I’ve been following this thread every day; I just haven’t gotten around to posting until now. I’m going to try to use all 33 words in the same post to make up for it (hopefully I didn’t miss any)!
I turn the corner onto Maple Street, my heart palpitating with each step. I can see the dilapidated mansion from here. Time to change.
I quickly look behind me, then in front, and then to each side. No one’s around, and most of the houses have their curtains drawn; as for the ones that don’t, I don’t see anyone through them. Despite this stroke of serendipity, though, I surreptitiously wander off the road behind a tall cedar, close my eyes, and concentrate as hard as I can, and the familiar surge of energy ripples through my body as I imagine the words Loading HALIFAX CASNER blinking in front of me on a digital screen. Got to be in Hally mode now.
I smile as I look at my hands to see my fingernails which are no longer gross and bitten down and pull down a few strands of hair to corroborate that it’s a lighter brown than when I was Oliver, and desperately hope that the rest of me looks exactly like I should. I wish I could change my clothes whenever I shapeshift. Oh, well. Got to have a few drawbacks, I guess. At least I made Hally have the same body shape as me.
I step back onto the road and make my way up to the mansion. It looks scarier up close. The grass is uncut, there’s a silver knocker in the shape of a lion’s head, and I can see ivory curtains, dusty and frayed, through the windows. Joel arrives a couple of minutes later.
“Hey, Hally!” he says with a grin. I don’t know how he can have so much zeal considering what we’re about to do. Then again, he’s the total antithesis of me. He’s congenial, adventurous, and audacious, while I’m an aloof and lackadaisical coward.
“Hey, Joel,” I say, silently lauding myself for my successful transformation.
“You ready?” he asks, his cerulean blue eyes sparkling.
“Yeah,” I lie, reminding myself that Halifax is braver than Oliver. “So, where’s your paperclip?”
“Right here,” he replies, pulling it out and flashing it before trying it in the lock.
“You sure you can pick it?”
“Positive.” He jiggles the paperclip in every direction, and after a minute or so I’m about to say that we should try something else when he twists the paperclip and I hear a click. He beams and swings the door open, gesturing grandiosely at his achievement.
“Wow, awesome,” I remark, impressed by his ingenuity.
“Let’s go,” he says, smirking mischievously.
I trepidatiously follow him into the first room. It’s pretty dark considering it’s only three in the afternoon, but Joel flicks on a light switch and I gawk at the surroundings before cautiously shutting the door. I close it enough so we’re not out in the open but leave a gap just small enough so we can make a quick escape.
“Whoa,” says Joel breathlessly. There’s a brown desk with an intricately decorated lantern on it, a large faded pink sofa, and a now-brightly lit chandelier with dozens of little lights in it. On the walls there’s a stained glass window and a wooden shelf filled with an eclectic range of flasks with a rainbow of liquids and powders and diminutive stones and other stuff inside, labelled with mysterious symbols. I go over to a bookshelf and pull out a heavy blue tome with some more weird symbols, a facet that only accentuates the creepiness of this place.
“This is freaky,” I say.
“Come on, I thought you were brave,” Joel says teasingly.
“Yeah, well, that’s a complete and utter fallacy,” I mutter, staring at a cobweb in the corner. Ugh. I hate spiders.
“Look at these!” he says, holding up two of the flasks and holding one of them, with bright blue liquid in it, up to the light. The other one contains a crimson solution that looks thicker when he swishes it which reminds me of blood, although I really hope it isn’t.
“Yeah,” I say uneasily, fully aware I’m acting like Oliver right now but too uneasy to really care. I open the book just as I hear a loud tinkle of broken glass on the floor, a sound that’s only amplified by the eerie silence of the mansion. My head jerks up at Joel and my jaw drops in horror.
“Joel!” I whisper-shout furiously, leaving the book on the table and rushing over to where he dropped not one, but both flasks, translucent blue and deep red puddles that flow into each other and coalesce—the puddle is a sickening orange where they meet.
“I’m sorry!” he says in panic, no longer showing a blithe disregard for trespassing onto private property but genuinely realizing that we should not have come here.
“Be careful,” I say. “Don’t step in that.” The blue was getting dangerously close to his sneaker, and I have no idea what those strange potions do. He quickly backs away, and I watch the two liquids softly bubble as they flow into each other.
“Oh, gosh!” he exclaims suddenly. “What is that stench?” At first I have no idea what he’s talking about, but then I gradually begin to smell the horrible miasma that pervades the air, something like a combination of burnt rubber and water treatment plants.
“Whatever that stuff you made is,” I say, having to cover my nose with my shirt.
“I can’t stand it,” he says. “Come on, let’s explore another room.”
“Are you serious?” I ask incredulously. “We’ve done enough to this place! Our fingerprints are all over. We’re in enough trouble if anyone catches us!”
“Come on, please, Hally?” he begs, just as the doorknob jiggles. Both of us quickly turn our focus to the door in horror. Joel mutters something under his breath.
“Alright, escape plan,” I say quickly. “What do we do?” But Joel has no time to answer, because the door is roughly yanked open, and a menacing-looking man stands in the doorway.
“Okay, you two,” he says. “You’re coming with me.”
“Run!” Joel shouts. He grabs two more flasks off the shelf, hurls them at the police officer, and launches the giant book I left on the table through the tall window at the back of the room. If the breaking flasks was loud, this is deafening, but I don’t have time to cringe as both of us race for the window and jump through it. I’m panicking so much that I can’t tell if the officer is on our tail or not. I wonder if he’ll shoot us. What an ignoble way to die, being killed after trespassing into a mansion and destroying it to a point where restitution is probably impossible.
I sprint for about a minute before realizing that Joel isn’t with me. I have no idea where he or the officer are, but I can’t let the police find me. The police officer knows what Halifax looks like. I do a quick check around the area as I run. Empty. Okay. Concentrate, Oliver, concentrate.
Loading CODY LIGHT.
And right then, I stumble into a girl.
Oh, no.
She gapes at me as we both get up. I start to run the other way, but she grabs me by my T-shirt.
“What was that?” she gasps. “You had brown hair two seconds ago, and now it’s blond! And your face—it looks so different!”
“Sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say disingenuously, silently kicking myself over making such an erroneous mistake. How did I not notice her? How? I need to stop transforming while running.
Today has certainly not been my most judicious day.
“I saw you!” she says frantically. “I saw what you did! What are you?”
“I can’t tell you,” I say, shaking my head feverishly. It’s just my luck that as soon as I surmount one obstacle, I run headfirst into another.
“You’re a shapeshifter!” she says, gripping my wrists. “How did you do it? Are you an alien? I promise I won’t tell anyone!”
I nervously glance around to see if anyone’s nearby. A maudlin and somber-looking woman slowly walks down the sidewalk and sighs as she sits down on a bench with a black leather bag slung over her shoulder.
“I can’t tell you here,” I say, shaking my head again. The girl turns around to see the woman on the bench.
“Then come with me,” she says, “and we can talk.”
The gears in my brain turn rapidly as I think about the predicament I’ve just gotten myself into.
I couldn’t just be a normal boy. No, I had to get preternatural powers, didn’t I? And with the hegemony that potential friends have over me, I stupidly let Joel lead me into that house which resulted in me revealing my secret to a perfect stranger. And now I’m trapped.
The very small upside: she never has to see me again. I can go home, retrograde into Oliver, and never turn into Hally or Cody ever again. No one ever has to know it’s me. But considering how fast I’m losing usable forms that I’m familiar with, extrapolate that forward a few days and I’m going to have to come up with a whole new set of appearances.
“Alright,” I say. “Let’s go.”
