Despite having accidentally decapitated myself and erasing most of my facial features, I figured I should keep trying to fix myself instead of waiting for my magician roommate Trish to get back home. I brought my eyes back and vanished my nose and mouth again. I needed to see to hunt for the proper tools to fix myself. While I was at it, I grabbed the disembodied left hand I had left in the bathroom. It was still functional. So, despite all my work, I was still in three pieces. But at least they were more manageable pieces. Carrying around my head wasn’t as hard as piggy-backing my upper body on my disembodied legs.

A thought occurred to me. Maybe I could use the extra hand as a temporary neck. So, I placed the wrist stump on my shoulder line, and was pleased to find it stuck. So I had a left hand in place of my neck. Probably one of the weirdest results of magic I had ever had to deal with. But, now I could hold my head in that spare hand, and sort of be in one piece. And maybe, just maybe, I could literally transform the hand into a real neck now. Maybe the black cloth that swapped my upper and lower body would work, or the weird first handkerchief that sometimes vanished and sometimes unvarnished.

I didn’t like the handkerchief, since it was so finicky. I still didn’t understand how it vanished only half my face, so I went for the black cloth. I wrapped my ‘neck hand’ up in it and whisked it away, feeling the magic tingle once again. But all that happened was that it was now a right hand. That wasn’t helpful at all. The black cloth seemed to ‘reverse’ body parts. Which explained why it didn’t affect my head. I wondered what my head would turn into if I bundled it up in the cloth by itself. It probably would do something, but I couldn’t imagine what it would be.

I felt better about my odds with experimenting with the black cloth, since it seemed somewhat reversible, and dropped my head into the cloth, bundling it up. I felt my head tingle with magic, and I shook it out of the cloth, onto Trish’s bed.

I lost my vision again. That was pretty much the worst case scenario. What had my head turned into though? I noticed I could smell again, and could taste. But I couldn’t see or hear. I was definitely talking though. I fumbled around the spot where I had dropped my head. Or what was left of it. My hands found what were unmistakably my disembodied nose and mouth. Separate from each other. And the rest of my head was nowhere to be found. Great. Just great.

I shrugged, and wrapped my nose up in the black cloth. Nothing. No magic whatsoever. So much for reversible. Maybe the white handkerchief would vanish my nose but bring back the rest of my head. I stumbled blindly around the house, nose and mouth in hand, to the kitchen, where I had left it. I draped it over my nose, and whisked it away. I could see again! But… it wasn’t my whole head.

My nose had turned into an eye. A single eye. My left one. Thankfully it wasn’t a disembodied eyeball, like Trish had once done to her eyes. That had grossed me out.  It was more like a sticker of my eye socket. Better than a nose. Gingerly, I picked it up in my hand and held it up to see.

I tried using the handkerchief on my disembodied mouth. It turned into my right ear. That wasn’t good either. I tried it on the ‘neck hand’, just in case. I would honestly be a little upset if it restored my neck, because that meant I messed up by using the black cloth instead. Nothing happened though. The handkerchief must only mess with facial features. How useful.

I tried whisking it over my disembodied ear again. It turned into my nose. Now it was random? Damnit. But maybe I could turn my nose into something useful. I tried it again. Left ear. Again, back to my mouth. One more try. My head! Minus every facial feature. Just a blank slate. No ears either. But there was a neck stump! I could reattach my head now, if I could get rid of this stupid ‘neck hand’.

But I’d have a blank, essentially worthless, head. What use is a head that can’t see, speak, hear, or even smell? Maybe I could rub the handkerchief on a specific area and it would work. If it transformed my whole head, I could always just keep using it until it turned back into a blank head. I rubbed the handkerchief on the small blank area where my mouth would normally be.

Nothing. I tried my ear area. Nothing either. I tried to affix my disembodied eye to my face, where it should normally be. It stuck. That was a good sign. Maybe now the handkerchief would work. I swiped it over my face. My sight disappeared. I inhaled. I had a nose. I felt my face with my free hand. A nose, and nothing else. That was not better, but at least I could swap between facial features. Maybe. I swiped my nose with the handkerchief, and found myself with a mouth, nose gone. I needed an eye, so I swiped until I randomly got one. Forget this. Time to reattach my head. I deposited my head into my awaiting ‘neck hand’ and went to the closet.

I got over to the props and searched for anything that could get rid of my weird ‘neck hand’. Or even just cut it off. Anything that could remove it in some fashion. As I rooted through the closet, careful not to trigger any errant magic, I spotted something odd. A hairdryer. How could a hairdryer be magic? It didn’t have a cord. Magic. I examined the switch. There were only two modes available, ‘OFF’ and ‘ON. It was currently off. Obviously.

