Boy Sorceress Pt. 01

Most of the people on this planet will never even hear about the slaughter. Those that do, will probably mention it to their coworkers and commiserate over how terrible it was. Some would idly toss conspiracy theories back and forth. Others would use it as an opportunity to rant about whatever they believed could have been done to stop it from happening. All of them will forget about it by the time the next catastrophe saturates the news cycle.

All of them but me. Those screams threatened to invade the silence of my apartment. Those faces, victims and butchers both, were before my eyes every time I closed them. I would sooner forget my own name than that night.

I shook off my gloom and focused on the here and now again. Despite realizing that the flower bud in my brain was real, I felt calm. The universe was out to get me on a whole new level, but I was sane and my grip on reality was sound. I found great comfort in that last bit.

I returned my attention to the TV. This time, I recognized the blonde reporter's backdrop. She was indeed in Riverside, standing across the park next to the town square. She was just six blocks away from me. I shuddered.

"That was all I could get him to say," she said. "He was taken away by the paramedics shortly after that, to be treated for shock." The screen split again, only this time it was between her and the anchor. "However, before he was taken away, he shared an image that he had taken with his cellphone as the police were arriving. We will now share this image with the public."

"Thank you, Alice," the anchor said and his image filled the screen. "The following image depicts human remains and is extremely disturbing. We encourage our viewers who might be affected by such graphic imagery to use their discretion."

The screen then went mostly dark and I squinted at it. It didn't take me long to recognize the town square, despite the fuzzy, dark picture. There was a Sheriff's department car in the background, frozen in a moment of flashing its lights. In the foreground, however, were several bodies. The picture was too low quality to be considered truly gruesome, but I was still shocked to recognize the clothing of each body on the screen. Their heads were severed and clutched in one hand. The fingers of their other hands were clutching something that looked like it might be made of metal. I bet you it was the exact same knives the cultists had used to slit their throats.

I swallowed some vomit and slid my breakfast bowl into the sink.

I again prayed for all of this to just be another facet of my horrible, all-encompassing delusion. Some guest was in the studio and he started telling the anchor about how the police were going to approach this investigation, what methods they'd be using, whether the FBI would take over and so on. I was hardly listening as I stared at the corpses on the screen. Who the fuck were these people? Where had they been taken from? Why them? Why not me?

The anchor appeared on the screen again and said, "Alice, you have some new information for us?"

The screen was split between him and Alice again and she nodded. "Yes, Mark, there has been a new development. The Riverside Sheriff's department is still holding off on commenting on their investigation, but we have unofficially learned the identities of two of the victims."

"Who were they?"

"One of the victims appears to be a local resident named Jennifer Malone." A DMV photo of a chubby, young, white woman appeared on the screen. I had lived in Riverside for four years and I hadn't managed to meet many people, but this woman's cheerful, chubby face looked familiar, now that it wasn't gagged and shown to me in profile only. "Miss Malone was a single mother who worked at a local fast food establishment."

Oh, fuck! I realized she was Jen, a cheerful waitress at the grill joint I used to visit to celebrate each car sale I made. She had served me, once or twice. I couldn't believe it. This was the first time someone I had met came to a gruesome end. I really, really wished I was insane, instead of all these people being dead.

The other victim was an older guy they also said was from Riverside, but I had never heard of him before in my life. I did recognize his face from the clearing, though. As I made the connection that Jen had been the Asian necromancer's victim, I started being able to recall each scared face I had seen. I felt so ashamed for not even trying to help those people.

The news kept on spinning in place, repeating what they had already said, but adding nothing new, so I turned off the TV.

The full implications of last night being real hit me. I had some kooky powers, myself, like floating down the mountainside and screaming at frequencies that only the werewolf could hear. Had the universe used lube on my asshole last night?

I tried to replicate my screams, but failed. I had magical powers while I had been Ashley. Now they were gone. I grinned bitterly and glared up at my ceiling. The universe gives me hope and then yanks my chain. Typical.

