The Mansion – Week 3

Stacy woke up on the morning of the fifteenth day.  She reached up to turn on the bedside light, and she tried to roll out of bed, but something was stopping her.  She looked over to where her missing arm used to be to find Katie attached to her at the shoulder.  The jostling woke Katie up.  It didn’t take either of them very long to wake all the way up.

When Mandi woke up, she rubbed her eyes to wake herself up, but for some reason, she couldn’t get her hands to cover her eyes.  It took her a moment to realize that her hands were covering her eyes, all right, but her hands were transparent.  She threw off the covers, and her entire body looked like it was made of glass.  She looked over to Jake, still sleeping on the couch, and he looked the same.

Rob and Beth woke up just as they had for the past week.  Well, almost.  They noticed that some things in the room were knocked over, and most of the pictures on the wall were tilted.  They also noticed some burn marks on Rob’s side of the bed.  Looking in the bathroom mirror, they also noticed that Rob’s hair had changed from light blond to deep red, and Beth’s had changed from red to white.

Brad woke up early, and the first things he noticed were some large stumps on his back covered with some kind of red fuzz.  It was a little weird, but he was pleased to see that he appeared to be back to his normal size.  His dresser came up to the same place on him as it had when he arrived.  He looked through his clothes and dug out his workout gear, which he found had been modified on the back to accommodate the weird lumps that had grown in there.  When he walked out into the hall to start his morning workout, he looked up at how huge the hall looked.  He looked back at his bedroom door, and it looked normal, but the other doors were enormous.  Then, he figured out what had happened.

He ran into the gym to try stretching himself out on the chin-up bar again, but he wasn’t ready for what he saw when he got in there.  On the treadmill, wearing a pair of short shorts and slip-on running shoes, was a woman’s lower half.

Luann woke up in her own bed.  She was a bit confused when she felt Wesley’s arms cradling her, but then she remembered what had gone on the night before.  She gave him a kiss on the cheek and turned over to get out of bed, and then she felt something unusual.  She looked under the covers, and then she threw them off the bed.  She prodded Wesley awake.  He came to easily, as if he had merely had his eyes closed.

“Good morning, Luann,” he said, and then he saw the look on her face.  He looked over the bed, and he noticed something missing.  “What’s the matter?”

“Wesley, I can’t feel my legs.”

Breakfast that morning was a frantic experience for nearly everyone in the house.  The least concerned were probably Rob and Beth, but they were still a little confused about what exactly had happened to them.  Seeing what had happened to the others convinced them that they couldn’t have remained unchanged.  They were the first to show up to the table, and the first people they saw were Stacy and Katie, who were now joined at the shoulder.  Their clothing was also joined to accommodate them; they wore a single halter top that wrapped all around their combined torso, and their shorts had four leg holes.  Their chairs were still pushed together where they had left them the night before, and when they sat at the table, they crossed their two middle legs in such a way that they almost looked normal, from the waist down, if you ignored the two legs on the outside.  They looked a little nervous, but not so much that they couldn’t eat, which they did from their one plate.

The next to show up were Wesley and Luann.  Luann was hanging on to Wesley’s neck, who looked like he wasn’t carrying anything heavier than a shopping bag.  He set Luann down in her chair, which had grown about eight inches in the night to accommodate her lack of a pelvis to sit on.  She looked at her food, but she wasn’t particularly driven to eat.

“Luann?” said Beth.  “Are you okay, honey?”

“You didn’t see me walking in here, did you?”

“No, but –”

“I think my legs have disappeared.”

“What?” said Stacy.

“How do you know?” said Katie.

“They were gone when I woke up, and I couldn’t feel them anymore.”  Wesley put his arm on her shoulder, since he still wasn’t worried about eating.  “Anything happen to you guys besides a dye job?”

“I think so,” said Rob, “but we don’t really know what.  I found scorch marks on the bed sheets when I woke up, and there was a lot of stuff around the room that was knocked over.”

“You sure you weren’t just having a good time last night?” said Katie with a mischievous smirk.

“Please,” said Rob.  “We’re married.”  Beth socked him on the arm.

The next to arrive was Jake.  Everyone looked up when he walked in.  He was completely transparent.  They couldn’t see his organs or anything, but they could see the interior of his clothes just fine.  They almost turned away a little when he ate, but as the food mixed with the saliva in his mouth, it turned invisible too.  Everyone breathed a silent sigh of relief that they didn’t have to see Jake digest his breakfast.

“Whoa, Jake,” said Wesley, trying not to sound too freaked out.  “Looks like you had an interesting night too.”

“Yeah, it would seem that I’m having an extended moment of clarity.  Why, what happened to you?”

“Don’t know yet, but I’m assuming something did.”

“Well, have you noticed anything different?” asked Stacy.

