Young Writers Society

Edward perked up when James put the pieces together; he had been getting more and more frustrated with his other brothers not being able to figure out it was him, and it was nice that James was no longer seeing him as a threat. But then suddenly the world shifted again, and he found himself slipping a very familiar hairpiece into James's hair. His mind scrambled to figure out who he had accidentally possessed; he had been too dazed as James to pay much attention to who was around him.

He looked down in the hopes that the outfit would give him a clue, and instead found himself staring at his chest.

"I have boobs!?" he exclaimed, yelping in surprise when he heard a woman's voice leave his lips. He stared down at his hands - they were definitely more feminine now - and desperately hoped that he was wrong. But the outfit confirmed his worst suspicions.

He was stuck as Wilson.

Annnd that was when the door opened.


Schadel ended the call and slipped her phone into her pocket, an amused smile dancing cross her lips as she went to enter the bar again. This was going to be fun - it was her turn, and she had a very entertaining story to tell if she was asked about the call. Her hand pressed up against the door. She could hear the others inside, and something about the chaotic undertone to their voices made her pause. What had happened in the short time she was gone?

She opened the door.

Chaos, apparently, had happened. Furniture was knocked, half of the people were knocked out, and the bartender was turning to look at her with an incredibly panicked look on her face. Wilson suddenly darted over from James's side and skid to a halt beside her.

"Schadel!" Wilson cried out. "Help!"

She stared. "What do you need my help wi-" She fell silent as her gaze traveled throughout the room. All were present except, suspiciously enough, a certain ghost. She glanced back at Wilson, who was staring at her with wide, horrified eyes.

Schadel knew in an instant who she was talking to.

"I've been body switching ever since you left and I just found my clip but I don't know how to get back to normal to put it back in and I think the switch happens after I touch people and-"

Edward's ramble came to an abrupt stop when Schadel placed her hands on Wilson's shoulders. A protest began to be uttered - eyes widening even more - but it died on the barkeeper's lips as Edward suddenly ended up in Schadel's body instead.

He unsurprisingly couldn't keep her form constant, and he let out a terrified, high-pitched scream she didn't even know her body was capable of. Shadows shot out from the ground as his terror grew, and Edward - now in control of her seven foot tall, shadowy body - went stumbling back into the nearest wall.

Some sort of energy seemed to leave Damascus' body, and he flopped back down like a rag doll, suddenly too sluggish to even hold himself up. He registered in the back of his mind that he was still in his true form, and that it might scare his brothers, so he mustered enough energy to switch back again.

A little sigh left him, and he curled in on himself, his eyes too heavy to keep open. Reaching out an arm, he held Boris' leg, to reassure himself that he was okay, and quietly dozed off.

Schadel noticed Damascus falling asleep out of the corner of her eye, but didn't put too much thought into it. Her sole goal was to get Edward back to normal - she just hadn't remembered how difficult it was to deal with one body having two souls. She could have tried severing Edward's soul from Wilson's body, but Edward couldn't control the possessions. He would have just gone to another person's body, and she was sure that person would have been just as freaked out as Edward was.

She took a deep breath.

"Edward," she said, her voice gentle, "it's alright."

"But I'm-I'm-" He let out another scream as a strand of darkness accidentally whacked them across the face. Now Edward was practically clinging to the wall; Schadel couldn't figure out if that was an improvement or not. At least he wasn't trying to move - she guessed that was where most of the damage in the bar had come from.

"It's alright," she repeated. The darkness began to slowly grow less wild, and Edward's grip on the wall began to loosen. "Every grim reaper knows how to take care of possessions - it's one of the first things you learn, since ghosts can be unpredictable."

The darkness shot right back up. "Are you-you going to do something to my soul!? I don't want to be reaped, even if it's just for a minute!"

She shook her head. "We're going to get you to form your body again."

The darkness wavered. "...And that doesn't involve any reaping?"

"It doesn't," she confirmed. "You just have to think of yourself. Possessions happen when a ghost loses sight of themself. Since you're possessing people and not objects, I don't think you've gone too far - it's probably because you're drunk and were distracted by the missing pin."

He screwed her eyes shut, took a deep breath and seemed to think long and hard on what she had said. After a moment passed, he hesitantly opened an eye. "Schadel," he said, voice high with fear as he stared down at her hands, "I'm still in you!"

Schadel's confidence wavered. Edward must have been too terrified and/or drunk to really focus on himself - her form alone provided a good distraction from what he needed to be doing. She had to come up with a better plan, something that was guaranteed to make him think of himself...

She perked up. "Edward, don't freak out."

"Okay-" he started to say, only to give another startled cry when her body suddenly shrunk and took on a human form. It took a few moments for the form to finish up, but she was quite proud of her creation when Edward glanced down.

