Abithica

ABITHICA

By Susan Goldsmith

Twilight Times Books

Kingsport Tennessee

Abithica

This is a work of fiction. All concepts, characters and events portrayed in this book are used fictitiously and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 Susan Goldsmith

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except brief extracts for the purpose of review, without the permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

Twilight Times Books

P O Box 3340

Kingsport TN 37664

http://twilighttimesbooks.com/

Cover art by Ardy M. Scott

Electronically published in the United States of America.

Gillie’s Restaurant, Tucson, Arizona

God always seemed to be a joker where I was concerned, saving up special kinds of humor just for me. He’d wait until I was in a state of turmoil, then up the ante with no warning at all. This time the joke was mackerel!

He might at least have let me figure out who I was going to be before dumping water on me, or sticking me on a plane going who knew where, or placing me at some party where I didn’t know a soul including my new self, but no. I didn’t even know what I
was,
for goodness sakes, forget the
who
part, or when I’d be yanked out of one host body and stuffed into another. Wouldn’t that have been entertaining enough? I mean, if you happened to be God?

Mackerel! I was actually chewing the disgusting stuff, oily taste and all, without so much as a whisper of warning.

Unfortunately, whenever I changed bodies it was my sight that woke up first, followed by smell and taste, so not only was I aware of what I was chewing, I could also see it. Or rather, my
host
could see and taste it. I was along for the ride. There it was, on a shiny plate with asparagus spears and a mound of fluffy mashed potatoes and the rest of whatever else I’d been eating. An ignored slice of lemon perched with some wilted parsley on the plate’s rim. In a blink, I added a neat little blob of white stuff in the center. I spit again but failed to get rid of the fishy taste.

Ah… hell! Was that God laughing, there in the background? He’d have an encore, of course, something else to throw my way while I was still trying to get my wits about me. This time it arrived as a woman’s voice.

“Sydney?”

I froze, refusing to look in that direction. Actually I couldn’t have looked even if I’d wanted to. My essence hadn’t had time to mesh with the new host. Any attempted movement prior to proper locking-in would make someone having a seizure look calm by comparison. Don’t panic, I thought, the woman probably wasn’t referring to me anyway.

“Sydney?”

Uh, oh—wrong! It seemed I was now going to become this Sydney person, whoever she—or he—might be. My reflexes kicked in as they always did after a switch, a kind of panicky emotion which thoroughly annoyed me because emotions of any kind were a no-no when switching. I flat out couldn’t handle them, especially panic. Even thinking about the consequences could do it, but not thinking about them was… well… next to impossible. No sooner did I tell myself what I ought not to be thinking about then, whoops, I remembered what I was—or thought I was—or at least appeared to be, some sort of parasite. That was as close as I’d ever come to it. I’d even looked up the meaning: An organism that grows and feeds and lives on or in some other organism. That was me all right.

Giving up wasn’t an option or I’d have done that a few dozen times over… I think. Unfortunately, thinking of anything I was trying not to think about shifted my thoughts to other things I also shouldn’t be thinking about, confusing things—like what had just happened moments before I’d switched into this body.

Claire was my previous host. Thanks to a little help from me, she and estranged husband Tom had patched things up between them, and he’d kissed her. Boy, had he kissed her! Their passion reached right across my insulating barrier and ignited me like an electric shock. It was
me
kissing Tom,
me
reaching up and grabbing his hair,
me
pulling him closer and begging for more. I would have done anything for it to be me he loved like that, not Claire. Unfortunately, parasite wishes never come true. They only make things worse.

Don’t get attached, ever. That was “The Rule” that kept me sane, and I’d just shattered it. Sure enough, there they were, more no-no’s—lust, jealousy, embarrassment, confusion—all at the same time, with mackerel for good measure!

Instead of my new host’s body responding to simple commands, something short-circuited. My arms and hands were first to go, smashing down on the table like dead weights. A salad plate, silverware, and butter dish went flying, along with an uneaten roll and everything in my water glass. Great! Sydney was no longer in the picture, but then neither was I, except maybe for my new head—which I seriously wished was my old head—but a little more of God’s humor surfaced, and said head started bobbling backward. I compensated, but only managed to plunge forward, bulldozing asparagus and mashed potatoes into the small lake soaking into the tablecloth in front of my plate. My cheek ended up corralling the slippery mackerel up onto the plate’s rim.

Don’t think. Focus.
Where on earth were my head-lifting muscles? They had to be in there somewhere, but I needed at least a few seconds without any distractions to sort it all out. No such luck.

“Sydney, honey, trying to embarrass me isn’t going to work. It didn’t work in the past and it’s certainly not going to work now.” The woman’s voice drifted away for a moment. Who was she talking to? “No, it’s okay. She’s fine. She’s just mad at me, that’s all.”

I was tempted to point out that fine people didn’t clean their plates with their face, but ended up trying to apologize instead.

“Woofkt!”

