2
"Aunt Zelda…" Sabrina returned home looking for advice as her mystical disguise wore off of her. The properties of her formula were wearing off almost exactly one hour after she had taken it as the normal rules of the universe started once again taking over again and her DNA started reverting back. Her hair was growing longer again, her frame was shrinking back to something more feminine and as Zelda came down the stairs to her niece, Sabrina's figure once more pushed themselves out once more from her sweater. A light discomfited moan of awkwardness accompanied the young girl's breath as Zelda stood over her.
"More Boy Brew, Sabrina?" Zelda lightly shook her head in disapproval. Sabrina burped loudly as the last vestigial trace of her formerly male chromosomes returned back to female.
"Sorry…" The blonde teenage beauty covered her lips to the shocked face of her beloved aunt. "But don't worry, it's all used up… Aunt Zelda, I just learned something I need your help with…"
"Take a shower and the smell will go away…" Zelda looked at her and walked through the dark living room to switch on the lights by passing her hand through the air. Alighting her modern Colonial room through psychokinesis, she moved through the dining room. "Your Aunt Hilda also had the same problem with that smell after drinking the boy brew; I'm afraid all boys smell like that…"
"No, not that…" Sabrina followed her into the kitchen after pausing to sniff herself and her clothes. Her Aunt Zelda was sitting with her early evening coffee and trying to finish the morning crossword puzzle. On the table before her was Salem Saberhagen, a former warlock and associate of Hilda who had been changed into a cat for a thousand years over abuse of his powers. "Aunt Hilda, I learned one of Harvey's friends is in love with me."
"Which one?" Hilda looked over to her. "The tall cute one with the brown eyes who looks like James Dean?"
"That's Mikey…." Sabrina clarified. "Aunt Hilda, what am I going to do? I'm in a relationship with Harvey; I can't break William's heart."
"Boys don't really get their hearts broken, Sabrina…." Zelda spoke up. "They're a lot more resilient than you think."
"Excuse me…" Salem spoke from within his feline body. "But I was once a boy."
"And now you're a cat, what's your point?" Hilda took him off the table and placed him on the floor.
"Sabrina…" Zelda poured herself some coffee to plan what she was conjuring for dinner. "For one, you're too young to be in a committed relationship with Harvey; maybe you ought to try giving him a chance."
"But I can't do that to Harvey…"
"And two, I don't see the big problem." She picked up her coffee and headed to the table to explore what looked good for dinner from the restaurant coupons. "Boys fall in and out of love all the time. He'll eventually find another girl."
"For me it was Bill Shakespeare…." Hilda recalled one of her Fifteenth Century infatuations. "But all he really cared about was his writing…"
"But if you really want to help him…" Zelda continued to try and help. "Why don't you go to William and try and fix him up with another girl?"
"I can't do that." Sabrina felt she wasn't getting advice that helped her. "He told Jack he was in love with me, he didn't tell me." She paused tormented by her problem. "Why was I born to be so wonderful?!" She picked Salem up from trying to get her attention and turned to race up the back stairs to her room. Zelda sighed hoping she had been of help then turned to her sister.
"You dated Bill Shakespeare?" Zelda was upset they had dated the same English writer. "But he told me he loved me."
"Oh, please…" Hilda scoffed under her breath and drank her coffee. "He barely knew you were alive."
Scurrying across the top landing for her bedroom, Sabrina brooded on whether she could date two boys behind each others backs; she knew she could do it, after all, she was a witch and had split herself into two people once before. Turning the knob to her room and pushing forward into her room, she was surprised by someone she was not expecting. Stretched across her bed reading her diary was a warlock named Albert Rollins, but Sabrina knew him as her Quizmaster. He was the witch counterpart of a wizard's auror, a mystical mentor to tutor her early years into the sorceress she was going to be. Sabrina jumped lightly aback upon seeing him.
"Surprise, Spellman… I'm here, and I've been waiting." He was an average-sized African American warlock trained in Santeria, the African counterpart of witchcraft. Genial and somewhat good-natured, he stood to meet her then hesitated to sniff the room whose scent had changed with her arrival. "Who's been drinking Boy Brew?" He sniffed the air.
"Can I do this another time?" Sabrina stressed a bit trying to deal with the new revelation in her life. "I'm kind of in the middle of something." She released Salem on to her bed.
"I think it's a very good time." Albert hopped to his feet and stood at almost her height. "You need to be able to think on your feet and find a spell that could solve this problem."
"There's a spell that will make William fall in love with someone else?"
"No, there isn't…." The Quizmaster was a graduate of Alexandria, the Greek version of Hogwarts in Scotland. Mentoring Sabrina reminded him of his old mentor, a Chinese warlock named Fuu Chen from the Hunan province. "And because…."
