My roommate is a magician. You know, like a stage performer. You’d think it’d be cool, especially since she uses real magic, but honestly, it’s kind of an inconvenience since she’s really messy and leaves her magic just lying around the apartment.

Take today for example, when I had to sneeze, and I grabbed the closest tissue I could find. Turns out it was my roommate’s handkerchief. And after I sneezed into it, my face felt strange. I recognized the tell-tale tingle of magic, and sighed. At least, I thought I sighed. I thought I knew what happened, but I went to the bathroom to examine the ‘damage’, bringing the handkerchief with me just in case. Man, Trish would not be happy that I sneezed into one of her props.

Yup. As expected, my nose and mouth were completely gone. Nothing but smooth blank skin in their place. My eyes were the only things left on my face. I ‘sighed’ again, out of habit. Not that it did anything. I examined the plain white handkerchief. There was nothing remarkable about it whatsoever, besides the sneeze my nose had left in it. My now non-existent nose.  Normally I’d get Trish to fix me, but she wasn’t home at the moment. Nor did I know when she’d be back. Also, she’d mess with me a lot in the process anyway. Not that I really minded. Magic was fun, if a little frustrating.

But that left me with the pickle of having to restore myself. Or I could just stay like this until Trish got back… but I was kind of hungry. I washed the handkerchief in the sink, and hoped it could restore itself. Unfortunately, I knew Trish’s style of magic, she never liked using the same prop twice, so it was unlikely at best. But still, worth a shot, right? I tentatively rubbed the blank spot on my face with the handkerchief (making sure there was no snot left on it).

Nothing happened.

As expected, I suppose. Trying a different motion, I wiped the handkerchief quickly over my face. And I found myself plunged into darkness. But I could smell again! “Ahhhh.” I said. I had my mouth back. I put the handkerchief down on the sink and felt my face with my hands. My eyes were gone instead now, but I had my nose and mouth back. “That’s… not really an improvement.” I said out loud. Seeing was more important than talking to myself. Probably. And I don’t need my nose either. Breathing wasn’t a problem with magic, I had discovered a long time ago. Alright, so, handkerchief again. I reached down for it, but accidentally brushed it off the sink counter.

“Oh, fuck.” I sighed, for real this time. I knelt down to search for the handkerchief on my hands and knees, and bumped my head on the counter. I yelled out in pain, and fell over backwards on reflex. As I landed, I felt the familiar vague tingle of magic. “Oh, no.”

I couldn’t tell if anything was different, and my face seemed to remain in its’ configuration, so I flipped myself over to search for the handkerchief on the floor. Something definitely felt off with my lower body, but I couldn’t really tell. I had to find the handkerchief first.
After a few minutes of searching, I finally found it, and whisked it over my face, restoring my sight. I blinked involuntarily, and felt my face. Sadly, my nose and mouth were still gone. And there was something wrong with my lower body still.

I looked down to examine myself, fearing the worst. Nothing seemed wrong though, at first glance. I searched the floor for the offending magic item, hoping to figure it out based on that. All I found on the floor was a razor blade. Blades usually meant cutting, so… I felt around my waist, and discovered a large gap in the back of my waist. Very large. Larger than that tiny razor blade had any possible reason of leaving, but magic wasn’t exactly very reasonable. I took my shirt off, and turned around in the mirror to examine the damage.

As I turned, however, the entire top half of my body swung forward wildly, and I found my torso hanging upside down from my waist. The razor had nearly cut me in two pieces, hanging on with barely a sliver of flesh. Fortunately, the cut had left smooth skin in its’ wake, so there wasn’t any icky gore or anything. Unfortunately, this was much worse than just being cut in half. I clumsily flipped my torso right way up onto my legs and tried to press myself together. Sometimes these cuts could be restored just by applying pressure. Sadly, this didn’t seem to be one of those times.

I ‘sighed’ again, tentatively taking a step forward to see how inconvenient this was. As it turned out, very. It was incredibly difficult to walk like this. I considered my options for a few moments, and came to the conclusion of grabbing the razor and finishing the cut, severing the few remnants of my flesh that connected my torso and waist.

I wish I had done that more carefully, as my upper body toppled off of my waist as I finished the cut. In the commotion, I fumbled with the razor, and felt it cut straight through my left wrist. Crap. Good thing I was right handed. I grabbed the razor blade and tossed it up onto the sink counter so it would be out of the way.

Fortunately, the razor’s cutting magic also left me with control over my detached parts. I would like to say I knew that to begin with, but I didn’t, and got really lucky. I picked up my left hand in my right and examined the cut. Smooth skin, as expected. I pressed it to my wrist stump, hoping for the best, but was left disappointed as the cut didn’t heal.

I flexed my left hand. I needed some way to put myself back together now. My nose and mouth problem was considerably less of an issue than my being in three separate pieces. If I knew anything about magic, and I did, even if it was very little, I needed a box or a cloth. Something that would obscure everything. And hopefully it wouldn’t be a vanishing cloth. Or maybe that would work anyway. I had to go root through Trish’s prop closet. Thankfully I had nothing else important to do today. I wrapped my arms around my waist so I could sort of piggy-back myself to the prop closet. Being in disembodied pieces wasn’t anything new to me, oddly enough.

I was about to yank open the closet door when I remembered how messy Trish tended to be. I stood my legs off to the side and opened the door so that nothing would fall out on my torso. My fears were justified as a whole mess of props tumbled out of the door. Who knows what would have happened to me if I had been hit by all of those.

