Melody – Eight

Lia took a sip of Iced Tea and laughed a little bit.
“What’s so funny?”
“Just this whole thing. I mean, it’s so… weird to think of it. Two girls who just discovered they can change everything about the world and now, I dunno. It’s just funny to think about it I guess.”
“Yea, I think I know what you mean.”
“So, what do I need to know about magic and everything?”
Melody relayed the story of the man who had came when she and Miranda had first discovered their gift. She told the story about the society of gifted ones, the idea of normalcy (which Lia immediately picked up, just as Miranda and Melody had). Lia listened intently, only looking down to drink more tea.
When Melody was finished, Lia look up at the entrance to the Flying Delight, where a college girl who looked a little like Natalie Portman was entering.
Lia looked back at Melody and said, “We could have so much fun with this.”
“What?”
“You said you can move time backwards, right?”
“Yea. And I can stop it.” Melody did so, leaving Lia and her unaffected. All the buzz of the cafeteria atmosphere fell to an eerie quiet.
“Well, haven’t you wondered how people would react if we did something?”
“A little.”
“Yea. Let’s start on her.” Lia pointed to the Portman look-alike who was walking in the door.
“What do you want to do?”
“Lets uh… uh… I can’t think of anything that’s not really mean. Besides, everyone else would freak out, so she would too.”
“Nope. We’ve got normalcy, right?”
“Oh yea… Well, lets uh… ok, I’ve got it.” With everything still frozen, Lia stood up and walked over to their victim.
“Lets start small,” said Lia, who disappeared the poor girl’s head.
“That’s small? She’ll have a heart attack.”
“Well, you can always undo it if she does.”
“Okay. Here goes.” Melody activated normalcy and Lia made her way back to her seat just as Melody started time again. The noise of the restaurant resumed, and both girls turned to watch their target.
The girl stopped walking all of a sudden and extender both hands forward. Maybe she thinks it’s a power outage, thought Melody. Then, cautiously, she brought her hands up to where her eyes would be, as if she had something in, them, but of course, she missed her head. Melody could see the panic in the way her muscles tensed up all over her body, and her hands grabbed madly for her head, finding only smooth shoulders where a neck should have grown. The girl’s body paused for a minute and then slowly squatted down, feeling around on the floor.
“She catches on quick,” said Lia.
“Yea. I think she deserves her head back.”
“Okay.” Lia pointed at the floor where the girl’s head, looking lifeless appeared in a flash of white. Lia then added, “But she’s gonna have to find it herself.”
The girl’s body got nearer and nearer to her head until finally, her hand brushed her hair. Her head, apparently unfeeling, gave no reaction. The girl grabbed her head and began to feel it all over, as if making sure it was hers. Then, she carefully lined it up with her neck and set it down.
The girl’s head opener her eyes, and appeared to come to life again. She looked very confused and extremely flushed as she glanced all around her to try and figure out what was going on. She then hurriedly stood up and walked quickly into the bathroom.
“Okay. Time out,” said Lia. Melody complied, putting time on pause again.
“Let’s become invisible and follow her.”
“Sounds fun. What else are you going to do to the poor thing?”
“I don’t know. But the whole time – this is really strange, but I was… listening to her thoughts. I don’t know how, I’ve never done it really, but then again, I’ve never tried. But I could… well not really hear, but feel what she was thinking. She was scared, but I think she secretly liked it. She seemed almost turned on.”
Melody blushed a little, remembering that magic turned her on a bit as well. Lia snickered, and just said, “Yea, I know.”
The two girls then became invisible – a process which Melody hadn’t tried yet, but didn’t find very difficult, where they both just vanished their bodies but retained their conscious awareness of the world around them.
Lia, or what Melody sensed to be Lia, although there was nothing there, zipped through the wall of the café into the bathroom. Melody quickly followed finding that it was like flying and going through the wall felt like nothing at all.
Inside, they found the girl just starting to examine herself in the mirror, looking at her neck.
Melody heard Lia like a voice inside her head. “She’s wondering if she can do it again.”
Melody listened toward the girl, and suddenly, she found that she too could feel the girl’s thoughts. She felt as if all of the girl’s history had suddenly been revealed to her, her name was Jessica Megan Sherear, she was from New York, used to collect post cards, and went to Middlebrook Elementary. It was all there.
Melody began to listen in harder.

Why didn’t anyone panic? This doesn’t make any sense. Oh god, I must be losing it. My head – came off. It was on the ground. Can this happen again?

The girl pulled up on her chin. Melody sensed Lia smiling somehow. Then, the girl’s head popped off, and once again reverted to the comatose state it had been in before.

Oh god. It did. This is too weird. My shoulders – they’re smooth. And my head, and neck – they feel like some lifeless appendage now. My face. I can feel my mouth, my nose, and my eyes. This is too strange. What if someone comes in? No, I locked the door. Good. I can’t hear like this. Is this going to happen forever? What’s wrong with me? I can’t go see a doctor – they’ll freak out for sure. But wait – why didn’t everyone else freak out back there? Or maybe they did and I just couldn’t see. But when I put my head back on, everything seemed normal. This is too strange. I need to … I don’t know. I wish I could see…

She lifted her head back up and set it down on her shoulders again. Backwards.

Oops. What the hell?

She turned around to look at herself in the mirror with a sort of confused look on her face.

Oh wow. This is too strange. This is too cool. God, I can still move and everything, and I can see like this. I wonder if everyone will still freak out…

Jessica left the bathroom with Melody and Lia following her. Outside, was the usual noise and chaos, but nobody seemed to notice Jessica, despite her odd predicament. Jessica seemed to be having difficult walking backward, and eventually resolved that by walking forwards and trying as best she could to look “behind” herself.