"Witches are not allowed to tamper with free will." Sabrina recalled a fact from her spell book. "But…" She began plotting. "I can introduce him to someone else and hope nature takes its course."
"Now, you're starting to think like a witch." Her Quizmaster responded. "But love potions are forbidden. How are you going to find him a worthy female companion?"
"That's the tricky part." Sabrina paced forward a bit. "I guess I could find someone who has the same interests he has."
"Now, don't forget, you are being graded for this." Her Quizmaster reminded her. "Last question…" He paused. "My girlfriend's birthday is coming up. What do you recommend?"
"Flowers, chocolate and a nice night out…" Sabrina announced out loud as her mentor dematerialized into nothing and transported to another of his young wards. Left on her own, Sabrina realized what she had to do and resolved to find William a girlfriend, but choosing the right girl from her class was not going to be easy. Whoever it was had to measure up to herself, and that was not going to be easy. She had to determine what William liked in her that attracted her to him, and to find that out she couldn't exactly ask him. She had to be able to read his thoughts, and to do that, she turned to her family spell book. In addition to her family genealogy and family tree all the way back to the Roman Empire, it had the complete text of the family lore and myriad listings of their history of spells and incantations. Often resorting to it for help in spells she didn't keep memorized, she checked the spell index and scrolled down through the list.
"Let's see…" Her finger perused the list. "Reading palms… Reading tea leaves… Reading minds, yes, Reading minds, see telepathy…" She rolled her eyes. "Of course…" She flipped through the rest of the R's and skipped over the S's for the T's. "Telekinesis…Tell-A-Friend… Telepathy, good. Warning, not permitted to be used by wizards, witches, warlocks, magicians, sorcerers or mystics under the age of 21. Are you kidding me?!"
"It was really abused in the 1930s." Salem leapt up on her desk and looked up to her. "Resulted in a lot of fighting between the twelve top magic families…"
"How am I supposed to find William a girlfriend if I'm not allowed to read his mind and find out what he likes?" She asked.
"Here's a radical idea…" Salem sat on his hind legs with his head held up proudly up to her presence. "Ask him!"
"Salem…" Sabrina took her book from its podium and sat in the center of her bed with it. "I want to surprise him. I want him to be… Wait, when I was Jack he said I haunted his dreams at night." She lit up a bit to enjoy the thought for a moment. "Maybe, I can see what he dreams about…." She flipped back through the book. "Dreams, Dreaming, Dream Interpretation, Dreamscape… Ah, entering the dreams of others. This looks simple."
"How do you know he's asleep yet?" Salem pranced over to her bed and sat next to her.
"Oh, he's going to be asleep." Sabrina waved her right hand over her head and a few streets over on Carrington Drive, William Samms entered his second floor bedroom over the garage and reached to turn on his TV across from his bed. His radio headphones hung unattached from around his neck, and the light of the TV illuminated his face as his head hit the pillow. Upon hitting it, his eyes drew heavy and he immediately dropped off, his head tilting back and his mouth dropping open. His mother, Monica Samms, crossed his doorway picking up laundry in the hallway, glanced in at him asleep then checked her watch. It wasn't even eight o'clock yet.
"I wish I could drop off like that." She commented to turn off his light and then his TV by the remote. Back at 133 Collins Road, Sabrina placed her spell book back on its podium, postured a bit and took a deep breath to compose herself.
"I call upon the gods Hypnos, Morpheus and Oneiroi…" She incanted as a breeze came in through her window. "Open your gates and allow this minor sorceress entrance into your kingdom of dreams…."
The wind had picked up a little.