With my luck, it’d suck up and vanish my hair or something strange. But it was worth a shot. A hairdryer could be aimed relatively precisely. I dropped my head onto the bed, out of harm’s way, and pointed the hairdryer at my ‘neck hand’, careful to aim it so that it wouldn’t hit my torso. Just in case. I flipped the switch, and my hand was greeted by a blast of hot air.

Apparently, it was just a hairdryer. That was cordless. That’s… useful, in a general sense, but It didn’t help me at all. As I wracked my brains to think of any way I could fix myself, I felt something tingle in my ‘neck hand’. The hairdryer was magic after all. The hand felt really, really warm. I shut off the hairdryer to investigate. I gingerly touched it with my right hand, and found that it was… squishy. And kind of sticky. Like it was less than solid. Then it hit me, my hand was melting. I didn’t want to get melted hand all over Trish’s sheets, so I hurried over (remembering to grab my head) to the kitchen, where I grabbed a bowl and leaned the hand over. It was dripping, but slowly. I recognized the sensation of melting (Trish had turned me into a smoothie once), but it was much slower than normal. So, I turned the hairdryer on it again. I stopped when my hand started to feel like it was falling apart. It dripped and sloshed into the bowl, fully liquid. It was at least free from my neck area, which was what I wanted. I examined my smooth shoulder line, wiping the excess melted hand into the bowl, and stuck my neck to my body, making sure my head was pointing the right direction.

Thankfully, it held tight. I was truly in one piece again, though I was missing a lot more of my face than I was before all this started. And I had a small bowl of melted me. I closed my one eye as I thought idly about how to fix my lack of facial features, idly stirring the bowl of melted hand with my index finger. If I had a mold of my head, I could have melted down my head and molded it back to normal. But I didn’t. Maybe I should ask Trish to help make me one when she got home.

I stared at the bowl, no ideas coming to mind, and thought back to the time Trish had melted me down and stirred me into a smoothie mix for her magic party. In the oddest sense, it had actually felt kind of nice. Relaxing, in a way. Weird, to be drunk, especially by so many different people. I should have asked Trish how she restored me, because I kind of lost proper consciousness after awhile. It was an experience I wouldn’t mind repeating though.

On a whim, I whisked the white handkerchief over my face again, stopping when I had a mouth. I brought the bowl to my lips and drank my melted hand. I smacked my lips when I was done. I had been drunk, but I had never tasted myself, for obvious reasons. I tasted pretty good, if I had to say so myself. I’d have more, if I could. But that would involve losing more body parts, something I could ill afford in my current condition.

Then I got to thinking. I should just wait for Trish to get back to restore me. But if I was going to be sitting around waiting doing nothing, and Trish was going to restore my anyway, why not mess around some more? She could fix whatever happened to me. Probably.

I won’t lie, this was in no small part due to the idea of melting down everything but my mouth and drinking my entire body. I wasn’t exactly sure I could drink myself if I didn’t have a stomach, but I was pretty sure magic would make it work somehow. Trish’s own stories had informed me that that was a possibility. She claims she had turned herself into living chocolate and eaten most of her own chocolate body. I remember wishing at the time that I could have tried a piece of her. I could just write a note telling Trish what I had done, and she’d restore me when she got home.

But then I’d be spending some large unknown amount of time as nothing but a disembodied mouth. And that seemed rather boring. I put a pin in the ‘drinking myself’ option for now. Maybe some other day, with Trish around to help restore me. Or get her to teach me how to restore myself. She had tried to teach me a few tricks, but magic was difficult for the untalented. Props worked fine though. I whisked the handkerchief back over my mouth until I had an eye again.

I decided on heading back to the prop closet and tidying up, determined to experiment with the weirdest thing I could find in there. The hairdryer was probably the weirdest though, I had reasoned.

I had been wrong. I found, in a small box buried in the back of the closet, a long zipper. It wasn’t attached to anything, it was just a zipper. It had to be magic though. I measured it tentatively, and found that it was just the right length to run down the back of my body. I could already guess what it would do, but I stripped my shirt off and attached it to my back anyway. Bracing myself, I pulled down on the zipper to open it up.

As expected, my skin parted in the wake of the zipper. Magic tingled all over, and I felt myself deflating like I was completely empty. The zipper had turned me into a living skinsuit. Fortunately, I could still move, though movement was rather… floppy, as there was nothing supporting me. ‘Standing up’ involved a lot of waving my body back and forth in the air, like a snake. I bent my arm backwards, unhindered by bones, to feel around inside the new seam in my back. As I felt my hand probe the inside of my chest, I shivered at the alien sensation. The inside of my body was also smooth skin. This was not something Trish had ever done to me. I couldn’t help but wonder if she had ever used it on herself, and what it would be like to be worn by her, or to wear her.

