Jacob

At some point after Sam left I must have fallen asleep, and at some later point I woke up again. I looked at the clock. 3.30 pm. It wasn’t going to be too long before he’d be here again. Did I have a dream while I slept? Yeah, I… I was walking around normally. Guess that counted as a fantasy to aspire to for me nowadays. And… I believe I looked different, but just like every time I had those dreams I couldn’t piece it together. A dream diary might have helped me remember it, if I had the means to write. Or use my arms in any meaningful way.

I kept staring at the wall. The clock was moving agonizingly slow.

Thinking back to yesterday, I felt myself smile internally. Externally would be too much effort right now. It truly was nice to have a friend like him. I could tell how much he cared about me. I just kept thinking back to his many visits, trying to pass the time.

3.45 pm. He was going to be here soon, just as always. It felt nice, having this event to look forward to, this steady rhythm.

But for the first time in months, that steady rhythm was disrupted when a witch materialized in my hospital room.

At least I assumed it was a witch. I could make that masterful deduction thanks to her appearing out of literal thin air, holding what looks like a wand in one hand, heaving a black cat up to her chest with the other. Her outfit also looked a little witch-y, if that made sense. Thin, black dress, simple black boots, purple thigh-highs and black fingerless gloves. Her shoulder-long black hair was dyed purple at the ends, and she was rocking a side-shave on the left side of her head. She seemed to be around my age. All in all, I was reasonably confident in my analysis.

Now, witches weren’t unheard of. Everyone knew that they existed, and that they could do magic, and they just kinda… did their thing. But they didn’t often meddle in other people’s business, so knowledge of them was kinda sparse. I knew I could probably have done some research on witches to enlighten myself, it isn’t like they were trying to keep themselves secret or anything like that, but most people were fine just coexisting with witches as long as they didn’t bother them.

So, having never met a witch before in my life and my knowledge on them extending to ‘they do magic’, you could certainly say I was confused.

“Hi. Wanna not be fatally ill and live longer?” was her greeting to me.

Huh.

“Either I’m having the weirdest dream right now or there’s some trick to this. What is it?”

The witch smiled. “Alright, so, any young witch needs a familiar, and those are a combination of a human soul…” she points her wand at me, “…an animal…” she points her wand at her cat, “…and all topped off with some magic!” She tried pointing her wand at itself, and just kept rotating her hand around for a few seconds. Visibly frustrated, she groaned. “You get the point. I’m a witch. I do magic. I need a familiar now.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle, but then I remembered my coughing fit yesterday and suddenly I could in fact help but chuckle. “So, what, I’m your sacrifice?”

She covered her mouth with her hands, aghast. “What? No! Never! The human - that’s you - still lives on through the familiar, in a kind of fused body. So you could live out the rest of your life, albeit in a slightly different body. You’d power my magic just by being around, so you could stay at my place.”

I tilted my head a little. “So, you’re gonna mind-control me into being obedient, or..?”

The witch took a step back in shock. “I- what- no! That’d go against like all the ethics rules, and even if I wanted to, magic can’t do that. The mind is a sacred place and whatnot, and there’s nothing I could do to mess with that. You’d still be yourself through and through, just maybe looking a little different.”

There must have been a trick to this. Something wrong with this whole deal. This was too good. “Okay, so, how much would this cost? It sounds like you’ve basically got the cure to cancer over here and I haven’t heard of it? Must be incredibly expensive then. Sorry, neither me nor my parents are swimming in money so we can’t pay you.”

I could tell she was slightly shocked at this accusation, but I could tell that this time, my suggestion wasn’t as unbelievable as the other ones. “Well, we’re not allowed to charge money for this. If you did and got found out you can say goodbye to ever actually getting into a magic college.“ She shrugged her shoulders. “You’d be stuck with the equivalent of a high school education and a familiar, but no way to actually learn any further magic. Doesn’t stop some people, of course, but I’m not that desperate.”

I thought about it for a bit more. “But if there’s no loss of identity, and it doesn’t cost any money, and I’m not gonna die or anything, doesn’t that mean cancer is basically cured? Why isn’t this all over the news?”

