Not Very Nice People - Chapter 9/11: And All The Children Are Insane free porn video

NOT VERY NICE PEOPLE by Crazy Baron Chapter 9: And All The Children Are Insane Synopsis: The proverbial port in a storm: a quaint country house with a lovable, somewhat eccentric mistress who is still far out and digs groovy guests, decades after the Summer of Love came to an end. But just as the original hippie era had its dark side, Lady Cinnamon and her "Kids" might be something more than simply a colorful and amusing throwback to a seemingly innocent time. ***** "Right on," Cinnamon said excitedly. For the first time in our lives, my friends and I were visiting an authentic hippie commune, and the high priestess herself had just welcomed us in her own inimitable style. "Let's sit down together for a moment and rap a little. I'm dying to hear your stories, and then you can hear mine. I'll ask the Kids to make us some tea." "Fair enough," Jake responded to this. "I can't speak for everybody, but I for one am glad to get out of the car for a while." "Me too," Scott added. "At least we finally arrived somewhere. I was beginning to think all the people had disappeared and we were left alone in the world." "Yeah," the hostess commented, "I grok you. It's like when you are out of sync with everything and nobody gets where you're coming from. The world is full of wonders, but you need to connect with it to dig it, if you know what I mean. But now that you're here, you can leave your worries behind and lay back." We were guided to what was presumably the living room of the house. However, to me, it rather resembled a shrine with candles and incense sticks burning in candelabras and holders, together with a small statue of a smiling Buddha sitting on a coffee table. Couches and armchairs were absent, and instead there were only wool rugs with colorful geometric patterns on the floor. The two windows were covered with thin purple curtains which allowed some of the feeble sunlight of that cloudy day to enter the room. Cinnamon sat down on the floor, motioning us to do the same, and so we gathered in a loose circle on the rugs in the middle of the room. "Okay," Cinnamon prompted. "You want to lay the saga of your journeys on me?" "Mike, why don't you do the honors," Jake said. "You're the chief of your tribe, aren't you, Mike?" Cinnamon laughed. "I wouldn't go that far," I responded with a wry smile and chuckle, trying to hide my slight embarrassment. "It's just that the car we're traveling in is mine and my buddies mostly want someone else to do all the talking." "Well, let's hear it, man. And don't worry about making it too long. We've got plenty of time." "Right," I said and exhaled. "We four--that is, Scott, Jake, Charlie and I- -were going on a vacation in Texas when we met Dan on the road. He intended to go see his relatives in a nearby town, and we gave him a ride, but then... things went awry." "They did?" Cinnamon inquired. "How?" "Well, we... What happened was that we spent the night at a motel and were going to take Dan to his relatives today, as we couldn't make it yesterday, but got lost. The GPS and cell phone reception completely disappeared a few hours ago, and after that, we have had no clear idea where we are." "You're not telling me everything," she said and winked. "There's way more where that came from. I can sense it, plain as day." "We've been through some strange things," Jake added, and I fervently hoped he would not reveal all the details of our experiences to an outsider in one indiscriminate and indiscreet information dump. "Maybe they're just weird dreams, but it's pretty accurate to say that everything has felt a smidgen unreal to us lately." "I dig," Cinnamon said. "Okay, maybe you have to loosen up a little first, so I'll entertain you with my story now. You must be wondering what a freak girl like me is doing in a place like this, right?" "It did cross our minds," Charlie admitted. "Yeah, this isn't exactly Haight-Ashbury, even though that's what I went looking for back in 1967 when I left New England behind. My hometown was so square you wouldn't believe it. Most folks were the kind who supported the Vietnam War and voted for Nixon, you dig, totally asleep and nothing happening. I had to get out of there. So, me and a couple of my friends jumped in a minivan when summer rolled around and then headed for the West Coast, just like they do in the movies." "Did you get there?" Jake asked. "What was it like?" "Outta sight, from what I've heard," she said and added another laugh. "Only we never got to see it. The van broke down and we got stuck here, totally burned out and short on money. And... the others, you dig, they sort of left the scene one by one over the years. A few fried their brains with bad acid, and another guy basically sold out. I'm the only person left, and I'm trying to carry the torch of the ideal." This made me raise my eyebrows. Cinnamon had unquestionably reached middle age, but to me she looked much too young to have been born before 1960, let alone 1950. If her appearance was anything to go by, she would have been hardly more than a toddler during the Summer of Love, I thought. "The ideal?" Charlie inquired. "Yeah. Environmentalism, free love, awareness, peace, feminism--positive things. I've always been big on those. Valerie Solanas actually used to be one of my role models when I was a teen, you dig, in the sense that I thought she had it right when it came to the idea of equality and the need to bring down the power structures of the old society, but I hate violence and I absolutely refuse to accept it, even if you stand for a good cause. You can't fight fire with fire because that way you'll always get burned yourself in the end." "And now you've got a bunch of male pigs sitting on your carpets," Jake pointed out with a chuckle. "That's a strawman," she countered in her lively and friendly manner. "Being born in a male body doesn't make you a pig. It's something you choose to be, or choose not to be. I've got no problem with men who value women and see them as equals." "Many men are bullies," Dan commented. "I have had negative things done to me by them, out and out, in my respective life." We were interrupted at this point. A little girl of about six or seven trudged into the room, carrying a tattered old teddy bear under her arm. She had a round face with a tiny upturned nose and puffy cheeks, and a radiant, long blond mane crowning her head. With her nightgown adding the final touch, she would have been perfect for the part of a cherub in a Christmas pageant as she was. "Aunty Cinnamon," the girl spoke up in a sleepy voice, "I'm tired. Can I go to bed now?" "Of course, dearie," the hostess said. "Is your dream buddy tired too?" The girl nodded and rubbed her eyes. "She says she wants to go dream happy dreams with me." "Alright. You go on ahead, Sunshine, and I'll come to tuck you in and light the peace candle for you a little later. Okay?" "Okay, Aunty." With this, the girl turned and padded quietly out of the room. "Are those children yours?" Jake asked point blank as soon as the girl was presumably out of earshot. "That's quite a brood you've got, if you don't mind me saying." "No," Cinnamon explained, "the Kids are not mine in the sense that I'm their biological mother; I'm not. They're adoptees, in a way, so they tend to see me as something of a mother figure or perhaps a spiritual leader. Still, we don't believe in hierarchies here, so we've agreed that they can call me Aunty or by my name as they wish. I'm just guiding them on the path of life, you dig, and in return they're guiding me. We each contribute in whatever way we can. The little ones naturally are just there for the most part, learning the way for when they grow up." "So, they're sort of like your disciples," Jake continued. "I really wouldn't go that far. I'm no guru or teacher, but more of an older sister to them. Every one of us teaches and learns." "Are all of the Kids girls?" Scott inquired, unable to contain his curiosity. "Yep. It's not that I discriminate against boys, but I've found that things tend to go more smoothly with girls." "Do you mean they're kids in a... well, mental or spiritual sense, or are they...?" "Both. The youngest turned six the week before last, and the oldest two are twenty. Your mind is more open when you're a child, you are in tune and see and dig things the way they are. That's why I love children and living with them. You don't need drugs to expand your mind when you're little. You're constantly high just because you're alive to the world around you." "Bully men ruin