God, my ass is weird from this angle. I never thought it was so… round. And nobody seems to care that I’m backwards. Hey, what the hell, why don’t I order?

With a little difficulty, Jessica shuffled her way through the line, her body standing backwards, leaving her head to face the counter. She seemed to be a regular, as the counter-guy knew her by name.
After ordering, Jessica paused and then asked the counter boy, whose nametag said Stan, “Do you notice anything… different about me today?”
“Uh… New haircut?”
“No, but close…”
“Umm… I give up.”
“My head’s on backwards. Right?”
“Oh. Yea. That’s… cool. Yea.”

God, he didn’t even notice! This is more than a little weird. I guess I should put my head back on right – this is sort of hard to walk.

Jessica pulled her head again, and Lia removed it, letting her switch it around to its right position. Jessica, looking a little relieved, half-smiled, and looked around.
“So what else do we do to her?” asked Lia.
“I don’t know. Let’s pick something else. I think we’ve tormented her enough.”
“But she likes it!”
“Yea, but she’s never going to get to do it again. She’s not gifted. If we let her remember this it will torment her forever.”
“Fair enough.”
Melody instantly brought everything back to how it was before. Jessica was just entering the store, and Melody and Lia were seated at their booth.
“So, now what?” asked Lia.
“Now, we can um… I don’t know. I mean, if we victimize people like this, it’s funny for maybe 5 seconds. But what if someone really panics?”
“I knew she wouldn’t. Somehow I just knew.”
“You seem to be better at reading minds than I am. I had to really concentrate.”
“Really? I just sort of look at them, and it comes. I don’t know. I mean, I just started today.”
“Yea. Hey, maybe we can put on a magic show of our own or something. Or we can just do stuff to ourselves without normalcy and see how people react.”
“Sure. That sounds fun.”
Lia looked up again and saw Perry, a rising senior at their high school and soon-to-be lacrosse star, walk in the door. After pointing him out to Melody, they both quickly decided he would be their next target.
“I got this one,” said Melody and stood up before Lia could respond.
Melody strolled over to Perry, evading his field of view and pretending not to see him. She walked with an exaggerated porn-star step, causing Lia to burst out laughing. Melody crept up closer to Perry and then with a little bit of timing, stepped into his way and they collided.
Melody’s parts scattered on the floor, her head rolling off her shoulders, her arms falling in different directions, and her torso separating from her lower half. Lia giggled.
Perry, without looking said, “Sorry,” but then paused, looking completely stupefied. Very quickly he glanced around, but due to normalcy nobody else paid them any mind. He then looked back down at Melody who was giggling a little, and sputtered, “I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean, I mean, are you okay?”
“Yea, I think so. I’m just a little well… broken. It’s not that bad.”
“Do you need an ambulance?”
“No, I’m fine. Hey can you just help me get myself together again?”
“Sure.”
“First, stand my legs up.”
Perry grabbed her hips and without much effort picked up her entire lower half and set her feet down on the ground. Melody reveled in the touch – it felt like it had been ages since she’d had any guy even hold her hand, and she secretly reveled in having his hands on her hips, though she paused, wondering if Lia was listening in.
“Okay, now get my upper body. Put it on my waist. Just set it down, and it should re-attach.”
Perry complied, wordlessly, his eyes filled with amazement at the task he was completing. He fumbled a little with her torso, trying to avoid Melody’s boobs, but ended up brushing them anyway, and Melody found it hard to stifle a giggle at just how gentlemanly he was trying to be.
“Okay, now pick me up. I mean, my head. Pick my head up.”
Perry scooped a hand under her chin, and lifted her head up to his eye level. For a moment, they both gazed into each other’s eyes and Perry used his free hand to brush some hair out of Melody’s face.
“Thank you,” said Melody, and Perry smiled at her while he lowered her neck down onto her shoulders and it stuck there.
“Now… did you see where my arms went? One’s right here,” Melody kicked at her left arm, “and the other one… I don’t know.
Perry bent over and grabbed her left arm by the wrist, then sort of tossed it up onto a free table. Next, he spent a second looking under a chair, then stood up producing her right arm, which he dusted off a bit. Perry seemed to have lost his initial fear, and had conformed to the nonchalant pretending that the rest of the restaurant seemed to possess. He even seemed to be enjoying the chance for body contact almost as much as Melody, and gave her hand a quick squeeze as he put her right arm back on. Then, he did the same with her left before Melody had a chance to try and attach it herself.
“Thank you!” squeaked Melody in a tone she hoped Perry would think was cute. She took this as an opportunity to hug him, which he seemed very happy to accept. Meanwhile, in her head, she ran over all the things she knew about Perry. She’d talked to him, once or twice, but nothing more than small talk, he was reputed to be very muscular, which seemed to be true, and he was a candidate for captain of the lacrosse team. She decided he seemed nice enough, and in the aftermath, managed to give him her number before Lia came and made an excuse for them to leave.
“Why’d you do that? We were having fun.”
“Yea, but it’s better this way. Trust me. He’ll call you, don’t worry about that. Besides, I was getting bored. I wanted to do something.”
“So did you uh…”
“Read his mind?”
“Yea.”
“He thinks the fact that you come apart is sexy as hell. That’s putting it bluntly.”
“Oh.”
“Yea, and you’re wet for him.”
“HEY!”
“Sorry, it’s just so hard to control this now. I’ve started reading people’s minds just by looking at them.”
“Oh. Well, I guess I can’t blame you. But please, keep your eyes off my smut.” Melody giggled a little.
“Sure.” Lia smiled somewhat knowingly.
“Now, what do you want to do?”
“I’m not sure. We could put on some sort of magic show maybe. But then again, I guess neither of us have much of any stage presence. I guess what I really want to do is just explore all the possibilities. I’ve got a couple idea that I’m just dying to try out…”

To be continued…