She sighed. “Well, a witch can only ever have one familiar. Try and cast another spell to get one if you already have a familiar, and it’ll just fizzle. So the amount of people that can be cured is the amount of witches who have gone through the equivalent of high school, which is… not enough to make as big of a splash as you’re expecting.”

I focused on any other way I could be tricked here. Any other loophole that might be used, any sort of metaphorical fine-print I might have overlooked. But I came up blank. At this point, she really seemed to be telling the truth.

The implications of that started to dawn on me. I could… keep going on? “Will I be healthy? As a familiar?”

She shrugged. “Well, it’s a new body, so whatever you’ve got going on will not carry over. Familiars can still be hurt and stuff, but I can guarantee you won’t be restrained like this.” She pointed at all the IV drips and tubes connected to me.

I weighed my options. I clearly didn’t have too long to live as it stands, she was correct on that. This was a no-brainer, really. I’d be gone in a few weeks anyway. So I might as well leave this behind and start over, in a way. It felt kinda sad to say goodbye to this body, but I can’t say I’ll miss it.

“Yeah, sure, I’m in.”

She jumped up in glee. “Alright, thank you so much! Okay, so, the cat needs to be close to you so we can guarantee that he’ll be the animal for this.” She placed the cat on the bed, next to me. I could feel its soft, black fur against my bony waist. It felt really nice.

She fiddled with her wand and summoned some scrolls out of thin air. “Alright, let me just make sure I’ve got everything set up right because I really don’t wanna mess this up, for both of our sakes.” She looks over at the cat to my side. “Sorry, all three of our sakes. He’s also on his way out, so don’t worry about him. It’ll be as peaceful as passing away in him sleep for the old guy.”

After a good few more minutes of fiddling with her wand and double-checking spells or whatever she was doing, she breathed in, then out, steeling herself. “Alright. I don’t think I’ll ever be more prepared than this. So, just to make things clear one more time, you’re okay with all this? You can still say no and go back to dying normally, just so you know.”

At this point, there was nothing that could make me reconsider. I was ready to start living again. “Let’s do this.”

We smiled at each other, she chanted some incantation, and a blast of energy flew from her wand, directed straight at me. This was really happening.

Sam

“Hi, I’m Sam Daniels, and I’m here to visit Jacob Hastings, room 3-06.” Same line as always. By this point, it was so familiar to me that I would probably blurt it out if I was woken up in the middle of the night. The same receptionist as yesterday, unsurprising since it was a Friday, told me to wait, and so I did. Not even a minute later, she came up to tell me I could see Jacob, so I made my way up the stairs as usual. This time I was certain she didn’t even bother checking the schedule. Then again, I couldn’t blame her, who else would be visiting him?

As I walked down the hallway towards Jacob’s room, I could hear people inside talking. Did his parents finally decide to go see their son again after, what, five weeks? No, that couldn’t be, they were sitting in the waiting room as always when I came in. Some other friends? No, Jacob would’ve told me about them.

I suddenly heard an unidentifiable but incredibly loud noise coming from the room, and before I could even think of anything else I was already through the door and saw Jacob being attacked, and my mind went into overdrive trying to find any sort of solution.

Someone - I couldn’t actually see them through the burst of light - was shooting some sort of beam at Jacob and oh my god I had to do something. I tried to think but my legs thought faster and I was already sprinting towards Jacob, just wanting to protect him, to shield him, to do anything. I jumped in the way of the blast and on top of the bed, covering Jacob with my body as best as I could, embracing him. He felt so weak, like if I held on too tight he would break under my touch. But I needed to hold on tight, make sure nothing would happen to him. When people talked behind his back, when they planned to prank him, I was there, protecting him, and I was going to protect him now even if it would cost me my life.

I could hear an “Oh, shit!” coming from the other side of the beam before it literally blew up in our faces. I kept embracing Jacob, protecting him, just trying to accomplish something, but soon enough I blacked out.