Young Writers Society

Damascus' frown grew. "Well, thash not very nisse." he ammended, nodding slowly. "but... but whyar you cryin, then? Do, do you need shome water? I think ya need shome water."

He lifted his head and craned it back toward the bar, letting out a deep breath when he realized that he would have to walk back to get a glass. He glanced back at Boris again.

"Nnnever- never you mind, Borish. I'll get, getcha tha' water." He stumbled to his feet, and hovered, trying to regain some control of his balance.

Finally, he took a step, and promptly slammed into a stool.

"Wash tha- wash that doin there? Oww..." He sat for a few seconds, hugging the circular seat, and then glanced back once more. "One momen", Borish! I jus need to... to take a quick break."

"You need to be more careful," Edward said, seeing his brother stumble around, and then promptly ignored his own advice by tripping over the same chair for a third time when he tried to walk over to Damascus. He let out an angry string of swears under his breath and tried to kick the offending piece of furniture when he got back to his feet, but that only resulted in him stubbing his toe.

"Hell's bells," he said - not quite sure if it counted as a swear, even though it definitely felt like one coming out of his lips - and then limped on over to Damascus. This time he managed to get over with tripping on the chair, but his legs gave out beneath him as he reached the stool. He frantically reached out to grab onto the stool, but him, the stool and Damascus went tumbling to the floor - his arms getting all tangled up with Damascus's.

And then suddenly he was staring at Boris's face.

He gave a startled yelp in a voice that still wasn't his own. Scrambling to his feet - even though he nearly fell over a few times in the process - he stared down at himself with wide red eyes.

"No, no, no," he whispered. "Not again!"

Damascus blearily frowned, though he was glad that he had been able to stand as fast as he did, by some miracle.

"Not again, whaat?" he paused, and tilted his head, squinting through the new fog that had suddenly come over him. "ooh- wash it me tha' said that?... why'd I saiy that, again?"

Unlike Boris and Engel, Damascus seemed to have a decent amount of control over his body. Unfortunately, Edward didn't - the realization came crashing down on him as he suddenly felt Damascus's body shift from human to something decidedly not. The shift only took a matter of seconds, but it still was enough for Edward to give a high-pitched shriek in terror and go stumbling back into the stool again; he nearly fell onto Boris in the process as he went crashing to the ground.

"Turn back!" he desperately begged Damascus's body, staring in horror at the now clawed hands that he was holding up in front of his face.

Damascus let out a little shriek as he shifted against his will and (he was sure of it now) his body was talked to him. He quickly moved, curling in on himself as if to hide himself from view.

"A- ahh!" he shrieked again, for no other reason but that he had the desperate need to hide himself from his brothers.

Then he had time to comprehend what his body had told him, and responded frantically, his tail lashing out. "N- nooo, why're ya askin me?? You turn back!"

"I can't!" he replied, wrestling back control of Damascus's mouth as he hesitantly peeked down to see why Damascus was trying to hide his body from view. He promptly covered his eyes a second later, warmth rising to his cheeks. "There's n-nothing covering down there!"

"Whaaay can't you-" He got abruptly cut off as his hand flew up to cover his eyes. He felt his cheeks flush, which was really strange, but the strangest of all was when his body cut him off to say something itself.

He waited a moment, just to be sure that he would be able to speak, and then interjected.

"Well, of courshe there ishnt anyeh covering, you shooould know that-" he gasped suddenly, a thought coming to him. "B- Bodeh, didyo get- amnesia? Were you poishened?" He blubbered on, not particularly worried that he wasn't making any sense.

He suddenly stopped, and dropped his hand, seeming to become aware of himself once more.

Bodies didn't talk, or move on their own. What was he doing?

He was too horrified by the prospect of seeing his brother's naked body again to clarify just who he was - the hand shot right back up to cover his eyes, and Edward quickly averted his gaze.

"Don't do that!" he said to Damascus, desperately hoping his brother wasn't going to the same thing again.

"Whaa don'tchu want me to see?" Damascus whined, fighting to make a slit between his fingers. All he could see was Boris still passed out on the floor- had he fallen unconscious again? His brow wrinkled in concern.

Still peering from the slit of his fingers, he attempted to crouch down next to Boris. His extremely tested balance got the better of him, and he fell straight forward, face-planting.

"Whhhy are ya so being difficult..?" he slurred into the floor, since apparently his body could answer him now.

