I ran out of steam at about 10pm. I had done as much research and formatting on this paper as I could have with the stamina I had available, so I went ahead and e-mailed my work to myself. Once done, I stretched and let out a yawn. The fatigue had taken its toll on me. The time for schoolwork had come and gone, and it was now time to finally take a break.
“Hey Zoey, what’re you up to?”
“Mmnn…” She was sleeping soundly on her side while carelessly letting out soft murmurs every now and then. I wondered when it was exactly that she ended up falling asleep.
As embarrassing as it is to admit, I was too worried about looking creepy to take any glances in her direction the entire time. I was zoned into working as hard as I could for the entire two hours.
She did leave at some point to walk Mao, but that was an hour before I was done. She was now so soundly asleep that I felt bad even being in the same room as her. Unfortunately, I would have to rouse her from her sleep regardless. She still had plans for the cooler we stashed out back, and plus, there was no place for me to sleep.
Not unless you counted the floor, the chair, or…. the empty side of her bed.
I gulped while eyeing that daunting spot of her mattress.
It somehow felt forbidden, like everything I stood for would be forfeit if I went there. Yet it still called out to me like a whisper. Could I really do that without her permission? After all, wasn’t it her fault for falling asleep without telling me what to do? I would just be going with my only available option.
As I was pointlessly rationalizing the crime of sharing her bed, I began to hear ruffling coming from under the sheets.
“Mmnn…” Zoey rubbed her eyes and looked around in a daze.
“Oh, Tristan. Are you done?”
“Uh, yeah. For now, anyway.”
“Okay.”
She let out a quiet yawn while covering her mouth. “Do you wanna hack my mom?”
“Your… mom?”
“Well, yeah. We still have no idea if you can hack other people yet. It would be pretty weird if it was just me.”
“Yeah, but…”
“Yeah,” she interrupted. “I get it. You think it’s wrong. But listen, wouldn’t it be better to find out now rather than later, by mistake? What if you accidentally hacked your friend Lance, or your own parents? Isn’t it safer to learn about it now, in a controlled environment?”
She made a good point. Learning as much as I could about Dream Paralysis with her at my side was probably the best way to do it. In the first place, there was no guarantee that I’d be able to figure any of this out without an outside perspective. She had already discovered so much about the ability in just the two days since she was hacked that I had to respect it.
If we looked at it as minimizing future damages, then I figured that it was the right thing to do.
“So anyway,” she continued. “The glasses are connected to my phone’s hotspot, so the feed goes straight to my laptop. The first thing I want you to do after hacking her is to go downstairs and put them on.”
So that was why she had me hide them behind the coffee machine. It would’ve been weird for us to do a trade-off while I was in her body, after all.
“Uhuh, and then?”
“Then, I want you to drive down to the gas station and buy us a 6 pack of beer.”
“What?”
“Beer. I want some.”
“What?”
“Are you listening to me? I said I want beer.”
“No, but…”
“We’re not 21 yet, right? So isn’t this like, a surefire way to get beer without getting in trouble? Sure, there are lots of tricks we could pull to try and buy some on our own, but they’re all way too risky. Plus, my mom would toss me out if I got arrested.”
“Is that why you had me get a cooler full of ice?”
“Yeah. When you get back with the beer you can just leave it all right next to the cooler. I’ll carry it all back up here before mom wakes up.”
“Right…”
My ethical justification for hacking her mother had just flown right out the window. She just wanted to get wasted. And besides that, I was once again keenly aware that, despite all of her intelligence, Zoey was still just another high school girl trying to score beer.
There was a conundrum that I had to face, however. Though I was content with waiting until I was 21 to drink, the prospect of doing it with Zoey was exciting to me. Is hacking someone I don’t know that well against their will worth the beer, though?
“It would be easier if we could’ve had you hack the guy at the gas station, but there’s too much setup involved so it wouldn’t work. Having to think about someone while falling into a deep sleep is just too inconvenient.”
“But, wouldn’t she find out? I’m gonna leave tons of clues behind.”
“Clues? I don’t think so. If you use my car then everything should work out. She can go out into the yard and look for beer all she wants, but when she doesn’t see anything, she’ll be forced to accept that it was just a dream. I mean, if it weren’t for the fact that you left that text to Ben behind, I wouldn’t have known that any of the things you did in my body really happened.”
“I… guess.”
“Okay, great!” She reached over and grabbed something from under her pillow then handed it to me. It appeared to be a photograph. I grabbed it and took a quick glance, before realizing that it was a photograph of her mother in a bikini swimsuit.
“Zoey…”
“What? You don’t like it? I was hoping it’d help you with your hacking if the photo was arousing.”