Stupid, stupid, stupid! How many times does it take for you to learn that you can only move one limb at a time right after a switch? Your mouth feels all messed up, like it belongs to a guppy, yet there you are trying to figure out how to raise your head and talk at the same time. Just leave your head where it is and focus on talking. Pretend you fainted and say something short, like “Did I just faint?” Concentrate! You can do it.

“Gluhrrr?”

Oh, that was truly amazing. What an improvement!

“Why is your face still in your food? You got what you wanted. People are staring. Sydney? Are you even listening to me?” The voice from across the table was a little more insistent now. Her next words were whispered and sounded almost giggly. “Fine, I get to play, too then!”

This woman, she was confusing me in an already ultra-confusing situation. Was she for real, or had God tossed her in for the fun of it?

“Darling, our nice waiter would like to know if he can take your plate.” Right on top of that, some other woman’s voice scornfully commented that she’d seen
children
better behaved. I latched onto what her words meant (with a lot of effort) instead of how they made me feel. Did that mean that I was an adult Sydney with my face in my food, not a child Sydney? If so, how could the one calling me Sydney in the first place sound so… so nonchalant about the mess I’d just made? I had to assume she was sitting with me for a reason, but what in the heck was I supposed to do with her?

I couldn’t lift my head yet, so I just lay there with mashed potatoes halfway up my nose. God, how I missed Claire!

“Sydney, did you hear me? The nice waiter wants to—”

“Need time.” I burbled into my plate, cutting her off.

“You’re saying you need more…?” There was a short pause. “She’s not finished. We’ll let you know.” Was she talking to the waiter? It didn’t matter. At least my mackerel mess had produced a little information without my doing anything
really
foolish: Sydney was an adult “she” with a history of bad behavior.

Restaurant noises suddenly switched back on, as if everyone in the place had been holding their breath until that point. Unfortunately, I’d never know what spectacle might have preceded my grand appearance, but my dinner companion had said I was mad at her. I waited for a few more revealing words, but she’d either snuck away or was sitting there pretending she didn’t know me. She’d be wearing an expression that said it all, something like “Honestly, I have no idea where this Sydney person came from or why she’s sitting at my table with her nose in her potatoes….”

I opened one eye briefly, but could see no more than a blur of other diners. Suddenly my tablemate was back, only now much closer, more conspiratorial.

“Well, young lady, that went much better than I’d hoped.” I decided it was best to keep my one eye closed. The other one was keeping tabs on the fish. “Steven will be pleased as punch. It was his idea to give you the news someplace crowded, like it is here in Gillie’s. He thought, you know, that having all these people around would keep you from throwing things or screaming. I
was
a little concerned that you’d do something rash, especially after how angry you seemed when you first walked in, but this, I must say, is all a most pleasant surprise!”

My mackerel-mashing antic a pleasant surprise? I didn’t think it possible, but I was now even more confused.

The first thing I saw when I finally managed to raise my head and look straight ahead was a pair of red-covered elbows resting in the drenched part of our tablecloth. They were already soaked, not that their owner even noticed. She was yapping away as if nothing unusual had happened at all, thoroughly enjoying herself. The wet red elbows belonged to a tailored suit with frilly white blouse sleeves that puffed out around her wrists. They were wet, too. I sensed long, black hair and a tiny frame, not actually seeing anything in detail, but the rest of her could wait while I concentrated.

My arms suddenly seemed connected to my brain, so I experimented by moving one hand forward on the table, preparing to push myself back to vertical. That was when I saw the back of my left hand. The woman in red saw it, too. “What in the world have you done to yourself, Sydney? What
is
that thing on your hand, some sort of animal head?”

What, indeed! Upside down, it didn’t look much like an animal. Maybe those were horns sticking out of a long head and ears sticking out sideways, but there was no sense babbling any more than I already had. I ignored the question and grabbed a napkin so I could wipe off whatever was stuck to my face. What was that hanging from my lower lip, some sort of ring? Yuck! That would have to go as soon as I had a little privacy, but I didn’t dare mention it.

The picture was developing. I was an adult Sydney with a bad history, screamed and threw things, had some sort of animal actually burned into the back of my hand—that was certainly a recent scar, all red—and had a lip ring dangling from my lower lip. What else? Tattoos? Other piercings? At least the lip ring didn’t hurt unless I pulled at it under the napkin.

I resisted the sudden urge to explore the rest of me. My talkative companion wasn’t helping one bit in the descriptions department. I needed a lot more than vague references to this “Steven person” and how angry I’d been just minutes earlier if I was going to slip into the Sydney routine as seamlessly as possible. This switch wasn’t going well at all. Where could I get answers fast? Apparently, my chatty tablemate was used to having her questions ignored, because she jumped right into telling me about a pair of shoes she’d recently added to her collection. Never skipped a beat. When I caught her peeking at my hand again, she quickly launched into another story. Whenever did the woman breathe? If I could just slide a question in, maybe she’d tell me why she felt I’d storm off and not speak to her again. An answer to that might offer a few clues how she and I were supposed to fit together, as long as I chose my words carefully.