At the moment though, no one was around to wear me, so the zipper was pointless. Plus, who would wear a suit with only one eye? I was about to zip myself back up, when I felt the inside of my own back, and a thought occurred. Maybe I could turn myself inside-out. That would be cool.

Fortunately, I was incredibly flexible like this, which helped as I bent my arm over backwards to reach inside my own body, and down my other arm. I grabbed hold and pulled it out the zipper, weirded out as my arm folded in on itself and reversed directions. I did the same to my other arm, and then worked on pulling my legs out the seam in my back. I caught a glance of myself in the mirror by Trish’s bed, a distended skinsuit with arms and legs sticking out the back of it. I would have laughed if I had had a mouth. I pulled harder, hoping to pop the rest of my body through the seam. As I struggled I finally felt my chest give way as it crumpled into itself and popped out the other side, along with all my limbs. I was almost done now, but my head was still oriented ‘normally’, which is to say, inside my own torso.

I tried to pop my head out backwards from the hole in my neck, but not being used to navigating with my backwards and inside-out arms, I had a little difficulty at first. Every move I made was backwards, and I had to flex in a very different and strange way to get my arms to bend the way I wanted. Finally, I was able to grab the inside of my own head through my neck, and pop it inside-out, just like the rest of myself.

This would probably have been more interesting if I had had more facial features. Or more disorienting, more likely. But since I was still flat, I had to shut my eye to keep my hair from poking it. I grabbed what was now the outside of my head and pulled it apart so that I could open my eye. I was now staring at the back of my own head. I could see the telltale spots where my ears would have been ‘normally’. The hollow of my head wasn’t an especially interesting place. I must have looked strange on the outside, just a completely blank skin suit. I ran my hands across my ‘outside’ and found no bodily features whatsoever. Everything felt weird ‘inside’ as well. My back was rubbing against my front, the back of my elbow against the front, and limbs rubbing against themselves in impossible ways.

I shrugged, or tried to anyway, the end result was my shoulders caving into themselves, and went to zip myself up, still inside-out. In for a penny, in for a pound, after all. Fortunately the zipper was large enough that I could grip it from the outside even without the tag part. The zipper went up all the way pretty easily. Nothing interesting happened as a result, however, other than my insides being plunged into darkness. I tried to detach the zipper from my body. I didn’t expect it to work, since it was technically opening from the inside, but it came off just the same. I felt the tingle of magic working throughout my entire flattened, inside-out body. It must have been trying to restore me to not being a skinsuit, but it probably couldn’t handle me being inside-out. I grew a little worried. The worst case scenario was that it’d try to restore all my insides outside of my body, and I’d probably die. Having a bunch of organs exposed to the world couldn’t possibly be a good thing. Trish had removed her brain before though, and lived, so maybe I would be fine even if that happened.

Fortunately, that didn’t happen. I was no longer hollow and flat, though, for starters, and I felt solid. I could no longer see, even the inside my body. The weird inside-out feeling persisted, but inside my body (which was really my outside) was no longer a thing I could perceive any more than I had before. I felt my chest with my hands, and found a pulse. My organs were intact, inside me. That was probably good. But, as I ran my hands across my body, I found I still had no features whatsoever, finding smooth skin everywhere. I had been turned into nothing more but the shape of my body. No face, hair, or even more private areas. I wished I could have seen myself. This was certainly a pickle. I felt around for the zipper, hoping I could put it back on and turn myself inside-out again, so I’d be back to normal. I slapped it on my back and pulled down, greeted once more with the sensation of turning into a hollow skinsuit.

It was much easier to turn myself inside-out again this time. Well, right-side-out now. It was a little strange that I had the know-how to do that now, but I figured experiencing more things was never strictly a bad thing. Unfortunately, however, the ‘new inside’ of me that was now outside was perfectly smooth too. It was too hopeful, I suppose, to imagine that the zipper kept track of what it had transformed. I was now, both inside and outside, devoid of features. I zipped myself back up and ripped off the zipper, so that at least I wouldn’t be flat any more. At least I wasn’t feeling inside-out anymore. I made sure to drop the zipper somewhere obvious on the bed, so I could get to it, or so that Trish could see what happened whenever she got back. I certainly would have no way of telling if she was home now or not. And the zipper was clearly not going to help me regain any parts of myself. Surely she’d be home any minute now. I opted to just lie on her bed and hope she could fix me herself. Then maybe we’d have a talk about leaving her magic around everywhere. Not that I really minded, to tell the truth. After all, it gives me an excuse to mess around with her stuff, and real magic.