A Body Displaced (Lansin Island 2)

by Andrew Butcher

  He came to resent many of his peers and couldn’t understand what made some boys more likable than him. There was a boy who perpetually sucked his lower lip, leaving it red and scabby, but somehow the girls found that cute. Another who was plain ugly, but so hostile he was fancied as the ‘bad boy.’ No one ever found my spots cute. The other teenagers would sing to him, Arnold Acne Arsehole plays with his arsehole.

  But there was a day when Arnold thought it would all change. He had his least favourite lesson, physical education. Having been bullied whenever he attempted the ‘manlier’ sports, he managed to gain sympathy from his teacher, who let him sit out on the occasions he felt intimidated.

  It was a particularly cold day, and Arnold’s class played football. The teacher acted as referee and was so absorbed in the game that he didn’t notice Arnold sneak off to get out of the bitter wind. If Arnold had been allowed to stay in school uniform, then the cold might not have gotten to him, but his teacher always made him change into his PE outfit, even when he didn’t join in.

  When he made it back to the changing rooms, he found Jessica inside, sitting on a bench.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, as if he were the one in the opposite gender’s changing room. Jessica had transformed a lot at upper school, acquiring an almost constant expression of disgust on her face.

  ‘Erm …’ Arnold was nearly too afraid to speak. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be in class?’ he asked, instead of answering.

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to be out there playing football?’ She made her expression more disgusted. ‘Anyway, where’s Curtis?’

  Curtis … Arnold hated that boy. At the beginning of the lesson, Curtis had complained that he felt unwell, but without a sick note, the PE teacher believed none of it and made him join in. Last Arnold saw of Curtis, he was competitively playing football, but feigning sickness and whining to the ref when he could.

  ‘He’s playing football,’ Arnold told the girl he had wanted to marry.

  Jessica pouted at first, then shrugged and got up suddenly. ‘Oh, okay.’ She dropped her hostile mask and put on a sultry face as she approached him. ‘Arnold …’ She stretched out his name in a way that made him want to do anything for her. ‘We’ve always been close, haven’t we? So I was wondering if you would, maybe, let me try something with you?’

  His heart began beating so fast it hurt. No reply came to him. He felt Jessica press up close to his body and put her hands on his sides. She said, ‘I’m just a bit curious about what you’ve got under here …’ Her hands stroked down to his hips and then slowly came around to his front. She fumbled to undo the tight string of his shorts, but eventually she pulled them down, his underwear following.

  Arnold’s voice came to him with the fear that his bits were out, and someone might see. ‘Errh-errhh … should we be doing this here?’

  ‘Yeah, we’ll be fine; no one’s going to come. I just want to have a look.’

  Arnold couldn’t tell if she was making fun of him, but she proceeded to take his top off, leaving him naked except for his shorts and underwear bunched around his trainers. It didn’t make sense. If the rumours could be believed, Jessica had done things with the most popular boys in the year, and even college boys much older than her. Why would she bother with Arnold Acne Arsehole?

  ‘Can I touch it?’ she asked, and grabbed him without waiting.

  The tingle he felt was nothing like when he fondled himself while thinking of her. In no time, he was aroused, and in less time he made a mess on himself and the floor … and that was when Curtis entered the changing rooms.

  Jessica instantly screamed and threw herself back from Arnold, whose mind began to swirl and swirl. He couldn’t figure out what was happening. For a while it was all a blur. He froze, unable to even pull his clothes back on. Soon someone else was in the room, his geography teacher, and Jessica wrapped her arms around the woman and began sobbing. ‘He dragged me in here and got himself naked and then he tried to touch me and everything!’ she asserted.

  Then Arnold was outside, thrown to the ground, and Curtis loomed over him. In his nakedness he was even colder than before. Curtis laid into him with football boots, relentless in his attack. It took some time before anyone intervened.

