It took Jon longer than usual to process his surroundings this time; a storm of sensation assaulted him all at once. Shouting voices, a screaming siren, flashing lights, dark lighting, gunshots... the first thing that caught Jon's attention, though, was the heavy metal bar in his hand, which flew through the air and landed hard on the face of the woman on the ground in front of him.
Jon looked in horror at the woman. Her face was bloodied and bruised, her nose clearly broken and one eye swollen shut. Her long hair, which was dyed a bright, unnatural, fire engine red, was matted, and Jon knew after a moment that not all the red in her hair was from hair dye. She was dressed in an orange jumpsuit and curled up on the ground. Though groggy and badly hurt, she was still conscious, and she groaned, "Please... please stop... I'm not the man you think I am. I didn't do anything to you; I've never even met you."
"Oh God," Jon said, "I'm so sorry. I'm not... I'm not who you think I am, either, not anymore. I'm..." Suddenly he recognized this woman. This was Scarlet Anderson; she was one of Zoe's goth friends. "Oh no, no. I know you. I'm Jon Madison; I'm Zoe's brother."
"Jon?" Scarlet said weakly. "Jon, have you talked to Zoe? Does she know what--"
FLASH
The uproar around Jon was gone. The shouts and sirens had been replaced with light, piping elevator music, and the cold, dark, cement-walled room had given way to a small, brightly lit sall. Jon found himself looking in the mirror at a very overweight woman in long, flowery dress. She was frowning. Jon looked down at himself and saw that he was wearing the same ugly, loose-fitting dress as she was, down to the sales tag on the shoulder. He must have been in a dressing room in a retail store.
Jon sat down on the bench at the back of the stall, moving away the very large shirt and jeans that were draped over it. He was glad to have a moment of peace and solitude, though he doubted it would last long. Jon had expected to remain in Meagan's body indefinitely, or at least until he could find the stone. Instead, though, he had switched again, not just once but... what was it... five, six, seven times now? He hadn't had an opportunity to investigate in much detail, but as far as he'd been able to tell, though a great number of people in town had switched lives, no one had switched more than once. After they had switched, they became immune to other people's physical contact; touching other people could cause those others to switch, but it no longer caused them to switch themselves. So whatever was happening to Jon, it was new, and it seemed to be uncontrollable. As far as he could tell, though, it was only happening to him; that, at least, was some relief.
One upside to all of this. Jon's own touch didn't seem to affect people anymore; he had touched the boy who had been making out with him on the park bench quite intimately for what must have been a full minute and it hadn't caused the guy to switch. Jon was glad to know, at least, that he didn't worry anymore about causing every person he touched to swap.
Nevertheless, this new development was troubling to say the least. He'd known what had caused his original swap into Meagan O'Shea, and what had caused all the other swaps across town. He didn't know what had caused this new wrinkle in his situation... and so wasn't entirely sure he knew how to fix it. The first step, was to find the stone, if that was at all possible. It seemed moe unlikely now than it had a moment ago; at the rate he was switching, he doubted he would remain in any one body long enough to get any serious work done.
Jon stood up, stretching... then, suddenty,
FL:ASH
Thumping bass was echoing from speakers somewhere nearby. Jon turned and tried to find their source... but as he took a step, he suddenly found himself wobbling unsteadily in what felt like unreasonably high heels. Catching sight of his clothing as he fell to the ground, Jon groaned; he was a bikini again. This one was bright green, and Jon saw that he was wearing matching stiletto shoes on his feel. Somehow his outfits kept getting worse and worse; he dreaded to think what he would find himself wearing next.
Jon tried to get to his feet, but he found it almost impossible; the tall, thin heels of his shoes simply didn't provide enough support for his feet. So, unbuckling the straps on the shoes, he took them off, chucked them at the wall, and stood up in his bare feet.
Walking up to the mirror at one of the vanity tables around the room, Jon studied his new reflection. He was a very well-proportioned young African-American woman now, almost bursting out of the small bikini he wore. The woman was attractive, Jon thought, though she was attractive in the way a porn star was attractive, not in the way Meagan had been attractive.
He watched in the mirror as another woman walked up behind him. This one was a very busty young blonde woman; Jon could not help but stare at her bare bresasts and at the rest of her amazing figure, which was covered only with a skimpy pair of red panties. If the woman Jon had become looked a little bit like a porn star, this woman was like something out of an issue of Playboy.
