The Mansion – Week 5: Epilogue

When Wesley got back to his home in Reston, VA, the first thing he did was to rent a moving van for the next day.  The next thing he did was call a friend of his from work.  He ignored the couple dozen messages waiting for him for the moment.

“John?  Hey, man, it’s Wesley.”

“Wesley?  Holy crap, where the hell have you been?  You haven’t shown up to work in a month!”

“Yeah, I’ve been away for a while.  It’s an incredibly long story, and you probably wouldn’t believe it without seeing for yourself.”

“You plan on telling the supervisor that?”

“What?  But I though that…I thought I’d given my two weeks.”  He couldn’t exactly tell John that Derek and Diana had given his notice for him.  “Why, was the boss asking about me?”

“No, I guess not.  So, when are you going to reveal your big secret?”

“Well, I’ve got some stuff to deal with.  How about the weekend after next, so about eleven days from now?  Of course, Sue is totally invited, too.”

“I think we’re free that weekend.  You got a time and place in mind?”

“Not yet, but I’ll let you know at least two days in advance, okay?”

“Sure, that’ll work.”

“All right, see you then, John.”

“See you, Wes.”

The next morning saw a lot of relocation activity for the new friends on the east coast.  Brad was busy shopping for a new apartment.  He was looking first of all for something big enough for two, or at least one and a half.  Second of all, he was in the market for a top-floor penthouse, especially since he had the money now.  Derek and Diana had told him to go out into the world and spread the word, and he intended to spend as much time soaring above New York as possible.  Wesley drove his rented van to New York to help move Luann in with him.  While he was at it, he helped Lori move in with Brad, with the understanding that he would help them both move again once Brad found the place he was looking for.  He actually ended up doing most of the moving, since he was still full size and could probably lift the whole contents of the apartment if he had a good grip.  The four of them decided to throw caution to the wind and just go right out in public, but no one really paid them too much attention.  It was New York, after all.

Later in the week, Brad found himself and Lori a nice place on the top of a building in Manhattan.  That wasn’t even the surprising part.  The real shocker was that they found a realtor who was able to keep his mind off the wings and the missing torso of his clients.  He found them a nice deal, though, and when Wesley and Luann helped them move in, they spent a lot of the day modifying the apartment to accommodate their below-average height.

When the weekend came around, Wesley reserved a group of hotel rooms for his little retirement party.  In addition to John and Sue, Brad and Lori were also invited.  Wesley figured it’d be easier to introduce John and Sue to as many test subjects as possible.  He also took the precaution of telling Brad and Lori to show up a little early.  Actually, he told Luann, and Luann told Lori.  It was just easier that way for some reason.

Wesley and Luann’s room was in between the other two, and Wesley had told John and Sue to knock on his door when they got checked in.  When they showed up, everyone else was hanging out in Wesley and Luann’s room having drinks and stuff.  Well, Luann and Brad were having drinks.  Wesley got up to answer the door, and John and Sue almost passed out.

“Wesley?  Is that you?” said Sue.  She worked at Northrop Grumman with John and formerly Wesley.

“Yeah.  I told you you’d never believe it over the phone.”

“Is this some kind of a joke?” said John.

“Nope.  If you still don’t believe me, come on in and see for yourself.”  He moved from the door and sat back down next to Luann.  “This is Brad, Lori, and Luann.”  John and Sue came into the room and stood staring at the others for about a minute.

“Hey, Wesley?”

“Yeah, John?”

“Am I tripping?”

“No, unless you took something before you showed up.”

“What about me?” said Sue.

“Not you either.  Want a drink?”

“Yeah, I really do.”

“Is there any kind of explanation for this?”

“Yeah.  It’s got to do with where I’ve been the past month.  We were all there, actually.”

“Basically,” said Brad, “we woke up a month ago in this big house with no doors or windows, and we spent the next four weeks there, and we all changed like this.”

“So, what?  You mean your legs slowly vanished over a month?” Sue asked Luann.

“Actually, Lori used to be attached to me.  Now she’s my sister.”

“What?”

“Yeah, it’s kind of weird,” said Lori.

“Gah!” said Sue and John.

