"...not to bring in the cops. All right, that's it; I'm killing this bitch."
"No! No, don't! Wait! Stop!"
"And why exactly should I do that?"
The first thing Jon noticed as the light faded was the handgun pointed directly at his forehead. The second thing he noticed was the large, angry man holding the handgun. The third was the ropes holding his hands and feet together and tying his torso tightly to he chair he was sitting in, and the fourth was the piece of duct tape stretched tight over his mouth.
"Because, uh... because if you kill her, you won't have any leverage, and there's nothing to keep me from coming in and arresting you."
The voice, a man's voice came from the other side of the door to the room where Jon found himself. Jon tried not to make any sudden movements that might set off the man with the gun, buthe needed to appraise his situation. He looked to be in a college dorm room, one which probably belonged to two women, judging from the furniture and the decorations. The room was empty save for Jon's captor and himelf, but it sounded like there was at least one person outside the room trying to talk down the man with the gun; Jon was grateful for that, though he wished the negotiator would get through to his captor soon. Jon was tied to a wooden desk chair in the center of the room with heavy, sturdy rope. The man held his gun close and steady in front of Jon's head, never moving it mor than an inch, though the man himself appeared to be agitated. He was dressed in a white sweatshirt with the letters of the local college spelled out in pink block letters and a pair of tight-fitting jeans, along with purple socks; it appeared to be women's clothing, but the man must have looked for the most androgynous clothing he could find, as this was hardly sweatshirt weather. The man still wore jewelry, makeup, and a hairband, though, so he hadn't thoroughly purged himself of feminine attire. Jon hazarded a glance down at his own clothing and saw that he was dressed only in a bra and panties. There was a pile of more substantial clothing at his feet, but it appeared to be shredded; Jon shuddered to think what the man had been doing with the girl Jon had become before Jon had jumped in.
"All right," the man said, a bit calmer now. "She stays alive... for now." Jon shut his eyes in relief as the man relaxed his grip on his gun. "But you better beat it, the man went on. "And I know you probably got more cops parked outside; they better leave, too. I'm not a patient guy; this chick isn't gonna keep her head for long."
"Look," came the voice from the other sid of the door, "why are you doing this? What do you want?"
"I want my fucking penis back, all right?" Jon's captor shouted. "I'm not a girl. And I don't care what you or that other chick say; this ain't natural and I'm not waiting around for you guys to sait on a bunch of committes and figure out what's what. I wanna be a man again, and pronto."
The man outside the room didn't respond. Jon waited impatiently to hear the man's voice again, but it never came. Then again,what could the man do, even if he did respond? The man couldn't return Jon's captor to his orginal body. Only Jon could do that, and even at that,. Jon could only do it if he could get his hands on the rock. And that was clearly impossible at the moment. This situation was at a very precarious standstill, one that would probably end in blood. Jon could only hope that he was out of his current life before it happened.
Jon had a trick up his sleeve... so silently, subtly, while the man's attention was focused on the door and not on his prioner, Jon got to work.
When Jon's captor turned back to the room, apparently satisfied that the negotiator outside had given up, Jon bounced in his seat and wagged his head and muttered as best he could through the duct tape over his mouth... everything he could do to get the man's attention. The man looked at Jon quizically for a moment, then, apparently getting the point, he leaned in close, close enough that Jon could smell the whisky on the man's breath. "Listen, bitch," he said, speaking low, "I'll take off the tape and say what you wanna say, but only if you say it quiet and calm and don't try to get the attention of the cop on the other side of that door. The second you raise your voice..." The man mimed pulling a trigger with his free hand. "Got it?" Jon nodded furiously. "Good," the man said.
The man ripped the tape roughly from Jon's mouth, causing Jon to wince at the sting. "Look," he said queitly, "I'm not who you think I am."
"You already told me that, babe," the man said, "and I already told you, it don't matter to me. I don't care whether your name is Betty or Jane or Sue; you serve your purpose the same whoever you are. 'Sides," he added, smilling with crooked teeth, "if you really ar stuck in someone else's body, don't you wanna be turned back into yourself, too? Seems to me we're in his together, you and me."
Jon hesitated over his next words, then plunged in. After all, what did he have to lose at this point? "No, you don't understand," he said. "I'm the one who caused this. I'm the one who made everyone start switching bodies. It was me. And I know how to fix it. But you have to let me go."