"Sir," the woman said, "calm down. I know this is confusing, and I don't understand it any more than you do. I don't know how or why, but you and I have switched places with strippers at the Pussy Kat Klub, and now everyone believes that we're these women." The woman pointed at their reflecitons. "I'm embarassed to be dressed like this, and I'm sure it must be far worse for you as a man, but getting angry and panicking won't help. So if you'll just stop yelling at me"--now the woman seemed to be getting frustrated--"perhaps we can figure this thing out together."
"Actually," Jon said, turning around, "I'm not..."
He stopped dead. Blinking, he looked down at the woman's bare breasts, then he looked quickly back at her face, trying to scrub the sight he had just seen out of his memory, but it wouldn't go away; Jon suspected it was going to haunt him for the rest of his life.
"Mom?" he said.
Jane Madison stared. "Zoe? Is that you?"
"No, Mom," Jon said, rubbing his neck in embarassment. "It's um... it's me. It's Jon."
"Jon?" Jane looked at her sone, amazed... then she threw her arms around him. "Oh, Jon, I'm so glad to see you,"
Jon squirmed out of his mother's arms, queasy again at the touch of her breasts against his bare skin.
"Jon, how did..." Jane began. "Just a minute ago you were..." She shook her head. "Jon, do you understand what's going on?"
"I do," Jon said. "Sort of, anyway. People al over town are switching places with each other... like you have with this stripper woman, apparently. I was one of the first ones; I switched with a college girl named Meagan. I thought I was going to stay in her body, but a little bit ago I started switching again, and this time the switches were all really close together." He frowned. "I'm not sure how long I'm going to be here, so we should make it fast."
Jane nodded, quiet for a moment as she took all of this in. Then she asked, "Jon, have you talked to your brother and sister?"
"No," Jon said. "They've switched, too. But I--"
FLASH
Jon sighed as the light faded once again. He hadn't been finished talking to his mother yet. He hated the fact that he'd left her hanging mid-sentence; if anything, she was probably even more worried than she had been before Jon had talked to her. If he could stay in one body long enouh, he was going to have to track down that "Pussy Kat Klub".and find his mom again.
Now he found himself sitting on a set of cold stone steps downtown. He was outside, and the broad steps led down to the street. Looking behind him, Jon realized that he knew where he was; this was the police station.
Standing up and looking around, Jon saw that he was not alone. Dozens of people were here, crowded on the steps of the station. Uniformed police officers were walking busily through the crowd, and people were going into and out of the building in a steady stream. Most of the people who were here, save the police officers, had clearly been victims of swaps; many of them were dressed in outfits that clearly looked out of place on them. Several of the people here were dressed in the uniforms of the cheerleaders from his high school, though none of the people in the cheerleading uniforms looked to be teenage girls. Still, the bodies of most of the cheerleading squad must have been here. Looking down at his own body, Jon realized with dismay that he, too, was dressed in the short skirt and cropped, sleeveless top that made up the cheerleading uniform from his high school.
At the far end of the steps, dresseed in another cheerleading uniform and sitting alone, Jon saw a very familiar face. Winding his way through the crowd, Jon sat down next to the pre-teen boy he'd spotted and said, "Hey, Mikey."
Mikey, who Jon thought looked a little ridiculous dressed in a cheerleading outfit--though who was he to talk?--looked up at him. "Hi," he said a little glumly.
"Mike," Jon said, "It's me. Jon."
Mikey stared at Jon dumbly for a moment. Then he frowned. Then his eyes went wide and he threw his arms excitedly around his brother. "Jon!"
"Hey, Brat," Jon said, patting Mikey on the back. "It's good to see you."
"Jon, Mikey said, "how long have you been here? Did you just switch? I thought you were supposed to be a woman or something. Or, well, the person in that body was a woman, or whatever."
"I just got here," Jon said. "Earlier I was a girl named Meagan; I was Meagan for a few hours. But then I started switching around really quickly; I've been a ton of different people over the last, like, hour. FYI, I don't know how long I'm going to be here; when I switched into this body, I was in the middle of talking to Mom. I didn't get to tell her everything I needed to say."
"You talked to Mom?"
Jon nooded, then me smirked. "You'll never believe where she is. She's a stripper."
"Ewww," Mikey said, scowling.
"I know, Jon said."