Eventually, John and Sue got enough time and alcohol into them that they started taking everyone else in stride.  Wesley managed to catch them up on everything that had happened, including the fact that he was now in a relationship.  They thought that was just as weird as everything else.

*          *          *

Meanwhile, over on the opposite coast, things were basically the same as with the other group.  Stacy and Katie arrived at Stacy’s place near their studio.  The next day, they moved their stuff into Stacy’s place and started going through their wardrobes, looking for the tops that no longer fit them.  When they were done, they realized that they needed some new clothes.  Fortunately, Stacy’s sister Margaret was a clothing designer.  Stacy gave her a call.  Marjorie got excited when she saw her caller ID.

“Stacy?  Oh, my God!  I thought something had happened to you!”

“No, it’s okay, Maggie.  I’m fine.  Something did happen, though, but it’s all okay.  It’s actually kind of cool.”

“What happened?  It was like you dropped off the face of the Earth.  Katie disappeared, too.  Zack and I even called the police.”  Zack was Margaret’s husband and Katie’s brother.  He was a software developer.  Zack and Margaret were responsible for introducing Stacy and Katie to each other.

“Katie’s right here.  She’s fine too.”

“Hi, Maggie,” said Katie.

“Hi, Katie.  So, what happened to you guys?”

“You know what?  Let’s meet tomorrow for dinner, and we’ll tell you all about it.  There’s this great restaurant downtown we know.  It’s run by some friends of ours.”

“Sure, sounds great.  See you then, Stace.”

“Later.”

“You know,” said Katie, “they probably won’t be able to eat the whole time.”

“Yeah, I know.  That’s half the fun.  Besides, we do need new clothes.”

“True.”

Stacy picked up the phone again and called Rob and Beth’s number to make a reservation.

The next night, Stacy and Katie showed up early for dinner.  They wanted to have a little time to socialize with Rob and Beth before their guests showed up.  As with their counterparts in Reston, Margaret and Zach were almost as startled to see Beth at the maitre d’ stand as they were to see Stacy and Katie sitting in the same chair and wearing the same clothes.

“What the hell?” said Zach.

“What the hell kind of place is this?” said Margaret.

“Hi, Maggie,” said Stacy.  “Hi, Zach.  We’ve kind of had a weird month.”

“You’re kidding me,” said Margaret.

“Yeah, it’s taken a lot of getting used to,” said Katie, “but we’ve got it pretty well figured out by now.”

“For starters, we’ve finally moved in together.”

“Explain to me how you possibly figured this out,” said Zach.

“You said you knew the people who run this place.  Did they do the same thing as you?” asked Margaret.

“Yeah, we got brought to this weird mansion for a month, and we all changed somehow,” said Katie.  “Like Beth, the hostess?  She has the ability to control wind and stuff.  And there are a couple of people from Frisco that turned invisible.”

“Hey,” said Stacy.  “Are you guys going to sit down and order or what?”

“Oh, right.”  They took their seats, and Beth came by to take their orders.

“So, the real reason we wanted to meet with you,” said Stacy, “was that we need to hire you.  Obviously, most of our clothes don’t fit anymore, so we need some custom clothing made.  Can you do that for us?”

“Sure, I’d love to.”

“Do you need to take our measurements or something?” asked Katie.

“Yeah.  Actually, I’ll need a few days to make patterns before I measure you, since I’ve never really made clothing like this before.  What kinds of clothing did you need, incidentally?”

“Well, the only things we have that fit are our open-shoulders stuff and what we got at the thing we went to,” said Stacy.  “God, what all do we need?” she asked Katie.

“Well, we’ll need a coat, probably a sweater or sweatshirt or two.  Tell you what, can we bring a list when we come in to get measurements?”

“Sure, that’ll work.”

They finished their dinner and talked about everything that happened for each of them.  Zach and Margaret had actually done things themselves, after all.  After dinner, they all went to their respective homes.  Stacy and Katie started going through the things that no longer fit them, and Margaret started to wrap her head around how to design clothing for what amounted to a woman with two heads, both of which needed individual neck holes.  Zach had as usual brought his work home with him, so he spent the remainder of the evening at his desk full of computers.