everything," Dan commented again. This time, there was a distinct, unmistakable flavor of passive-aggressiveness in his speech, as toneless as it was otherwise. "They won't let you stay a kid, even when you're young at your respective heart and mind and soul and want to live in that space where you thusly feel comforted." "I'm not saying you shouldn't grow up," Cinnamon clarified. "What I think is important is that you keep your mind and awareness open and always look beyond the here-and-now, the material wealth and the norms of the System. You're dead if you can no longer feel wonder and amazement at the simple things, the way children do." "Like at school," Dan's bitter tirade continued. "There were these three big bullies who would call me names and throw dimes at me because they wanted to see me pick them up. They were idiot males with their stupid muscles and cars and girlfriends. They told me I would never get a girlfriend in my life and that I was a retard, out and out. I hate them." "I can relate," Charlie said. "Most of us have been bullied one way or another, but that was decades ago. It's no use bearing a grudge, Dan." "I hate them," he repeated. "I want them to die. All of them." "Man, that's not cool," Cinnamon rebuked him. "I'm not a man! I'm multi-flavored, female but non-binary beautiful soul in most ways and among other things masculine, but not exclusively, physical body, throughout. Men are evil and they do nothing but hurt you. They should thusly all be made to take a pill that makes them women, or else their male parts and such should be cut off. I hate that I have a male part in my pants." "Dan's got issues," Jake told Cinnamon with a weary grin. "You guys are bullies too," Dan said to me and my friends. "You are men, and you bully me and, I think, most others too. You tell me what to do and then yell at me when I, from within my own thoughts inside my sound mind and soul, want to do something else." "You'd better mellow out, buddy," Cinnamon said to this. Her tone was gentle but simultaneously persuasive and emphatic. "Hate's not good for you. Chill, bro." "Okay," he said. His sudden bout of anger appeared to dissipate as quickly as it had gathered, and in no time he had resumed his earlier (in)activity of sitting silently and staring blankly into space. "Too bad we didn't have you traveling with us," Jake remarked, clearly impressed by Cinnamon's ability to rein in Dan's unwanted behavior. "You could have settled an argument or two we had along the way." "I can see you two aren't always on the same frequency," Cinnamon pointed out. "You'd do well to rest a little and soak in some good vibes together." "It's a tempting suggestion," I said, "but we must get back on the road immediately after this. Dan's cousin is waiting for him, and we're already a day late. He has probably called the police by now and reported us missing." "It's all good," she reassured me, or at least attempted to. "There's no hurry, and it's not safe to travel today; won't be for a while." "What do you mean?" Jake inquired her. "Not safe?" "Precisely. This thing is happening out there, you dig, this wave that affects everything and everyone. It's best to be at home and just hang tight until it passes. You can try to ride it out in the wild, but it can give you a pretty bad trip like no other." "I'm sorry," I said, speaking in my turn for myself and all of my friends, "but I don't think I understand. What kind of wave? Does it have something to do with the communications blackout that we ran into?" "That's kind of hard to explain. The wave is more like things changing and reordering themselves around you and your perception evolving. You can learn to groove on it and then it's like a room full of the purest acid in the world, but if you haven't experienced it before, it has a way of totally freaking you out. So it's better for you to be in a peaceful setting somewhere when the wave goes down, and it's better in general, unless you're really adventurous and open to everything new." Cinnamon's answer was less than informative, from my point of view, but it did give me food for thought. She had to be describing the same mysterious phenomenon that had seemingly either rearranged the lay of the land or whisked us away into a parallel universe of sorts. Even though the rational side of my mind continued to protest and refuse to accept such a thing as objectively real, the events of that day had admittedly been difficult to reconcile with common sense and logic. Perhaps, I reasoned, it really was the best bet to stay here for an hour or two and let Cinnamon host a groovy get-together or whatever she was planning. Regardless of whether we had encountered a reality distortion or just plain gotten lost in a fog, she might be more disposed to giving us the directions to Bedford afterwards. "I guess we have to take your word for it," Charlie said. He had obviously been thinking along similar lines as I had. "I'm not too keen on going out there again and driving back and forth in a mist, not knowing which way is north and which way is south." "Me neither," Scott concurred. "Anyhow, if it really isn't that far to Bedford, we should still make it today even if we stop for a few hours." "Righteous!" Cinnamon exclaimed with a wide smile and got on her feet. "We'll have ourselves a proper little gathering here tonight! I'll go get us some tea, and then later we'll eat something." "Sorry to interrupt," I chimed in. "If you'll excuse me, I have to get my phone, or actually go looking for it. I think I left it in the car." "No problem, Mike." Cinnamon went out of the room in a hurry, excited and overjoyed to start an evening of philosophical conversation and mind expansion with her unexpected guests. In contrast, I felt apprehension at the same prospect. At the very least, we would face yet another delay, and it was also within the realm of possibility that the "gathering" would involve illicit substances. I didn't know what Cinnamon's stance on drugs was, but if it was as liberal as that of her ideological forebears, we would have to stay on our toes and decline any food or drink we couldn't identify and trust to be innocuous with absolute certainty. "So, anyway, I'll get the phone," I said and got up. "If this was a movie," Charlie quipped in a low voice in an effort to make sure Cinnamon wouldn't hear, "the opening bars of 'White Rabbit' would be playing on the soundtrack right about now, don't you think?" "In my opinion, The Doors' 'The End' would fit our adventures better," I replied in kind. I returned to the hallway and was about to go out the door when I heard a girl's voice talking in one of the other rooms. Unlike Sunshine, this female sounded like a teenager, and then Cinnamon replied to her. I could just about make out the majority of the words, and after a moment's vacillation, I gave in to the temptation to eavesdrop. My guilty conscience was mostly mollified by the justification that it was imperative for us to be aware of any surprises Cinnamon might have in store. One "party trick" was enough for this trip. "Yeah, I don't doubt that," Cinnamon said to the girl, in response to something she had asked or stated just before. "Anyways," the girl spoke, "I was wondering. When we turn the guys on, can we keep the cute one, at least for a few days?" "Who do you mean?" "You know, the quiet guy with brown hair and pretty eyes." "The tall one?" "No, not the tall one. He's a little shorter and younger than him." "Oh! That's Scott." "Yeah, Scott," the girl gushed. "He's so dreamy! I want him." "We've got to think about that, Alana. Just so you remember, you can't have him all for yourself, even if he gets to stay. We share everything, and love's free." "Sure, I'll share him with Daisy and the others, but can we keep him? Please, Aunty?" I missed Cinnamon's reply as another hippie girl, this one in her mid- teens, came into the hallway from the room in the opposite direction. Stopping to survey me with her eyes, she had a quizzical expression on her pretty face at first; after a short while, though, it turned into a wide smile. I smiled back but felt uneasy because of her attention, not quite knowing what to make of it and the conversation between Alana and Cinnamon. At any rate, I thought as I went outside, the sooner we left, the better. My cell phone had found its way from my trouser pocket onto the driver's seat. Thus it fortunately wasn't actually lost and I didn't have to search for it. I took the opportunity both to lock the car and check if the cell was by any chance receiving a signal here but was disappointed by the result of the