"You changed your form to...me?" he asked, staring at his hands and flipping them over. The only difference between the actual Edward and the form Schadel had just taken was the cross hanging around her neck - she didn't want to risk losing it by shoving it in a pocket or putting it down somewhere.

She doubted he would notice.

The change happened in only a handful of seconds - she didn't even realize he had left her body at first. But then he was suddenly standing in front of her, looking at her with a look of confusion before staring down at himself.

"I'm me again!" he exclaimed, grinning.

Schadel wisely left him where he was and walked over to James, snagging the pin from his hair and slipping it in the hair of its rightful owner. Edward was suddenly visible to everyone who couldn't see him before.

James stared wide-eyed as Edward came over to take the pin and went to go put it on... Edward? James blinked.

They had lost one Edward and then gained two. Did he have a twin?

"You have uhh brothur?"

Edward stared at James. "What? No, I'm an only child-"

His gaze slowly traveled over to Schadel, who had just thrown herself into the nearest chair and was letting out an exhausted sigh. It was eerie how well she had been able to copy his form; he had never seen her do his form before, though there had been times where she copied other people they knew. Now that he was back to normal - or as normal as a drunk ghost could ever be - he could focus on how weird the situation was.

"Schadel?" he asked.

She looked up. "Yeah?" she asked. Hearing his voice instead of hers made his ghostly blood run cold, but he tried to not look half as creeped out as he felt.

"Could you...you know..."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, glancing down at herself. "I'm sorry - I was spacing out. Between you and that call from Blanx, I've been doing more reaper stuff than I've done in the past week.

A second later, Schadel was sitting in the chair in her usual form.

Wilson was a little giddy after being possessed, but with the issue of Edward disappearing now resolved, she was excited to start the game again. She figured Boris and Damascus would be out for a minute, but she would get to them in a minute.

First, she went over to James and helped him back up into his chair. She made sure he was steady before she hurried over to Edward, offering an arm to help him get back to the circle. Kratzer was next.

"Schadel, it's good to have you back!" she said as she put an arm around Edward's back. "It's still your turn. Did you decide on truth or dare?"

The arm, of course, went through Edward, but he didn't care as much as he might have earlier in the night. Edward would take being a regular old ghost to possessing someone any day, and there was almost something relieving about no longer defying the rules of ghosthood.

"I'll go with truth," Schadel said with a smile, glancing over at Edward. After a moment passed - and he tore his eyes away from the unconscious Boris and asleep Damascus - Edward sat down in the seat beside her.

Edward didn't have a question to ask her, but he did have something else: a request. "Don't tell Claire or Liz about what happened," he implored her. Schadel studied him for a second, then gained an almost mischievous look to her eyes. "Schadel! Please don't say anything - Claire's never going to let me live it down, and I'm sure Liz would end up telling Claire if you didn't first."

"Heyy," James started, pointing a finger at Schadel, as if to grab her attention from Edward. It was her turn. She was supposed to be asked questions, not getting distracted a bunch.

"Nayme one fing that makes you thuh happiest you erver been. Event or uh, a thing. Person. Any worksh."

"One second," Schadel said, glancing over in James's direction before turning back to Edward. "I don't even know the full story of what happened. All I know is that you accidentally possessed everyone here, caused a bit of property damage and probably had something to do with Boris being unconscious on the ground - how much could telling them really hurt?"

"Schadel!" he repeated.

Grinning - and now fully satisfied with her teasing - she turned back to James. It took a moment to think, but it came to her rather quickly. Her grin turned from mischievous to peaceful. "I think the happiest I've ever felt is when Liz decided to join my agency," she said. She leaned up against the bar's counter and rested her head in her hands. "I was giddy about it for days. She wasn't the first person to join it, but she was the first living person. I didn't think regular humans would want to do something like this, but then she decided that she wanted to work for me."

She caught Edward moving out of the corner of her eye; she quickly glanced over at him, only to see that he had quite the mischievous look of his own now. "Does Liz know you feel that way about her joining?"

"No...?" Schadel asked - maybe a bit too quickly. "Why would she?"

"Well, if I was going to make a guess, I'd say you like her," Edward commented, looking increasingly more smug.

"Of course I do! Liz is my friend."

"Not like her," Edward corrected. "Like her. Like you're madly in love with her. Every time you need to go somewhere, you always ask her to tag along. You'd go to the store around the corner to get a pack of gum and still ask her to get some with you, even though by now we all know you can pick out a good pack of gum compared to a bad one."

She felt heat rise up to her face. "I-Is it really that obvious?"

"Oh, definitely," Edward cheerfully replied. "Claire's noticed, too. We talk about it sometimes."

