"I saw a man this morning
Who did not wish to die." - P.S. Stewart
.
"Would you kill yourself if a cute kitten told you to?" mewed Sock.
Sock, after much practice, had finally figured out how to possess small animals. At this moment, Sock had possessed a feline and was rubbing against Jonathan's legs on the sidewalk, purring softly. Not really a kitten, like Sock implied; more like an oldish cat. It was orange with stripes, vaguely similar to Sock's hair colour. If you gave the cat a silly hat and wrapped it with a woolly scarf, it would have been the spitting image of Sock.
Jonathan had been trying to ignore Sock while waiting for the bus.
"No..." was his only reply.
He really hoped that no one would walk by and see him there. Not because Sock was a talking cat (even as a cat, Jonathan was sure no one else could hear him), but because Sock began to rub his new feline face into Jonathan's leg more aggressively. Jonathan put a hand to his brow. Anyone walking past this scene would have assumed that Jon had extra-dose catnip in his trousers. Jon tried to retaliate by giving Sock a glare, but to no avail.
"Pick me up! Meow!"
Sock noticed Jon turn up the volume on his headphones.
"Nope... And leave that cat alone." His voice became louder, albeit possibly from turning up the volume to his music, so Sock phased out of the cat's body.
The cat, frightened, scrambled away from the area. Jon watched it sprint away into a nearby garden.
"Well," said Sock, straightening his yellow goggles, "Yesterday I manifested objects. Today, I can control animals. So now the next logical step would be... possessing humans."
Jonathan turned to look at Sock. Jon's eyes no longer half-lidded. They were wide with apprehension.
Sock smiled. Even though Sock wasn't a cat anymore, Jon noticed that Sock could still smile like one.
"Now I'll possess you." said Sock.
Jon's eyes went back to being half-closed. He turned to look at the road. "You're not going to." He wasn't giving an order. He just said it matter-of-factly.
"Like you have any say in it." replied Sock.
"Look, I don't exactly have the best scripture knowledge, but I'm pretty sure demons need some kind of 'consent' to control people. Even with the cat, you had to coax it."
Jonathan was right. The cat seemed to sense the invisible demon-perhaps using animal instincts-and seemed to like him. Sock liked moggies. Even when Sock was alive, wild animals and pets seemed at ease around him.
Until he killed them, of course.
Sock began to beg. "Then please, Jonathan, let me. Just this once? Just let me pos-"
"No. What would you even do, anyway?"
Sock shrugged. "I'd probably just goof off. Make you do embarrassing stuff in front of everyone. Do a funny dance. Nothing you can't handle. Everyone thinks you're crazy anyway." Sock adjusted his the knot in his unnecessarily-long scarf. He quickly looked back up at Jonathan and added, "I promise I won't kill anyone while I'm controlling you!"
He shouldn't have said that.
He really shouldn't have said that.
Newton's Third Law of Conversation (if such a thing existed) would dictate that for every statement, there is equal and opposite subtext. So, by adding the part about not killing someone, Sock only strengthened the idea in Jonathan's mind that he would.
"Yeah, right. Just leave me alone."
"You know I can't do that," smiled Sock. "It's my job."
Jonathan turned back to staring at the road. He turned up the volume on his headphones again, leaving a long, awkward silence for Sock.
Sock decided that he might as well try. He braced himself. He finally was going to possess his human counterpart.
Sock floated up to Jonathan and phased phased through him, like he had done with the cat. He floated and moved until his entire body was inside Jonathan, much to Jon's annoyance.
It had no effect. Jonathan was still sound in mind and in complete control of himself.
Correction, it did have an effect on Jonathan: It just miffed him off more.
Jon side-stepped away from Sock.
"Come on! At least try to help me!" Sock said.
Jon scowled. "I'm not letting you possess me."
"Please. Don't you trust me?"
"No."
"But we are friends, right? Friends trust each other."
"No. We're not."
Sock looked genuinely disappointed. "Why?"
"Why?! I mean, help me out here," said Jonathan, starting to get louder again. He gestured towards the bus stop sign. "You appear out of the blue, annoying me, ruining my life, making everyone at school stay away from me, all while trying to convince me to off myself. And now I'm supposed to be your friend because of what? Because you asked nicely? Because you have a nice face?"
Sock couldn't help himself. He should have helped himself, he knew, but he just couldn't.
"Why not?" he shrugged, and tried to look charming. "I'd do anything you say if you flashed me a smile."
Terrible mistake. Really terrible. Jonathan turned to Sock, suddenly very angry.
"You can drop that shit right now."
"All I meant…" Sock said, but he was slightly glad when Jonathan cut him off, because he'd honestly didn't know what he'd meant.
"I said drop it. I'm not dead. Living people can't be friends with demons."
Sock nodded, guiltily, and he bowed his head, as if paying his respects to the road (if roads could die, which they can't).
In the distance, Jonathan could see the bus approaching.
