This choice: Surround Chad; convince him he's crazy. • Go Back...Chapter #15Surround Chad; convince him he's crazy. by: Seuzz   Josh is best positioned to re-possess his housemates, so you steer him back to his place. Tommy Yarbrough's truck is outside the house when you get there, and the front door is open. You cautiously look inside. Some of Chad's and Anthony's furniture stands just inside, and Anthony has just dropped a small bookcase by the door. He gives you a studied, hostile glance then goes back into the bedroom. Raul is on the sofa, watching TV and pointedly ignoring the bustle in front of him.
You cover a nostril with your thumb and blow a little bit of goo into your hand. Raul is alone for the moment, so you make him your first target. He ignores you, too, until you shove your hand into his face. He twists away, curses, and grabs your wrists, but his grasp goes limp once you're inside him. Your recent possession of him means you don't need to do anything special: he is entirely yours again.
You glance into some of the other bedrooms while avoiding the one that Chad and Anthony are vacating: empty. You head down into the basement. Yung-ching is there, doing crunches, which is fortuitous. He doesn't hear you or open his eyes as you come up behind and drop a worm onto his upper lip.
Anthony comes out of the bedroom and sets down a box. "Okay, off the couch," he snarls at Raul.
You glance up, arms folded. "Fuck you. Why?"
"It's mine and Chad's. We're taking it."
"It's yours and Chad's and Josh's. You went in on it equally. Hey Josh!" you call to yourself.
"We own most of it, so we get to take it," Anthony retorts.
"What's going on?" you say as you come up the stairs. You bump into Tommy, who's coming out of the bedroom with another box.
"Fucker is trying to take your stuff."
"The sofa is mine and Chad's."
You shrug. "Take it. After you give me thirty bucks."
"I'm not giving you shit for it, Josh. It's ours."
"Two thirds of it is yours. Pay me for my third or get a hand saw."
Anthony and Tommy glance at each other, and then advance. You jump up onto the couch with one body, and remain seated on it with the other. Anthony and Tommy try to pick it up by either end. It wobbles and creaks dangerously as they lift, and their muscles strain.
"What the fuck is going on out here?" You've brought Yung-ching up. The sofa slips from Tommy's hands and crashes to the floor; you lose your balance and fall off, then spring up and cross over to the door, where you join Josh with Raul and Yung-ching.
"Get out of the way," Anthony warns. It will be two against three if it comes to a fight. But Tommy is the biggest guy in the room, and Anthony's not much smaller. Raul and Josh, though well-built, are much less bulky. Yung-ching could probably take either of the other two alone in a fight, but it's going to be a close-fought thing.
Anthony stalks up to you, chest out. He glowers for a moment, then shoves you hard. You jump him with Raul and Josh, throwing your arms around him and forcing him back while you charge Tommy with Yung-ching. You knock over boxes, and with great splintering crash three bodies fall onto and smash a spindly coffee table. Tommy swings at Yung-ching and smashes him in cheek; you punch him in the stomach, but it doesn't slow him down. He swings back with his elbow and catches you on the side of your face. Yung-ching's head rings.
Raul is pinned under Anthony amidst the wreckage of the table while you grasp at him with Josh, but it's like trying to lift a sack of bricks, and then he slides out of your grasp to turn over and knee Raul in the crotch. You howl. You try punching him in the kidneys, but he snarls, throws an arm around your waist, and pulls you off balance. His face is briefly close to yours, and you hork back to spit goo in his face, but some sixth sense seems to warn him, and he ducks. He falls back into a crouch, then rams you in the chest with his head, knocking you back hard against the TV. You sag to the floor with pain shooting up your back.
Of your three bodies, only Yung-ching's is now standing. Anthony turns and glares. "You want some too?" he roars. He starts to advance, but Tommy catches his arm. Anthony twists away, but stands in place, breathing heavily. He looks around. "Fine, keep the couch," he spits. "I'd say I got my money back out of your goddamn skins."
You watch from your three hiding places as the other two quickly take the stuff they'd gathered out to the car. When they've got the last of it out, you use Raul and Yung-ching to pick up the sofa and hurl it out the front door, which you slam shut behind you. You've planted a worm deep in the cushions.
You hurt all over. There's a bad cut under Yung-ching's eye, and his lips are bruised and swollen. Josh has shooting pains all up his back, though when you lift his shirt you see only bruises. Raul seems to have got off mostly lightly, once the terrible ache in his crotch subsides.
All in all, though, you're not disappointed, after you've patched yourself up and are sitting in the floor. True, you weren't able to get either Tommy or Anthony during the melee (which was the only point of having it), but you've booby-trapped the sofa, which they've taken with them. You just need to get one of them, and then a secret rendezvous will arm you to take the other.
The door opens and Michael comes in. He stops cold when he sees the mess. "What the hell ...?"
You sigh and stand up. You're not unhappy, but you're not in the mood for pretense, explanations, or finesse. You grab him about the torso with Yung-ching's arms; with Raul you pull his head back by hairs on the top of his head; you cough a worm into Josh's hand, then lightly pull back Michael's lower lip and tuck it between his cheek and gum. He falls briefly into a daze.
And then he's just another set of hands you can use to clean up the living room.
* * * * *
You spend the next hour trying to figure out what went wrong with your mind-wipes. Raul seems to remember the least. He's troubled by blank spots, and by the cryptic conversations he overheard or took part in during those spots he does remember. But he doesn't really connect anything or to have noticed anything odd in his housemates' behavior the previous day.
Michael doesn't remember the details of the rude "wake up call" with which you took him, but he does remember that something awful happened. He also remembers the feelings of frustration he felt around Cindy the night before, and is wracked with guilt at the memory of his intense desire to "take" her. He also has the sense—though he can't put his finger on it—that his friends were all acting very oddly.
Yung-ching ... Well, you can only hope that Anthony remembers less. Yung-ching remembers being in bed with the latter. He doesn't recall what he and his friend said, but that's only because he is trying not to remember the details.
All in all, you figure, you might be safe in exiting Raul, but you fear you are stuck with the others. And it gives you an intense desire to get back into Anthony as quickly as possible, before Chad can show up. After the fight, you won't be able to approach him through your current crew; Sandra he will also likely view with suspicion, and he doesn't know Allison at all. That leaves the worm you planted in the sofa as the only quick means into him.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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