A few days later, Stacy and Katie came to Zach and Margaret’s house so she could take their measurements.  “So, did you two crazy kids come up with a shopping list for me?”

“Yeah.”  Stacy handed over the list they had come up with.  “Besides the coat and sweatshirts we mentioned, we’d also just like some basic t-shirts.  We got a lot of clothes from the mansion, but most of them are fairly nice.  We don’t really have anything casual.”

“So just some basic everyday around-the-house wear, then?”

“Yep, pretty much.”

“I can do that for you, no problem.  Get back to me in a week, and I should have something to show you.”

“Thanks, sis.  And we’ll be able to pay you for fabric and stuff.  We got a pretty good consolation prize from the mansion.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Katie.

Margaret spent the next week creating her sister and sister-in-law’s new wardrobe.  As she worked, she wondered what it might be like to go through what they had gone through.  It was pretty cool, actually.

*          *          *

“Well, my goodness.  Our friends have certainly been busy, haven’t they?”

“It would appear that the world may be a little more open to magic than even you had thought.”

“So much the better, then.”

*          *          *

When Wesley woke up in the hotel room the next morning, he heard something falling over in John and Sue’s room.  It sounded like a lamp had fallen over or something.  He threw on some clothes and knocked on their door.

“John?  Sue?  Are you guys okay in there?”  He heard groaning.  Apparently they were still asleep, which was odd, because if their room was like his room, the lamp wasn’t really close to the bed at all.  He knocked louder.  “John?”

Suddenly, John called out in surprise, pretty loudly.  It was a sound that Wesley had heard many, many times.  Oh, come on, you’re kidding me.  “John?  Are you okay?”

“Wesley?  I think your vacation is contagious or something.”

Oh boy.  “John, did something weird happen to you, too?”

“Yeah, you might say that,” said Sue.

“Would it help if I came in?”

“Maybe, I don’t know.  Hang on.”  Wesley heard something thumping against the door, and then the knob turned.  Wesley entered the room, and once again, Derek and Diana had managed to surprise him again.

John and Sue were absolutely enormous, like about fifteen feet long.  The clothes they were wearing had grown with them, fortunately, but the bed had not, so they were hardly even lying on it anymore.  John was able to open the door while his feet were pressed against the window.

“Whoa!  That’s a new one.”

“No one else at this thing of yours did anything like this?”

“Well, Brad shrunk, but he also grew wings.  No one else got bigger, though.  But you know what’s really weird about this?”

“There’s something about this that’s especially weird?” said Sue.

“When the rest of us changed, it didn’t really prevent us from being able to do normal day-to-day stuff at some level.  Whereas with this, you’d have a hard time getting out of the room, and none of your clothes fit anymore.”

“Well, we’re not naked right now,” said John, “so obviously some of our clothes changed.  Maybe the rest did too.”  He reached over to his suitcase and found a t-shirt.  It was still normal size.  “Oh, never mind.”  As soon as he picked it up, though, it grew to match his own size.

“Oh, cool,” said Wesley.  “I didn’t think you should have been that inconvenienced by it.”

“Hey, Wes, what’s up?” said a fairly groggy Brad from the hallway.  Lori and Luann were behind him.  “Whoa!” he said as he saw John and Sue through Wesley’s legs.  “I guess this is what Derek and Diana meant by ‘spread the word,’ huh?”

“Who are Derek and Diana,” said Sue.

“They’re the ones responsible for the changes,” said Luann.

“Well, we’ve covered the clothing problem, but there’s still the issue of size.  They wouldn’t have changed you in such a way that trapped you in your room.”

“Maybe they can change their size,” said Lori.  “Like the way Rob and Beth had control over what happened with them.”

“Yeah, maybe,” said Wesley. “Can you try and shrink yourselves down?”

“I would if I had the slightest idea how,” said John.

“You kind of have to visualize it happening,” said Brad.  He, Lori, and Luann came into the room, since they didn’t take up as much room as Wesley and they could fit into the smaller gaps that John and Sue didn’t occupy.  “That’s how I learned how to use my wings.”