They were silent for a moment, then Jon patted Mikey's knee and said, "Stay strong, Bro. We'll figure this out."
Suddenly, behind them, Jon heard a man clear his throat and begin to speak. Jon turned and saw a man dressed in yet another cheerleading outfit, a police badge pinned to his top. "Excuse me, people," he said. "I have an update. We just got off the phone with the governor; the town is going to be preparing for--"
FLASH
The last several swaps had been a wild ride for Jon, and he had begun to prepare himself to jump into any situation. Nevertheless, when the light faded again, Jon was truly startled by what he saw.
He was home. In his living room. Judging from the clothing the people around him were wearing, the bodies of all the people who had been in the house before the swap were still here, though an entirely new set of people was in their place. Ann Brant, his friend Tim's mother, was in Meagan's clothing; an elderly man was in his own clothing; there was a baby dressed in a tiny version of Zoe's black dress and boots crawling across the floor; a heavyset man was wearing Mikey's clothes. There was a somewhat shady-looking man in the mayor's clothes; there was a teenage girl in the bodyguard's suit, and a little boy in the agent's suit. Jon even saw a man in antother of Zoe's dresses, though he didn't have any of his sister's piercings or dark makeup, or her hair dye. The only "body" that should have been there that Jon couldn't find was the little girl who Karyn had turned into... but then, looking down, Jon could account for her as well. He frowned at the Dora the Explorer t-shirt and skirt he was wearing.
The television was on; everyone was gathered around the couch watching as a news report played. Right now there was an interview with a teenage boy in a police officer's uniform, talking about the efforts by the poilice to bring order to the city. As they watched, the man dressed in one of Zoe's dressed turned to Jon. "Angela, you said you worked at this station?"
Angela? Clearly the man thought that Jon was still the person who had replaced Karyn as the little girl. For a moment, Jon thought about telling then who he really was, but he thought better of it; he didn't know what kind of trouble Jon Madison was in. Karyn had done something very stupid when Jon had last been here, and by running, Jon was her accomplice. The feds didn't know who Karyn was, since they'd seen her as a little girl and not as herself; but they knew who Jon was, and they would be doing their best to try to track him down. Jon decided it would be wise to lay low for a while, and he hoped Karyn, wherever she was, had the good sense to do the same.
"I, um... yeah," I work there," Jon said. He started to walk to the kitchen to grab a chair for himself, since the couch, the armchair, and the floor in front of them were already quite full. Before he could take more than a couple of steps, though...
FLASH
If Jon had been surprised last time the light had cleared, he was astomished this time. He was still in the living room of his house. And, more startling, he realized when he looked at his clothing that he was wearing his own clothes... his very own clothes. For the first time in hours, Jon had returned to his own body. He was probably the only person in town who had become himself again.
"Oh my," said a creaky old voice. Jon looked at the source of the voice and saw the old man in the t-shirt and skirt Jon had been wearing a moment before.
"Something wrong, Angela?" asked the teenage girl dressed as a bodyguad.
"I'm not Angela," the old man said, "I'm Phil. I musta switched places with Angela."
"Then where's Angela?" the girl said.
Jon hesitated, then raised his hand. Everyone turned to him.
"Weird," the teenage girl said.
They all turned back to the television, though; apparently they didn't know enough about the switches yet to know how rare second-time swaps were. For now, Jon would go on pretending he was Angela, even though he was wearing his own clothing, because he wasn't sure it was safe to raise their suspicions any further.
Jon went over to the window and peered through the blinds. The police had dispersed, for the most part, though there was one police car and one federal car still parked in the street. They must have found out that Jon had disappeared from the house and satisfied themselves that the people who were in the house now didn't have any useful information. Clearly they hadn't let their guard completely down, though, given the faces that stared at the house from the other side of the car windows.
As Jon turned back to the room...
FLASH
And he realized, to his astonishment, that he was still in his living room. What was going on? Jon found himself on his hands and knees, and a quick glance at his clothing revealed that he was wearing Zoe's dress and boots. He sighed; he supposed he couldn't Slowly he got up from the floor.
"Oh my God," said Ann Brant suddenly, "She's walking! The baby's walking!" Everyone turned to look at Jon, surprised.
"I don't think so," said the guy in Mikey's clothing, pointing behind Jon. Jon turned, as did everyone else, and saw that the baby who had been dressed as Zoe a moment ago was now dressed in Jon's own clothing, and it was again crawling aimlessly around the rooom on its hands and knees.