latter activity. It was as if every the cell phone tower in the county, or indeed the state or the country, had been powered off. The get-together had resumed by the time I got back to the living room and sat down next to Charlie and Scott. Dan, no doubt prompted by Cinnamon, was in the process of narrating his version of recent events. Jake's dismay at having to listen to Dan's rambling story was plainly visible, and Charlie and Scott did not seem to be enjoying it very much either. "...and then we went to see their friends, called Kenny and Christine," Dan blathered. "They were real nice people, out and out, between them offering us some tasty coffee and a place to sleep for the night. Christine even said that they have these magical suits, skinsuits, that you can put on your respective body and wear them and such and then they change you into another person with the same soul and mind. I wanted to put on one and become a pretty girl to give my beautifullest soul a body that comes in harmony with it, with respect to this world and dimension and all the others." "Right on!" Cinnamon prodded him. The woman was paying him rapt attention, which I could only explain by assuming that she was either polite beyond belief or simply interested in and amused by almost everything bizarre and nonsensical. Jake bit his lip, and I was silently appalled. This was exactly what I had feared. "But when they, that is to say Kenny and Christine, when they showed Mike and Scott the suits, Mike and Scott got scared and said we had to leave. They and Jake and Charlie hate and fear the skinsuits and think the suits are bad for you, out and out." "I don't know about hating the suits," Scott interjected, "but I guess 'scared' does hit the nail on the head." "Then, we went to this motel, and slept the night over," Dan continued. "Kent Noggin and Angronok spoke to me in telekinesis speech, as such, in my sleep and gave me sound advice of the neighboring dimension where Angronok is in prison, and we decided that we would put our solid and good minds together and I would start thinking of a way for his friends to release him from the respective prison. Anyhow, in the morning we---" "The word you want is 'telepathy,'" Charlie interrupted. "More like 'schizophrenia,'" Jake quipped, "if you want to get technical." "---started towards Bedford. Even though Kent told me I didn't need to go there anymore in person, Mike said we would, anyway. I talked with Kent and Angronok in telekinesis speech again, thusly, when I was in the back seat of the car, and they freed my brilliant mind and soul for our better working together in this world as they were doing their respective things in the next world and dimension over, out and out. And then, when it was over and my thoughts returned to staying just inside this body, we arrived at this old gas station where there were many more of these skinsuits. I put one on and became a lovely and bright girl, who was called Stacy, but Mike made me take it off. He forced me out of the suit without asking me first." "That's far out," an enthralled Cinnamon said. "You guys have gotten yourself a mighty cosmic trip, but I don't get why you wouldn't let Dan wear a skinsuit if that's his thing, Mike." "Mike is a bully man," Dan grumbled. "Just like the others." "We have no idea what those suits are and what they're capable of," I responded reluctantly. "It's never wise to fool around with things you don't understand. To add to that, Dan is our responsibility until we meet up with his relatives. If something happened to him, it would be our fault, so I opted for playing it safe." "You're kinda uptight in some ways, bro," Cinnamon laughed. "Yeah, I get your point, and it's sweet that you want to take care of and protect your fellow man, but in this case you didn't need to. You see, I know about the suits, the skin babies. They're outta sight." "You do?" Jake blurted out in astonishment, taking the words out of my mouth. "Oh, you bet. If you want to expand your mind and you have a skin baby hanging in your closet, forget about meditation or acid and just go put it on. That turns you on like nothing else, trust me." "But what's the deal with the suits at the gas station?" Charlie asked. "Do you...?" "Yeah, absolutely. I know the place. It's basically a stash anyone can borrow from. Me and a few fellow freaks sometimes take skin babies from there and give them to people to wear, and then bring them back again after we're done." "Wow, that's--strange," Scott commented. "Who owns the suits?" "Nobody. We try to possess as few material things as possible and share whatever we have. Like I said, anyone's free to borrow anything they want from there, and there's also no obligation to bring back the stuff you take. If you think you want to keep the skin baby you're wearing because that makes your life better, it's all cool. We can always make more skins." Cinnamon paused and aimed a searching look at me. Despite her smile, I suddenly felt more than a little uncomfortable under her gaze. She seemed to be trying to read my thoughts against my will. "The vibes I get from all of you," she continued but kept her eyes fixed on me, "are telling me that your souls have this very powerful, very strong feminine side. Some of you hide it more than others, or it could be deeper within you, but it's there. It's beautiful and groovy, it really is--only you don't appreciate it anywhere near enough and you're out of sync with it." "You are right," Dan said, with his eyes wide. "That's so true." Everyone else in the room was decidedly taken aback, however, and Jake let out a somewhat nervous laughter. "No offense," he remarked, "but I think your vibes are mistaken here. That doesn't include me." "It does include you, Jake," she said with a smile. One of the teens who had been hanging around on the porch when we arrived-- Alana, I guessed--brought the tea on a large wooden tray. There were big brown earthenware mugs, each almost full of dark, hot liquid giving off a strong herbal scent. Alana went from one person to the next so each one of us could get his or her mug. This ceremony bore a striking resemblance to the coffee break at Kenny's house, and the fact that Cinnamon was somehow involved with the skinsuits as well only served to highlight the ominous similarity. As a result, I had become absolutely convinced that we had no alternative but to leave immediately after the first cup, Cinnamon's warnings and offers of accommodation notwithstanding. The tea tasted good, I noticed upon taking a small, careful sip. It was sweet, but not excessively so; my assumption was that Alana had mixed some honey in to balance the aroma of the herbs. No matter how renowned Mrs. Taylor was as a vegan latte maker, I realized straight away that I preferred the hippie lady's tea to the hipster wife's coffee. The others slowly tasted their drinks as well, and if their facial expressions were true to their feelings, none of them found the tea very disagreeable. "I'd love to tune you guys in and turn you on," Cinnamon said, sipping her drink. "It's what I've come to consider my main mission in life, pretty much. Good thing we have lots of time. When we're done here, I'll show you a couple of babies I made a while back. They're really wicked stuff, way out there!" "Hey, wait," I exclaimed and put down my mug. "You---?" "I make skinsuits," she confirmed. "Not to brag, but I'm pretty good at it too. All the girls you see in this place are the handiwork of yours truly, and I was the one who hooked Kenny and Christine up with their skin babies. Pretty groovy, don't you think?" I was too shocked to say anything, but Charlie managed to put one more question to her: "What the heck? You made those girls?" "Not really the girls," Cinnamon said, "only their skins. Some came here looking for a new path, but many of them used to be all kinds of square folk who bugged me and other people for a living, like the two repo men. They required a teensy bit of sorting out, you dig, but I turned them on and now they're together." "I-I really think," Jake said, stammering suddenly, "that we... that I should..." His eyes were half closed and his head nodded, as though he were having trouble staying awake. "We sh-should..." "Take it easy," Cinnamon told him with a smile which showed her mischievousness openly. "There's no hurry. You're not going anywhere anymore." I sprung to my feet--or tried to. I already felt weak and dizzy, so much so that the mere act of standing up was an effort in its own right. My thoughts were fast becoming muddled and unfocused as my physical strength was drained