by Robert Bevan
Dave nodded. “Matthias was pretty keen on calling himself an inventor. He probably has a lab or a workshop or something. We should rule out all the upstairs rooms first, then poke around for hidden doors down here.”
Tim dreaded the thought of more stairs, but Dave's reasoning was sound.
As he hobbled up the stairs even more slowly than Dave, Tim thought of another idea. “Dave, do you have any stonepiss?”
“Jesus, Tim. Can you give it a rest for once?”
“I was just thinking it might be a good idea to get this body nice and shitfaced before we switch it back. If we're able to escape, and they decided to come after us, it would make sense to get the only one of them who could find their own ass with a compass and a map falling down drunk, would it not?”
“That's some impressive rationalizing.” Dave pulled a short glass bottle out of his bag. “Try this. I swiped it from the dining room.”
Tim uncorked the bottle and swigged back some of the contents. It burned going down, like cheap whiskey. Tim felt the effects almost immediately. He was buzzed before he reached the top of the stairs. Ol' Matthias didn't have a very high tolerance for alcohol. That was for damn sure.
Julian had reached the top of the stairs well before him and was already listening at a door. He whispered something.
“Speak up!” said Tim. “I can't hear you!”
Julian glared at him, as did Cooper and Dave.
“Shit. Was that too loud?”
“So much for the element of surprise,” said Julian, taking a step back from the door. “Cooper?”
Cooper pulled his finger out of his nose. “What?”
Tim gulped back another shot of terrible booze. “Grab my body and pin it to the floor.”
“What the fuck is he drinking?” asked Cooper. “He went from stone cold sober to blurting out suppressed rape fantasies in less than a minute.”
“Not this body, fuckhead! My real body. You hold him down, I'll switch us back to normal, and we'll hightail it out of here.”
Cooper sighed in relief. “You had me going there for a second. I was thinking about how we used to wrestle at the pool, and –”
“Will you just kick down the goddamn door?”
“Okay.” Cooper planted his heel right into the door, which swung wide open, appearing to not have been locked in the first place. “FUCK YOU MOTHERFU– um...”
The room was mostly empty, decorated solely with manacles hanging on the walls. Its single occupant sat on the floor with a filthy cloth gag in her mouth, her wrists manacled and raised over her head. She looked like a female version of Matthias, just as wizened and malformed, with extra thumbs and one disproportionately large eye. But instead of an eye patch, she had another normal-sized eye. She looked at Tim with horror on her freakish wrinkly face. At her side sat the maggot-ridden corpse of a ten-foot-long boa constrictor.
Tim cringed at the patches of scraggly grey hair flowing down from her mostly bald head. “Who the fuck is this?”
“It's Ula,” said Julian.
Tim took a moment to consider Julian’s theory, then looked down at the dead snake. “Then that must be Simon.”
Cooper squeaked out a small fart. “Sorry. I’m confused. Thinking too hard makes me gassy.”
“It’s not that complicated,” said Julian. “The Ula we met had already swapped souls with a younger woman. That's why she looked so much different than her brothers. This woman here, who should look like the woman who brought us here, is in Ula’s real body.” He ran over and pulled the gag out of her mouth.
The old woman coughed as tears streaked down her cheeks. “Who are you people?” She looked at Tim. “You are not Matthias, are you?”
Tim shook his head. “I'm Tim. Who the hell are you?”
“My name is Enna. I am a traveling warrior. I found this old woman on the side of the road and offered to escort her home. The next thing I knew, I –”
“Yeah, yeah. We get it. I hope you've learned a valuable lesson about helping old people.”
“Is that how they lured you here as well?”
“No. Ula said she'd pay us for –” Tim stopped himself, thinking about how the truth sounded when spoken aloud. He thought up a quick alternative. “– sex.”
Enna gasped.
Julian gave Tim a 'what the fuck' look, but didn't bother changing the story. “We didn't actually go through with it.”
Tim tried his cell door key and found that it worked on the manacles as well.
Enna wrung the paper-thin skin of her ancient wrists. “For twenty-three years I've kept my vow. My body has never known the touch of a man.”
Tim glanced at his right arm but kept his mouth shut.
