The Mansion – Week 2

On the morning of the eighth day, there was a lot of surprised screaming coming from several of the rooms.  Brad was the first to arrive in the dining room for breakfast, followed by Mandi and Jake.  Brad and Mandi were already dressed for the gym, but Brad couldn’t help but feel a little inadequate.

“Morning, Mandi,” he said as she and Jake came in.  “Hey, Jake.”

Jake and Mandi looked at Brad, a little confused at first, and then it dawned on them.  It took them a little while to figure out just what it was that seemed a little different about him.  “Brad?” asked Jake.  “Is it just me, or did you shrink?”

“Yeah,” said Brad.  Sometime during the night, he had shrunk from his usual six foot six down to five feet even.  “I see you had a weird morning too.”

“Yeah, I don’t know what happened,” said Mandi.  Both she and Jake had become translucent.  The lights behind them were clearly visible, and they cast projected images instead of shadows.

“More and more evidence for the Twilight Zone theory,” said Beth as she and Rob came in for breakfast, followed by Stacy and Katie, a little warily.  Rob and Beth looked the same, but Stacy and Katie were missing their left and right arms, respectively.  The corresponding sleeves of their bathrobes were missing, too.  There wasn’t even a stump, just a smooth transition from neck to chest, with no bump for a shoulder.  The two of them sat at their places and tried to work out how to use a knife and fork to feed each other.

“Why?” asked Jake.  “What happened to you guys?  You look just like you did yesterday.”

Rob got up from his seat and offered his hand to Jake.  “Here, grab onto my arm.”  Rob and Jake grabbed onto each other’s wrists.  “Now lift your arm.”  Jake raised his arm, and Rob went right up into the air with it, keeping his body rigid.  Jake moved his arm side to side, and Rob waved around in the air like he was made of foam.

“Whoa, you don’t hardly weigh anything at all.”

“Yeah.  I got out of bed this morning and accidentally launched myself across the room.”

“So that only leaves Wes and Luann,” said Beth.  She looked across the table at their adjoining spots.  “Oh, my God.”

She saw where Wesley and Luann usually sat.  Both chairs were still there, but Wesley’s name card was missing and no food had been set out for him.

Jake and Rob headed for Wesley’s room.  Stacy and Katie jumped up from their chairs and ran from the dining room.  Mandi, Brad, and Beth were right behind them.  Jake tried the knob, but it was locked.  He pounded on the door with his see-through fist.

“Wesley!  Are you in there?  Are you okay?”

From within the room, they heard a toilet flush, followed by footsteps.  They all breathed a sigh of relief when Wesley came to the door.

“Yeah, I’m okay.  What’s the – whoa,” he said when he answered the door.  He saw Jake standing in front of the crowd, and he could almost see Rob and Brad through Jake.  He also saw Stacy and Mandi missing an arm each, from their clothing as well as themselves, and Brad all of a sudden only came up to Wesley’s chin.  “So you guys all changed too, huh?  Wait, did you two change, too?” he asked Rob and Beth.

Beth reached her arm up around Brad’s shoulder and cantilevered herself out to the side.  “Yeah, we’re feeling some drastic weight loss, both of us.”

“What happened to you?” Jake asked Wesley.

“Nothing drastic, but certainly noticeable.  When I woke up, my acne medication and dandruff shampoo were gone, and so were my acne and dandruff.  Also, my hair wasn’t sticking up, and it didn’t feel all greasy like it usually does in the morning.  And I’ve been sitting on the can for the last 20 minutes, which is the reason I was late getting to breakfast.  And here’s the weird thing: out of sheer curiosity, I took a look at the toilet when I was done just now.”

“Ugh,” said Mandi.

“And the stuff on top of the pile in the bowl hadn’t hardly been digested yet.  It’s like I just crapped out everything in my entire GI tract.”

“But you’re okay, though, right?  Nothing dangerous happened to you?” asked Katie.

“No, I’m totally fine.  Why?  What happened?”

“There wasn’t any food set out for you at breakfast,” said Stacy, “and your place card was gone.”

Wesley thought for a moment.  “You know, that actually makes some kind of sense.  I wasn’t actually hungry at all this morning like I usually am.  Maybe my change wasn’t quite as overt as yours were, and instead I, like, don’t need food and my skin doesn’t produce oil anymore.”

“Sounds like you got the long end of the stick, then,” said Brad.