“I guess it was a little easier to carry Luann than it has been.  Maybe that’s something.  Is, uh, is Mandi the same way?”

“Yeah.  She’s not taking it too well.  I don’t know if she’s going to come out of the room today.”

“Hey, guys?” said Brad from out in the hall.  “Is Luann in there?”

“Yeah, what is it?” said Luann.

“I think I found something here that belongs to you.”

Wesley picked up Luann and carried her out into the hall.  The others were right behind them.  When they came through the door, they paused when they saw Brad for the first time.  He wasn’t merely of below-average height anymore.  Now, he was legitimately short at about three and a half feet tall.  He still had the same proportions, though; he looked like a miniaturized version of himself.  They also couldn’t ignore the stubs on his back covered with a layer of fine red hairs, matching the hair on his head.

“Damn, Brad,” said Stacy.  “What happened to you?”

“Shut, up, never mind that.  You guys have to see this.”  He led them through the gym and into the pool room.  Luann gasped when she saw her own lower half sitting in the hot tub wearing the bottom of the two-piece swimsuit from her closet.

“When I walked in here this morning, I found them, or it, or whatever, running on a treadmill.  They ran for a while, and then they changed and went into the hot tub.”

“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” said Wesley.

“I thought she was just exercising, brainiac,” said Brad.  “Sometimes people do that, you know.”  The truth was that he had spent most of the time just admiring Luann’s lower half.  He had skipped out on most of his own workout just staring at her legs as they ran by themselves.

“Why the hell would I exercise?” said Luann as she hung from Wesley’s shoulders.  “Have you ever seen me exercise?”

“Okay, okay, guys,” said Jake.  “We’re all a little scared here, so let’s not jump down each other’s throats.  Let’s just try to figure out what’s going on.”

“Right, cause that’s worked really well so far,” said Katie.

“Look, everybody calm down!  We won’t get anywhere by all barking at each other.  You guys,” Jake said to Rob, Beth, and Wesley, “try a few things, see if you can figure out exactly what’s happened to you.  I’m going to go check on Mandi, see if she’s ready to come out and eat something.”  He went back to his and Mandi’s room.

“Well,” said Stacy, “I’m still a little hungry.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Katie.  They went back into the dining room to finish their breakfast.  Rob and Beth followed them.

“How about you, Luann?” said Wesley.  “You still hungry?”

“Not really,” said Luann.  She hugged Wesley a little closer to her.

“So, what do you think we should try?”

“Well, you said it was easier for you to carry me around.  Maybe you’re stronger now.”

“Well, isn’t that just great,” said Brad.  “I’m shrinking, and the nerdy guy gets stronger?”

“Maybe someone thought you needed to be taken down a notch,” said Wesley.

“Oh, please.  Look at you.  You’ve got arms like toothpicks.  No way you could lift your own weight.”

“Care to find out?”

Brad looked him up and down.  Mostly up.  “I got twenty bucks says I could bench more than you.”

Wesley patted his back pocket.  “I don’t have my wallet.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

“So you can just make a scientific experiment instead of a bet, then,” said Luann.

“Yeah, all right,” said Brad.  “Come on.”  He headed for the gym, and Wesley followed him carrying Luann.  Brad went over to the bench press machine and set the weight to 200.  His usual max was around 380, but he was adjusting to compensate for his decreased body weight.  He lifted the bar from the slot and strained against it, completing five reps.  “All right, brainiac, top that.”

Wesley set Luann down on a nearby stool and lay down on the bench.  Brad could tell that Wesley had never done this before, and he chuckled a little.  The chuckling stopped when Wesley lifted the bar five times without straining at all.

“Nice one, Wes,” said Luann.

“Yeah, you out-lifted a guy half your size,” said Brad.  “I was benching twice that before I came here.  So let’s see you match that.”  He moved the pin down to the 400-pound mark. Wesley lay back down on the bench and lifted the bar five more times, again without any apparent effort.

When he was done, Brad didn’t say a word.  He just pulled out the pin and moved it down to the highest weight, 650 pounds.  This time, Wesley strained a little, but he still lifted the bar five times without too much trouble.  On the last rep, though, his hands slipped a little and the bar fell onto his chest with 650 pounds of force.

“Oh, no!” said Luann.  She hopped off the stool as best she could and worked her way on her hands over to the bench.  She pulled up on the bar as hard as she could, but it wouldn’t budge.  As Wesley’s arms struggled to push up on the bar, she hobbled over to the weight stack and tried to pull the pin out.  With 650 pounds sitting on it, though, it stayed right where it was.  As she pulled, Brad ran over, pushed her out of the way, and yanked the pin out with one hard tug.  The weights clanged down, and the bar lifted up off of Wesley’s chest.