“No, it’s not that. Are you really okay with just showing guys pictures of your mom like this?”
“Sure, why not?”
No, it wasn’t exactly a situation you said ‘why not’ to. Usually, you’d have some sort of reservations about having a friend think dirty things about your mother. Why would she give me something like this?
“I trust you, Tristan. Don’t worry about it.”
“I see…” I smiled.
“Besides, my mom and I don’t exactly have a normal relationship, you know.”
“Well, I get that, but…”
“Truth be told, when I was seven, I walked in on her and my dad having sex.”
I blinked twice. What she said was so incomprehensible that it took everything I could to not yell out in surprise.
“It was scary, and I didn’t understand it very well, but after searching the internet, I figured out what sex was. After that, whenever it was late, I would sneak around and try to catch them doing it… Tristan?”
“Huh? No, uhm. You just said something really strange, that’s all.”
“Strange? Well, I am a bit strange, I suppose.” She stared deeply into my eyes with a grin.
“But you don’t seem like a judgmental person, so I think it’s fine to tell you about myself.”
While I was still shaken by the insanity of her story, I was more relieved that she trusted me to tell me even more intimate things about herself. It was a good omen. It meant that I was making progress with her.
Still, it sounded like the origin of her voyeuristic tendencies. I wasn’t sure if it was okay to enable something like that, but I doubted that she would even listen to me. So for the time being, I would just have to go along with whatever she said.
“Uhm,” I started. “Zoey, is it okay if I fall asleep while staring at this picture?”
She nodded, then got off the bed.
“Go ahead.”
She gestured to the spot in the bed that she was just lying in. There was a part of me that was giddy at the thought of sleeping in the same spot Zoey was just in earlier, but I placed those feelings on the back burner for the time being.
She trusted me, and I needed to respect that trust. My number one goal was to get the assignment done. And that meant clearing out any thoughts of Zoey, and focusing on her mom.
And focusing on her mom meant thinking about her while staring at that picture of her. Still, there was also was a part of me that felt wrong doing it. After all, it was quite an erotic picture, and I was staring at it, analyzing every curve of her body without her consent.
Doing this made me feel uncomfortable, so I decided to think about something outside of how attractive her mom was. Like how she didn’t seem like a very good mother. She was very hands off with Zoey, and it led to her having to raise herself using the internet. And that thing about her not closing the door when she was in the act was another thing. I couldn’t help but wonder if there were some ill-intentions there.
Eventually, my eyes closed and my consciousness faded.
---
I awakened in an unfamiliar room. Just going off the fact that I was in a new room, it was safe to assume that the hacking was a success. The first thing I noticed once in this body was how much pain Zoey’s mom was in constantly.
Just by sitting up, my (her) hips flared up with a creaky pain I had never once experienced before in my life. It was nothing terrible, but it did stand out to me immediately. There was also a vague, tingling sensation present in her arms and feet. I wasn’t entirely sure what that could be, but if I had to guess, it was either nerve or blood related.
I lifted myself out of the bed and began walking out of the room as best as I could in the darkness, which proved to be extremely difficult.
It was no easy task trying to maneuver an unfamiliar room without any lights on. I couldn’t see anything at all. There was very little outside light filtering into this room. All I could do was pray that there was nothing to trip over. If I damaged her hip even more than it already was, then God knows if that damage would get transferred over.
Thankfully, I made it to the door safely and headed out into the hallway.
Upon flicking the light switch using the body’s muscle memory, I came to the sudden realization that the darkness wasn’t the issue, her vision was just much worse than mine or Zoey’s.
If I had to rank our visions among the three of us, I would guess that Zoey’s was the best, followed by me due to my long hours of playing online video games, and then Zoey’s mom’s due to her age.
“Oh.” I was forced to stop in my tracks.
Thinking about Zoey caused a tsunami of new sensations to suddenly crash down on me. All sorts of complicated feelings that I’d never experienced before were all weaving and interlocking in an inexplicable manner inside of me. I wasn’t sure what these feelings were, but I could tell that it would take a lifetime to untangle and manage them.
I quickly realized that all I could do was swallow them whole and ignore them before pressing forward. In order to avoid being assailed by those feelings, I consciously did my best to think of Zoey as not Zoey, but as entity [X], a mysterious looming figure that I couldn’t quite place. I headed down the staircase and, after flicking the light switch back on, I gravitated toward the kitchen and retrieved the items I stowed earlier.
I opened the glasses case and found her spy glasses, a ten-dollar bill, and the keys to her car. It was everything I needed to make this happen. [X] seemed to have accounted for everything. The money and keys aside, the phone functioned as a wi-fi hotspot for the spy glasses. That way, [X] could see everything that I was doing.
