on me as I turned to the front and realized the only place where it could possibly be.

I just hoped. I hoped...

Walking into the living room with a rerun of The Golden Girls starting up, I didn't have to check far to see the bowl of candy set on the table away from our plates. Grandma and grandpa each held the drooping remains of a banana peel as they looked through the old clothes from the attic, brought down earlier to keep them preoccupied.

Grandma, with my father's childhood sailor's cap on her head (which I recognized from old photo albums), gestured to grandpa, who had on Lacy's mom's distinctive striped-pink glove from about the same age and wiggled his eyebrows as it was clearly too tiny for him. For the moment.

"Could you ever believe they were so small?...OH! Welcome back, sweetie. Is everything alright? It looks like some of the fruit you two got is about to go bad with that color. Still tasted great, if a little odd. I know just the recipe though, so the others shouldn't go to waste."

For a moment, I rubbed Lacy's eyes in the meager possibility I had both misheard grandma and mistaken the peels they were holding for a random part of the bunch I'd acquired earlier, but the presence of the candy bowl sealed my worrisome realization.

I could've screamed that they were tainted and maybe they could bring them up, but I couldn't imagine putting them through that ordeal with no knowledge of whether the smallest mote of banana counted the same as consuming the whole. Think think...

Right behind me, Lacy stood a little bit back and came to the same realization as me with a sudden, sharp gasp unlike any I usually made. This caught grandma's attention immediately, "What is it, sweetie? You okay?"

Looking for a place to set his empty peel, grandpa shifted his teeth around and noted, "Reminds me a little of the pudding over at Ponderosa", before catching grandma's concern and offering up to Lacy-as-me, "You alright, buddy?"

Think! "Oh! It's just we were thinking of using those singles. Irregulars. We got them...they gave them away. Just as like something decorative. Give the bowl a little flair. And color! Since they were out of gourds. Yeah."

Grandma eased back in the couch with a settling of relief. "Oh! Is that all? They were perhaps a bit past their halcyon days, but I feel fine. You okay, hon?" She fanned a hand in grandpa's direction as he gave a sudden hiccup.

That hiccup, on its own, did not lend a sense of foreboding. But the gurgle that issued from my grandfather's stomach, somewhere between a squeaky brake and a dog's mournful whimper in the night, did send Lacy's constant heartbeat in my chest into a different gear. At best, I worried that the banana and its magic wouldn't agree with them and we'd have a mess to clean up. At worst, I feared things were going to resolve in the other end, in a way I was quite familiar with.

Taking a full measure of breath, I heard grandma's gut take to puttering like an uneasy engine before rattling around like liquid gravel. She commented, with a touch of embarrassment evident in her tone, "Goodness. Surely it wasn't that bad? Irregular, you said?"

With a snort, grandpa added over a second wave from his gut, "At least it's not irregular prunes."

Their mild concern and cordial amusement took a turn moments later when grandma grunted with a hand near her mouth and cleared her throat a few times before stating, "My gosh. I may need to excuse myself for a moment. Orson? Do you need help?"

Though they both looked uncomfortable and hunched over, grandma swiftly touched grandpa on the shoulder. For a few, lingering moments, it looked like he was steeling himself, before he clearly decided he was at his limit. With striking, spry energy, he rose from the couch, maneuvered around the collection of mementos, and made for the stairs.

Scaling them with more fervor than I'd seen him command in decades, he was upstairs and out of sight in less than a breath. Hiccupping herself, grandma paced her steps to the bathroom we'd just left. I exchanged a glance with Lacy as he hustled to her side.

The remaining bananas sat in the bowl of candy with no order to their positions. Through the fear and uncertainty of that moment, a single note struck me like a lightning bolt in slow motion: Four of us affected. Seven bananas, all told. Three bananas left. If they were the cause and the fix, then someone was the odd one out.

What if it was me? The minutia and overt details of Lacy hadn't overwhelmed me for some minutes, but that was only because I had too many other things. Lacy had copied me. And our grandparents were, if we understood the rules of what was going on correctly, about to change as well.

With Lacy opting to attend to grandma, my only choice was to make sure grandpa hadn't injured himself in his hasty trek. Pushing up the stairs, I gave Lacy's room just a quick inspection and grimace before peeking into the bathroom.

Grandpa had cast off his red suspenders and gray pants to lay across the floor with his cream shirt in the act of being unbuttoned as his boxers dipped to his knees. He basically hurtled himself at the seat with a raspy groan and a hand reaching for any surface that might support him.

Fumbling with my words, I both asked if he was alright while trying to reassure him he was fine. Flailing his hand around, grandpa wordlessly asked for my assistance. With what muscles Lacy provided me, I managed enough leverage to get him situated comfortably.

Then, came the noises. Imagine (or, more appropriately, no one should imagine or try to describe the sounds) a roiling, angry vat of soup turned up past the correct setting on a stove. Then add in a dying, wailing bear tumbling down a hill with the alarm of a buzzsaw as his body splinters sheets of lumber in his way. And that level of intense sounds and vibrations in the floor not only continues at that pace, but also sounds like it's building to something even worse about to be unleashed upon this world.