“So, is everything okay, then?” asked Wesley.

“As far as we know,” said Rob.  “We still need to check on Luann.  She hasn’t shown up yet.”

“Well, go ahead, and I’ll get dressed and be right with you.”  Wesley closed his door and went back to his dresser as the others went across the hall to Luann’s room.  Beth knocked on the door, and Mandi stood behind her so her knocking didn’t throw her across the hall.

“Luann?  Are you okay?  There’s been some weird stuff going on, and we wanted –”

“No shit!” said Luann.  Everyone jumped back.  They’d known her for a week now, and they’d usually had to get her to raise her voice so they could hear her.  Yep, something weird was going on in there, too.

“It’s okay, Luann.  We’ve all had weird stuff happen to us, too.”

“Not like this!”

“Are you sure?” said Stacy.  “Katie and I are missing arms out here.”

“Yeah, I’m sure!  This is fucking weird!”

“Can you show us?  We might be able to help,” said Jake.

“Is Wes out there?”

Jake turned to Rob.  Wes? he mouthed to Rob as he raised an eyebrow.  Just what had those two been up to over the past week?  “He’s getting dressed.  He should be here soon.”

“I’m here,” said Wesley as he came out of his room.  “How is she?”

“She wants to talk to you, Wes,” said Jake.  “She sounds freaked out in there.”

“Okay.”  Wesley went to the door.  “Hey, Luann?  How you doing?”

“I don’t know!” she shouted through the door.  “There’s some weird crap going on here, and I don’t know what’s going on!”  Her voice was starting to crack.

“Do you want someone to come in?  Do you need any help in there with anything?”

“I don’t know.  I’m afraid to get out of bed.”

“Hang on, Luann.  I’m going to come in, okay?  Are you, you know, decent and everything?”

“Yeah.”

Wesley opened the door wide enough to slip into the room, and he closed the door behind him.  He saw Luann lying in bed with the covers pulled up to her neck.  “You okay?  You sounded a little, well, panicky.”

“Wesley, I’m scared.”  She looked scared.  “I don’t know what’s happening.”

Wesley sat down on the edge of the bed and held Luann’s hand.  “Luann, none of us knows what’s happening.  I certainly don’t know.  But there are weird things going on with all of us.  Rob and Beth are light enough that they might start drifting around in a stiff wind.  Brad has shrunk a foot and a half.  Jake and Mandi are translucent.  Stacy and Katie are each missing an arm.  You remember what I told you last night?”

Luann nodded, still looking terrified.

“I told you that in this house, you have the opportunity to not be alone anymore.  As long as we’re stuck here, we might as well work together and share our troubles.”

“But, I don’t know if there’s any way that anyone can help me.”

“Try me.”  He gave her a look that he hoped conveyed a great amount of confidence.

She looked up at the ceiling, and then she slowly drew aside the covers.  When Wesley saw what was underneath them, he did his best to not look shocked, but it wasn’t easy.

At the bottom of Luann’s rib cage, there was a twelve-inch gap until her body started again where it left off.  She was simply in two pieces.  There wasn’t any blood or anything, just a flat surface of skin on the bottom of her torso and on top of her hips.

“Does it hurt?” asked Wesley.

“No, it feels completely normal, and that’s what scares me.  I can still wiggle my toes and everything.”  She proved it.  Her feet and toes wiggled around, about a foot closer to the end of the bed than they should have been.

“Have you tried walking?”

“I haven’t even tried moving.”

“Well, you’ll need to eventually.  You can’t stay in your room forever.”  Wesley couldn’t believe he was saying that; a week ago, he would have been perfectly satisfied with staying in his own room.  “And there are half a dozen people out there who want to help you handle what’s going on, because they have their own things to deal with, too.  If we’re going to deal with what’s happening, we’re going to do it together.”  He laid his arm gently around her shoulders.  This was as far as he had ever gone with a girl, and he didn’t want to foul it up.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.  Okay, help me up.”  She tried to sit up, but she still had a way to go to get used to her new state.  Her abs tensed as she tried to sit up on her own, but since her abs weren’t connected to her hips anymore, her hips sat up and her abs stayed put.  Wesley put his hands to her shoulders and lifted her torso to the vertical position so she was sitting on her new waist surface.  Then, she tried to stand her legs up on the floor, but since she couldn’t lean forward to shift her weight, her feet just struggled against the floor.  She started to get frustrated, but Wesley pressed his foot against her ankles, giving her something to brace against so she could stand on her own.  He then lifted her torso onto her legs and helped her keep her balance as they walked out of her room and showed the others what had happened.