“You must help me return to my true body before those wicked people can defile it.”
Tim, Julian, Cooper, and Dave, all managed to find something fascinating to look at on the floor.
“That may pose a bit of a challenge,” said Tim. “What if we found you a new body? Some smokin' hot girl who, for whatever reason, doesn't deserve to live?”
“Why? What's wrong with my body?”
“Nothing,” Tim lied. “I was just spitballing ideas.” He offered his elderly disfigured hand to hers to help her to her feet. “Let's find the inbrednecks before we make any rash decisions.”
“Who?”
“The people who live in this dump. Do you know where they might be hiding?”
Enna shrugged.
Making sure to keep everyone in the group together, lest one of them get soul-swapped and infiltrate them, they searched the remaining three rooms upstairs. They found nothing but rats and spiders.
“There are still a few more rooms to search downstairs,” said Dave.
Cooper and Julian led the way down the stairs. Tim and Enna followed, supporting each other's old and weary bodies. Dave took the rear, still organizing the search aloud.
“I think we should try the kitchen next. They might be hiding in a big pantry or something, where they'd have enough food and water to wait until they –”
“Stay where you are,” said a voice similar to, but not exactly like Tim's, coming out of Tim's mouth. Tim's body stood pantsless at the other side of the living room, holding a dagger to Tim's tiny dick. Matthias's carny brothers stood on either side of him.
Tim contemplated taking off his own pants but had neither a desire to see Matthias's junk, nor a dagger to threaten it with. He took a small step forward.
“What are you doing, Matthias? You and I both know you're not going to cut my dick off. Why would you? It's your dick now, right?” If he could just get close enough, he could use the spray to switch them back.
“It’s hardly significant enough to make a credible threat.”
That was unnecessary. “Oh as if you’re packing some monster schlong.” Tim reached down Matthias’s pants. Admittedly, Matthias bested Tim in both length and girth and… number of testicles? His scrotum felt like a crumpled paper bag full of marbles. “Jesus Christ, dude. How many fucking balls do you have?”
“More of the gods’ cruel irony. In my prime I could produce gallons of seed, and yet it all fell on barren ground. Not that it matters anymore. What use have I for this worthless appendage now that you've ended our family line?”
“It can still be fun to play with. It's helpful when you need to take a piss. And cutting it off would be incredibly painful, I'd imagine.” Tim took another step forward, hoping that it would indeed be too painful to follow through with if this was, as he suspected, a last ditch effort bluff.
“You feel the agony I've felt since birth, living in that grotesque body. You think I can't handle a little pain? I never planned to keep this useless body anyway. Now I can walk among the normal folk without arousing suspicion. I'll find a man with the kind of body I truly desire.”
Tim stopped walking. Matthias was making a convincing case for being willing to cut his own dick off.
“You're into dudes?” said Cooper. “Is th
at why you couldn't knock up your sister?”
“How dare you bring up my sister! Ula is dead because of you fools!”
“Dead?” said Enna. She hobbled across the living room, evidently less concerned with the fate of Tim's dick than Tim was. “What happened? Where is my body?”
Matthias backed up and brandished the dagger at her. “Stay back! I'm warning you!”
This was the best chance Tim had to make his move. He hobbled after Enna, swigging back as much of the terrible booze as he could choke down and digging in his pocket for Matthias's potion.
“MOMO!” said Momo, slamming his iron ball down on Matthias's foot. That was going to hurt. Tim hoped that Dave had a healing spell ready to go.
Matthias shrieked in pain and dropped the dagger. “She isn't our sister, Momo! Our sister is dead!”
Enna picked up the dagger just as Tim pulled out the potion.
YEHEHEHEHEHEHE
Distracted by Julian's horse announcing its presence, and the fact that he still wasn't used to having extra thumbs, Tim dropped the potion.
Matthias-Tim's eyes, already wide with the pain and surprise of having his foot crushed, went even wider as they followed the glass bottle to the floor, where it shattered, letting out a thick purple cloud of vapor.
Suddenly, Tim's hearing amped up to eleven, and his vision was binocular again.
People were screaming, falling over each other, making horse noises. It was complete bedlam.