“My God, Wesley, are you okay?”

“Yeah, sure, I’m fine.  Why do you ask?”

Luann and Brad looked at each other.  “You had 650 pounds pressing down on your chest, man,” said Brad.  “That sort of thing usually kills people.”

“Your arms were flailing all over the place,” said Luann.  “I thought you were suffocating!”

“No, I was just trying to get my arms under the bar so I could lift it off me, but I didn’t have enough elbows.”

“So what you’re saying,” said Brad, “is that you had a 650-pound bar on top of your chest, and it didn’t even hurt?”

“Well, it hurt a little.”  Wesley seemed almost guilty that it didn’t hurt more than it did.

“Damn, did you ever get the long end of the stick.”

Just then, Luann’s ex-legs came out of the changing room, wearing the short shorts and walking barefoot with the shoes on top of their waist.  They gave Luann a little tap on the arm with a big toe, and on their way out of the gym they brushed against Brad as if they were trying to make it look like an accident.  They certainly weren’t trying very hard.

Wesley saw the looks on Brad and Luann’s faces.  “What was all that about?”

After lunch, Stacy and Katie walked through the gym, where Luann’s legs were doing squat thrusts and Brad was trying to do arm curls without being too distracted, and they entered the changing rooms and changed into a double-wide bikini.  From there, they stepped into the hot tub and proceeded to, well, keep each other company.  Their legs wrapped all over each other, and their arms looked like they were doing that hugging-from-behind-by-yourself trick.  It couldn’t have been easy to make out with each other when they were fused side-by-side, but they looked like they had had some practice.

This was what Beth saw when she came in for a swim.  She paused, slightly taken aback, then an idea formed in her head.  She changed back into her clothes and headed for the third floor.

A few minutes later, she went downstairs and found Rob playing backgammon with Jake.  “Rob, honey?  You got a minute?  I’d like to show you something.”

“Yeah, I’m rolling lousy here.”  Rob got up from the table.  “See you later, Jake.”

“See you, Rob.”

Rob followed Beth towards the stairs.  “So what is it?  What did you want to show me?”

“You remember what you said at breakfast this morning?  It was just after Katie asked what we were doing last night.”

“Look, it was just a joke, okay?  I wasn’t being serious.”

“Still, it got me thinking.  It’s such a cliché for married couples to become less…active.  Since we’ve got nothing but time as long as we’re here, I had hoped we could do something about that.”  They reached the third floor and entered the storage room with the dials on the wall.  Beth adjusted the controls for summer and night, and when they left the room, the full moon was out and the air was cool.  The faint glow of fireflies could be seen in the sky.

Beth and Rob walked hand in hand across the grass towards the lone tree in the park.  They sat down against the tree and looked up through the branches at the sky.

“You know,” said Beth, “ever since we opened the restaurant, we haven’t really had a lot of time to slow down, have we?”

“We really haven’t.”  Rob leaned over to Beth and kissed her on the cheek.  She turned her face towards him, and they kissed again.  Beth brought her hand up to stroke Rob’s face, and he wrapped his arms around her waist.  She rolled over on top of him, and they made out like a newlywed couple.

As the emotion increased, the wind started to pick up a little.  It started as a comfortable breeze, and then it became a gale.  As Rob was about ready to tear Beth’s clothes off, the wind had become almost a tornado, lifting them off the ground.  Somehow, they managed to notice that they weren’t lying on the grass anymore.  They let go of each other and started to grab for the tree instead in an effort to keep themselves from flying out of control.  Beth was the first to let go.  She went sailing across the park and landed on the other end of it.  Rob had a good grip on a tree branch, but he began to slip as the twister pulled him upwards.  He tightened his grip, and as he started to panic, the tree branch caught fire in his hands.  He let go, startled, and the wind died out abruptly.  He fell through the branches of the tree to the ground, and it began to rain.

Beth ran over to him.  “My God, are you all right?”

“More or less, but I don’t think I can handle any more romance tonight.”

Downstairs in the pool area, Stacy and Katie were toweling themselves off when Rob and Beth entered looking for the first aid kit.  “Holy crap, Rob, what happened to you?” said Katie.

“We were taking you up on your suggestion from breakfast this morning,” said Beth.

“Which one?”

“The one about having a good time.”

“What, did you trying clawing him?” asked Stacy.

“No,” said Rob, “that’s from falling out of the tree.  Long story.”

“But there is some good news,” said Beth.  “We figured out what happened to us last night.”

“We did?” asked Rob.

“When we were upstairs in the park enjoying ourselves, a tornado suddenly came up out of nowhere.  Then, when Rob was hanging on to the tree for dear life, the branch he was holding started on fire.”

“Damn,” said Stacy and Katie.

“Wait, you think that was us?”