That was one weird day for everybody.  Rob and Beth were walking around the house very carefully, for fear that if they pushed too hard against anything, they might go flying around the room.  They also avoided going upstairs to the indoor park in case it happened to be a windy day.  Brad didn’t have any problem getting around, but he was still instinctively ducking through the doorways.  Wesley wasn’t having any problems, so he was available to help Luann keep herself together, in both senses of the word.  She was moving like a person with a bad back, which was pretty much true.  She had looked through her closet and dresser looking for something like a one-piece swimsuit that she could use to bind herself together, but the one swimsuit she found in her room was a bikini.  Wesley had brought her into his room and gave her a couple of his belts, which she linked together and wrapped around herself from shoulder to crotch.  Thus equipped, she was able to move slowly around the mansion on her own.  However, this didn’t stop Wesley from spending his time at Luann’s side almost constantly.

By the end of the day, people had more or less figured out how to make things work for themselves.  That afternoon, the poker tournament they had scheduled went on as planned.  Luann even managed to take advantage of her new condition by getting up and going to use the restroom without leaving the table.  She used the edge of the sink to pull down her sweatpants and panties, and she raised them again the same way when she was done.  Wesley was impressed.

In the evening, Wesley and Luann decided to shift things about a bit.  When they came to dinner, they were decked out in the finest clothes in their respective closets.  Wesley was dressed in a three-piece suit, and Luann wore a peasant blouse and skirt.  Since she wasn’t wearing the belts, Wesley was still helping her walk a little, but she was still moving with complete confidence.  Everyone else was dressed as they had been all day.

“Wow, you guys,” said Rob when Wesley and Luann entered the room.  “What’s the occasion?”

“It was Luann’s idea, actually,” said Wesley as he helped Luann sit in her seat and then take his own seat.  There still wasn’t a plate for him, but there was still a chair.

“I realized at the poker game that today, we finally got an answer to that problem we’ve been working on for the last week.  We’ve got some hard evidence of what’s actually going on around here.”

“What do you mean?” asked Brad, his face closer to his plate than was comfortable for him.  “Don’t we know less of what’s going on now?”

“Well, you remember what options we were looking at, right?”

“Yeah,” said Stacy.  She had scooted her chair right next to Katie’s, and they were eating off of their two plates with one set of silverware between them.  “I think the choices were Conspiracy or Twilight Zone, right?”

“Right,” said Luann.  “And now we know.”

“My God, you’re right,” said Jake.  “The stuff that’s happened to all of us can’t be explained any other way.  The other stuff could, unlikely but possibly, have been the work of a bunch of people trying to screw with us.  There isn’t any way that some group of conspirators could do this to us.”

“And for a lot of us,” said Katie, “what’s happened just shouldn’t be possible.  I mean, look at Rob.  A full-grown man should weigh more than ten pounds.  I should not be able to see the backs of Mandi and Jake’s chairs from in front of them.  And look at friggin’ Luann, for crying out loud.  A pair of legs should not be walking around on their own.”

“Well, I never would have believed it,” said Rob, “but I’m starting to lean towards the M word.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Wesley, “raise your glasses.  I’d like to propose a toast.  Here’s to certainty at long last, and here’s to magic.”  He didn’t drink, of course, but everyone else raised their glasses and drank.  Well, almost everyone else.  Mandi and Brad just drank.

After dinner, everybody wandered back to their rooms, or to other people’s.  Wesley carried Luann’s upper half back to his room and opened the door for her lower half.  They fell asleep on the sofa watching movies that they discovered they both liked.  Rob and Beth went back to their room and went through their closet looking for the formalwear.  Stacy and Katie did the same, as did Jake.  When he got back to his and Mandi’s room, though, he went to bed on the sofa.  After the first few nights, he had gotten an impression from Mandi that she wasn’t comfortable sharing a bed with him.

Mandi and Brad were the last two people at the table.  Neither of them had finished their dinner.  They were just staring at their plates, and at each other.  They looked like they had just lost their life savings.

Brad had worked out his entire life.  He had chiseled his body into a finely honed instrument.  And without an education, his body was all he really had to go on.  And his body was going away.