  The following months of Arnold’s life were hell. He got expelled; he was forced to attend therapy; his parents repeatedly told him how he’d shamed the family; they enrolled him at a private school he hated; and on the occasions he went outside, he would be called pervert, rapist, sicko … A few times he was even beaten up after bumping into teens from his previous school.

  He began to escape into his own world, meditating, visualising, dreaming of other realms and dimensions like in his graphic novels. As he grew up he shut himself off more and more, spending his time alone in his bedroom, eyes closed, imagining fantastical settings. He would research in strange library books about ways to develop his ‘psychic self,’ attempting divination, astral projection, reading auras, telepathy, telekinesis, and much more.

  It was during one of his attempts at astral projection that a voice appeared inside his head.

  : Hello, Tormented One.

  The voice startled him so much that his eyes flew open and severed the contact. But later, he tried again to get into the same state. He succeeded. When the voice came again, Arnold tried to focus hard, thinking maybe he could somehow glimpse who communicated with him, but he heard …

  : You don’t want to know who I am.

  Arnold aimed back at the voice, But do you have a name?

  : You can call me … Moloch.

  Over the next few years, Arnold gained a lot of knowledge from the voice, who told him he was special, that not many humans learnt how to reach the Otherworld through meditation. The voice also taught him about the existence of other beings, other realms, and magic. He told tales of humans with psychic abilities, even of one who could control people with his mind.

  The idea of that got Arnold thinking, and while he daydreamed over having complete control over others, the voice said …

  : Would you like that type of power?

  Arnold couldn’t answer, and came out of his meditation to think. He’d done some research on the word Moloch since being told to address the voice by that name, and so he knew of the worship that was practised in the past, of children being sacrificed to the ancient god. His findings hadn’t deterred him from conversing with the voice, though.

  But this seemed like a bigger choice to make; was he being offered something? He knew from his comics that accepting it would come with a steep price … but then, those graphic novels were only fiction. Whatever consequences the illustrated characters faced were probably just to convey stupid moral lessons, he figured. Arnold considered the voice’s question for a long time, thinking about how much he’d love to be like one of his favourite superheroes, someone people would look up to, and do things for … but in the end, something about it all spooked him.

  He returned to his meditative state and told the voice of his concerns. The voice was not happy.

  : All the knowledge I’ve given you, and you spurn my offer! Be left to your pitiful life, Tormented One.

  Arnold had tried to contact the voice again, to apologise, to show his gratitude for everything he’d been taught, for all of their conversations, for … having a friend to speak to. But it was of no use.

  The years that followed were lonelier and worse than the ones before.

  Drip, drip.

  Austin brought himself out of his past hell, out of Arnold’s body, and came back to this present hell. He found himself crying. The elf shaman entered not long after, and as usual, he gave Austin the chance to answer the two questions; he seemed to say it in a different manner this time, as if it was the necromancer’s last chance.

  Austin spoke no answers. Drip, drip. The torture was the same again. To endure it, Austin spoke of the bitter memories that haunted him, everything about his family and Jessica and Curtis and school and t
he changing rooms. He didn’t reveal how he first made contact with ‘Moloch,’ though.

  He managed to stay conscious throughout the gory session. At the end of it, the elf shaman left for a while and then returned with a pestle and mortar. The little bowl was filled with a luminous blue paste, and its cloying odour made Austin dizzy.

  The elf used his long fingers to scoop out the blue gloop, and then he rubbed it into Austin’s open wounds.

  ‘What’s this?’ said Austin. ‘A condiment for when you eat me? You savage!’ He laughed hysterically to himself until his torturer scraped some of the paste onto the pestle and shoved it in his mouth.

  The thick substance began to dissolve, fizzling like popping candy. Austin gagged at the taste. He was about to spit, but the shaman dropped the mortar and pestle and grabbed his face, clamped his mouth shut, and squeezed his nostrils together. He had to swallow.

  ‘You may think I have learnt nothing,’ said the elf, his blazing amethyst eyes boring into Austin’s, ‘but you have given me much more than you realise.’ The shaman gave a single satisfied laugh. ‘You don’t know a man until you torture him.’

