by Robert Bevan
“Don’t keep me waiting long.”
Julian frantically went to work on his restraints, and Ula seemed surprisingly unbothered that her brother mysteriously collapsed and that one of her prisoners was setting himself free. Logic dictated that Tim should get busy with the rest of his own restraints now that nothing made fuck-all sense, but a gut feeling told him that was the wrong move.
While Julian unfastened his ankle restraints, Matthias slowly climbed the cage bars, lifting himself off the ground. Tim was actually glad the old guy wasn't dead. He was clearly suffering from some kind of dementia.
“I feel amazing!” said Julian, leaping off the table. He stretched his arms and legs like he was about to run a marathon.
“I'm happy to hear that, sir,” said Ravenus from his cage. “But I'm getting more of a sense of weakness and confusion.”
“What's happening?” said Matthias. He put his hand over his ear. “What happened to my ears?” His voice was louder now. He looked down at his right arm. “Why is my arm sticky?” His already massive eye grew even wider when he saw the ring on his finger. “What the fuck?”
Julian stopped stretching. His face was suddenly pale and his eyes were wide. “My ring!”
Matthias held the ring close to his eye and squinted.
“NO! DON’T!” cried Julian.
“Fireball?”
Tim's world erupted in an explosion of light, warmth, and the sound of something like chunks meat slapping against a wall. He felt his table slam into Dave's, which slammed into Cooper’s, which slammed into the wall. Ears ringing and temporarily blinded, he decided his gut feeling could go fuck itself and began unfastening his left wrist restraint. When his vision returned, he found everything and everyone in the room coated in a film of blood and bits of gore.
Julian sat on the floor against the wall, crying and cradling a human leg in his arms. Blackened bone poked out from a partially cooked ass cheek.
Matthias slumped in the corner of his tiny cage, either dead or merely unconscious.
Tim's blurred gaze continuing counterclockwise around the room, he found Ula, or at least what was left of her. She appeared to be standing in a deep pool of blood, except Tim knew it was just a puddle. Everything below the tits was gone.
“What the fuck just happened?” asked Cooper.
His left hand freed, Tim sat up. “I think Ula just exploded.”
Dave lifted his head and looked over at Ula's grisly remains. “That was unexpected.”
“Fuck it,” said Tim, freeing his ankles. “That's two down as far as I'm concerned. Let's get the fuck out of here.” He felt a little awkward walking around Dave's table to release Cooper next, but if the rest of the family came down the stairs to investigate the explosion, Cooper would be more immediately valuable. No one came down, so Tim unbuckled Dave's straps as well.
Cooper looked down at Julian, still sobbing on the floor and cradling the leg. “Dude, get a hold of yourself. Put down that fucking leg and let's go.”
Julian nodded, forced himself to stop crying, then set aside the leg. “Yes. We must abscond at once.”
Tim paused. That was an un-Julian-like choice of vocabulary. But what the hell. It was kind of a fucked up situation. “Yeah, let's get to absconding.”
“What's wrong with him?” asked Ravenus from his mangled, but still locked cage on the floor under Cooper's table. “What language is that?”
“Tiiiiim,” a weary voice called out from the cage.
Tim turned around to find Matthias reaching out for him. He jumped back.
“Keep your two-thumbed hands away from me, inbred freak!”
“It's m-m-mee,” groaned Matthias. “J-J-J-Julian.”
“What?” Crazy as it seemed, it might explain a lot of the crazier shit that had happened in the past few minutes.
“He lies!” cried Julian. “His evil heart is filled with deceit! We must hurry, before –”
“Hooooorse,” croaked Matthias. A grey riding horse appeared in the cage, flattening Matthias against the bars.
Holy shit. It was really true. Somehow, they had –
“Fuck you!” Cooper punched fake Julian in the face, dropping him to the floor. Fucking up a Mount spell like that had left zero doubt as to Julian's true identity, even in the smallest of minds.
“How dare you!” cried Ravenus, trying fruitlessly to bend his cage bars apart with his talons.