“Okay,” said Sue.  She closed her eyes, and slowly, she began to shrink.  She got smaller and smaller until she was back to her normal size.  Then, she kept shrinking.  She didn’t stop until she was only about a foot high.  Again, her clothing had changed size along with her.

“Sue?” said John.  He gently picked her up and held her in his hand.  “Are you okay?”

“Technically, yes.  Except for the fact that I’m the size of a Barbie doll.”

“Did you stop visualizing when you got to your normal size?” asked Lori.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I think I’m beginning to get this,” said Wesley.  “Derek and Diana said they wanted to spread what they were doing to the rest of the world, and I guess it defeats the purpose if the changes are easy to hide.  So you guys have the ability to change your size, but you aren’t able to be your normal size.  You can be really big or really small, and that’s it.  How about you, John?  Can you change too?”

“Hang on.”  He picked up their suitcase and set it on the floor.  He then set Sue next to it, and she started climbing through the suitcase looking for her clothes.  As she found her clothes, they shrank to fit her.  John then shrank himself down as well so he could move around the room.  Suddenly, something occurred to him.

“Wait a minute.  How are we supposed to be able to go to work like this?”

“John?” said Sue.  Fortunately, she didn’t sound like a chipmunk or anything.  “I don’t think we need to worry about work.”  She reached into a pocket of their suitcase and pulled out an envelope.  It was like she was handling an enormous sheet of plywood.  Luann hobbled over to the suitcase and took the envelope from Sue, trying not to knock her over.  She opened the envelope, and inside was a check for two million dollars made out to John and Sue.  In the memo field was a note.

“Thanks for Playing Along – Derek and Diana”

“Wow,” said Brad.  “How loaded are they?”

John and Sue gave each other a big hug.  “Oh, this is wonderful!” said Sue.

“You know what?” said John.  “I’m in the mood for a big breakfast.  How about the rest of you guys?”

*          *          *

On the other end of the country, Zach woke up in his bedroom after a long night of programming.  He sat up in bed, but something seemed unusual.  He ran his hand over his face, and his skin seemed really dry.  He took a look at his hands, and they looked like they were made of plastic.  As he woke up some more, he realized that they actually were.  In fact, his entire body was covered with a kind of semi-rigid plastic.  As he felt his chest, he also felt some small gaps in the plastic.  The weird part, though, was when he looked at the other end of the bedroom where he had left his laptop charging.  It was gone.

He left the bedroom to look in the office for his laptop, but when he got there, all of his computing stuff was gone.  His desktops, his printer, his fax, his PDA, even his cell phone was gone.  He ran back to the bedroom to wake up Margaret, but when he got there, he got his first good look at her of the morning.  Immediately, he ran to the phone and dialed Stacy’s number.  After about four rings, she answered the phone in a sleepy voice.

“Hello?”

“Stacy?  It’s Zach.  I need you and Katie to come over here right away.  Something weird has happened.”

“What do you mean, something weird?”

“Something like what happened to you guys.”

“What do you mean?  Happened to who?”

“To me and Maggie.”

Zach could hear Stacy waking up on the other end of the line.  “It has?  Are you sure?”

“Trust me, I’m very sure.”

“Okay, we’ll be right there.”  Stacy hung up the phone.  Katie had woken up by now.  “Who was it?”

“That was Zach.  Apparently Derek and Diana paid them a visit last night.”

“Really?  Did he see them?”

“No, I didn’t mean literally.  I mean like they’ve changed somehow.  He wants us to get right over there.”

“Well, let’s go.”  They threw something on and headed right over.  When they got there, Zach let them in with his finger to his lips.  They followed him into the house, creeping along until they got to the bedroom.  Lying there, still sleeping, was Margaret.  Her skin had become a little shiny, almost like latex rubber.  That was a side note, though.  The real shocker was what had happened to her body.  Her right leg was missing at the knee, she had two extra arms, and her four arms were cradling her head on her stomach.  The bottom of her head was totally smooth, as was the top of her shoulders.  There was no sign that there had ever been a neck.

“Whoa,” said Katie.  “Yeah, this definitely looks like Derek and Diana’s work, all right.”

“What do we do?” said Zach.

“I guess we have to wait for her to wake up, and then we break it to her slowly.”