Schadel at him, feeling increasingly more flustered the longer this conversation continued. "...Something tells me you wouldn't be saying that if you were sober."

"Probably," Edward confirmed.

She groaned.

"Now, I was planning on telling Liz that you just said that about her," Edward continued on, looking Schadel dead in the eye, "but I might reconsider if you promise not to tell her or Claire about the accidentally possessing everyone incident."

Letting out a sigh, Schadel knew what she had to do.

"I promise I won't tell if you won't," she said.

Edward nodded, seemingly satisfied with the response.

So Schadel was in love. James only nodded with a faint smile as Edward and Schadel began to bicker back and forth about it.

"Vewy nice," he finally said, as they came to a conclusion.

Wilson, meanwhile listening with intrigue, took the opportunity to push a small table back between them all, and placed the bottle in front of them. She considered Schadel sober enough to take the hint as she turned away to go check on Boris and Damascus, both sleeping on the floor. She stood over them with her hands on her hips, deciding on whether to wake them gently, or let them sleep.

Wilson's guess was right - she was sober enough to take the hint. She spun the bottle and watched as it thankfully landed on James instead of one of her unconscious brothers; she didn't want to wake them up unless she absolutely had to. "Truth or dare?" she asked. She hoped he was sober enough for the question to register, but he seemed even worse off than some of the others.

Upon waking, I immediately regretted it. A dull, thick ache weighed upon me as my welcome to the land of the living. Along with that, my mouth still tasted of blood, dried, crusty tears overstayed their tenure on my cheeks, both badly bruised. Those forces combined were enough to make me feel a touch soberer.

But the sleeping Damascus was cuddling my legs, and that was fine. It was rather sweet, actually.

I thought I remembered what happened. But what I thought I remembered was completely ridiculous, and strongly required some second opinions.
I peered around the bar first, to try and regain my bearings, when I chanced upon Edward. Edward, whole and fine as he ever was.

I sat up, leaned forward, and moved Damascus' hand away. As soon as I let go, it stubbornly curled back into its former position. I gently pried him off, and escaped swiftly enough for his arm to grab hold of a chair-leg, instead of my ankle.

I shambled up to Edward, joy and relief taking precedence over my protesting limbs.

"Edward!" I exclaimed. "Edward, you're alive! Well, close enough."

I attempted to hug him, forgetting the exact meaning of 'incorporeal.' Upon rediscovering this meaning, I turned meekly to Schadel.

"Schadel, will you please hug him for me?"

The question took a moment to register - she had been too busy staring at Edward. Her best friend had frozen up the moment that Boris had awoken and started heading towards them, and now looked like a deer in headlights. Something must have happened between them during the time she was outside, but Boris bizarrely didn't seem affected by it...

...besides that weird comment about him being alive (or close enough).

"Uh, sure?" she replied. She awkwardly went to hug Edward in what she had intended to be a short embrace, but he returned the hug so tightly and pulled her so close that she let out a little surprised squeak.

"He thought I passed on," Edward whispered into her ear. "We got into a fight - he thought I was Engel."

She quickly glanced over at Boris before turning her attention back towards Edward. "You got into a fight?" she hissed.

"I punched and slapped him," he clarified, as if that somehow made it better. "It was annoying, Engel and I are both drunk, and also I knocked him unconscious."

"You what-"

"Engel's a vampire," he reminded her; she hadn't forgotten, but apparently that was a good reason for knocking honorary family members unconscious. "I thought I killed him."

"...Engel?"

"No, Boris," Edward replied, and then finally let her go - he seemed to have realized that their hug was getting suspiciously long. Schadel couldn't stop glancing between Boris and Edward, trying to get a grasp on what exactly had happened while she was calling Blanx.

James watched Boris return to them with a pleasant relief. Boris was alright! Splendid. That was all he ever wanted.

He stared at Schadel and Edward's hug for a disproportionate amount of time before the question finally registered. Truth or dare. It was his turn. He looked down at the floor, to see if it was still moving like it was earlier, and though it wasn't rolling like waves of the ocean, the thought of walking around or moving at all made him worry. He decided to play it safe.

"Troof," he declared finally, then turned to Boris. "I'm glad yourrr well."

Wilson remained at the sleeping Damascus's side, deciding to wait for the final player to wake up.

Edward had been sufficiently hugged. All was right with the world. Almost.

I peered around the bar for Engel, and found him residing off on the edge somewhere, looking only slightly less alive than usual.

I stumbled over, embraced him, and clumsily brushed my cheek against his nose by accident. I winced, moved my face out of the way, and patted the back of his head.

"Hello, Engel." I whispered gently. "I'm sorry I hit you."