Tim turned to the ancient freakshow being crushed by a horse in a cage. “What happened? How did you...”
“The bottle,” Julian croaked, pointing one of his superfluous thumbs down at the bottle on the floor. “We... breathed in the vapor and... I don't know... swapped souls or whatever.” He groaned as the horse shifted its weight. “Give me... the bottle... and bring my body... close to the cage.”
“Have you not done enough,” said fake Julian, rubbing his eye where Cooper had punched him. “Toying with magic you don't understand. You killed my sister!”
Freakshow Julian got on his hands and knees so he could breathe a little easier and the horse wasn't quite as uncomfortable.
“I did no such thing!” said Julian. “I don't even know what happened to her.” He scanned the room with his giant eye. “I mean, besides the obvious.”
“You read the incantation to activate the pearl,” said Tim. “It must have come loose inside her when they were...” he tried to find a delicate way to express his theory, “...in the other room.”
Dave and Cooper shuddered.
“Is that why my arm is sticky up to my elbow?” asked Julian.
“Jesus!” said Tim. “Details!”
Julian looked at fake Julian. “Why wouldn't you take your ring off first?”
Fake Julian was hugging Ula’s leg again. “That's how she liked it. She said it enhanced her pleasure.”
“Enough!” said Tim. “I don't want to hear any more. Cooper, punch out Asshole Julian again and lay him down next to Freakshow Julian.”
“No!” said Freakshow Julian. “That's my body. I'm going to feel that when we switch back.”
“Who gives a shit?”
“Can I at least try a more Diplomatic approach first?”
Tim grimaced. “I think your Charisma score might not be operating at full capacity right now.”
Julian ignored him, focusing his big eye on his real body. “I'm taking my body back. You understand that there's nothing you can do to stop that, right?”
Fake Julian scowled and nodded.
“Then you'd want to make things as painless as possible for yourself, wouldn't you?”
“Aye.” Fake Julian dropped to his knees in front of Freak Julian and put his hands behind his back.
Julian looked at Tim. “I think we can trust him to behave.”
Tim rolled his eyes. “Whatever. If he tries anything, at least we'll get to beat the shit out of him.” Keeping a wary eye on Fake Julian, he handed the perfume bottle to Freak Julian. “You know this magic shit better than I do.”
Julian accepted the bottle. “Okay, now stand ba– Shit!” His extra thumb fumbled the bottle.
Tim instinctively reached out and caught it by the bulb atomizer. A small puff of purple vapor came out, and Tim's consciousness suddenly blinked.
As if someone had turned the volume all the way down, he found he could barely hear anything. His mouth tasted like spoiled meat and ass. His vision was sharp but lacked depth perception. But the strangest thing of all was that he was looking at himself.
“Oh, thank God!” said Julian. “I'm me again! I'm...” He rubbed the side of his face. “Jesus, Cooper. Did you have to hit me so – UGH!”
Tim saw himself, his body, punch Julian in the nuts, then run past Cooper and up the stairs.
“Get him!” Tim shouted in a hoarse voice that he could barely hear himself. He tried to stand, but his head hit something soft and furry. A second later, his entire left side was soaked with what felt like the initial water from a hose which had been left out
in the sun all day, but which smelled like horse piss. A quick glance to the left confirmed his nose's theory.
“Goddammit, motherfucking son of a bitch!”
Julian and Dave looked down at him. “Tim?”
“Yes!” said Tim. “Matthias is in my body! He's getting away!”
“Ow!” Cooper dropped Ravenus's birdcage, sending it rolling across the floor, then sucked on a finger. “I was trying to let you out, asshole.”
Once the birdcage stopped rolling and Ravenus oriented himself, he stepped on the bars, moving the cage back toward Cooper like he was in a hamster wheel. “That was for punching my master! There's more where that came from!”
“Ravenus!” said Julian. “Stop!”
Ravenus stopped his cage in front of Tim's and looked up at Julian. “Master, you're okay! It's so good to hear your voice again!”
“Leave Ravenus here,” said Tim, shouting so that he could hear his own voice. “I need his help. Go get my body!”