I examined the pile of props by my feet. All sorts of innocuous looking objects that I knew were imbued with magic. I needed something that would help join me back together. I could either vanish the area that was separated and bring it back, hopefully joined, or… do something else that would meld me back together. I settled on a large black cloth. I should test it on something other than my lower body first. Maybe my left hand. Which… I had left lying on the bathroom floor. I slapped myself on the forehead. How could I forget my own left hand? I didn’t really want to trek back to the bathroom in two pieces, so I shrugged and decided to go for it with my legs. I threw the cloth over my disembodied legs, and whisked it away. As I did so, I felt the tingle of magic in my legs. However, that meant I still felt my legs. Which means… something else happened than vanishing.

My jaw would have dropped, if it could have. My legs had been replaced with a copy of my upper body, complete with arms. Okay, maybe ‘complete’ wasn’t the right word. It was missing a head, fortunately. I’d had two heads before, and it was just disorienting. Actually, they weren’t both my heads, one was Trish’s that I was borrowing.  And naturally, had nothing below the waist.

I flexed my new arms tentatively. Everything felt ‘normal’, for lack of a better word. It worked just like my regular upper body, at least. But, they still felt like my lower body, in the vaguest sense. Like I was moving my legs. I threw the cloth back over the new torso, hoping to turn it back into legs. Unfortunately, I felt no tingle of magic. I whisked the cloth off, and my torso was still there.

I considered my options. I could cover my original torso with the cloth and turn that into legs instead. I’d be ‘reversed’, and it would feel very unnatural for awhile, but I’d probably get used to it. That seemed like the best option. And besides, maybe I could reattach myself after I’ve done that. Magic was weird that way.

I grabbed the cloth and draped it over myself, feeling the tingle once again. Then, I realized that my head was under the cloth as well. I ‘groaned’ in dismay. I sincerely hoped that my head would not be gone after I was done with the trick. I threw the cloth off myself, eyes shut tight in fear of the worst.

I cracked an eye open. My head still existed, that was a good sign. I moved an ‘arm’ tentatively. A leg moved instead. I looked down, and found that my torso had indeed turned into a pair of my legs. That was good. However, my head was attached to my waist. Strange. I guess what was stranger is that I had been in that configuration once before when Trish tried a trick that involved vanishing my torso. She had simply pushed my head down and my entire upper body was swallowed up by my waist until I was just a head attached to my legs. The difference this time was that I still had my upper body. At least, an upper body. That was really my lower body. And it was separated. Gods, I was a mess.

Maybe now at least, if I separated my head from my waist, I could simply reattach myself and appear relatively normal, even if I didn’t feel normal. I scoured the props for a blade of some sort, to no avail. But I did find a head-sized box, with a slot for a neck. That would probably work. Maybe. I checked to make sure there weren’t any dagger slots for a vanishing head trick. Vanishing my head would probably not do it. There weren’t any, so I popped the box open, knelt my legs down by my torso, and encased my head in it.

And if I was right, I could just sort of pop the box off, with my head still inside it. So, I yanked on the box as hard as I could. It did in fact, fly right off, far more easily than I had expected it to, which resulted in the box containing my head crashing into the wall behind me and breaking apart. My head tumbled out among the broken pieces of box. Boy, Trish was not going to be happy about that, either.

But my head was successfully detached from my legs, so it had accomplished what I had hoped for, at least. I grabbed my head and tried to affix it to my torso. To my great relief, it stuck tight. I tugged on it lightly, and it didn’t pop back off. I tugged harder, and it remained firmly attached to my body. I would have grinned if I could.

Then, to my great disappointment, I found that I had put my head on backwards. I slapped my forehead again. Which was really the back of my head. Okay. I could fix that later. First things first, reconnect my upper and lower body, so that at least I was back in one piece. Making sure that both parts were turned the right way, I grabbed my legs and shoved them against my torso, and was greeted with the sensation of them sticking tight. Great! I was ‘upside-down’, but… great! It would be a little clumsy to move my legs like arms and arms like legs, but… I guess that was why I messed up with reattaching my head.

I stood up, shakily, on ‘new’ legs. Alright. What did I still need to fix. My head was on backwards, and I didn’t have a nose or mouth. Oh, and I now had a ‘spare’ left hand lying in the bathroom. I’d have to vanish that later. I was really getting hungry now though. I weighed my odds of restoring myself before messing myself up more, and figured I should go try to eat first. Maybe I should detach my head first. A detached head was significantly better than a reversed head. The razor would not let me reattach my head, so I should try to find something else.

I settled on a nondescript red scarf. I hated that Trish liked using plain nondescript items, it made identifying her magic a lot harder. I wrapped it around my neck, feeling the magic once more. I whisked it away, and my head tumbled from my shoulders. I winced as I hit the floor, but at least the job was done. I picked up my head to examine the effect of the trick. My shoulder line was smooth, as expected, with no trace of my head or neck. Which normally meant my neck stump should be attached to my head. But as I felt underneath my disembodied head, there was no trace of a neck stump, just the smooth contour of my head. The scarf had vanished my neck instead of simply beheading me. Damn.

At least I could go eat though. I grabbed my head and went to the kitchen. It was hard to cook with a disembodied head. It was even harder to eat while blind, after using the handkerchief to reverse my face issue. Especially since I had to feed my head. Like it was a pet or baby or something. Weird. But at least I wasn’t starving anymore. Maybe I should just wait for Trish to get home and restore me. Then I’d have to give her a lecture about leaving her magic lying around.