This isn't the Beatles!
by JMK758
Chapter One
Magical Mystery Tour

Jimmy Palmer turns the key and pushes his apartment door open with the last of his strength, planning to simply collapse on the carpet and start snoring. Undressing is just too much work, his clothes feel too heavy to hold up and he's not going to stay awake longer than it'll take to shove his trousers down, step out of them, pull off and drop his shirt and crash onto the couch - except it's already full.

"Hi, Jimmy!" Chelle exclaims. He's happy to see her, slightly less so to see Sammy Sky seated beside her on the couch on his left. It's not that he doesn't like her, they've become good friends - particularly after they'd gotten her free of a murder charge - but the chirpy blonde ME Apprentice is best taken in small doses - when he's awake.

Still, there's no call to be ungracious; he can summon up a last burst of energy to play good host for 30 seconds, then ride the last diminishing dredges of energy into the bedroom and collapse there.

Sammy almost runs off the couch and grabs his arm. "Now I don't want you to freak, honey, it's not anything that can't be fixed."

He stares down into her pale blue eyes. 'Honey?' Looking down - she's five nothing as opposed to his six feet - Chelle's five five and closer to his face but why's Sammy addressing him so familiarly?

"Actually, I don't think it's so bad as all that," Michelle says from the couch while he tries to extricate his arm from Sammy's grip, but she turns on Michelle.

"Just shut up! This is your fault!"

x

"HEY!" He yanks his arm loose from the small woman. Friend is friend but "Don't you talk to my wife like that."

"No," Chelle says. "It's okay."

He turns, amazed that she'd let a guest do this, but as he does he catches a glimpse of a large, seemingly ancient book open upon a small stand on the coffee table before her. "What's that doing out here?"

Every witch, be she Wiccan or no, has a book where she keeps her spells and other magical work, and so far as he knows it's universally called the 'Book of Shadows'. Chelle says it's an ancient title but he's always suspected she got it from 'Charmed'. But the point is that it's supposed to be in the wheeled cabinet she uses as an altar together with the rest of her stuff, not open wide on a stand on the coffee table.

"That's what I'm trying to tell you," Sammy says, pulling his attention down. Discourteous – again; he was talking to his wife.

He looks from her to his wife to their very strange friend. "What?"

"Listen," Sammy says, looking up at him intently, "it's very simple."

"What is?" What's their usually so bubbly friend stressed out about? And he's not forgetting, or soon forgiving, her uber-rudeness.

"I am she," Sammy points back and forth between herself and Chelle, "and she is me."

"And we are all together goog oog a choo?"

"THIS ISN'T THE BEATLES!"

He nearly jumps out of her grip.

"I thought you said you weren't going to freak," Chelle says.

"I said I didn't want HIM to freak! I can freak as much as I want!"

x

He's had enough. He tears his arm free, tries to cling to the last of his temper but he's exhausted and she's really working it. "Sammy, you're freaking enough. Before I throw your... butt out of here, what are you trying to say?"

"Honey–"

"Don't 'honey' me."

"I was trying to teach her a bit of magic and–"

"Wait! You were trying to teach Chelle magic? She's the witch, not–"

x

A horrible realization chills him. He looks down to the petite but unusually not so intense blonde, then to his wife seated on the couch, who shrugs and gives him a very disturbing smile. "Oh no. Oh no, no no no no no." He looks back down to Sammy.

"Please don't freak."

"Don't freak. Don't freak? HOW CAN I NOT FREAK? MY WIFE IS IN... here?"

"Hey," Michelle's mouth says, "it's a perfectly good body."

"Yeah? If it's so good, get inside it!"

She smiles and shrugs - when does she ever get mad even when in someone else's body? "If I could I would."

'I'm gonna jump out a window.' "All right, what happened?" 'But that'll only give Ducky more work and ruin his night.'

"I'm teaching her a bit of magic," Sammy - Michelle says, "with my wand. And dingbat over there–."

"Over there," Chelle's mouth says.

"Reaches out and touches the tip of the wand just as I say muto!"

"What's muto?"

"Shift, change, alter, transform, exchange, take your freaking pick."

He looks from one woman to the other. "Oh... Frack."

xx

Fifteen minutes later, fifteen minutes of him on the couch with Chelle on the other end and Sammy - or rather Sammy at the other end and Chelle paging through the Book of Shadows...

"That's it." She closes the book from back to front. "I went through the entire book - hardly a point because I wrote it - and there's nothing I can use as a Transfer Spell."

"But couldn't you just..."

"First thing we tried," Chelle says, sitting back in the couch. Rather Sammy in Michelle's body–

"Apparently," Sammy, no, Chelle says, "you can't just recreate an accident to reverse it."

"Then what can you do?"

"I left a voice mail for Kendra on all her phones." She looks at the clock on the cable box. "If she plays her message - at 11:14 - she may be able to help."

"Well," Sammy in Michelle at the couch right arm says, "if she's as good a High Priestess as she is a lawyer," Kendra Little had represented Sammy at her murder arraignment, "she should be able to save us."

"Well, what do we do in the meantime?" Jimmy asks.

x

Sammy's face turns to him. He can barely get used to the idea that his wife's in there. "Why don't you get some rest? You look beat."

"I was beat when I got home. Now I'm sliced, diced and grated."

"Go to bed."

"Great idea," Sammy in Michelle agrees. "But..." She looks to her former body. "Which of us gets the bed with him?"

Jimmy's off the couch before the blonde between them can say a word. "No. No way. I am not getting into this. I'm not getting bound up with either of you until this is finished."

"Honey," blonde Michelle inside exclaims, leaping to her feet. "You're a genius!"

"Oh heck, I knew tha... what did I say?"

"Binding - or rather unbinding. Our souls, essences, whatever, were transferred but were never bound to these bodies. An unbinding spell might work."

"So cast it."

She shakes her head. "It's not that simple. You can't just cast an unbinding spell. You need things." She sits down and quickly flips through the pages until she reaches a page with her distinctive calligraphic script, which is headed in large flowing script 'To Unbind A Spirit.' "Yes. Yes. Yes ... Damn."

"Damn?"

"Pineapple."

"Pineapple? You unbind a spirit with pineapple?" Sammy's face gives him a look that can only come from too long observing Agent Gibbs. "All right, pineapple." He looks at the cable box on the television. "I can try S&H." An hour ago he was ready to fall face first onto the nearest horizontal or near horizontal surface. Now both women are on their feet and he's still confused about which one to speak to. "Any particular kind?"

"Fresh as possible," Sammy's lips say.

"Figures. Hope that doesn't mean just harvested."

"Would be nice."

"Don't go away."

The two women exchange glances, then back to him but it's Sammy's mouth that asks "Where would we go?"

"I'd kind of like to go to Sodom and Gomorrah and really shake them up," Sammy says with Michelle's mouth. Double glares, one up, one down. "All right," she gives in. "Would've been fun."

"Too much fun," Jimmy says, heading to the door beside the couch.

x

"Jimmy?" the petite blonde calls. He turns back to her. "Aren't you going to give me a kiss?"

He can't help it. He hesitates. It's Sammy. No, it's not Sammy, it's Michelle in Sammy's body, but he can't kiss her with his wife right next to – No, with Sammy right next to... "I'll give you two when this is solved."

She looks away. "Yeah, right, whatever..."

"Chelle–"

"Go before they close."

He opens the door, walks out as fast as he can. He won't be suicidal enough to mention S&H is 24/7.