“It would explain what we found in our room this morning.  Remember?  Your side of the bed was burnt a little, and the room was in a general state of disarray.”

“You’re right.  I guess the emotions brought it out upstairs, then.”

“Emotions?” said Katie, raising her eyebrow.

“Yeah, those emotions,” said Beth.  “I got the idea when I walked in on you two in the hut tub.”

“So, what you’re saying,” said Stacy, quickly changing the subject, “is that you can create wind, and Rob can create fire?”

“Well, I can set stuff on fire, anyway,” said Rob.  “We should tell the others at dinner.  Hey, do you guys know where there’s a first aid kit?”

At dinner that night, Jake was pleased to see Mandi come out of their room for the first time that day.  He was a little disappointed to see what she was wearing, which was a hooded sweatshirt and long pants.  She had the hood up at the table, as if she was trying to hide in her clothes.

The next day, Jake was pleased to see Mandi wearing her usual short workout clothes to the gym for the morning, but she seemed unusually tight-lipped.  She didn’t even seem to have it in her to berate him or be curt to him today.  He hoped she wasn’t taking the changes too hard.  Perhaps she’d open up a little tonight.

When Mandi reached the gym, Brad was already in there.  He’d given up on trying to stretch himself out on the chin-up bar, and he was sullenly doing crunches in the corner.  Mandi found a treadmill and started her own routine.  By this time, Mandi and Brad would normally have exchanged a few pleasantries, but this morning neither of them was quite up to it.  

Luann’s legs walked into the gym a little later than they normally did.  They claimed the treadmill next to Mandi’s and got started.  Mandi tried to focus on her workout, but she couldn’t get over the fact that next to her was a pair of legs that apparently were no longer being controlled by anybody, and they were keeping a pretty good pace.  Eventually, Mandi couldn’t take any more weirdness in her previously comfortable life.

“Brad, how the hell do you handle all this?”

He stopped doing crunches.  “What are you talking about?”

“I mean, how do you keep from just snapping around here?  I swear, I’m this close to going absolutely crazy.”

“So what?”

“So how are you able to keep your brain from wanting to jump out of your head?”

“How do you know I am?”  He got up from the workout mat and walked towards Mandi.  He only came up to her waist, but she was still intimidated.  Luann’s legs stopped running and turned towards him.

“What?”

“Maybe I’ve already gone crazy.  Maybe I’m hallucinating right now, I can’t really tell.  Who knows, maybe I’ve dreamed this whole thing.  But you know what?  It doesn’t matter.  Because I’m still going to get through this, and I’m going to do it without any help.  And so are you.”  He turned back to the workout mat.

“Wait, Brad, I need –”

“Yeah, I know you need.  We all need, okay?  But we aren’t going to get what we need.  You need to learn to get along without the things you think you need.  That’s what I do.  Maybe you should try it.”  He went back to his crunches.  Luann’s legs turned off their treadmill and walked out of the room.  They were moving unusually quickly, almost like they were a little disgusted.

Mandi stared at Brad’s back for a second or two, and then she left the gym on the verge of tears.  She hadn’t been exaggerating when she told Brad about her state of mind, and Brad hadn’t done anything to make it better.  She ran out into the middle of the hall in a state of panic, just as Jake was leaving the library.  He saw her as her head jerked around, and he hurried down the stairs to her.

“Mandi?  Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Jake.”

“You sure?  You look a little beset.”

“Look, I’m fine, okay!  Just because I look like glass doesn’t mean I’m made of it.”

He backed away and spread his hands.  “Okay, okay, I didn’t mean anything by it.  Suit yourself.”  He went back to the library.  She spun on her heel and slammed the bedroom door.

In the bedroom, she went over to the TV and looked for a movie.  She was so sick of Jake and his pandering.  The way he thought she always needed his help…She froze.  In her mind, she rewound the past fifteen seconds and listened to what she had just told Jake in the hall.  He was the only person in the world who knew exactly what she was going through, and she had all but spat in his face.  She sat down on the sofa, and then she collapsed and sobbed until lunchtime.  When she came out to eat, she tried to avoid looking Jake in the face, or anyone for that matter.

*          *          *

“Oh, dear.  Hadn’t foreseen that.  Perhaps I should have.”

“Come now, darling.  You couldn’t have known how she would react any better than I could.”

“Well, I vetted all of the participants beforehand.  I should have realized that she might have been more fragile than the others.”

“Hopefully, she will see this as a learning experience.”

“I do hope so.  Otherwise, I shall sincerely regret whatever might happen to her future.  And I thought the incident on the third floor was the worst that might happen.”

“Please, dear, give the others a chance.  Of all people, you should be able to appreciate the power of human kindness in situations such as these.”

“Yes, of course you’re right.  Well, time will tell, I suppose.”