"It's not what I don't want you to see - it's what I don't want me to see!" Edward replied, thankful that Damascus was looking at anywhere but his body now.

Of course, he didn't like the feeling of smacking right into the floor, and didn't like how much effort it took to prop himself back up, but Edward knew there was nothing he could do about it. He went to rub the sorest part of his face (his nose) with a hand, only to promptly give another shriek of terror when he remembered that he still looked like a demon and had a very demonic hand.

"And I'm n-n-not being diff-diffi-difficult!" he protested. This whole experience was really, really creeping him out! It had been bad enough with Engel and Boris, but they had at least looked human. Damascus was a demon. And while he would obviously be supportive of his brother, he didn't want to be a demon himself!

"What's going on?" James moaned, holding his head as he sat on the floor. His head was spinning.

Meanwhile, Wilson smiled cheerfully as she picked up a small hairpin off the floor. She turned it around in her hands curiously before putting it in her shirt pocket. She watched as Damascus and Engel argued amongst themselves. She figured she could wait to clean it all up once Schadel came back.

Edward unsteadily got to his feet, ignoring the question as he decided to go back to searching for his missing hairpin. He still didn't know how he'd get back to normal, but the hairpin was key to showing up again when he finally did. He didn't want Boris to keep going on about him being dead-dead when he was standing right near him, and didn't want Schadel to walk in on the chaos.

According to all logic, Edward should have been able to avoid the chair. He had tripped on it three times and stubbed his toe on it once - it should have been something he was very much aware of. But he was still panicking about suddenly being demonic, and was growing increasingly more worried about never being able to return to normal.

(And both he and Damascus were intoxicated, which didn't help.)

So when he came across the chair and should have avoided it, he instead kept obliviously walking forward. A startled cry and a thud later, Edward came to the conclusion that he was cursed with a horrible case of bad luck. He groaned and went to get to his feet, but then his hand brushed up against whoever was sitting on the ground near where he had fallen.

The world shifted. He groaned again, this time because his head was spinning far more than it had been a few seconds ago. He groggily peered down at the hands holding his head up. They looked...surprisingly normal. He stared at them, trying and failing to blink away his drunken stupor. They weren't demonic. They looked human. If his head wasn't hurting so much, he might have seen it as a reason to celebrate-

Wait, what was on his face? Edward frowned and tentatively touched his chin with a hand. Was that facial hair? He didn't like the feeling of it at all! As he bemoaned his current fate, Edward suddenly realized that he must have ended up as James - hadn't he been sitting on the ground, suffering because he had had a little too much to drink?

Edward groaned and promptly threw himself back onto the floor, staring up at the bar's ceiling with a look of defeat on his face.

"I'm so done right now," he declared.

James did not like this feeling.

Somehow, his body had been repossessed and suddenly, it made sense why the others had acted so strange. Something was controlling them, going from person to person, but that something was a person. A stubborn rage stirred up inside of him as his autonomy was robbed of him and he flopped onto the floor, speaking against his will. Had he willed it, he might have said the same, but because he didn't, he was furious. With a surge of focus, he sat back up, leaning on his arms for support.

"F*** this," he spat. "Whoebers's doing thish, I'm-I'm-not gonna... gonna f***ing let ya."

Well. That came out a lot less eloquent than he'd imagined. Oh well. At least he got his point across.

"Get outta me, ya little sh*t."

"It's not that f****** easy," Edward shot back, torn between lying back down and keeping the same position. The ground felt far better, but movement of any kind was something he desperately needed to avoid at the moment. "By all means, try kicking me out - I'd appreciate the favor."

James grimaced after feeling someone else speak through him and he growled in his throat in frustration. "Like I even know how," he muttered, frowning as he looked at the floor which was finally starting to settle. He tried to clear his mind, thinking of a way to rid himself of the spirit inside him. Would sheer willpower do?

He saw Wilson kneel down beside him. He knew he should've remembered her from somewhere. Had she given him water before? She was the bartender, wasn't she? He stared at her in confusion as she pulled a little pin out of her pocket and then reached forward towards his head. In his mind, he pulled away, but in actuality, he remained where she was as she gently slipped the clip in his hair.

"Boop," she said with a smile.

It was then that something clicked. The clip. The clip. Edward was wearing it earlier. The clip was Edward's. Edward the ghost...

Edward was inside of him.

"EDWARd," he said triumphantly.