Mandi was a little less despondent.  She did think the changes were kind of interesting, but no one who hadn’t been here would know what had happened.  Hell, even the people here didn’t know what was happening!  If she ever got out of this place, everyone would think she was a freak.  After all, she was a freak.

When they were done staring, Brad and Mandi shambled off to their own rooms.  Brad was a little afraid to go to sleep, but he had had enough alcohol at dinner that he couldn’t fight off the urge much longer.  Mandi went off to sleep without any trouble, especially since Jake had been good enough to leave the bed for her.

For the others, the new developments were an opportunity to add a little fun and levity to their routines.  Luann even became a little more outgoing, taking part in as many of the activities as she was able.  She sat out for the dancing, but she frequently went to the park to enjoy the sun, fake or not, or make snow half-angels.  Actually, even though she sat out for the dancing, that was just her lower half.  Wesley still carried her upper half onto the floor and moved like he never had before.  It was a lot easier for him to be able to dance without worrying about stepping on Luann’s feet, which were resting over on a bar stool.  Brad, however, retracted even further into the gym, and Mandi was able to continue enjoying his company despite his melancholy.

One day, Mandi came into the gym ready for her workout, when she saw Brad doing some unusual chin-ups.  He was wearing jogging weights around his ankles, along with as many other weights as he could strap on.

“Um, Brad,” she said, “what are you doing?”

“What’s it look like?  I’m trying to do something about this.”

“Are you actually trying to stretch yourself?”

“Well, it’s the only thing I could think of!  I’m not gonna stay like this!”

“Brad, how do you know that?  There’s things going on here that none of us understand.  You might just have to learn to live with it.”

“No one has to live with anything if they don’t want to.  You think I got to be as ripped as I am by learning to live with the way I look?  No!  I decided to change my body, and I went out and did it.  I did it then, and I’m gonna do it now.”

“Why can’t you just be happy with this and find the good in it?  Look at Luann.  She used to live in the library.  Now she’s gotten cut in half and she’s living la vida loca.  You’d never know anything happened if Wesley didn’t spend so much time carrying her top half around.  Look at Jake.  He’s enjoying himself just fine.”

“Jake looks to me like the kind of guy who would just let things happen to him.  I knew kids like that in high school.  They were usually busy getting me food at lunchtime.”

Despite how much Mandi agreed with Brad about Jake’s basic persona, she was surprised at how much Brad’s insults actually offended her a little.  “And what if you can’t change it?  What if you fail?”

“Mandi, babe, I never fail.  You wait and see.”  He continued his chin-ups.  Mandi headed over to an exercise bike.  The two of them didn’t speak for the rest of the day.

On the evening of the fourteenth day, everyone gathered together for dinner.  By this time, Wesley and Luann’s evening wear habit had spread to the rest of the group.  Rob was dressed in a fine tuxedo, and Beth was wearing a long white gown.  Stacy wore a low-cut red top with exposed shoulders and tight black leather pants, and Katie wore the same outfit with the opposite color scheme.  Jake was wearing a collared shirt under a v-neck sweater with slacks, and Mandi wore a button-down sleeveless blouse with Capri pants.  Even Brad managed to get into the spirit of things with a sport coat and a t-shirt over a nice pair of jeans.

After dinner, everyone went off to their rooms.  That night, nobody had any trouble falling right to sleep.”

*          *          *

“Well, so far, so good.”

“Yes, they seem to be taking the initial stages well.  It was a good idea after all to ease them into it.”

“Yes, but the next one will be quite jarring for several of them.  I truly hope they aren’t too taken aback.”

“Indeed.  The larger gentleman may prove to be something of a worry, especially if…”

“You’re afraid he might cause unrest among the others, aren’t you?  Perhaps even enough to lead to violence?”

“I do hope not, but it may come to that, especially with what some of the others have in store for them.”

“True enough, love, true enough.  On the other hand, though, there have proven to be several level heads among the group, and their influence will be invaluable.”

“Indeed.  Say, had you planned on inducing romance into the equation as early as this, my dear?”

“I find it disastrous to attempt to force such a thing as love to conform to any sort of plan.  I merely arranged the elements and watched them react.  It is fortunate that these young people have taken to each other as they have.  It ought to ease the transition for everybody.”

“We can only hope, my love.  We can only hope.”