I drew a deep breath and held it before slowly letting it out. I repeated the procedure a few more times and calmed down enough to see things rationally. It boiled down to me being alright and no worse off than I had been. I'd probably have nightmares and PTSD from the shit I had seen last night, but I was in the exact same situation as before. No better, no worse. If anything, I had made a lateral move. Out of the category of people that are ok, into the category of people that might need professional help. Lateral moves were ok.

I frowned as I remembered the pity in Skip's eyes. Lateral moves were the worst, I realized. While the rest of my generation was advancing, I was standing in place, falling further behind with each and every passing moment. They were graduating, meeting new people, starting careers and families. They were setting the bar higher with each accomplishment they ticked off and what was I doing? Nothing.

Thirteen people had been robbed of their lives last night. It was all over for them. All the opportunities being alive brought with it were now denied to them forever.

And here I was, ignoring my life like it was all the rage. Pitying myself for being on the receiving end of the universe's ass-fisting fetish. Guilt and shame washed over me. I was done with that shit. No more listing all the things that could go wrong until the opportunity passed. No more meticulous, time-consuming research and preparation. I had to grab life by the horns. I owed it to the dead.

Besides, how does one research magic? Where does one find information on monsters? Wikipedia? Google? The very idea of preparation was ludicrous. There were monsters running loose, killing people and I considered reading up on things.

I shuddered as I thought about the corpses. Those people had been murdered, then marched into Riverside and made to completely sever their heads from their bodies. What if the Asian necromancer chick decided to make them rise from their graves and kill people? What if she made them rise from their autopsy tables and kill the county coroner?

I felt sick to my stomach. I should never have crushed the flower in my brain. Now it was useless and I had no more magic to fight the evil with. I was useless. I really wished I could just call in an anonymous tip and leave it at that, but I couldn't. Not after sitting on that branch and watching it happen. Not with those dying faces etched on the backs of my eyelids. I was going to fight the cultists, or I was going to go nuts with guilt.

I began to analyze what I knew. The first thing to come under scrutiny was my hasty declaration of uselessness. The bud was in my brain, growing out of my brainstem, just as it had been before. It just wasn't blooming. What if I really, really wanted it to bloom? No sooner had I thought about it, then it happened. The flower's petals opened. My perspective shifted. Hair tickled the top of my back. Gold framed my vision.

I gasped a girly squeak and ran to my bedroom mirror. I was Ashley again. Did this mean that I could use powers again, too?

I jumped up and wished for myself to remain floating in the air. It worked. I hovered about a foot above the floor until I barked out a laugh of disbelief. My concentration wavered and I fell back down to the floor.

I imagined crushing my flower back into a bud and watched myself shift in the mirror.

Ashley's face and body expanded into mine and her hair shortened and darkened at the same time. The transformation was brief. There was no pain, no discomfort. Just a little disorientation as I changed height, but seeing it in the mirror was disturbing. Human flesh should not morph like that.

I made the stupid mistake of also watching myself change into Ashley and that nearly made me throw up. Seeingmy own face get changed like that was disgusting beyond words. It looked like the worst CGI from the early nineties. I still shudder every time I think about it. Blech.

Anyway, I tried to use my powers to make myself float as me, as Kevin, but all I got was a painful knee and my downstairs neighbor banging his broom against my floor again. Apparently, I was right to assume I had to change into Ashley to use powers.

I thought back to the clearing and that indescribable, timeless instant. When the unknown entity examined me, it determined my greatest desires to be power and Ashley. Why the fuck had Ashley been my answer to what my greatest desire was? She and I were over a long, long time ago.

I guessed the answer was in the fact that I had thought about her betrayal before the thirteen cultists had shown up. After they had shown up, I had wished I wasn't powerless to stop them. But why tie this power, whatever it was, with being Ashley Williams? That was just stupid. Mean. Further proof that the universe had it in for me and my poor asshole.

Fuck it. I had the power to levitate and incapacitate monsters with screaming and I was going to find out exactly what else I could do with it. I wanted to try throwing fireballs around, but I couldn't do that inside my apartment, obviously. I needed to drive across the river. The Indian reservation there sported a lot of wilderness and a big forest. I was certain I could find a nice, secluded spot to try things out.

