Author's Note: Another chapter here for everyone! Things should start to roll along now, so never fear! And if all things go to according to plan, I will have another chapter for everyone within the next 24 hours. So, since I don't have too much more to say...
Read and enjoy, then please leave a review!
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot bunnies.
With every shift in the sun, his face would follow suit.
It was all supposed to be an illusion; he didn't understand. He'd never lost control of his ability in his life.
Women, alcohol, fun and games, those were a different tale, but this...
This was supposed to be instinctual. As simple and flawless like slipping on a well-loved glove.
But this...this was horrific.
The past was coming back to haunt him in ways he'd never thought possible. Faces, identities that he'd technically stolen. They were back to make sure he'd never forget.
When there was a drastic change in physiology, his body ached at the shift, at the supposed illusion. Bodies of slimmer, younger men were like aching, tingling limbs. Women were like breaking bones, shifting his vertebrae and contorting it into a more compact version of his own.
He barely cried out anymore, only when he had to change sexes now. No one was here to listen to his screams, to sooth his fear. No one could come to tell him what was going on.
For three days, he'd been sitting alone in his apartment in Manchester, his body seemingly filing through his past masks like a catalog. He thought he was nearing the end now, as he came on the image of Browning.
He wanted to cry, but he didn't know how.
Crying was something he hadn't done since his father's funeral, something he'd promised himself he wouldn't do again.
There was supposed to be nothing frightening enough to make him cry ever again.
But he never thought this could happen.
He'd never heard of this happening.
No one could have ever dreamed, imagined, willed this to happen.
Why would this happen to him?
It would happen to him.
His luck always was rubbish. Unless he used his master forgery skills.
Then things came out half way decent, mostly.
Tucking his head between his knees, he could feel the age of Browning wear on him. As if he was actually on the last hill of his life instead of his prime. His skin wrinkled, thinned. It felt like paper as he stroked it.
Sometime the day before, he'd stopped bothering with clothes. They would fall off him, become painfully tight. Sometimes rip right off him, stinging his skin and leaving marks until he shifted form again.
"This isn't supposed to be this way," he moaned, grabbing his now thinning, grey hair. "I'm not in a dream."
As dream left his lips, his watch beeped on the floor next to him. His skin felt like it was on fire, his spine shrinking. He wondered who he'd changed into after Browning, already lost. The beeps on his watch continued as his grey hair grew out into chemically colored blond hair, his frame shrunk drastically.
A cry he couldn't hold back escaped his lips and he shuddered, nearly in time with the sudden ear-deafening tick, tick, tick of the timepiece. An unbidden thought came to him, hitting him like a flash of lightening from the summer sky.
As he grew the small breasts and thin fingers of his female face, he reached out, grimacing as his morphing fingers tried to hold on to the gold watch.
Only when the last shudders ran through his system could he pull it to him.
"What...what in the name of god..." he gasped out.
The second hand sped by, oh so much faster than it should.
His first thought was to kill himself.
Then to wake up and kill whoever was making him dream.
He hadn't dreamed for years.
But before he could try to stand and reach for one of his hidden pistols, the structure around him shook violently. Something was waking him up above.
And whoever it was, he was going to strangle.
–
He dragged out the old, full-length mirror from the back of his closet, sat in front of it, and nursed a bottle of whiskey.
Of course, he'd been alone when he'd bolted awake. Death in dreams always had given him vertigo.
The woman he'd spent the night with was long gone, leaving an orange post-it note with her number and name on the bedside table. He hadn't bothered with it. Instead, he stared at himself, memorizing his own features, his imperfections and perfections.
It took a lot to scare a man like him. Someone who'd seen so much, even more so than others could comprehend. And it took a lot to make him want to pick up his cell phone and make a call.
"Arthur, old chum. We need to have a chat."
A/N: Didn't really plan out that last part. It poured out of my fingers like the mischievous little thing it was. Please go leave a review, then check out my story recommendation for this chapter, which is Secrets and Needs by Soxunorthadox!