from me. I knew I should have told my friends to run, but I could only concentrate on one single thing: getting out of there while I still had a fraction of a chance. My legs were like lead weights, and I had to plan for every step in advance and then consciously command my limbs to execute the movements, but somehow I managed to stagger out of the room in a kind of wobbly limping jog. Glancing over my shoulder one last time, I saw that Scott had fallen on his back and that Jake was nodding off and about to join him in slumber. However, I also made one heartening observation, namely that Charlie had gotten up and was following me, even if he struggled to walk just as much as I did. In a blind rush, I headed towards where I thought the door was and found it after an agonizing couple of seconds. The building seemed to heave and roll under my feet like a ship in a storm, and every step carried with it the risk of falling over, but that was among the least of my worries. Another brief panic ensued as I grabbed the door handle and found out I couldn't move it. Was it locked? I no longer had the time and spare brain capacity to attempt to solve such a challenging problem, so I threw my whole weight against the door. It gave way and opened, and I almost collapsed on the porch as I very nearly lost my balance in the process. Then there were the steps in front of the house, then the yard, the stone pillars at the gate, and finally the open field and the cold air. The ground was wet and muddy and the sky was gray. I could dimly sense Charlie's presence not far from me, even hear his heavy breathing, but I knew I could neither stop running nor turn my head to look and make sure he was there, unless I wanted to collapse on the spot. A few moments later I had forgotten where I was going and why. All that remained was the unyielding conviction that I had to keep pushing on and get away from a threat, run until I had no energy left in me. Every yard and every inch I could put between myself and the bad place would make me more secure, even though there was nowhere to go. The absurdity of all this dawned on me, and I recall laughing out loud to myself as the entire world was spinning madly and ever faster in my eyes. I was about to ask Charlie for his thoughts on the matter when I stumbled and fell forward. Everything was dark, soft and quiet before I even hit the ground. ***** I blinked; and then I blinked again. Instead of lying face down in a fallow field somewhere in another state, I was sitting at a table indoors and holding a piece of paper in my hand. The hand was Buffy's, as was my whole body; so much was immediately obvious. Just to err rather on the side of caution, I spent the next seconds completely still, hardly even breathing. Cinnamon had surely put something in our tea, so this environment might have been a hallucination. If, however, nothing out of the ordinary happened, I could more or less safely conclude that I had only been transported to another time and reality in the usual way. As soon as this thought had formed in my mind, I had to suppress laughter at its ludicrousness, no matter that it was completely logical and applicable to my life as it was now. Finally I risked a look around. To my relief--and an enormous one at that-- I had ended up at the dinner table of our family home in Greensville. No one else was in sight, but I could hear Kate talking on her cell somewhere nearby, perhaps in the living room or the study. I noted all this with a smile and leaned back on my chair. Regardless of my current physical form, there were countless far more uncomfortable situations I could have found myself in upon regaining consciousness. The paper attracted my attention next. It had a hand-drawn (but scanned and printed) cartoon or a series of sketches on it, together with labels written underneath. The first picture on the left, titled "Denial", showed a girl sitting on a sofa with her legs spread apart in a masculine manner. She was dressed in ill-fitting dirty clothes and drinking beer from a can. The next one, "Anger", featured another girl, who had long blond hair. Her face was contorted and she was sweating profusely as she was apparently trying to push her breasts into her chest with both hands. Then followed "Despair", an elegant brunette staring forlornly at a picture of a man and shedding a small tear; and lastly "Adjustment", yet another long-haired girl, smiling, dressed in a night club outfit and dancing provocatively with her back to a handsome young man whose arms were around her waist. The drawings were well done and easy to recognize as caricatures of Jake, me, Charlie and Scott in our female bodies, respectively. "What do you think?" Kate asked me. She had ended her phone call and entered the kitchen almost without me noticing. "Sammy drew it and sent it to me by e-mail." "Yeah, it's funny," I admitted and smiled. "Pretty good, isn't it? She's got some real talent. She told me there was originally one more panel with Leslie, called 'Fun', but she decided to leave it out in case little kids saw the drawing." "Figures," I chuckled and grinned. "Maybe that was for the best. The Charlie character is a bit out of date here, though." "How so?" "From what I've seen, he's closer to adjustment than despair these days." "If only you were too," my sister said, pulled out a chair and sat down. "I'd like to see you all the way up there, in the Adjustment and Fun territory. That could be you, picking up a cute guy at a club for a dance and rubbing your butt against him." "Are we back to talking about sex?" I questioned her. "Not necessarily, but you can't keep skirting around that subject forever," she pointed out. "In fact, it occurred to me that you need to learn how to move your body. I don't mean walking or sitting around casually, but things such as slow dancing and... well, seduction. You have no idea how powerful your body language can be when you know how to make it work for you." "I know how to flip the bird. That can be pretty effective." "I bet you do, but that's not what I'm talking about, you smartass. I was thinking your identical twin, the one who works in the entertainment business, could give you a lesson or two when it comes to body movements and gestures. There's the Buffy episode where she dances with Xander at the Bronze, and I suspect I might still have Cruel Intentions on VHS somewhere. Of course, then I realized I might be doing a favor to everyone if I didn't show you those." "What? Why?" "You see, Cindy, if you were armed with that skill and knowledge, no man would be safe from you within a ten-mile radius when you finally decided to come out as a hetero woman. I shudder to imagine all the broken relationships and marriages you would cause." "How very amusing," I grunted and got a giggle from her as a response. "I was being serious, sort of," she countered. "You probably don't fully appreciate what a bombshell you are. Not a day goes by that I don't envy you, at least a little. Still, you'd be even more attractive if you had some confidence in yourself and you smiled every once in a while. That's all it takes. You don't have to go all out, like Leslie." "Speaking of Leslie," I said, making good use of the chance to steer the conversation to matters I found more interesting. "I'm not really certain she's real." "That's a new one on me," Kate remarked and lifted her eyebrows. "Care to shed some light on your thought process?" "Uh, maybe it came out wrong. I'm not saying she doesn't exist as such, just that she's out of place here." "Here where?" "In this world. Even though I remember going to school and hanging out with Larry when we were kids, there's another part of me that is convinced I never met him at all." For a passing moment, I considered whether or not I should let Kate in on the scrap of information that in the future reality this was a proven fact: no one close to me had ever even heard of Larry Simmons there. However, I decided not to reveal this tidbit to her for fear of confusing her for no good reason. "He's like the piece of the puzzle that won't fit. What if... Okay, for the sake of argument, let's say that Leslie and Amanda Elkins are the same person. If you take---" "Let's not," she countered and grinned triumphantly. "When Sammy and I went to get the Buffy and Dawn suits for the party, Larry was at Amanda's house as himself. We both saw Larry and Amanda there together. So much for that theory." "Well, then, I guess have to come up with something crazier." "If you ask me, that idea of yours is already crazy enough. I don't really understand why you feel you have to