Young Writers Society

Finally, they arrived at the store.

Lacey saw the clothes and made a beeline for them. She found a pair of adidas sweatpants. Matching sandals. A plain burgundy shirt, reminding herself she was a size zero for the time being. She found different shoes too, noticing the ones she had on were a size six. Much smaller than her usual nine. Her great-grandmother was tiny.

Either way, this was much better then what she was wearing before, and the shoes weren't going to give her blisters. Besides, the dress she had on before was pretty, just not practical, and she put it in her bag. She found the rest of the group.

"Okay, what are we looking for?"

While Anna ran off to find clothes, James ended up replacing his backpack with a much more suitable one - it was more sturdy, larger, and worlds more practical. He then rummaged the store for better equipment and essentials, still throwing the pack together in a rush, but feeling more prepared.

He returned around the same time Anna did, with a collapsable hunting knife, now hidden on him, and ax. The blade was covered, at the moment, and he had yet to take it out of its packaging.

"Found this in the outdoors and camping section," he said, lifting it up. "This seems more like what Briar was describing."

Queenie cringed at being referred to by Briar's name. Was that what everyone at school was always complaining about? Mom keeps calling me Kathy. Like, I'm Bethany, mother, why can't you remember your oldest kid?

If this was what that felt like, Queenie was going to have to stop tuning Beth out every time she opened her stupid mouth. Out of sympathy, at the very least. Bet never really had anything to say regardless.

"Yeah, that'll work better." Queenie wanted one of her guns. One of the good ones, from the secondary panic room. That would be better.

Stephanie grabbed an axe as well to be on the safe side, but she felt like she was armed to the teeth. It was more than she was used to carrying. If she added anything else into the mix, she was sure that she would spend too much time fumbling around for a decent weapon when she actually needed to fight.

...Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that.

She scanned the store.

"There must be something here," Stephanie muttered. If not here, then Briar's guess had to be right. But where would robots have a camp. She hadn't seen any clues leading towards a camp earlier - they had barely seen any robots to begin with.

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye from within one of the aisles. It was hard to make out what the movement was due to all of the clothes racks in between, but Stephanie's body moved on instinct. She couldn't tell if it was Jason or her instinct guiding her forward; she wasn't really sure she wanted to know which.

She came to a stop at the mouth of the aisle, hand reaching for the knife she had gotten in the last store.

There was a man standing in front of a mirror at the other end of the aisle. If she hadn't found him here and now, she wouldn't have given him a second glance. His brown curls were messy. His eyes - which were an electric blue - were hidden behind a pair of thick black glasses with a little piece of tape in the middle. Even his outfit was plain: a casual gray hoodie, faded jeans, and a pair of worn sneakers.

But the way the man held himself was anything but plain. Stephanie found herself frozen as she stared at him. Every inch of her body was screaming at her that he was dangerous, but she couldn't tell why. All she could do was wait for him to notice her.

He looked away from the mirror.

"Oh," he said, seemingly surprised when he heard his own, quiet voice. "I didn't realize there were other people here."

He glanced back at his reflection and fiddled with his glasses.

"...But I guess that makes sense," he said, his voice a little shaky. Then he straightened a bit, grinned, and walked over to her. When he finally reached her, he reached a hand out. "I don't usually go by it because it's an absolutely terrible first name, but my name is Allen-"

He blinked.

"My name is Allen," he insisted.

Then he frowned, staring down at his hand like it was the reason for all of this. "I should have guessed that it wouldn't only be my appearance that changed - this is more tricky than I thought it would be."

He let out a sigh.

"And I was finally going to meet him," the man added. "It's just my luck!"

Stephanie just stared.

Allen looked back up at her, giving an apologetic smile as he fixed his glasses with his free hand. "I'm sorry - I'm being incredibly rude right now. I think I've been enchanted by some kind of spell, but I don't know how to break it. Still, the polite thing to do would have been for me to ask your name."