…
The principal of Black Sheep High turned back to the science teacher. "You say Mr. Combs held a lighted Bunsen burner to your bott-to your lowerer back?"
"Deliberately." replied the science teacher.
Jonathan was in the principal's office. Sock was floating next to him, laughing. Jon shot him an angry look, though he didn't dare say anything to Sock in front of the two educators.
Sock shut up.
"And you're quite certain this had nothing to do with the science experiment the class was engaged in?"
"Nothing whatsoever," she replied sternly. Her old eyes gleamed vindictively at Jonathan.
Jonathan just stared blankly at her. He had already said that he didn't do it. That it was an accident. He decided he would just let the two academics talk it out by themselves.
The principal, who obviously had other things on her mind, seemed to only just notice that the teacher was the only one in the room standing.
"Please, sit down." said the principal.
"I can't."
"Oh, right, of course."
Sock began to giggle. Jon ignored him.
"Jonathan Combs is a usually quiet, introverted boy from a good family. Until recently, he hasn't had to see this office for any incidents..."
Jonathan's eyes became even more jaded than usual. 'Until recently'. As in, until Sock crept into his life, he'd had a clean record with the school.
The principal had trailed off into a dull lecture."...You remember that speech I gave at last month's Teachers' Conference? About earning students' respect?"
The principal basically began to put the whole situation down to the old 'boys will be boys' cliche. Both adults were so busy that Jonathan took this chance to give Sock another death glare. Sock just gave a bemused shrug.
This had all been Sock's fault. During science class, the teacher walked past the burner on Jon's desk, so Sock saw an open opportunity, and seized it. Using his newly-found powers of object manipulation, he stuck an incorporeal hand into the burner, turned it on to full-blast, and, then, well...
The principal was still talking. "...It seems like you're legitimately disappointed with with your class' behavior, but shouldn't you be used to this by now? You're not a student teacher anymore. You haven't just started teaching last week. Learn to be more authoritative and the kids will respect you more," the principal said.
The science teacher nodded, possibly thinking something along the lines of, 'And what about my roasted bottom?'
Jonathan wondered how they could be talking as if he wasn't in the room. If only he could learn to ignore Sock like that.
The principal picked up a sheaf of papers on her desk and began to read them. The discussion seemed to be over.
Jonathan hoped that he would just be let off with a warning. Sock began to look bored and disappointed. What had started with fire and demon magic had seemingly ended with an anti-climax. The science teacher tapped acid-stain fingers on the office desk, impatiently.
"Then, this boy," she said, gesturing a hand towards Jonathan, "is not going to be punished for trying to set fire to my backsi-to me.
The principal looked up from her papers.
"Punished? Well, if you're absolutely certain that his actions were intentional, then give him after-school detention."
"Yes!" yelled Sock, punching a fist into the air.
…
After detention for the science class incident, Jonathan left the school. He started walking home after a long bus ride. His demon counterpart followed right behind him, giving Jon a friendly reminder that if he killed himself, he wouldn't have to deal with detentions ever again.
The teacher had given him a lecture. What the principal had left out in lecturing to him (she has been pretty easy on him in terms of punishment, considering), the teacher more than made up for.
"You're in grade 11, Jonathan, so you should act like you're in grade 11," she said, which Jonathan saw as pretty bad advice, since, if the Bunsen burner event was his work (which it wasn't), then that's exactly what he was doing.
So Jonathan just said the usual stuff. About being sorry, he won't do it again, and he didn't know what he was thinking. That kind of thing.
"You have to admit, it was funny." smiled Sock. He floated up next to Jonathan.
Jonathan made no reply, though he must have heard Sock, because his headphones were off.
"Oh, come on, Jonathan. Not even the tiniest bit funny?" Sock measured an inch with his fingers.
Still no reply.
"You're laughing on the inside," said Sock.
"No, I'm not."
Sock may have been right, just a little bit, but Jonathan sure as Hell wasn't going to admit it.
...
After five o'clock, which was the end of his shift, Sock left Jonathan to go back to the underworld.
Sock didn't have anyone to really chat with in the Hell (other than Mephistopheles, but he was usually busy with the renovations), so he was in no hurry to get there, giving him plenty of time for reflection on the day's business.
Despite how wonderfully his plan had worked in science class, Sock was still upset about not being able to possess Jonathan. Sock wondered if he ever would be able to.
The one thing that also stayed in his mind, as he floated through the red portals and tunnels to Hell, was Jon telling him to drop 'that shit' about them being friends. And the reason Sock had to drop it was because Jonathan was still a living human being.
The Third Law of Conversation, Sock thought to himself. The implication was that he could have kept on holding that shit, that they could be friends, if Jonathan was dead.
That cheered him up. He started to think that if he couldn't work things out so that, one day, he and Jon would be standing in front of each other, both dead, then his name wasn't Napoleon Maxwell Sowachowski.
Which, of course, it was.