"Oh, hi Karyn," Jon said to her in the food court.
"Hi Jo...aaah what?"
"I don't know," Jon said, trying to back away. But it was futile. An invisible force was inexorably dragging him toward her, and her toward him.
"The stone!" he said. "Unless it's not the only magic thing in the world."
"I think it's probably got to be your stone," Karyn said, not bothering to fight it, just making sure to not be knocked off her feet. "Who has it?"
"It's at home, uh!" he said as their bodies pressed against each other. Pressed very hard together. Other people were staring.
"Get a room!" someone shouted.
"I'm not doing this because I want to!" Jon yelled, before realizing there was no way he could possibly qualify that statement with an explanation as to why it was so.
"The only one I can think of is my mother," he said. "Oh my god, what's happening!"
Both Jon and Karyn were panicking now, because where they were in contact, their clothes had already merged together, and now their flesh was. Her breasts were now flesh bridges between her chest and his own, while they still faced each other.
"Oh god no!" Karyn screamed. The two of them were smushing together like putty and their torsos were dissolving together.
"No! No! No!" they both yelled together, as their heads got closer to each other. They tried to lean away from each other with their necks, afraid of a kiss that would be a little bit more harmful than a normal one, resulting in their heads fusing together. But they were surprised when their heads did not fuse. Instead, Jon's twisted around, to be side by side with Karyn's, on her left. Both heads, over the same pair of shoulders. The flesh bubbled and reformed, with the clothes they were wearing mixed together. Jon looked to his right, while Karyn looked to her left.
"Jon, your face!" she shouted.
"What is it ah! Hi high voice! Ah!" Jon said in a deeper, then cracked voice, then sweet and sonorous voice that matched Karyn's.
"You, haaa, gasp, look like me!" she wheezed. "Sound like me too!"
As they were speaking, it was clear that they were drawing from the same set of lungs. They found it made speaking very difficult if they tried to do it at the same time, as one breathing out would mean the other's lungs were exhaling too, when one was breathing in, the other wouldn't be able to exhale at that moment, since they were the same lungs with the same diaphragm, and they merely spoke and breathed through separate air passages.
When the change was done, they stood, heads cheek to cheek, as siamese twins. Only one copy of a body from the neck down - KARYN'S body - and two necks coming out from that body, with two heads, both of them looking like Karyn. But the one on the left contained Jon's mind.
"Oh my god!" Karyn cried.
"You're telling ME!" Jon lamented. "I'm right-handed."
The food-court was dead silent.
CLAP! someone clapped their hands. CLAP! Someone else clapped. CLAP CLAP CLAP! several onlookers joined in. The whole food court of the mall broke into applause.
"Wow! What an amazing act!" someone yelled.
"The aristocrats," Jon said with a deadpan serious face.
"BMFRllll! HA HA ha!" Karyn couldn't restrain laughing at that. A few people in the audience who got the joke laughed as well. The two of them had just watched a documentary on this standard joke, that ended with that as the punchline, premised by an atrocious act with all sorts of abominable acts and horrors.
They took a bow and carefully left the food court. They were both surprised by how little practice it took them to figure out how to walk together. Effectively, it was as if each only had half a body, and that was all that was left of them, and they were just glued together at the bloody parts, so Jon only had a left hand and a left leg and Karyn only had the right. Their faces also blushed as they rushed out, because they were sexually aroused by the situation, and knew the other could feel it too, and neither one was completely sure who was responsible for the sexual feelings, so the only solution was to not talk about it.
Also unspoken between them was the fact that they now had to go to the bathroom. Badly. How did that work anyway, did the contents of their bladders combine but not get any smaller, even though their combined body was apparently the same size and shape as Karyn's was originally? The blasted stone had the power to create or destroy mass apparently, but it didn't do the decency of making the urine in their bladders just disappear during the change just for their convenience? And it was more than their bladders, it was intestinal contents too.
"Jon, I'm afraid, I have to..." Karyn started.
"I know! I feel it too. Let's just, get it done, I won't look at anything, unless you ask for help."
They went into the ladies' room. They had biggest dump of their lives, and a satisfying leak too. There was more awkward silence at the end, as they were both feeling VERY relieved and physically quite comfortable now, and didn't want to mention that fact, for having shared that experience. And again, they were sexually aroused. Jon didn't want to admit that it was mostly him (or so he assumed), for having experienced that as a girl, even if he averted his eyes, he - or perhaps we should say she - had still felt it all. Karyn didn't want to admit that her component to it was substantial and for all she knew, it was entirely due to her. Suffice it to say, at the end of the ordeal, they were both feeling really relieved, good, comfortable, aroused, and embarrassed.
They got to Jon's home and found the stone sitting on the kitchen table and Jon's mom's car gone. She had apparently set it out there and then left the house. But what were they going to do about their current situation?
Jon picked up the stone in her hand (i.e. their left hand, since that is "her hand") and said "I wish we knew what the wish that caused this was." And then they did. "Whew. It's full of loopholes to get out of it. We just need to specify in the way that we're more than friends and then go back to normal."
"Aww," Karyn said.
"What?" asked Jon.
"Well, come on, I know that solves the problem, but still, at the back of my mind, this is kind of cool, and I kind of wish we could stay like this forever."
"Karyn, I'm STILL HOLDING THE STONE!" She hadn't noticed since her left hand wasn't hers any more.