Julian nodded, then took off up the stairs. Dave followed after him.
“Since when are we taking orders from this prick?” asked Cooper.
“Come on!” said Dave, stopping under the arch to look at Cooper. “The prick is inside Tim's body.”
Cooper's jaw dropped open. “They're cornholing him?” He pushed Dave out of the way and ran up the stairs. “I'm coming for you, buddy!”
Dave got back on his feet and waddled after Cooper.
“Ravenus,” Tim rasped in his best old man British accent.
“Don't speak to me!” said the bird. “I must go and help my master.” He started hamster wheeling it to the stairs, but Tim caught the cage.
Ravenus pecked and clawed at his fingers. Tim winced but didn't let go of the cage.
“I'm Tim!”
Ravenus stopped pecking and scratching long enough to look Tim up and down. “No you're not.” He resumed his attack.
Tim grabbed one of Ravenus's talons and talked to him in order to better ignore the pain of his forearm being torn to shreds. Wincing in pain with nearly every other word, he tried to explain. “The... old... freak... switched bodies... with Julian. Then he... switched... bodies with... me.”
Tim had never seen a birdcage with a lock that required a key before, but he supposed that pets in the Caverns & Creatures world tended to be a little cleverer than pets back home. Still, it wasn't nearly as good a lock as the one on Tim's cage door, and Ravenus's talon made a suitable lock pick. When the door opened, Tim pulled his hands back through the bars.
Ravenus limped out of the cage and fell on his back, breathing heavily. He turned his head to Tim. “Were you telling the truth?”
Tim nodded.
“Oh,” said Ravenus. “Sorry about your arm then.”
Tim looked at his arm and smiled. It was torn to ribbons from elbow to wrist and bleeding like a stuck pig that was also menstruating. Ravenus had fucked it up good. “It'll be worth it when we switch back. How's your leg?”
Ravenus walked in a circle, limping a little less with each step. “I think I'll pull through.”
“Good. Listen, Ravenus. Ula had a key. I need you to help me find it.”
“Which one was Ula?”
“The one that exploded.”
Ravenus nodded. “Very good.”
Tim scanned the room, stopping at the empty doorway where the wooden door had been. “Check in there first.”
Ravenus flew into the room, and Tim crawled around on the cage floor, contemplating murdering his equine cellmate. He saw a conspicuously shaped lump in the gore, plastered to the wall by a chunk of uterus or spleen or gall bladder or some shit. He wasn't a doctor. Reaching through the bars, he was just able to touch it with the tip of his finger.
The gore peeled off the wall, landing on the floor with a splat and a clink.
The key!
Since it was barely within his reach, Tim was extra careful not to push the key further away. He pulled gently on the chunk of Ula meat it was still stuck to until it was close enough to grab. He peeled it free from its fleshy casing, shook some of the gore off, then crawled to the cell door. The lock turned easily, and the door swung open.
Julian's magical horse dropped a couple of turds for its captors to remember it by, then strutted gratefully out of the cage.
Tim was disappointed in how unsatisfying it was to finally be able to stand up. He was still in an old man's body with arthritis in all of his joints and a severe case of scoliosis.
He shuffled carefully across the floor past the top third of Ula's dead body, wary of the large blood puddle surrounding it. The last thing he needed right now was to fall and break a hip. The door lay on the floor, slathered in liquid Ula. The room beyond, while not exactly cleaner, was at least less bloody. Ravenus was on the floor, pecking at the exposed meat at the top of Ula's other leg.
“Ravenus!” said Tim.
Ravenus squawked and froze.
“You were supposed to be looking for the key!”
“I've determined it's not inside this leg.”
“That's because it's in my hand, shithead. Come on, we've got to –” Tim's monocular gaze was drawn to the bed where Ula had obviously intended her brothers to boink her with Tim and his friends' dicks. Never one to turn down sex when it was available, Tim had developed a fairly high tolerance for where he was willing to do the deed. But even the filthiest basement futon his bare skin had touched in the name of getting laid seemed as pristine as a hospital operating table compared to the crime scene that was this bedroom.