  Austin’s vision blurred, and his mind felt like it was swimming. The pain of his injuries seemed to buzz into numbness. He heard the dripping stretch out—drriiiiip, drrriiiiiiip—while he fell into a dreamy darkness.

  A woman gasped. There was the rattling and the creaky hinge, and then the sound of footsteps came towards Austin in the dungeon. ‘Oh, what have they done to you, Arnold?!’

  Arnold? ‘Wh-who are you?’ Austin’s voice came out croaky. All the sconces were lit, but it took a moment for his vision to clear. The woman looked about thirty and had a beauty mark on one cheek. ‘Jessica?’

  ‘Yes, it’s me; it’s Jessica. You poor thing.’ She inspected his naked and gored body.

  He felt shock. Then rage. I should have killed you back in the changing rooms. I should have throttled you and taken you on the floor. But he also felt sadness, because Jessica looked more beautiful than ever, reminding him of how his heart had fluttered the first time he ever set eyes on her. For some reason she wore a dressing gown now. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I was taken by these strange people and brought to this strange place … They told me you were here.’ She gasped again, her breath shaking with emotion. With Austin propped up so high, Jessica’s head only came to his abdomen. She peered up at him. ‘Oh, look at your face … You are so handsome now.’

  I’m finally worthy, am I? ‘Why would they bring you here?’

  ‘They told me you should tell them what they want to know. If you do that, then they will let both of us go. They promised. And then we can be together … Isn’t that what you always wanted?’

  ‘Wh-why would you want to be with—’

  ‘I hope you can forgive me for what I did back in school,’ she said desperately. ‘I was young and stupid …’

  What if I could forgive her? Back in the lodge, when the curly-haired half-elf had hinted at a way out for Austin, Austin had seriously considered it. If he could let everything go, all the resentment, all the jealousy, all the hate, then maybe he could finally have a decent life for himself, and relationships, like the one he’d faked with Juliet. But then he had wondered, With my soul in that thing’s possession, what hope is there for me? And while that had made him doubt the prospect of a good future, the half-elf pushed him over the edge by speaking to him like dirt, the way everyone had spoken to Arnold.

  Here and now, Austin struggled to think at all. ‘I … don’t know if I could forgive you.’ His mind swam, the way the paste had made it swim.

  ‘I’d be good to you,’ Jessica said fervently. She stepped forward and touched him below, but nothing stirred in him. After all his suffering he wasn’t sure that pleasure still existed, or ever had. ‘Come on, tell me the answers they want …’ She moved back and slowly pulled open her dressing gown. Underneath she was completely naked.

  Austin stared down at her hard nipples, trying to feel something, then dropped his head lower, gazing at the dark patch between her legs.

  Not even a twitch. In fact, he preferred the thought of opening her throat.

  She moved closer again and tugged him some more. ‘Please tell me the answers they want. Then we can get married, like you always wanted, have that family together, like you always wanted … Oh, please, Austin!’

  Austin? Jessica had known him as Arnold. ‘How do you know that name?’

  ‘Huh?’ Jessica frowned. ‘What do you mean, Arnold?’

  ‘You called me Austin.’

  ‘Oh … that’s … that’s just what the strange people here call you. I—’

  The blue paste … ‘You’re not Jessica.’ … Drugs and an elf illusion. ‘I won’t fall for your trick, dipshit!’ He’s trying to use my own ramblings against me.

  Before Austin’s eyes, Jessica stretched taller, her frame expanding, her naked flesh rippling into fabric, her hair becoming a cowl, her face shading into darkness with purple eyes. A buzzing sound accompanied the apparent metamorphosis.

  ‘Looks like you don’t know me as well as you thought,’ Austin told the elf shaman.

  The amethyst orbs were unblinking. ‘Are you ready to answer my question?’

  ‘Huh, sorry?’ He gave a smug grin. ‘Did you want to know something?’