"Lift me into your arms that I might share the visions beyond my mind's eyes of your domain…." Sabrina felt a heaviness coming around her and gasped unprepared, feeling herself lifting off her feet as her room became cloudy and misty with astral energy. Her body and spirit was becoming ghost-like, and the world around her was becoming intangible and no longer bound by the laws of science. She was entering another plane of existence, which only psychics and mediums knew existed. It was one degree off from the physical world and one below the afterlife. In this world, all the minds of everyone who ever lived were interlinked in this quasi-state of existence. She could step backward out of her house and drift harmlessly to the ground like a ghost as around her the minds of her sleeping neighbors caroused the neighborhood living their dreams. Mr. Ochmonek rowed across the street fishing for a giant fish as the street lamp turned into a tree. The actual trees swelled and turned into pillars holding up the sky with moonlight shaping the stars through the branches where numerous little kids played and hid in the limbs and eaves. Miss Shapiro from across the street was reunited with her deceased husband playing the role of an Italian gondolier as Sabrina's classmate, Jimmy Healey, from down the road streaked through in his souped-up dream racecar past the boaters. The wind turned the leaves into birds soaring up into the sky and blew Sabrina up into the sky to look down on the city lights of Westbridge. Looking down on the world under her, she felt like a giantess among a world of tiny people, but she somersaulted once and descended down on another block. The street looked like a party with dogs walking around on their hind legs, people fishing from boats in the sky and streets peeled up into highways through the air. Trying not to get distracted, Sabrina pressed on through this world. It was crazy, mad and fun all at once, but she did come here looking for William and what he dreamed about. Descending down before his split-level Dutch Colonial, the house blinked its eyes at her once, opened its front door to invite her in and extended its front porch to let her enter. Floating off the ground, Sabrina drifted from one jumbled setting of over-lapping dreams and stepped into one stabilized reality dominated by one mind. It was an old fashioned living room in hues of black and white. Surrounded by the large TV and record player in the corner, she felt she was in an old TV show from the Fifties.
"Well, this is interesting…" Sabrina smirked a bit amused. "He dreams in black and white." She heard another presence and looked around to see a young housewife setting her dining table. Clad in a Fifties-era light gray skirt and blouse with high heels, the happy homemaker turned around to reveal she looked exactly like Sabrina. William was dreaming about her! Her jaw dropped in amused shock. Clad in the Fifties-era clothes with the pearls and high-heeled shoes, she watched her dream clone happily setting her dinner table for her husband to come home.
"I'm sorry, but just watching this is setting women back almost a hundred years." Sabrina told her clone. "Can you hear me?" She waved her hand before her counterpart's face just as William came home through the front door.
"Honey, I'm home." Wearing a suit and overcoat, he took off his hat and hung it and his coat up by the door. Sabrina's dream counterpart beamed happily and rushed to his side to welcome him home.
"Welcome home, darling…" She kissed him. "You're just in time for dinner. I made your favorite. Meatloaf!"
"Wonderful." He kissed her again. "Girls, time for dinner…"
"Daddy…" Coming down the staircase, an adorable eleven-year-old girl in a sweater and blue jeans with long braided blonde hair was leading her eight-year-old sister in a ball cap and dirty clothes down to her father. "You've got to do something about the Beaver. She embarrassed me in front of Doug Simpson."
"I did not." The younger sister stuck her finger up her nose. "Besides, he's got cooties…"
"The only thing I've learned so far…" Sabrina talked over William talking to his daughters. "Is you've pretty much stolen this entire dream from the TVLand Network." She followed them into the dining room. "You are not telling me anything that will help me get you a girlfriend…" There was an explosion of color, and the room if not the entire house changed to a large ranch-style house with a large open living room. Stunned by the sudden change in her surroundings, she realized that William had changed his would-be future life with her into another setting with more children consisting of three boys and three girls with hair of gold… much like a very familiar Seventies TV show.
"Here you go, Mr. and Mrs. S." Alice their housekeeper came from the kitchen. "Here's dinner…" She placed a large platter of a large meat-like object surrounded by potatoes and carrots on the dinner table.
"Oh boy… meatloaf!" William lighted up and sat at the end of the table with his six kids from his beautiful wife. Sabrina's counterpart had changed in attire and style with the times. Gone was the uncomfortable dress and pearls only to be replaced by a flipped-down hairstyle and a round head of gold hair. William and all three of his sons had afros of dark brown hair.
"Mom, is it okay if I go out tonight with Doug Simpson?" The eldest daughter asked with a flip of her long blonde hair.
"Oh, honey…" Dream Sabrina looked happily to her husband unaware the real Sabrina stood right over her. "Maybe you ought to ask your father."
"Why does Marcia get to go out?" The middle daughter opined. "Why is it always Marcia? Marcia, Marcia, Marcia…"
"Listen to your middle daughter and stop making googly eyes at me…" Real Sabrina stared at William's dream counterpart. "Look, I get you love your TV Shows, but I'm trying to get you a girlfriend here. Work with me here."
"So, how was work tonight, dear?" Dream Sabrina spoke as the dream subtle warped again into another house. Gone were the three sons, the housekeeper and the huge dinner table. This house was more modern, more up to date but still looked familiar.
"Al was complaining again." William told his dream wife. "He says I'm always using Tool Time to discuss stuff in my private life." He made a low simian grunting sound under his breath.
"But, dad…" His older daughter looked up. "You always do that."