think up and ruminate over things like that, anyway. I'm not criticizing you, and I suppose it's only natural to want to know why and how something as strange as this happened, but in my opinion you're spending way too much time and energy on it." "What should I be spending them on?" "How about you develop a plan for us to get two hot and rich boyfriends and then to go on a summer vacation in Europe together with them?" she suggested. "Now that would be a good use for your brilliant analytical mind." "Who did you call, by the way?" I asked, changing the topic again. "Tina. Or actually, she called me. She's coming to see me in a few minutes." "What about?" "She just---" Kate's cell phone began to ring in her trouser pocket, and she jumped to her feet and pulled the phone out, answering it at once. "Yeah? Tina, hi! Okay, I'll be right there! See you!" She hung up and slid the phone back into her pocket. I was convinced that I had witnessed the shortest telephone conversation my sister had ever had with anyone. "Tina's walking here now," she explained to me. "I'll go out and greet her." "Why won't you guys come inside?" "We will." With that, she darted to the foyer and then out of the front door. As she came into my view through the kitchen window, I observed that she had pulled on a pair of warm boots and my brown Buffy jacket, which had made the coat rack in the foyer its permanent home. She ran through the front yard and the driveway turnaround, overjoyed to see her friend again. For my part, I was rather leery at the prospect of meeting Tina Mills, given that she had a mostly negative attitude towards men in general and she had played some part, likely a major one, in the scheming that resulted in our being lured and trapped in the skinsuits. I suspected nothing good for me would come from her visit. It was impossible to see what was going on outside from where I was sitting, so I got up and walked around the table to the other side. If I stood right next to the window and the wall, the two girls were just within my field of view. They were talking in the middle of our driveway, a fair distance from the front door. If Tina had arrived by car, it was probably parked even further down the way. This seemed very odd to me. Even though Tina was by no means a regular guest at our house, there was no sensible reason (that I could think of) for her not to come directly inside. Ever since the fateful Halloween party I had presumed, admittedly on a mere hunch, that she had a desire to stay as Riley and that she would be in that form when we next met her. To me, in certain ways her behavior appeared to parallel that of Larry's to an uncanny degree, and I had thought that they both possibly harbored a wish to be rid of their original bodies and genders. Now I was proven wrong: Kate's friend was indeed all female in appearance, even if nowhere near as graceful and attractive as Kate, or any of us transformees. Clad in an oversized padded black longline overcoat, her body from the neck down and all the way to her knees looked like a shapeless mass; below, two thick booted legs stood on the ground, and on top there was a round head with long straight hair that sported a dye streak of neon blue and another of green. She had a pair of thick-rimmed glasses on her nose, as well as a silver stud piercing underneath her lower lip. The latter would have been all but unnoticeable if not for the sunlight, which happened to reflect brightly off it when she turned her head. Without warning, I was struck by an eerie and intense foreboding that grew into a certainty in a matter of seconds. There was something wrong with Tina, or the person who was posing as her. She should have been in the Riley skin, yet she was not; she should have come into the house, yet she had not. The person my sister was talking with was, beyond question, not who she seemed to be. The back of my neck tingled unpleasantly as I considered my options for a brief while. Then, as though again under the guidance of a will that was not entirely my own, I walked into the foyer and stepped out on the porch. If my instincts were not mistaken, Kate was in danger and I had to rescue her immediately. Kate herself seemed to be oblivious to any signs of trouble. I could now hear the two girls chatting in a lively manner about how a common friend of theirs got into some sort of trouble at customs after returning from a trip to Mexico, but I discerned an alien tone in Tina's voice. She had to be a shapeshifting demon of some kind, I concluded. Giles' help would have been valuable in this situation, as he might have been able to tell me what the best way of defeating this particular kind of demon was, but there was no time to read books. When in doubt, a fast, determined attack and offering the baddie the business end of a sharp stake was seldom a bad idea. I stepped down to the yard and started looking around for a makeshift weapon. If I had no choice, I was prepared to take on the monster with my bare hands, but I would have appreciated a tool for the upcoming brawl, such as a large axe. In the end, the only even remotely suitable object I laid my eyes on was the old rake leaning on the trunk of the stout birch tree on the other side of the front lawn. Mom, in a most uncharacteristic moment of carelessness, had forgotten it there a week or two ago. Hurrying along, I walked up to the tree, picked up the rake and swung it in my hand so I could get a feel for its weight and balance. Then I started marching towards the girls. The demon masquerading as Tina noticed my approach at once, unlike Kate, who had her back turned towards me. Its eyes grew wide in shock, and we stared at each other until it suddenly bolted. Kate's sentence was cut short as the being she assumed was her friend Tina Mills ran down the driveway as fast as it could in its cumbersome, overweight shape. I had been about to shout to my sister to step away and look out, but that was fortunately no longer necessary. Kate spun around on her heels. "Cindy!" she yelled. "What the fuck are you doing? Cindy!" "You were in mortal danger just now," I explained. "You may not have realized it, but that was not Tina." "What?" she almost screamed in my face. "Mortal danger? And what the hell are you carrying that rake for? Were you going to hit her on the head with it, or what?" "Impale her, actually, if it had come to that. In reality, she was a disguised demon---" "A demon? Good God, Cindy, you've really gone off the deep end!" she exclaimed. "This is not Sunnydale, and you're not Buffy Summers, but first and foremost, Tina's not a demon!" "I... I just..." I stammered. The spell released me as abruptly as it had caught me, and in the blink of an eye I was left feeling indescribably stupid, embarrassed and even scared. "I don't know what came over me. I'm terribly sorry." "Another day, another meltdown," she said and sighed theatrically loudly. "I guess that's the way things will be with you for the time being. When you're not pretending you're a man, you think you're Buffy and you try to slay my friends." "I've got to apologize to her," I said. "Where do you think she went?" "She can't be far. I'll call her and explain." "You know, I'm honestly---" A millisecond later, Kate, our family home, the front yard, Greensville and even the sunshine were gone. It all evaporated like a dream; and now I was sitting in the driver's seat of my car. The vehicle was not moving, which was truly fortunate, for I was all but incapacitated physically. Every muscle in my body felt either paralyzed or stiff to the point of immobility. Forming coherent thoughts was all but impossible with the chaos churning inside my head. Hence I could do little at first, aside from staring forward through the windshield and breathing steadily. "Oh fuck," Charlie's voice moaned from the back seat. "Oh shit... Everything's gone totally sideways, Mike." "You don't say," I uttered and closed my eyes in an attempt to make my mind clear up faster. "The bitch spiked our tea," he went on and groaned. "Oh fuck... Fuck her!" "How did we get here?" I asked him. To my delight, I discovered that I was able to turn my head and look directly at my friend, who was lying on his side on the back seat with his knees bent. "I've got no clue," he confessed and emptied his lungs in a long, slow blow. "I thought we collapsed and lost consciousness somewhere out there in that field." "Me too." "What the hell are we supposed to do now, Mike?" I had no answer ready for him, so I leaned back in my seat for a moment and collected my strength. We would have to take one step at a time: first, get our bodies in working condition; second, assess the situation; third, find out what had happened to our friends and Dan. Only then could we start to make plans. I lifted my left hand, fumbled with the door handle and managed to pull at it enough to open the door. "Can you move?" I asked Charlie, who groaned again. "I can try," he mumbled. "Let's get out and have some oxygen. That should do us good." It was colder outside than I had assumed, but the fresh air did seem to help in sorting out the mess inside my head. Charlie and I leaned against the car, unsure at first if our legs could carry our whole weight. Strangely enough, both he and I had our jackets on. I could no longer remember whether we had left them in the car or taken them inside Cinnamon's house, but we were wearing them at the moment anyway. Even more surprising was the good condition of our clothes. I would have expected them to be covered in mud and grass, but they were no dirtier than they had been right before our encounter with Cinnamon. We were in the middle of large area of flat, open land. The car stood on the shoulder of an agricultural road, or gravel driveway, that crossed the plain in an almost perfectly straight line, vanishing in the distance in both directions. Thick dull gray clouds covered the entire sky, and what little light penetrated it only cast a gloomy pall over the dreary landscape. "I don't remember this place," Charlie commented. "We didn't park very far away from Cinnamon's house, did we?" "You're right, we didn't," I concurred. "Is the house over there? Your eyes are better than mine; can you see it?" I pointed at a low hill that appeared to lie near the road in the direction the car had been headed when it had pulled over, whoever had been driving it. The hill was the only noteworthy geographical feature in this solitude, with a few trees and what looked like a group of small buildings to me. "Yeah," Charlie said and squinted. "That has to be it, but it's pretty distant. I'd say at least a mile, maybe mile and a half." "Do you feel well enough to walk there?" I asked him. I had quickly regained a significant amount of physical energy and could seriously consider such a feat. In fact, my only immediate concern was the weather. We would inevitably begin to feel uncomfortably cold at some point. "I don't particularly like the idea," he said after thinking about it for a few moments, "but I'd assume I can do it. I'm getting stronger." "Good. Let's rest for a little while longer and then move out." "I hate to be the one to ask stupid questions," he said, "but what exactly are you planning to do there? That Cinnamon woman already tried to poison us once. What do we stand to gain by going back?" "We have to rescue Scott and Jake," I reminded him. "We can't just abandon them to their fate." "How about Dan? He might well be happier with Cinnamon than anywhere else." "I thought of that, and it's a fair point, but my gut feeling tells me it's infinitely better just to get him to Bedford. His cousin is waiting for him there and he's our responsibility, like it or not." "What if Cinnamon won't allow them to go?" "We have a couple of pretty persuasive arguments packed in the trunk," I said. Jake's gun cases were secured with combination locks, but he had once told me the correct combinations, and I even recalled two of the three. The locks duly clicked open, and I took out first the AR-15 and then the 12- gauge shotgun. Ammunition for the weapons was harder to find, and Charlie and I had to rummage through Jake's bags, but eventually we discovered three boxes of .223 Remington rounds and two of shotgun shells. Two 20- round magazines for the rifle were hidden among Jake's summer clothing. I didn't find the larger 30-round magazine, which he must have brought along as well, but I was more than satisfied with the equipment we had on hand. "Are you sure this is wise?" Charlie asked. "There will be hell to pay if things turn ugly. Couldn't we just tell them that we've got guns, or something?" He made an excellent argument. Resorting to firearms, even in a situation like this, would have been almost unthinkable to me under anything resembling normal circumstances, but we had left those behind, along with the normal world and reality. I feared for our lives and wanted to be prepared for every contingency. "We'll try that first," I told him, "but the thing with firearms is that if you carry one and then use it to threaten someone in a life-or-death situation, you must also be prepared to pull the trigger. There's always the guy who will want to see if you're bluffing." "I meant we should negotiate before pointing the barrels at them." "Of course, and that's how I'd like to handle this, but we can't count on Cinnamon and the others being cooperative if we only ask them nicely. In fact, we probably can't count on them not attacking us physically if we go back there." "She said she doesn't go for violence." "She said a lot of things, and many of them were total nonsense. She wouldn't be the first nutjob I've heard of who eschews guns and war but is perfectly okay with beating someone to death with a baseball bat if the other person assumes their gender." "You're probably right, but it doesn't give us the right to assault her home with blazing guns." "They are for our self-protection and nothing else, Chuck. We don't know what the bitch is capable of." I began to load the weapons. The rifle and the shotgun were lying on the top of our luggage as I laboriously took out the rounds from the boxes and pushed them into the magazines. My recent lack of practice showed, as well as the cool weather that made my fingers much less dexterous than usual. "You really know your way around this stuff," Charlie commented as he was watching on. "Did you learn that in the National Guard?" "Yep. Turns out my stint there was good for something." "Why did you join?" "I suppose I wanted to follow in the footsteps of my relatives," I said. "I'm not sure if I've told you about them, but military service sort of runs in the family with us Caldwells. My grandpa, Mom's father, was in the Navy in the closing days of World War Two. He served on a destroyer escort in the Pacific but didn't see actual combat, though, as far as I can recall. My father was with the Army in the late 1960s in Germany, and then there's Uncle Rick, of course." "Who's he?" "You mean Rick? He's Mom's older brother, and Don's. He was a corporal in the ranks of Uncle Sam's Misguided Children and got to see the idyllic Southeast Asia, Khe Sanh in particular. As a kid I always admired all of them--still do, in fact--and wanted to be like them. Maybe I also wanted to prove to myself that I could do what they could. Anyway, my military career was much shorter, less demanding and far less exciting than any of theirs. I signed the papers right after high school and got out when the minimum time was up." "So you didn't like it all that much, am I right?" "The Guard? How should I put this... It was more than okay for the most part, and I'm glad I served. The experience was good for me at that point in my life, and I got plenty of exercise. Then again, the most important thing I learned was that I'm not really cut out to be a soldier. I suppose I can do my share in a war if I absolutely have to, but it's best to leave the fighting to people who are more qualified for the job." The magazines were finally full. I handed Charlie the shotgun and took up the AR-15, sliding one of the magazines in the well and shoving the other in my trouser pocket. It barely fit inside and weighed quite a lot but I could get it fairly quickly from there if the need arose. I carefully locked the car again and, after considering if I should chamber a round and deciding not to do that yet, checked once more that everything was in order. "You good to go?" I asked Charlie, who had a concerned look on his face. He held the Benelli with both hands, with its barrel pointed at the sky. His discomfort with the weapon and the whole situation was patently visible. "I've never fired one of these in my life," he said and laughed nervously. "I don't have a goddamn clue what to do if we end up in a shootout." "Just point and click," I told him. "You've seen how they load pump-action shotguns in the movies, so that shouldn't be too hard. However, keep in mind that the thing kicks back when you fire. You have to keep the buttstock firmly against your shoulder--or actually, this part here, not really your shoulder. And another thing: don't waste your ammo at targets that are so far away you can barely see them. The shotgun works best at