"Right," the man said, scoffing and backing away from Jon. "Like I believe that. If you know how to fix this, why didn't you say something before?"
"Because I wasn't here before," Jon said. "I'm not this girl that I look like to you, and I'm not whoever was in this body after you touched her. I just jumped into this body. Do you know of anyone else in town who's changed bodies more than once? I've been in, like, twenty different bodies so far. I'm special, because I'm the one who caused all this."
"Shut it, bitch," the man said, tightening his grip on his gun again, "or I'll shoot you just because you're annoying."
"I can prove it," Jon said. "I can also see people for the people they really are, not the people they look like to everyone else. I'm the only person in town who can do that. Have you run into anyone else who can see you as you?"
"Oh yeah?" the man said. He was still scowling, but he seemed a little less skeptical now. "What do I look like, then?"
"You're a tall man," Jon said. "Big. Muscular." He didn't say a little overweight. "Black hair in a crew cut. You have a big scar on your left cheek and a tattoo of an ornate cross on the back of your neck. Satisfied?"
The man raised his eyebrows in surprise... then he smacked his gun across Jon's face. "That's for getting me turned into a chick." He leaned in toward Jon. "Now, how did you do this, and how are you gonna fix it?"
"Come closer," Jon said. "I don't want them"--he nodded his head toward the door--"to know."
The man leaned in further.
"Closer," Jon said. "I want to whisper it... this thng is dangerous, so I don't want anyone else to know about it."
The man leaned all the way in, placing his ear right next to Jon's mouth, forcing him to lower his gun. Taking advantage of the moment, Jon swung his free left arm around and punched the man hard in the back of the head. The man staggered forward and dropped his gun, startled by the suddenness of Jon's strike. He reached down for his gun, but Jon was faster than the man; kicking out his feet, which were still tied tightly together, Jon kicked the gun toward the wall.
As the man scrambled across the floor for his weapon, Jon tossed the ropes off his hands, shook free of the bonds that had held his waist, and picked up the chair in which he'd been sitting. The man got the gun in his hands and turned to fire at Jon, but before the man could pull the trigger, Jon brought the chair down hard over the man's head. The gun went off, but instead of hitting Jon, the bullet lodged into the wall. The man screamed as the chair crashed over him; then he felt silent and still. Jon watched the man carefully for a moment, then the muscles in his body relaxed. The man was unconscious.
Leaning down, Jon untied his feet. As he picked up the loose strands of rope, Jon looked at them and reflected. As children, he and Zoe and Karyn had been fascinated by magic. First it was all wizards and fairy princesses, Merlin and Glenda the Good Witch. As Jon and Karyn had approached adolescence, though, their interests had turned to stage magic. Jon's grandfather had nurtured his grandson's interest in magic by buying Jon a magic kit, so it had seemed particularly fitting when his grandfather had left Jon the wishing stone, which possessed powers Jon never could have imagined back in his Houdini days. Jon, of course, had long outgrown his interest in magic, though Zoe never had; after some brief flirtation with being a girly girl, Zoe had plunged headfirst at age thirteen into the goth lifestyle, and Jon had a feeling that Zoe actually believed that she was capable of casting spells. Who knows? After inheriing the wishing stone, what right did Jon have anymore to scoff at magic?
Though Jon had long away put his magic kit and books away in the attic, he still remembered a few of his old tricks. He'd been paticularly interested in Houdini-style escape tricks as a kid; he still remembered all the motions necessary to escape from almost any knot. After his magic years, Jon had gotten into James Bond and fantasized about escaping from one megalomaniac villain after another. Jon had never seriously believed that he would ever have a practical use for his knot skills, though. But today they had saved his life.
Leaning down, Jon tied up his captor with a skill equal to his ability to escape from the same ropes. One he was satisfied that the man was sufficiently restrained, Jon opened the door and looked out at half a dozen startled faces. Jon quickly zeroed in on the man who had been negotiating with his captors; most of these people appeared to be college students who'd had the good fortune to remain in their own bodies so far, but there was one man among them who appeared to be notably older--probably his thirties--and he was dressed, rather unflatteringly, in a bikini that was even tinier than the underwear Jon was wearing.
"I think I have a package for you," Jon said, pointing toward the bound an unconscious man on the floor.
"But... what? How... what?" the man in the bikini staggered.
Jon shrugged. "It was no big deal," he said as the light took him again.