It smelled heavily of ass, body odor, and Tim's current right arm. The bed's rusted iron frame made his dick want to retract inside him. The mattress, insofar as a giant amorphous roughspun sack of feathers can be called a mattress, looked like it hadn't been washed in... well, ever. It was covered in stains ranging in color from yellow to near black. The freshest was a large wet spot right in the middle, presumably where Matthias had just 'warmed up' Ula. Tim desperately wanted to wash his hands.
His giant eye already having taken in more than he wanted it to, Tim turned away from the bed. He saw a table in the corner of the room with a wooden box on top of it. Hoping it was full of disinfectant, or at least hard liquor, he opened the lid.
Inside the box, nestled in one of two identical indentations atop a padded silk cushion, was another perfume bottle just like the one Matthias had swapped their souls with, likewise filled with purple liquid. Another one of those might come in handy. He carefully removed it from the box and slipped it into Matthias's pocket.
“Let's go find the others.”
Tim shuffled across the floor from the bedchamber to the archway, where Julian's horse was blocking the way and looking curiously up the stairs.
“You, stay here,” he said to the horse, then turned his head as far as it would go back to Ravenus, who was perched on his hunch. “You, be quiet.”
“Righto!”
“Shh!”
Tim's Move Silently skill was impaired by his current body's compromised Dexterity score, but he felt he was making a solid effort at minimizing the noise as he climbed up the stairs. Of course, that could also have to do with his shitty hearing.
The stairs ended in an open hatch, the door of which had planks running off the edge which, when closed, would fit into the missing floorboards. It would be difficult to spot for someone not specifically looking for it.
Tim's old knees ached as he climbed out of the stairwell and into a room full of portraits hanging on the walls. It was like a study in the effects of inbreeding. He thought that, given enough time, he could sort the pictures in chronological order based on how fucked up their faces were.
This room was cleaner than the living room, which Tim recognized through the open door. Cautiously peeking out, he found the living room empty. The door directly across from the one he was standing in was also open.
CRASH
The sound of breaking porcelain. Maybe a vase or a large dish.
> “Shit,” said Cooper.
“Watch where you're going!” said Dave.
“Shhhhh!” said Julian.
Tim shook his head. He was nearly deaf and could hear those three idiots two rooms away. They stepped out into the living room and stopped dead in their tracks when they saw Tim.
“Sorry,” said Julian. “You startled me for a second.” He pointed his thumb back at the room they'd just come from. “Looks like a dining room, or at least it was at one time. No sign of anyone in there.”
“What happened to your arm?” asked Dave.
“Ravenus and I had a little misunderstanding.”
“Do you want me to heal that?”
“Fuck no.”
Julian's gaze shifted up to where Ravenus was still perched on Tim's hump. “Are you okay?”
“Never been better, sir!”
“Keep your voice down!” Tim snapped, feeling more than ever like an old man.
“I don't get why we're sneaking around,” said Dave. “What's the point?”
Tim wheezed out a shallow laugh. “No point at all the way you guys are doing it. You might as well be playing trumpets and drums.”
“They know we're here, and that we've freed ourselves from the table straps. They'd expect us to go up the stairs. What the hell else would we do?”
“So where are they?” asked Julian.
“They're probably hiding somewhere. Regrouping. It's pretty clear that Ula was the leader. Matthias has a functioning brain in his head, but he lacks the experience to effectively lead his dimwitted brothers. He's trying to think up a plan to take us out, and we need to find him before he's able to.”
“He's trying to take us alive, isn't he? He wants our bodies to swap his brothers into, right?”
Tim eased his weary old ass down on a rickety wooden stool. “Not necessarily. Ula was the mother of invention here. Now that her plans are off the table, as is any possibility of continuing their pure family lineage, Matthias might decide to follow a new path. His brothers, whatever bodies they're in, might only drag him down.” He paused to reflect on how depressing the whole situation was. He remembered how Matthias had cradled Ula’s leg, and another thought occurred to him. “And he's no doubt still pissed at us for blowing up his sister.”