Hunched over and standing on all fours, Tim briefly worried that he'd switched bodies with the horse, but when he tried to stand straight, he discovered that his hands were chained to his ankles.
Shit! I'm Momo!
“What the fuck?” said Ravenus in a distinctly non-British accent. He waddled past Tim, flapping his wings in such a way that would never lift him off the ground.
Just beyond Ravenus, Julian stood as if in a trance, mesmerized by his own forearms. He felt them up and down, then ran his fingertips down the sides of his face. Tears welled up in his eyes. If Tim had to guess, he was actually Figg, who had never experienced having smooth skin. His hairless bliss was cut short when Ula lunged at him and wrapped her old double-thumbed hands around his throat.
Tim scanned the room for his own body and found it sitting on the floor and cradling its foot.
“Yaaa! Yayaaha! Ha? Hoo? Helloooo. Hellooooo! Hellllooooooo!” With an excitement that can only be gained by suddenly being able to pronounce consonants, Dunder seemed to forget about the pain in Tim's foot. “Hellooooooooo!”
Should he attack Dunder? He felt like he should attack somebody, and would have preferred to attack someone who was both his enemy and also residing in the body of one of his other enemies.
He wouldn't be able to attack anyone until he got this goddamn chain off.
Lifting the ball to his neck, he was able to reach the pin on his collar which loosened the chains.
Fuck yeah! Tim now had the brains, the brawn, and a big ass iron ball on a chain. He looked for a target.
Dunder, the guy with the immovable jaw, was indiscriminately punching people with his left fist, clapping his two right baby hands together, and shouting “Yoyo!” through his permanently-set open mouth. That had to be Momo.
Tim felt kind of bad for Momo, but he fit all of the target requirements Tim was looking for. Tim swung the ball over his head, then released it in Dunder-Momo's direction. Dunder-Momo ducked just in time, and the ball slammed into the horse's screaming face. The horse vanished. Tim hoped that it hadn't been part of this mess.
“Damn it!” said Cooper, a pretty good indication that he was actually Julian.
Matthias stumbled around, flapping his arms up and down like someone had just removed his straitjacket. He looked even drunker than Tim's booze-guzzling body sabotage should have accounted for.
“My wings!” he cried in a gravelly British accent. “What's happening to me? What's blaaaaaauuuuurrrrrgggggh...” He threw up a puddle of brown booze and chunks of who knows what all over the floor and collapsed face-first into it.
Shit. Sorry, Ravenus.
Cooper, still having trouble walking on bird legs, fell forward and pushed himself toward Tim-Dunder, using his wings like a sea turtle on the beach.
“Dude,” he said to Tim-Dunder. “What the fuck is going on here?”
“Hellllloooooooo!” said Tim-Dunder. He let go of his foot and grabbed Ravenus's body with both hands. Ecstatic to have a working jaw, he bit down hard on one of Ravenus's wings.
“FUCK!” said Ravenus-Cooper. He fought back ineffectively with his talons and remaining wing, but Tim-Dunder only bit down harder.
“I'm really angry!” Cooper squawked. His black feathers bristled as he grew to the size of a turkey jacked up on illegal steroids. When he finally achieved functional use of his talons, they looked like fists full of black daggers as they ripped into Tim’s arm and face.
“Son of a bitch,” said Tim. He was definitely going to feel that when he switched back to his own body.
Tim-Dunder screamed, releasing Cooper's wing, and kicked him away. Cooper made a solid effort to flap his monstrous wings but landed with a thud in front of Dave, who appeared to be having some kind of seizure.
“Dave!” said Ravenus-Cooper. “Tim just bit the shit out of me. Slap me some Hit Points, would you?”
“YEEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE!” Dave whinnied.
“Seriously?” said Figg, who Tim now guessed was actually Dave, through the grizzled white pubes obscuring his mouth. “The fucking horse?”
Tim pulled in the ball connected to his chain to ready himself for another attack. But in all the chaos, it was difficult to keep track of who was who. He knew that a Wilmott was in his body, but he didn't like the idea of smashing his own face in with an iron ball.
Cooper-Julian grabbed Figg's flabby body by its pube-furred man-tits. “Who are you?”