  ‘I will leave you to think for a while, Austin, but know that if you are still uncooperative when I return, then I will be forced to try other … techniques.’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ said Austin as enthusiastically as possible. ‘Be sure to wake me when you do.’

  The elf exited in no hurry.

  Austin had a fair amount of energy, though the effects of the paste still muddled his mind. He hung awake for a long time. Drip, drip. He put separate attention to the pains he felt across his body, wondering if he could accelerate the healing with his power. I am life, permanently self-actualising. Eventually, though, he fell into unwanted memories again …

  After Arnold had been abandoned by the voice from the Otherworld, he continued to live at home with his parents, but would seethe alone in his room in bitter misery. Attempting to re-join the real world—if he had ever been a part of it—he searched for a job.

  He worked and was fired from multiple menial jobs over the next few years.

  ‘Arnold …’ His mother’s voice again. ‘Your brother is married now, to a beautiful woman. Just look at the money the two of them are making! Do you not want that kind of life for yourself? Can you not do better than this? Even your sister moved out years ago!’

  Arnold hated his life, his mother, his brother, his father, his sister, and contemplated suicide more than once. The outside world made fun of him when he dared face it, because of his past and his appearance. His acne had left scars, and his face had not developed; he only seemed to get uglier.

  Therapy met a dead end after Arnold was repeatedly violent and uncooperative in sessions. He secretly hoped he could talk to his parents about his feelings somehow, as much as he despised them, but his mother never understood and always criticised him, and his father had barely spoken to him since the incident with Jessica in the changing rooms.

  One day, when Arnold’s mother was touting praise about her two favourite offspring again, she’d gone on to say, ‘You’re twenty-eight years old now, Arnold. You’re so lucky we don’t chuck you out on the street. You’re an embarrassment to me and your father.’

  Although he rarely spoke back to her, he felt a need to reply. ‘Father loves them better than me. Doesn’t he? He doesn’t love me at all.’

  His mother looked at him with those eyes, the eyes that told him he was shit on her shoe. ‘Do you want to know how you can tell your father loves you? Because he hasn’t kicked you out yet, that’s how. I’ve told him countless times that we should, and one time I was so close to coming to this bedroom and dragging you out by the ear. I don’t care if you’re a grown man now; you’re weak and pathetic. If your
father let me have my way, I’d haul you outside kicking and screaming if I had to. You’ve brought nothing but shame upon my family.’

  Arnold was left stunned, feeling like someone had smacked a giant sledgehammer around his face. Later that day, he wept and escaped into his visualisations and begged and begged for the voice to return and give him the power he’d rejected. ‘Maybe I won’t be a superhero,’ he’d snivelled aloud to himself, ‘but this might be the closest I can get.’

  He cried and mentally pleaded until he was choking on tears and close to giving up. But the voice returned.

  : I will do you this favour, Tormented One, but when I have use of you in the future, you will obey.

  Arnold was so relieved to hear ‘Moloch’ in his head that he agreed without hesitation, and asked what he had to do to get his power.

  : Open your wrist and drain your blood. You must offer yourself to me. It is the only way to make it work. When you are at the point of death, I will take your soul, leaving life to flood into you, restoring your health and granting you power over others.

  Arnold experienced some trepidation, wondering what would happen if it didn’t work.

  : Then you would die. But is that not better than your pathetic life?

  Before any other doubts could consume him, he made his way to the kitchen to collect a knife, avoiding his parents, and then headed for the nearest bathroom. In no time, he was slashing one wrist and whispering that he belonged to the voice. He woke hours later, hanging over a bath tub stained with blood, and staring down at his wrist, which was covered in scabs instead of deep, open gouges.

  It took him a while, and some stealth, to scrub the tub clean without drawing his parents’ attention, but he was eager to get it done and return to the voice. When he was back in his bedroom and guided his visualisation to ‘Moloch,’ he began to learn about his new condition.