short range, tens of yards or something like that, depending on shot size." "Okay, but I'm still hoping we won't have to shoot a single round." "So am I." The slightly moist gravel crunched quietly underneath our feet as we made our way towards the farmhouse. It occurred to me that if someone was watching us from the house and also had a weapon, he or she could take us out without much trouble as there was no cover anywhere. All Charlie and I could do, if we were fired upon, was to dive into the shallow ditch flanking the driveway and keep our heads down, assuming we weren't already hit. Furthermore, Charlie's shotgun was only useful for making noise, unless we could get much closer. Hence, we had more than enough reason to hope we would be able to liberate Scott and Jake, and also Dan, without anybody resorting to force. I heard Charlie's footsteps stop. "What's that?" he whispered to me. "What? I don't see anything." "Somebody's standing over there. Look a little to the right of the hill." "Where?" I turned around to ask him to point the figure out to me. I had assumed Charlie to be no more than four or five feet behind me, but there was no one there--only a stretch of empty road and my parked car in the distance. Cold shivers ran through my entire body as I raised the rifle to a firing stance and scanned the landscape over its sights. The next bizarre surprise was not long in coming. Footsteps again sounded on the road, but this time they were coming from ahead. Soon afterwards, I discerned a small shadowy figure approaching me from the direction of the house at a walking pace. It bounced slightly as it came, almost as if it were jumping up a little on every step. My first impression was that it was a human being, but it was apparently clad in some sort of a black suit from head to toe. Even in bright daylight it would have been difficult to tell what or who exactly it was, and now the light was faltering with the night approaching, slowly turning the whole world into a mishmash of indistinct shapes and shadows in my eyes. I had to prepare for the worst. I pulled the charging handle all the way back, released it and moved the selector to the Safe position, for the moment. Keeping the barrel of the rifle pointed in the general direction of the advancing dark figure, I looked around me to see if there were any others nearby. I feared that the strange walker might have backup or that the whole thing was a distraction meant to allow his or her buddies to sneak up on me. I saw nothing else of interest, so I again raised the rifle butt to my shoulder and took aim at the figure. I only needed to move the selector switch and press the trigger. In case I was forced to shoot the being, I would put the first two or three bullets in its center mass, and then, in the highly unlikely event that it was wearing very good ballistic protection and remained a threat, I would shift my aim to its head. Jake's rifle was naturally only semiautomatic, but that was no drawback in this situation. My heartbeat quickened and my palms were beginning to sweat as the figure came ever closer. It was still difficult to see clearly, but it appeared to have a long black hair growing out of its scalp. I was all but certain that it was a human being, but its clothes had me guessing almost until it stopped only a few paces away from me. It was only then that I realized the figure was one of the horse fetishists, wearing an all-black bodysuit, boots and a horse mask, which was entirely black as well, apart from a small white spot at the center of the forehead. The weird jumping movement was an imitation of a horse's gait. "Hello there," a low-pitched, drawling voice from behind the mask greeted me. It was definitely a man's and not unlike that of Mr. Ed on the old TV show. Under different circumstances I would have laughed at this person and his performance, but there and then my sense of humor was stretched too thin. "You can put the gun away, pal," he continued. "I'm your friend." "Forgive me for not being very trusting of strangers," I responded, turning the barrel somewhat to the side. "Just who might you be?" "Hnnrr," he nickered. "I'm good old Derry Darkmane, that's who. I came to keep you company, Mike." I looked the man over once more and held the rifle upright with one hand. The horse suit revealed very little. The person inside was perhaps roughly of average height and either somewhat plump or else wearing several layers of clothes under the bodysuit. The eyes of the mask were covered with tinted plastic lenses, and so nothing at all of his face was visible. He could have been of any race and almost any age. "You seem to know my name," I said to Derry. "Sure thing, Mike. This ain't the first time I've met you." "I'm sorry, but you really have me at a disadvantage here." Derry shook his head. "No worries. Hnnrr." "Um, Derry, can you help me? Do you know where my friends are? I have to find them so we can continue our trip." "You're on a trip right now," he said, "and it's a good one." "Maybe, but I'd still like to know what happened to them." "They're safe. Things are gonna change soon, so don't worry, pal. I'll keep you company. Hnnrr!" "Thanks for the offer, but I'd appreciate a straight answer." "You'll get answers. Follow me!" My new pseudo-equine acquaintance turned around and started walking in his silly horse gait, at first along the road, but soon he jumped over the ditch and continued on in the field on the right side of the road. I followed, trudging along far less exuberantly. Jake's rifle had no sling, which meant there was no option of carrying it on my shoulder or across my back. While the weapon was not particularly heavy in itself, having to hold it in my hands continuously would nevertheless make long walks more tiring for me. "It's getting dark," I commented. "Where are you taking me?" "No worries," Derry said simply. Little specks of bright light appeared under his feet. They grew, combined into one, and then formed into a multi-colored flash that expanded and engulfed us, along with the whole landscape. To my astonishment, the deserted muddy field, almost as inhospitable as any place can be on this continent in November, was suddenly a lush garden full of gentle sunlight. Apple trees, bushes, flower beds and tiny ponds dotted a well-tended green lawn or pasture. The air was warm and filled with an incredible combination of the fragrances of nature, and a faint tingling sound, which apparently was coming from all around us, carried into my ears. "What's that?" I asked Derry. "You're hearing the sun's rays playing on the grass, pal," he said simply, without stopping or turning his masked head. "Ain't it awesome?" "That's one way of looking at it," I said. Derry made a beeline for a nearby bed of daisies, and there I found proof that not even this fairytale garden was an untainted paradise. Lying on the top of the flowers was the gaunt body of the purple-haired activist I had met at the University campus a few months ago. I could still recall the intense frustration and anger I had felt towards him--or her--as he had stopped me on my way to work and tried to force me to take some sort of a pamphlet, no matter how many times I told him I was not interested. Later, I had imagined that I had shot him dead that same day. Regardless of the killing not having actually occurred, there he was now, with an obvious bullet hole in the middle of his forehead. His glassy eyes were still open, as was his mouth. His whole form, which lay on its side, was twisted as if he were still in his death throes. A big portion of the back of his head was missing, and brain matter and blood had splattered over the flowers. "Hnnrr," Derry intoned. "Did you do that?" "No, I didn't. I didn't shoot anyone at the campus or anywhere else. I know that for sure. I don't understand why I keep seeing him dead as if his death was my fault somehow." "Maybe," Derry said, "and mind you I'm only guessing here, you're being shown what could've been. If the higher ups hadn't pressed the reset button, you might've shot him and a bunch of other people." "Who are the higher ups?" "The ones in charge. They intervened when things were going kinda badly with you and all the others, or so I'm told. But then again, I'm just a horse. I don't know much about those deep things." "You're claiming some sort of gods changed reality and arranged to have me put in a skinsuit so I wouldn't kill one shit-for-brains social justice warrior?" I exclaimed incredulously and angrily. "He must be really fucking special to get that kind of treatment!" "There's way more to it than just