After a moment of hesitation, Stephanie shook his hand. "My name's Jason," she offered, "but it's not-"

"-really Jason?" Allen asked. She nodded; he let out another sigh. "I was guessing as much. This place absolutely reeks of magic."

Most of the wrongly-named and wrongly-bodied group went to get their weapons or a change of clothes, or whatever else they happened to want or need from this shop, and Queenie just wanted to look less like Briar of all people.

Pacing the clothing isles, she granted it more consideration, and came to the conclusion that maybe the inconspicuous nature of Briar's appearance might be an advantage. After all, she didn't know who any of the others actually were. If any of them were somehow connected to her boss, then she could be in big trouble if she gave too much away.

So she'd stay dressed like a dam nun.

As she finally made this decision, she left the clothing section and wandered around, looking for...something. Something useful, maybe a clue about what the heck was going on here.

She turned a corner and...something. Something almost human, but very, very inhuman was standing in the baseball isle.

It was humanoid, facing away from Queenie, with pasty white skin marked with patches of vibrant red, shimmering with a transparent, scale-like overlay. A skirt-like fin emerged directly from her skin, along with several other fins around her ankles and wrists. Her blue...well, it looked like hair, sort of, twisted unnaturally though the air, one strand even wrapping and unwrapping itself around the handle of a baseball bat beside her.

Queenie approached silently, freeing the knife from its sheath in her sleeve and palming it. "Hi," she said curiously, but casually.

The...whatever it was, whirled around with a snarling expression. "Who are you?"

"I'm...Briar." It - she? They? He? - could speak then. "Wha...who are you?"

"I'm Tallulah," they said, crossing their arms over their chest. The too-big linnen shirt they were wearing bunched up awkwardly around their wrist fins. "What is this?" they asked sharply, gesturing vaguely with one hand.

Queenie sighed, finally getting it. "You're in the wrong body, aren't you?" She didn't wait for a reply, "You won't be able to give your real name or anything. There's a whole bunch of us."

The sentence that then escaped 'Tallulah's' mouth was laced with enough curse words, many directed at insulting Queenie, that even Queenie cringed. The gist of it appeared to be confusion, and aggression.

"Right." Queenie slid the knife back into place. "Well, love, I'm so glad we had this chat, but I'm going to leave you here alone now, m'kay." With that, she turned on her heel and went to find the rest of the group.

By the time she got there, though, the stranger was leaning against the wall, looking incredibly grumpy, and glaring at the rest of the group.

Lacey drifted away from the rest of the group and started to eye camping stoves when she saw someone eying them too.

Rachel?

No, not Rachel. Someone else in her sister's body. "Rachel" looked over at her and stared.

"Who are you?" Rachel asked.

"I'm Anna... but not really."

"My name is Rachel," "Rachel" replied. "No, that's not my name. It's..." No words came out, just like before. "You look familiar," she said. It was odd to think of whoever this was as her sister, but in the absence of any other names, she'd have to. "But I can't put my finger on it."

Lacey didn't know what to say. It was one thing to reason with the fact that everyone was in different bodies when she didn't know anyone else. But this was different. Lacey thought about her real sister, who last she heard was in Cape Cod. It had been a while since they'd last talked. She had a lump in her throat.

"Do you know how we got here?" "Rachel" asked.

Lacey shook her head and rejoined the rest of the group, her face flushed. This was too weird.

Oh, dragons above, Carter was in pain. What the hell happened?

When he opened his eyes, he immediately knew a million things were wrong.

He wasn't on Nye, for one. That much was obvious. He was in some kind of store that kind of reminded him of places he saw during that whole library incident, but it was so bizarre. There were high ceilings and all sorts of clothing and other items hanging up and on display all over. And he was lying in some kind of kayak, except it wasn't made from wood. It was... oh, hell, he forgot the name of it. Some new material from another world.

Except, that wasn't the most concerning thing.

When he looked down at himself, he wasn't himself at all.