I got dressed and noticed my belt was loose. I usually wore it on the last hole and it was tight enough for me to consider punching another hole next to that one. I tightened it on the next to last hole and it was still loose. I tightened it to the third-last hole and it felt just a little tight. I turned to look at myself in the mirror in profile. Had I lost weight? My waist was demonstrably smaller, but most of my fat sat a bit higher than that. I still had a big gut hanging out over my belt. Was it any smaller now? It's hard to tell the difference between two big things.

I stripped naked and stood on my scales. Two hundred and ninety-eight pounds. I stepped off, let the flower bloom and became Ashley. When I stepped onto the scales again, they said I weighed a hundred and six pounds as Ashley. I made the flower retract into a bud and weighed myself again. I weighed two hundred and ninety-five pounds. I stared in disbelief. Either I lost three pounds changing shape, or my scales were very off.

I changed again into Ashley and my weight was the same. One hundred and six pounds. I changed into myself and my weight now read two hundred and ninety-two pounds. Wow. It cost me three pounds of my own weight to turn into Ashley and back again. This was cool. I could lose weight just by switching shapes.

I frowned. That was an assumption. I needed to test my assumptions, not rely on them. I decided to see if the time I spent as Ashley affected how much weight I lost, so I let the flower bloom and set a timer for one hour. I'd spend an hour as Ashley and see how much that cost. I had spent an entire night as her and come out not looking like Gandhi, so I figured I wasn't going to die of starvation by spending an hour as her.

I looked at my closet. All my clothes were my own size. I had literally nothing that could possibly fit Ashley. If I was going to go out to practice my magic, or go out to, I don't know, do something about the cultists, I'd need to find something for me to wear as Ashley. Some pants, some shirts, underwear, shoes and definitely something for my tits. My tits had hurt like a motherfucker as I had dashed down Stony Mountain. Plus, I had fallen to my death by tripping on the leg of my sweatpants. There was no way I was going to put on any Kevin clothes as Ashley. Ashley needed threads of her own size.

Tits were a simple matter, I'd just need to buy a sports bra. I got on my computer and started looking things up. I found some tutorials that showed me how to take my chest measurement and cup size. They were quite...distracting. I found a length of twine in one of the kitchen drawers and measured myself. I kept watching the tutorials, um, just to make sure I was doing it right.

When the timer dinged to signify the hour was up, I turned away from my computer and made the flower retract. I stood on my scales and they read two hundred and eighty-nine pounds. It seemed that it cost me three pounds to turn into Ashley and back, regardless of how long I spent as her. I'd double-check after spending some more time as her.

I remembered the cold water that had slid down my back when I had turned back into myself this morning. Did changes to one of my shapes extend to the other? I got my sharpie out and drew a squiggly line down my forearm before making the flower bloom. The squiggly line was on Ashley's forearm, too.

Cool. This probably meant that I could wash my short hair and have Ashley's be clean, or I could stick her long hair into a shower cap, take a quick shower and be clean as myself. I'd save a lot on water and soap and shampoo that way.

I sat down at my laptop again and worked at finding out how to shop for Ashley. Obviously, I was going to go out as myself to shop, but I needed to know my female measurements and what to buy.

Finding out how to take my measurements and how those numbers translated into sizes was the easy part. I was adept at converting figures. Finding out what to buy was another matter. Each and every fucking tutorial was focused on how to make a chick look good. I had no interest in appearances, I wanted mobility and comfort. Besides, Ashley was hot whatever she wore. I was looking for some clothes that would allow me to run and fight as Ashley, not prance around like an idiot. At the very least, I needed some stuff that wouldn't trip me up and make me fall off a fucking mountain again.

The underwear was a complete nightmare. G-strings, thongs and a million other types of lingerie that would give me a fucking wedgie and make it uncomfortable to run and jump around in. I had just about given up and decided Ashley would go commando when I learned about boyshorts. Then I was left with the task of finding out which local stores carried such fare. That's when stuff went nuts. Half the local stores weren't online, the other half seemed dedicated to providing the ladies with insensible clothing. I persevered and managed to find everything I needed in the Springfield mall.