“Ow! I'm Dave!”
“Julian!” said Tim. “Who gives a shit? Let's you and me just start knocking motherfuckers out. We'll sort it out later.”
“YOYO!” screamed Dunder-Momo, just before taking a swing at Tim. He might have actually hit if he hadn't announced it first. Tim dodged the attack, dropped the ball, and grabbed Dunder-Momo by the leg and throat. Dunder wasn't exactly a waif of a man, but Momo's body was strong as fuck. Tim easily lifted Dunder-Momo over his head and looked for someone to throw him at.
“Helllooooooo!” said Tim-Dunder, just before biting Tim in his giant Momo dick.
“YEEEEOOOOOOWWWW!” cried Tim, losing his grip on Dunder-Momo, who dropped down hard on Tim's body, taking a chunk of dick skin with him as he went down.
Tim groaned, bleeding from the dick, while Cooper-Julian punched out whoever was inhabiting Ula's body, who was still strangling his own.
“I'm sorry!” said Cooper-Julian.
“Cooper!” cried Ravenus, rising out of his vomit puddle on Matthias's wobbly legs. “I can understand you!”
Julian's body breathed in deeply, his throat free of Ula's choking grasp.
With a regretful look in Cooper's eyes, Julian punched himself in the face. “I'm really sorry.”
Ravenus, clearly not fully appreciating that he wasn't currently a bird, flapped Matthias's arms and ran at Cooper-Julian as fast as his arthritic knees would carry him. “You son of a bitch! I warned you!” He leaped into the air, flapping his arms even harder and thrusting both feet forward, then came down hard on his old hunched back. It looked so agonizing that Tim forgot about his own dick pain for a fraction of a second.
With most of the punching having subsided, Figg-Dave stepped up behind Cooper-Julian. “Does anyone need a healing sp–”
Cooper-Julian whirled around and punched Figg-Dave in the face. “Shit! I'm sorry. You shouldn't have sneaked up on me like that.”
“Asshole!” Dave honked out through Figg's broken nose, now locatable from the reddening pubes beneath it.
“I could use some healing,” said Tim.
&
nbsp; Figg-Dave looked down at Momo's bleeding dick. “Ouch. I guess you could.” He raised a furry arm out for Tim to touch.
“Not this me.” Tim rolled Dunders body off of his own, then went through his pockets until he found Matthias's potion bottle. Fortunately, it was still intact. “Maybe we should make sure this works before we start healing anyone.”
“Good idea,” said Figg-Dave.
Tim handed the bottle to Cooper-Julian. “Don't drop this, or we're all fucked.” He worked the chain through the rings on his wrist and ankle restraints, then up through the ring on his collar. “Can somebody pin this?”
Figg-Dave picked up the pin and put it in Momo's collar. Tim cringed at the feel of Figg's finger pubes on his neck.
“Okay,” said Tim, lying down on the floor with his head next to his real head. “Hold your breath, give us a small squirt, and get the fuck back.”
Cooper’s head nodded, and Tim had to remind himself that he wasn't entrusting this to a complete moron.
Cooper-Julian sucked in a deep breath and held it, then squirted a puff of the potion between their faces.
*
Tim awoke, groggy but feeling strangely refreshed and free of dick pain. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, opened them, and saw Cooper looking down at him.
Had it all been a dream?
“Helllllloooooooo! Helllllooooooowwwww!”
Tim looked to his left. Momo was freaking the fuck out, thrashing in his chains and bleeding from the – SHIT!
He spat out the chunk of dick skin which had been festering in his mouth.
“Can I go next?” asked Figg-Dave. “I'd really like to get that horse out of my body.”
Tim took the potion bottle from Cooper-Julian while Figg-Dave the pube monster waddled over to Dave-Horse.
Once Figg-Dave was in position, Tim gave them a good spray in the face and backed away.
Dave sighed and got to his feet. “I never thought I'd be so grateful to be a dwarf again.” He put his hand to his neck. “My throat's a little sore from all the neigh–”
Figg-Horse whinnied and kicked Dave in the nuts.
“Dave's back to normal,” said Tim. “Who's next?”