him." "Still. Who cares if he lives or dies? There are billions of much better people in the world who never get a second chance." "I reckon you're sometimes not a very nice person, Mikey." I said nothing more. I was trying to come to terms with the realization that I still felt little sympathy towards the freak. Whoever had taken his life had committed a heinous crime, and it was indisputably wrong; other than that, though, his untimely death was a mere fact to be recorded. I couldn't bring myself to shed one single tear for him. It was curious how devoid of emotion I was. Derry had decided that we should move on, and so we continued our walk. There were other people in the garden, I noted. A gaggle of little children dressed in white lacy dresses and suits, screaming and laughing, was running after two huge butterflies, and four other kids, who looked no older than preschoolers, were sitting on the grass beside a pool and petting a pink lizard which was the size of an alligator. As I was taking in this scenery, we passed by two old apple trees. Both had human faces with eyes, noses and mouths carved into their trunks. "Hey," a low, gravelly voice called. With a mild start, I realized that it came from one of the trees. Its mouth moved and its eyes were aimed directly at me. "You a head, bwana?" it asked me. "No, I'm not," I replied hesitantly. "Or at least I wasn't, until today." "You're catching up," the tree noted with apparent satisfaction. "Good, good." "This is not real," I said, mainly to myself. "Nothing is real, bwana," the tree commented. Another pink lizard crawled slowly out of one of the bushes. As it went past us, it paid no mind to us other than adding in a weary tone and with a sigh, "And nothing to get hung about." At this point, it occurred to me that this experience was possibly a test of sorts. Someone was perhaps observing me and taking notes of my reactions. If that was so, I thought, I had probably already failed. I didn't have much time to dwell on this subject. A little girl, aged about five or six, ran to me from the adjacent orchard and hugged my feet. She was wearing a white dress, like the ones playing with the butterflies and the lizard, and her head was topped with curly light brown hair. "Mike!" she exclaimed. "You're here!" "Who are you?" I asked her in amazement. Her face had momentarily looked somewhat like Ella Woodbine's to me, but the girl couldn't be Ella since she, our former neighbor in Greensville, was now close to twenty, not six. She let go of me and stepped back, with a strongly disapproving expression on her face. "Put that gun away!" she commanded me. "It's scary." "I'm not going to shoot anyone unless I'm attacked," I told her. "It's totally safe. You don't have to be afraid of it." "Put it away!" the girl repeated. "Boys always want the stupid toys." "Maybe you oughta listen to her, pal," Derry seconded. "Come play with me," she spoke up. "We are having a garden party!" "I'd like to, but I'm too busy," I said. "I have to find my friends and rescue them." "They will be fine. Come with me!" The girl took my hand and tried to pull me along, but she had nowhere near enough strength to make me move. Frustrated, she stomped her tiny foot and cried out, "Boys are stupid! Why don't you want to play with me? I wish you were a girl!" "I think I may have heard that one before," I remarked with an inward grin. "Why can't you be a girl?" she kept on. "For your information," I said, "and for everyone else's who has asked me that, I wasn't born a girl, I've never wanted to be one and I never will. I'd be happy the way I am if only you people left me alone." "Why don't you want to be a girl? Girls are better than boys! You could be pretty and nice but you are mean and stupid now. If you were a girl, you would play with me." I bent my knees so that my eyes were almost level with hers and said in a mock formal tone, "With all due respect, I disagree. I'm sorry, little miss, but I need to get going. It was a pleasure to meet you, the more disparaging of your remarks aside." She cast one more angry and disappointed look at me and then ran away, going around the trees and disappearing behind a row of bushes. Derry tilted his head and nickered quietly. "You disapprove, horse boy," I said to him. "It's not for me to judge, pal," he responded. "Come on. There's someone I want you to talk to. Hnnrr!" He led me to the other side of a man-high thick hedgerow. The hedge separated a smallish square space from the rest of the garden; there was a pair of swings, and a dark-haired girl was sitting on one of them. She, however, was not a little child. Leslie Simmons alias Faith rose to her feet with an impishly playful smile on her beautiful face and began to walk up to me. "Shit," I breathed and froze in place. I turned towards Derry to scold him for arranging this inconvenient meeting without telling me first, only to become aware that he was no longer by my side or, indeed, anywhere to be seen. "Look at you, Mikey," she spoke up while sizing me up. "Didn't quite expect this. How's the urban guerilla thing working for you?" "If you mean the rifle," I replied, "I'm on a rescue mission, and I had very little say in the matter." "Speaking of guns," she said and lightly touched my chest with her fingers, "might you be interested in Round Four now that we're both here?" "Round Four?" "In your apartment, remember? We did it three times that night and agreed to do it again when we'd get the next opportunity. I'm itching for some more mattress mambo with you." "Thanks for the offer," I said in a matter-of-fact tone, "but maybe later. I'm pretty busy, as well as preoccupied and worried." "Damn, you're no fun anymore." She absentmindedly pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear and continued, "There's not much for me to do here in that case. Just keep in mind what I told you earlier." "About me having to choose?" "Yeah, exactly. The moment's coming up soon. Actually, it's tomorrow by your reckoning." "Can't you tell me what it's all about? What are the options?" "And spoil the whole thing? No way! Okay, to be honest, there are a couple of things that aren't set in stone yet, so I couldn't give you all the details even if I wanted to. But I guess I can tell you this. Don't choose the easy path only because it seems easy. Take that to your heart and think it over." "I would appreciate something a little more concrete and explicit," I remarked. "I bet you would, but that's not how this works, Mikey." I felt someone's eyes on my back. At first, I thought Derry had returned and was waiting to take me somewhere else. When I turned around, however, I was treated to a shock. There was none other than Buffy Summers herself, standing only a couple of yards away from me. Her looks were an exact match to mine at the Halloween party: her hair was long, straight and neatly parted, and she was clothed in her iconic red leather pants and a black top. Her face was almost expressionless as she stared at me intently. "I'll be off," Faith said with a smirk, "to hang out with Derry and his buddies. You two have fun!" Buffy stood like a statue, her eyes unblinking, and the thought already crossed my mind that perhaps she wasn't a living human being at all, but then she suddenly broke the silence. "Mike," she said in a purposeful voice, "you've got something that belongs to me. I want it." "What's that?" I asked. "Your body. It's mine." "What do you mean?" "Don't play dumb," she retorted angrily and started to approach me slowly but menacingly. "You stole it from me! Give it back to me! Now!" The situation had become so threatening that I pointed the rifle at her without even thinking. She grabbed the barrel and twisted the weapon out of my grip with ease and flung it away, and it landed on the ground. "You already have a body," I said, desperately trying to find an escape route. "What do you want with another?" She reached out for me, and her arm stretched unnaturally until her hand made contact with my right shoulder. It began to melt into a thick, warm black liquid that stuck to my clothes and flowed under my collar and onto my skin. This was how the skinsuit had enveloped me in my apartment after Faith had thrown it onto me. I stood there, petrified, as a strange warmth and then numbness began to spread throughout my body. Buffy held me with both her tentacle-like arm and her piercing gaze as she continued to approach me. I could no longer move a muscle and felt my strength rapidly flowing away. Then I fell to my knees, and just seconds later the merciful darkness again came over me. (To be continued...)