The teenage girl looked at the baby, frowning, and then she turned to Jon. "Angela?"
"Yeah," Jon said. He didn't like this. He was starting to draw too much attention.
A moment later, the shifty-eyed man in the mayor's clothes stepped forward. "Something screwy's going on with this Angela chick," he said. "Why's she the only one of us who keeps switching? I ain't seen nothing on TV about anyone switching more than once."
The people in the room looked at each other; from their eyes, they all seemed to be in agreement.
The man swaggered up to Jon and grabbed him by the arm. "What's the deal, bitch? What's up with--"
FLASH
At last, Jon realized, as the world came back into view around him. He wasn't in his house anymore. And it was just about time; things had been pretty heated in that house. Jon felt sorry for whoever had jumped into Zoe after him;; he or she--she, he realized, looking down at his feminine clothing--was going to be facing some rough treatment until she proved that she wasn't that Angela woman, who the people in the living room now seemed convinced was up to something sinister.
Jon was now standing in the middle of a large crowd of people gathered around the front door of a modest-sized church. He was dressed in a conservative denim dress, which pegged him as a woman again; by this point, though, he had become so many women that it was getting to be par for the course. Jon still didn't much care for it, though.
Jon was more interested by what he saw up on the steps of the church. An old man was speaking loudly to the assembled crowd. Jon knew right away who this was; it was the reverend Jacob, the preacher he had met in the library what now seemed like ages ago. The man was dressed in surprisingly feminine clothes, though the clothes were extremely modest: he had on a long skirt and a blouse. Apparently the good preacher had decided that, if God wanted him to be a woman, he would be a woman; he would be a good, modest, Christian woman, though.
"The angel who visisted me this morning," Jacob intoned, "was dressed in the lascivious fashions of today's youth, but I assure you, my friends, it was only to illustrate a point; she wanted me to see the depravity of our modern world. Had she appeared as a crossdresser or a Hindu or a hippie, the point would have been the same, but God chose to send me my angel in the form of a sweet young woman. She had a grave warning for me, of God's wrath and the impending doom he has planned for this town. You're beginning to see that doom befall our town, not just in the form of his plague of body-switching, but in the form of the fires, the riots, and the confusion that is spreading over this town like a plague of locusts. I had hoped my angel would stay at my side, to help me see through the illusions God has placed over the sinners of this town, but it was not to be; as suddenly as she had appeared, by angel ascended back to heaven in a cloud of glory, leaving me alone to preach the message she had brought to me."
Jon smirked as he realized that the "angel" Jacob was talking about was none other than Jon himself, in the form of Meagan O'Shea. The preacher had clearly... embellished a little upon their meeting, though. Or a lot. Or almost entirely. Jon wondered if Jacob had consciously made up the more mystical elements of their conversation together, or if Jacob truly believed what he was saying. Either way, the story Jacob was telling now was wild and unbelievable, if inadvertently amusing, story.
The next thing Jacob said, however, seemed far less amusing to Jon.
"Children" Jacob said, "I implore you. God will not halt his angry march through our town until we have purified ourselves of the taint that has so displeased him. I have tried for decades to preach to the heathens and convince them by peace to give up their sinful ways, and my timidity and gentle hand have only allowed the cancer of sin to grow. My friends, if we cannot part the sinners from their sins by peace, then we must do it with the weapons of war. So I ask you now to go to your homes, to find whatever weapons you have at your disposal, and if you have none, then I urge you to find weapons by whatever means necessary. Then you must seek out the sinners in our town. You must hunt them down and you must use your guns and your axes, your torches and your righteous swords, to cut out the sins of this town at their very roots. Together we, the hands of righteousness, will make the streets run red with the blood of the profane."
To Jon's utter amazement, a number of the people in the crowd cheered in agreement with Jacob's words, and as they began to disperse, they seemed energized with a wild fury. Jon couldn't believe these people were taking Jacob seriously... but, then, they had been faced today with events that should have been impossible. And Jon, a somewhat sheltered boy, had not seen the violence, the paranoia, the rage and the fear that many people kept hidden deep down inside them. He hoped that the people would calm down once they'd left the influence of Jabob Foster's lulling voice... but looking at their faces, Jon believed that the town's troubles were about to become much, much worse.
He shivered as the light once again swept him away.