With my shopping list complete, I changed into myself. I was hungry, so I ate some lunch before getting dressed.

I got in the Interceptor. Well, I tried to. The seat was all the way forward, as I had left it last night. I pushed it back and got in. I started the engine and noted that it sounded normal, not sexy like last night. I shrugged and drove off to Springfield.

Springfield was the home of the Riverside Raccoons' arch-rivals, the Springfield Spartans, so I had never been there, except when the Raccoons had come by bus to crush their team. I had no trouble finding the mall, even without my phone. I had simply memorized the route I had seen online. Finding the stores was easy. Finding the items I wanted was slightly more complicated than that. Mainly because I had to fend off some fairly annoying salesgirls.

I'd enter the store and begin a systematic sweep of it to find the item I was looking for. It wasn't subtle, it wasn't your casual shopping, it was a quest. Enter yonder store, find the Sweatpants of Agility, buy them, go to the next store. The salesgirls just saw me as a boyfriend that was trying to buy something nice to apologize to his special lady, but had no clue how to do that.

How many times does a guy have to say, "No thank you, I'm just here to buy two pairs of sweatpants in dark blue," before the message gets across? And that was just a run-of-the-mill outlet store. I had to go get the sports bras in a lingerie store, where they were on sale. The freaking salesgirl actually took me by the hand and started dragging me away from the sports bra bin and towards the lacy stuff. I was only there to buy a few sports bras, I had no interest in looking at the rest of their wares. Bras don't look like much, when they're on their own. They look nice when they're on a big pair of tits and even nicer when they're next to the bed, but on their own? Nothing to write home about.

Anyway, that one nearly required me to physically extricate myself from her grasp to be able to buy the sports bras. The salesgirl then gave me instructions on the store's return policy, instead of ringing up my purchase, dead sure my girlfriend was going to break up with me over what I had bought. She was all but laughing at my face by the time she finally did ring up the bras.

Imagine, for a moment, if a chick walked into a store to buy a necktie for her husband, boyfriend, brother, whatever, and the sales guy talked down at her like they had done with me? There'd be fucking riots in the streets.

In the third store, I got an idea. I went straight up to the salesgirl and held up my notes, pretending they're a shopping list. In my best mimicry of the kind of incompetent boyfriend you see on sitcoms, I begged her to help me find plain cotton T-shirts in this exact size, or I'd be in big trouble. This one just smiled warmly, handed me the things I wanted, rung them up and said, "Goodbye! Come again!" like a regular salesperson.

This act got me through the next two stores, where I bought some zip-up sweaters and athletic socks. In the shoe store, I was given a few queer looks as I stuffed cardboard cutouts of Ashley's feet into pair after pair of running shoes. I did it to assess if the shoes would give me blisters, or not. Shoe size only gets you so far. I found a cheap pair that the cutouts fit nicely and bought it. If they did turn out to give me blisters, I'd just wear them to the store as Ashley to buy some shoes that fit me better.

The fall was quite warm so far, but we'd be going into coat weather in less than a month. Shit. Women's coats cost more then men's. Why is that? They're smaller, they should be cheaper. Oh, well, that was a financial worry for a later date. After I figured out all the abilities this power has given me, I was sure I'd find one I could discreetly cash in on.

I was deep in thoughts of how to explore the limits of this screaming and hovering power, when I thought I saw a familiar face out of the corner of my eye. I turned and took a good look, only to freeze in fear. I did see a face I was very familiar with, but it wasn't a friend. It was the scrawny man I had shot in the gut last night. It was the fucking werewolf in human form. He was wearing a nice pair of brown slacks with a button down red shirt and examining a window display on the other side of the promenade like everything was perfectly normal.

I stared in horror, until his gaze rose to look at other windows. I turned on my heel and marched towards the nearest exit, some hundred yards away. The adrenaline in my veins demanded I break into a mad dash for safety, but I somehow managed to keep a lid on it. He hadn't seen me. If I ran, he would. Then I'd be fucked. I power walked towards the exit, even as I felt beads of cold sweat drip down my back.