Little by little, Margaret woke up.  She stretched and yawned, still not quite aware that she was stretching more limbs than normal.  “Oh, man, I must have slept funny last night.   I think my foot’s asleep.”  As she let go of her head, it tumbled off her stomach and landed on the bed.  “Whoa!  That was weird.”

“You have no idea, sis,” said Stacy.

“Stacy?  Is that you?”  She tried to get up, but her missing lower leg made it tricky.  Plus, when she rolled over and lifted her shoulders off the pillow, her head naturally stayed where it was.  She tried to raise her shoulders again, but her head stayed put.  “What’s going on here?”

Stacy picked up Margaret’s head from the bottom and held her facing the mirror.  “Welcome to the club, Maggie.”

“Whoa!  What happened to my body?”

“It’s still in bed.”  She turned Margaret’s head to face her body, and Margaret gasped when she saw what had happened.

“Whoa.  This is…so cool!”  Stacy and Katie looked at each other, and then at Zach.  “No wonder I couldn’t feel my foot.”

“Wow, Maggie,” said Katie.  “You’re sure taking this well.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about it ever since I saw you guys again.  I was wondering what it was like.”

“Now you know, I guess,” said Zach.  “Now what?”

“Now I need to figure out how to live with no neck, two extra arms, and a leg and a half.”

“You know, that’s what has me puzzled,” said Stacy.  “We’ve met the people who are responsible for all this.  If they had wanted you to only have one leg, they would have removed it at the hip.  It doesn’t make sense to leave you with half a leg.”

“Yeah,” said Katie.  “Frankly, it doesn’t make sense to leave you with only one leg.  There’s not much you can do with that.”

“Also, I had always thought that they were trying to bring a little variety into it.  They’ve messed with limbs before, so they wouldn’t just do the same thing again.”

“Actually, I’m thinking about the rubber skin thing.  Maybe she has the ability to reshape herself.”

“Really?” said Margaret.  “That would be awesome!”

“Yeah, why don’t you try that?” said Stacy.  “Try to grow your leg back.  Just, like, think about it growing.”

“Well, here, give me my head back,” said Margaret.  “This is disorienting.”

“Oh, sure.”  Stacy handed her sister’s head back to her, and she took it in her four hands.  She closed her eyes and concentrated, and her right leg slowly grew back to its normal shape.

“Oh, goody!” said Margaret.  She finally got out of bed, but she was still a little unsteady.  “Whoa.  This is hard without my head where it belongs.”

“Well, why don’t you try putting it back on?” said Zach.

“Oh, right.  Duh.”  She held her head above her shoulders and closed her eyes, and a neck grew up from her body and joined with her head, putting it back in its proper place.  “Now, if only I had a spaghetti-strap top I liked, I could stay this way.”

“Well, you are a clothing designer,” said Stacy.  “Now you can experiment on yourself before making our stuff.”

“Yeah, that’d be cool.  Hang on, let me try something.”  She closed her eyes again, but nothing happened.  “Aw, nuts.  I guess I can’t make myself taller.  Oh, well.”  She closed her eyes, and her lower two arms went away as she got a shirt out of her dresser.

“Um, hello,” said Zach.  “Anyone want to help me figure out what I’m supposed to do now?”

“Oh, right,” said Katie.  “You probably changed too, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, my skin feels like some kind of plastic, there are some little gaps in it, and all my computers are gone, along with the peripherals and my cell phone.”

Stacy looked at his arm.  There appeared to be a little door in it.  She felt along his arm until she found a little latch, and she opened the door.  Behind it were a series of small plugs, like on a digital music player.  She looked again at the patterns on his chest, and they started to look familiar.  “Zach?  I think I know what happened to your computers.”

“What?”  He looked at the plugs in his arm, and he looked down at his chest.  “No way.  No way.  Could they really do that?”

“Look at your wife,” said Katie.

“You think they put my computers inside me?”

“Could be.”

“But there’s no monitor.  How can I use my computer without a screen?”

“Maybe it’s built into your eyes or something,” said Margaret, who had taken her head off again and was experimenting with other changes.