"Wha .. what? But, oh no, maybe because you're holding it..."
Nope, they felt the warmth of the wish being granted. Apparently they counted as much as the same person that it was good enough for it to be in contact with Jon's side for Karyn to be able to be able to wish with it.
"Now there are no loopholes, since you were 100 percent explicit with no wiggle room!" Jon cried.
"No, oh no! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! ... FOR THE NEXT FIVE MINUTES! I wish we could stay like this for the next FIVE MINUTES!" she yelled.
"It's too late, you said forever, and we've shared at least two sentences each since then."
"I'm so sorry! I'm sorry! Please forgive me, I'm so sorry oh god I'm so stupid, I'm so..." she was bawling.
"Calm down, being punished with the same situation as me is punishment enough, we won't get anywhere by you being miserable."
Karyn was still crying.
Jon rubbed her right cheek against Karyn's left. And suddenly they were extremely sexually aroused again. And then they were mutually extremely embarrassed again.
"Do you want to, you know," Karyn said.
Jon knew exactly what she was talking about.
"Are you ok with that, with me here?"
"It's your body too, now," Karyn said.
Much playing with themselves and eventually movie-watching later, they were snuggled up under the blanket in Jon's bed, just their two identical heads sticking out. If you just saw that, what with the blanket being in the way, you might just think they were two identical twin girls who were huddling together heads side by side in a bed. On wishing to understand the wish and all its effects and to learn if there was any loophole they hadn't thought of, they learned that they were also immortal and would never go old. They were literally going to be like this FOREVER, as Karyn had said. Through the end of Earth and the heat death of the universe, they'd eventually just be floating in space. Well, maybe something could be done about that too, the magic stone could create or destroy matter so maybe it could reinvigorate the universe as it ground to a close, though the distance range limit of a few miles would prevent them from wishing the sun to be made younger or for the Earth to be out of danger, but maybe it could be used somehow to do something.
"Uh oh, mom's home," Jon said.
"Are you sure you want to do this," Karyn said.
"Do you have any better ideas? Do you want to explain this to anyone normally?"
"No, I guess not. You go ahead, you've thought about what to say after all."
"Ok, I wish," Jon paused to carefully say it. She didn't want to misspeak anything. "That our new state would not surprise anyone. That we would still remain, as far as anyone else is concerned, my mom's child but also Karyn's parents' child, that everyone who knows us will recognize us and not think anything is the matter, and that no one would ever think this is strange or unusual in any way, no one will be able to stop and think about the contradictions or their implications."
Jon's mom knocked on the door and they beckoned her in.
"Hi there, you two. Sorry I've been gone, something came up all of a sudden with work. How has your day been?"
"It's been a weird day," Jon said.
"It can't be any weirder than mine," Jon's mom said.
"Oh, I'd take that bet," Jon said.
"Well earlier today, I was wishing for..."
"Oh don't we know it," chimed in Karyn.
"I, uh, I was wishing you two would, uh, be happy," she lied, but truth be told, she couldn't make sense in her mind of what she had actually wished for. Why would she wish for them to be more than friends? They were already conjoined twins and best friends, what more is there than that? It didn't make any sense. But oh well. "But I was just thinking, that I haven't always there for you as much as I could have, and wouldn't it be great if I had more money to provide for the future you deserve, and I wished I would get a promotion. And then all of a sudden, I was called from work, and they offered to make me the CEO of the company! Just like that! Out of the blue! They want to pay me 8 million dollars a year to run the company! It's crazy, I mean, why me? Has the quality of my work been so good that they decided to let me control it all?"
Both Jon and Karyn were rolling their eyes at this.
"Yes mom, I guess you're right, you have us beat, your day was WAY weirder than ours," Jon said, trying to not sound sarcastic. She wondered if her mom picked up on that.
"Well anyway, I just wanted to tell you that. I have stuff to prepare for, tomorrow so I have to go. Good night you two, I love you both very much, and I'm proud of you, I just wanted to tell you that too, I want you to know that."
"Mom number 2 is very nice," Karyn said.
"Hey. She's mom number 1 to me," Jon criticized.
"I didn't mean. Oh whatever. Hey stop that! Didn't you get enough already?"
"It's my body too," Jon stuck her tongue out at her. Which Karyn could barely see. It was kind of hard for them to face each other, since it required them to turn their heads at 90 degree angles. "That's a weird ethical question though. If you don't want it to happen, does that mean that if I masturbate, that it's rape?"
"I... I don't know. And if I do go along with it, is it sex? That's a headache I'd rather not even devote one wasted thought to. But I'm not exactly going to fight you on it, I'm not really against it. Also, it feels amazing since I can't feel my left arm, or, your, left arm, or just your arm should I say, so it just feels like someone else is doing it to me, maybe I should do it this time so you can see what I mean?"
"Yeah," Jon gasped. "I see what you mean. Wow. Um, Karyn, can we, um, can we kiss while we're doing it again?"
"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, that was really nice. Maybe we can... oh wait, I know, do you still have the stone?"
"You want me to pick it up again? It's on the night table on my side."
"Yeah," Karyn said.
"Ok. Say your wish."
"Ok, I wish our necks were more flexible. But that they wouldn't look any different. Just that it would be comfortable to turn our heads 90 degrees, so we can easily face each other."
"Oh, good idea," Jon said.
They continued where they left off. They both decided it was very nice after all.