Carter leaped out of the kayak and the pedestal it was being propped up on and looked around, frantically. Somewhere across the giant room he saw a mirror, tucked away by a rack of puffy jackets that looked just as ridiculous as all of the other new fashions he saw on earth, in that other world.

He looked around, scanning the area around him. He didn't see anyone yet, but that didn't mean there wasn't anyone around. As hastily and quietly as he could he bent down and hurried towards the mirror to confirm what he already suspected was true. He was not in his own body.

He looked like James.

Carter stared into the mirror at the face that wasn't his.

Good gods.

James lived like this?

Carter's back hurt. His ankles hurt. His joints hurt. His head hurt. And he was pretty sure there was a phantom pain somewhere in his side, but he sure as hell wouldn't be surprised if there was an actual, current wound still-healing.

Torture had been fun, but gods, Carter should've killed him when he had the chance.

James was dressed like a hunter who lived in the wilderness - a fur coat, thick fur-lined boots and pants, and all sorts of layers. Carter already felt absurdly warm.

He cursed and peeled his coat off, and tossed the boots to the side, and started grabbing clothes off the racks that looked like they were in James's size.

The only plus-side to being in James's body was that Carter was a little taller. By like, four inches.

Carter found some cargo pants, a regular looking long-sleeved shirt, and a puffy jacket that he thought looked ridiculous, but would hopefully make him blend in, or something. He really didn't want to bother trying on shoes, but he did anyway and found a pair of "sneakers," as they were labeled. Running shoes. At least they were light.

He took one last look in the mirror, grimacing at himself with a hundred overlapping feelings of discomfort. He inspected his face. Well, James's face. There was a beard - decently kept, but Carter never liked having a full beard. And James's hair had gotten long again. Fortunately, it was clean. But it was so much more... fluffy. Carter tried to pat it down but it was no use.

Whatever. He needed to figure out what was going on.

He started wandering the store and eventually heard the sound of voices, and saw people up ahead, gathering together. He didn't recognize anyone - wait. Nevermind.

Anna. That girl from the library thing.

What was she doing here?

But then he overheard just enough of a woman's introduction that he realized something: it looked like everyone gathered wasn't in their right body.

Gods.

Did that mean he'd have to pretend to be James?

This day was just getting worse, wasn't it. He didn't want to pretend to be a useless sad-sack. But if everyone was in the same boat, he wouldn't be expected to act like James, since they were all body-swapped anyways.

He walked up to the group, making himself known, and kept an unassuming posture - which was easy, considering how much discomfort he was in.

"I, too, would like to know how we got here," he said. "I'm James, by the way. But not really, as you all can probably deduce."

James. That guy - or, his body - was familiar. Queenie tried to place it.

Fuck.

He wasn't going to recognize her, though. He couldn't. He wasn't in that body, even if it was his. Even so, they hadn't interacted much in their brief encounter anyway. Without her body, it was impossible for him to realize it was her. She was putting on an act then, too, which would help quite a lot.

She was about to speak when the freakish, scaled person strode forward. "No one gives a shit whether your name is James, or Jill, or Peter or whatever the fuck. I have responsibilities back home, believe it or not, so could we quit fucking around and figure out what in the eight frozen circles of hell is going on here so we can all get home, preferably in our correct bodies."

Someone's imatient. Watching her talk, Queenie noticed two things. First, her teeth were sharp and shark-like. Second, there were shark teeth sewed along the neckline of the pirate shirt she was wearing.

Who the hell did that body belong to?

Lacey watched as someone rudely barged in and introduced himself as James. Of course, that wasn’t really his name. Lacey didn’t know who he was, but she knew she didn’t like him.

And then the scaled person let James have it. Lacey couldn’t help but laugh.

Whoever was pretending to be her sister was standing close to Lacey, also staring at James. “Hey,” Rachel said, catching his attention. “It’s rude to stare.”

Then, she turned back to Lacey. “You look so familiar.”

“So do you,” Lacey said.