Zach closed his eyes, and behind his eyelids he saw his desktop display.  He tried mentally moving the mouse, and the pointer moved over to the Start menu and pulled up Notepad.  Whoa, this is sweet, he thought, and as he thought it, the words appeared on the screen.  “Whoa, that’s cool.  Apparently I can type with my mind now.”

“Do you have an Internet connection?” asked Katie.

“Let me check.”  He double-mind-clicked on his Web browser, and the window loaded right away.  “Yeah, a really fast one.  Man, this blows the crap out of a hands-free headset.  Oh, wait!  I still don’t have my cell phone.”

“Yeah, I’ve got an idea about that,” said Stacy.  “It’s probably in your hand.  That would be the convenient place for a cell phone to be installed in a person.”

Zach looked at the palm of his right hand, and sure enough, there were little numbers on it.  There was also a display with his phone’s menu showing on it.  He tried dialing his home phone, and he heard the dial tone in his ear without having to hold his hand there.  The house phone rang, and Stacy and Katie went to get it.  Katie picked up the handset.  “Hello?”

“Cool,” said Rob over the phone.  His hand still wasn’t at his ear.  “It’s like I have a headset built into my head.  I think that all the computers I had are now built into me.  This is so totally awesome.”

“Hey guys, check this out,” said Margaret.  Everyone looked over at her.  Stacy rolled her eyes.  Margaret’s torso was sitting on top of her dresser, along with her detached head and one of her legs.  Her lower half and remaining leg were back on the bed.  “I think I’ve got this figured out.  I can separate my body into pieces, and I can grow new pieces or make pieces go away, but I can’t change the pieces, so I can’t make myself actually look different.  I can just change around what parts I already have.  Here, Zach, catch.”  She tossed her leg over to Zach.  “Put that back for me, will you?”  He went over to the bed and reattached her leg, while she put her head back on and opened one of her dresser drawers.  She took out another shirt and a pair of shorts and gave Katie the shirt.  “I want to try something here.  Since I can separate my parts, and I can grow extra parts, I want to see if I can grow parts that are already separate.  Katie, can you hold my shirt above my hips?” She did.  Margaret closed her eyes, and a mound of rubbery flesh started to grow up from her severed waist.  The new body part grew up into her shirt, filling it out.  Arms grew out from the sleeves, and another head with hair came out of the neck hole.  The new Margaret looked back at the dresser, where her other top half was still sitting.

“Cool!  Now I can model for myself!”

She took the shorts from herself and held them open like a garbage bag underneath her extra upper half, which lifted herself up above the dresser.  Both of Margaret’s heads closed their eyes, and a new pair of hips grew out from her stomach and into the shorts.  They were followed by a pair of legs, and soon, there were two Margarets in the room facing each other.

“Okay, I’ve seen weird before,” said Stacy, “and that’s weird.”

“Holy crap, are you a quick study,” said Katie.

Margaret hopped down from the dresser and gave Stacy and Katie a big hug as the other Margaret gave Zach a big hug.  “Oh, man, we are going to have so much fu with this!  Stacy, Katie, I am so glad you guys invited us out for dinner!”

“Hey, think nothing of it,” said Katie.

“Hey, Maggie, look at this,” said Stacy as she caught a peek of something in Margaret’s top dresser drawer.  It looked like an envelope.  She pulled it out and handed it to Margaret.  “Is this yours?”

“I don’t know.  Let me see that.”  She took the envelope and opened it up.  The flap wasn’t sealed.  Inside was a check made out to Margaret and Zach for two million dollars.  In the memo field, Stacy saw a familiar pair of names.

Margaret gasped.  “Where did this come from?”

“This check is from the people who are in charge of all these changes,” said Stacy.  “I think it’s their way of thanking you for your participation.”

“Oh my God, Zach, look at this!”  Margaret took the check over to Zach and herself and showed it to him.  He saw the string of zeroes, and he gave both Margarets a bear hug and started laughing.  The two-three of them danced all over the room, rejoicing in their new wealth.

“Well,” said Stacy, “I’m in the mood for a celebration.  How about you guys?”

“Shall we hit Rob and Beth’s again?” said Katie.

“Why not?” said Zach.  “Have we got a surprise for them!”