"Finish your meatloaf…" William finished his dinner. "I'm going to go talk to Wilson at the fence." He rose from the table and headed out through the patio. Holding her forehead in her right hand, Sabrina was slowly realizing she was not learning anything but the same two things over and over. She knew William was in love with her, and she had also figured out he compared his life to TV shows on Nick At Nite.
"I've got to get deeper. What do you care about?" She followed him out into the yard, which suddenly stretched from an enclosed backyard into a huge archaeological dig site in a warm arid country. William was now a famous movie archaeologist with a whip beating up Nazis and trying to rescue the Lost Ark. Sabrina ducked from the plane blowing up, it's immaterial fragments flying through her body without harm. A young Korean kid used martial arts to beat up much larger adults. The scene was instant noise to Sabrina's ears. William's mind was all over the place. There were comic book battles, dinosaurs roaming through and gobbling up Nazis, zombies coming up out of the ground under Sabrina and killing German soldiers, a number of one-manned fighters from "Star Wars" blasted German panzer tanks and hordes of kids from the "Our Gang" series firing pellets from slingshots and water balloons from cannons. Covering her ears, she tried to shield her head from the noise to turn around and duck back into the house that had changed once again from a home into a large newspaper office. She started wondering if entering William's dreams was a very bad idea.
"Jimmy…" The editor came from his office. "Where are Lois and Clark?"
"I think they're still covering that explosion in Times Square, chief…" The youthful cub reporter answered as Sabrina moved unseen between them. "I think they'll be here in… Wow…" He looked up to the front windows of the Daily Planet and saw William being carried in by a beautiful flying blonde girl in a red and blue costume. It was Sabrina in the dream again as William's ideal girl, only Kryptonian, super-strong and powerful enough to jump over several buildings in a single bound. William stared dreamily back upon her as she landed, and at least in this dream, she loved him too.
"Thank you, Super-Babe. You saved my life."
"Anytime."
"Super-Babe? Okay, first off…" Sabrina looked at this comic book tableau before her. "That's not my body." She looked at her superhero counterpart's double-d chest.
"But I'm worried about Lois…" William spoke. "She vanished when the explosions started."
"She'll be here." Sabrina's comic-book counterpart levitated up into the room and flew up to the balcony and out of the building. Almost at that exact same minute, she reappeared from the elevators this time dressed in a blue jacket and skirt combo with a white blouse and high heels. A set of eyeglasses and her hair pulled back into a ponytail, and she was a completely different person.
"Is everyone okay?" She walked forward. "Clark, did you get hurt?"
"You've got to be kidding me?" Sabrina spoke over the dialogue in this crazy dream. "She changes her clothes, stuffs her chest into a blouse and puts glasses on, and no one knows she's the same person?!" She stood for a minute trying to figure out what to do next. If she left now, this was all going to be one colossal waste of time. All she knew was that William was obsessed with her; he couldn't stop thinking about her. He saw her in his life. He was in love with her.
"William…" She pleaded to him. "What do you like in a girl?! Please, can you hear me?" He was suddenly reminded by something else and the dream started changing again. The roof disappeared to empty sky, a motorcycle began revving up and a highway appeared in the room. Determined to take charge, Sabrina realized what she had to do. She had to get out of his higher brain functions and into his memories and thoughts. Taking a deep breath, she stepped through him and took over his mind as things around her warped once more, but this time deeper and darker. There was a deep groan from the world around her and the sound of straining egos as their minds overlapped. Opening her eyes, Sabrina looked up into a huge library with books on shelves and filing cabinets under a ceiling covered in wires. This was how her mind perceived the memories of William's brain: like a huge cluttered and disorganized library of memories, thoughts and buried images in material and video form. Every second, voltage from his brain sparked through the lines and jumped from cable to cable. Paper flew around unloose in this unorganized stock room of memories and lost thoughts. Scenes from his past replayed from picture tubes on shelves, and bottles shook and danced from repressed emotions trying to escape. In flickering monitors, Sabrina could see the exact moment William saw her in school, the moment his mother dragged him to church kicking and screaming and the day he first met her as Sam. In the center of the room, a huge pressure tank of buried anger and hostility to his mother was building up. Someone released a bit of the pressure into a dream focusing the anger into a violent dream, but that also caused a bit of shame to float up and cause him to have an embarrassing dream. A dozen picture tubes replayed the day Brad Wilkerson embarrassed William at the school Pep Rally by pulling his underwear up and over his head in front of everyone.
"Good evening, and welcome to the morgue…" The librarian looked like Sabrina in round-framed glasses, a loose white sweater and blue jeans. Her hair was a bit mussed and hanging down in front of her glasses, which she blew out of her vision. "How can I help you?"
"Finally!" Sabrina cheered. "Now, I'm getting somewhere!"