“I don’t know why I’m so old,” Rachel complained. “But I kind of like this body.”

Stephanie had thought that the argument back in the alleyway about attempting to write their names had been frustrating, but she was starting to realize that their original group wasn't as prone to arguing as this new one - and that it was easier to keep track of.

Allen didn't seem as overwhelmed. He surveyed the quickly glowing group with a certain glint to his eye that Stephanie couldn't quite place. It was a strange thought to have, but she saw a little bit of herself and her father in the way he was looking. That wasn't the look of someone who was overwhelmed; it was the look of someone who was taking this as a chess game and was picking what square to move to next.

He turned back to Stephanie.

"What are those weapons for?" he innocently asked, cocking his head ever so slightly to the side. "Are we in some kind of apocalypse? This store is emptier than it should be."

Stephanie glanced down, eyes wide. How had he noticed-

"I'm good at picking up on things like that," Allen said, giving her a friendly, sheepish smile. He rubbed the back of his neck. "You could call it a gift, I guess."

He lowered his voice a little.

"Also," he added, "I can see the bulge of your gun underneath your jacket. It's not too noticeable on its own, but considering that you have other weapons on it..."

He trailed off. Stephanie frantically readjusted her jacket, but she knew there was nothing she could really do to further hide the gun. Before she could even begin to explain why she had the weapons in the first place - and that it had been Jason who had picked out the gun, not her - Allen had already moved towards the aisle next to them: hunting supplies. He made a beeline for the bows and arrows. As he sorted through the different kinds of bows and looked for the sharpest arrows, he hummed a familiar song.

Stephanie stared.

"Is that Somewhere Over a Rainbow?" she asked.

Allen, who had finished grabbing his bow and had popped over to the next aisle to grab what looked like a machete, gave an eager nod. Stephanie was quickly realizing she didn't know what to make of him.

"I've always loved that movie," he said, an almost nostalgic look on his face. "Just imagine what it would have been like to see color for the first time on TV! It would have been a special kind of magic~"

He thought for a moment.

"Though nothing like the magic here," he mused. Stephanie blinked. He had moved so fast. He was heading to the rest of the group now, but she could have sworn he had only just been standing in the aisle she was in. She had to rush to catch up.

"This is magic?" Stephanie asked. Their conversation was easily loud enough for everyone else to hear. "How do you know it's not something else?"

Allen mused over the question. Crossing his arms and putting a hand underneath his chin, he said, "Experience, I think! I've interacted with enough magic to get a feel for it, even though I don't recognize this combination. It's a shame, too. If I was able to recognize this group of spells, I'd probably be able to end it so we could be ourselves again."

At one moment she was looking at camp stoves, and the next, she was back in her bed. Esther was shaken by the dream, and the body of the older woman she'd inhabited. She didn't know the woman, but couldn't shake the feeling of knowing her, of being bound to her.

She pulled her covers more tightly over her body. It would be a few minutes yet before Marcia came pounding on her door.

One day, she'd get out of this place.



Everything faded away in a moment, and Lacey woke back on the bed in her apartment with a vivid memory of what she had just witnessed.

She was sure that it had been a dream, but it had been so vivid.

She'd been in Anna's body, and for a moment felt connected to the woman she'd always admired but never had a chance to know.

Lacey eyed her surroundings and sighed. Being back here felt oppressive after talking to Mathis the night before, but she had nowhere to go. Mathis had said he was only in San Diego for the week, and he would be going back soon.

And it wasn't like he could be interested in her. Not when he could have had any woman he wanted.

She sighed, rolled out of bed and went to make herself a cup of coffee.

Whoever had cast this spell had a cruel sense of irony.

He had been trying to not think about the man he had seen in his reflection. Looking for weapons and making guesses was a slight comfort, but even that made his throat clench up. His mind just kept flickering back to that moment whenever he looked down at his all-too-familiar hands: to that girl's wide, terrified eyes, to the blood that coated his weapon, to the thunder rumbling loudly in the background, and to the man staring at him with horror and shock as his life drained out of his body.

He took a shaky deep breath. He felt like he was going to be sick again. He didn't deserve to be sick. He was the one who had killed that man in cold blood - killed him for protecting an enemy that was really just a little girl. And now he was dealing with the consequences. He deserved that much, at least. He didn't know how it was possible, but Allen undoubtedly looked like that man had. That man must have had some sibling that passed down the appearance; he had never really grasped how genetics worked. Magic made so much more sense-

As if his thought had conjured the idea of familiar magic into existence, two of their group suddenly disappeared.

Jason gasped. He was frantically glancing around now, trying to find out where the two had suddenly gone off to. Even without checking, Allen knew where they had to have gone. They must have gone back to where they should have already been. And that magic wasn't anything terrifying; it was teleportation magic.

But to cast something that would send someone back on top of this had to be straining the caster's magic - unless, of course, they were like who Allen normally was.

"Don't panic," he said, voice soft and reassuring. He wasn't sure if he was doing that part right. It had been awhile since he had regularly interacted with other people, but he liked to think he had some of it down. "I think the two of them just got sent home. But if this magic is like what I think it is-"

His voice cracked at the end.

Not like a puberty voice crack. Gods knew he had never had one of those before, and Allen was far too old for something like that. It was another voice slipping through. A slightly higher, much more familiar voice.

His voice.

He looked down.

It looked like his appearance was glitching. If he stared at it for just long enough, he could barely make out the clothes he had been wearing before he ended up here.

When he glanced up, everyone else's appearances were glitching, too.

"The magic's about to go out," he said, voice jumping between Allen's and his actual voice. "The spell's caster must have strained themselves too much."

Things were getting chaotic. James watched as everyone’s existences flickered in and out of focus. The pictures of who they weren’t, briefly replaced by who they were, but too fast for his eyes to catch. It was like the room had suddenly gotten very loud, but with a visual static. He squinted, and tried to think.

They needed to get out of here.

He wanted to go home.

And then, he saw a flash of home.

Well, he couldn’t call it that. But it was a piece of Nye. A person - the last person he wanted to see from his homeworld.

Everything flickered quickly, like a burst of flashing lights, and then suddenly, he was staring at not himself, but Carter. And now James was back in his own body, with all of his old aches and pains, and the familar tension that built up in his shoulders when he saw his old friend, because, well, they weren’t friends anymore.

James barely processed what the others looked like. All he had time to do was take a small step back before Carter lunged forward and rammed into him.

For such a small man, Carter was dense.

They fell to the floor and Carter grabbed for James’s neck. James rolled over and swatted at him, and Carter grabbed his wrists, trying to wrestle them to the ground.

This was not how James imagined any of this going.

Briar's body flickered away, and suddenly Queenie was herself again. Gods, Briar really is short.

Before she could fully process the differences between her body and Briars, the man who was once James - Carter, apparently - charged the man who was actually James. She stifled a laugh.

As entertaining as this was, though, she should really break this up. Both of them had met her, but neither was fully aware of her capabilities. Even if they'd noticed her, she still had the advantage.

So, she stepped between them, shoving both off-balance and grabbing Carter in a chokehold. He'd be the most likely to try to keep fighting. James was just going to step back.

"Gentlemen," she said smoothly, applying pressure to Carter's neck. She considered taking out a knife for emphasis, "Is this really necessary?"

James scrambled away on the ground before getting to his feet and brushing himself off. He watched as Carter struggled against the girl’s hold - and he recognized her. Queenie. He had almost forgotten the name. He didn’t recognize any of the others.

“Stay out of this,” Carter hissed, still squirming.

“Killing me isn’t going to get you back home,” James said cooly.

Carter spat at him, and James took a step back out of range so he missed.

“Fine,” Carter conceded. “I’ll leave him alone. Just let me go.”

James could tell there was much more Carter wasn’t saying, but he did seem to understand that now wasn’t the time.