The glasses fit Mrs. Brahm’s face decently enough. They appeared to be nothing more than fake lenses however, so they did nothing to improve or distort my (her) vision. With that sorted out, I carried everything else with me to the door. I put on what I assumed were Mrs. Brahm’s slippers and exited the house.
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After locking the door, I walked through the all-encompassing darkness once more. It was cold out at this time of year, so I tried to hurry my way to the car.
I realized that her body recognized the layout of both her room and the front of her house, as I had no problems getting to any of my destinations. My concerns over tripping over something were completely unfounded.
Once I made it to the driver’s side of the car, I jammed the key up against the hole of the car door with little success.
“Why won’t this…?” I muttered to myself, before realizing that I was at the wrong car.
It was another habit.
Managing someone else’s body was proving to be a hassle. There’s so much battling to do against the subconscious that it made me appreciate how easy it was to move around in my own body.
After circling around to [X]’s car, I unlocked the driver’s side door and stepped inside.
“Phew.”
I dropped the phone and the money in the passenger seat.
My journey had barely even begun yet and it had already been quite hectic.
However, there were a few things I managed to get a better grasp of just by doing this.
First, and most importantly, the body obeys my orders only in ways that it knows how. As much as I can consciously think something like “get in the car”, if the body normally gets in the SUV instead of the sedan, then that’s what it’s going to do.
In a way, it was like talking to a child. You need to be as specific as possible, while taking in mind whatever habits and tendencies it leans towards, or else something completely unexpected could happen.
The second thing is that I couldn’t even think about [X] without having my body tear itself apart. The knot in my chest made it difficult for me to function normally if I so much as even entertained the possibility that she really existed. That type of feeling was something I’d never experienced before.
In any case, such a thing would only get in the way of the mission. I decided to put it in the back of my mind and focus. I pressed down on the power button near the steering wheel and the ignition responded with a gentle roar. The car slowly began heating up the second it was on, peeling away at the cold of its interior.
Then, after setting it into reverse, I pulled out of the parking area and set out on my journey. The drive itself wasn’t difficult at all.
My dad said he’d get me a car once I graduated high school, but he’s already helped me get a license so I’m familiar with all of the basics. Also, thanks to Mrs. Brahm’s experience, driving to the gas station was almost second nature.
Once there, I parked near the building and exited the vehicle once it was off. I’m embraced by the cold once more, as the well-lit exterior of the empty gas station washed over my (her) body.
I rushed into the building to escape the chills of the outside world. Once inside, I found it much easier to calm down. Is what I would say, but I felt a lot of eyes turning on me the second I walked in.
There were four people inside. A couple, a guy who might’ve been a few years older than me, and one guy around the same age as me manning the counter.
Their gazes didn’t feel entirely strange at first. It makes sense to check the door when someone comes in this late at night. However, what was strange was how their invasive gazes persisted even after I walked in.
It was making me self-conscious. It wasn’t my body, so I kind of felt guilty being stared at like that. I couldn’t help but wonder what it was about me that stood out to them. And that’s when I suddenly realized that I hadn’t checked what Mrs. Brahm was wearing.
I looked down.
Pajamas.
They were really childish looking ones too.
Mrs. Brahm’s body was reacting to the realization with a sudden surge of irritation, and I was right there with her. I really wanted to go back and not deal with any of these people. But I couldn’t. I still needed to get the beer. [X] was still watching through the spy glasses. I’d have no excuse if I suddenly backed out this early.
With a heavy sigh, I walked over to the fridges and grabbed two six packs of canned beer. While the guy who was older than me already checked out, the other three were all still staring at me in awe. The contrast of the bed-wear and the beer must have painted quite the picture. I mentally apologized to Mrs. Brahm for making her look like an alcoholic.
I placed the beverages up on the counter.
“Uh, can I see some ID?”
“I forgot it.”
“Right… um, listen. I’m really sorry, but I can’t sell it to you if…” I was already irritated thanks to all the stares, but that one really set me off.
“Look hun. I know you’re trying to flatter me, but I don’t buy the idea that I look anywhere near a day under 21. Believe me, I wish I did. So instead of paying me this pointless lip service, how about you just save me the trip and scan the fucking beer already?”
He sized me up for a moment, shocked and annoyed by my outburst, but he eventually acquiesced and scanned the beer reluctantly. I should note that the outburst just now was nothing like me. It was all Mrs. Brahm.
When he was done ringing the beer up, he placed them back on the counter.
“$6.63.”
I hand him the ten, and he placed it into the register and gathered my change. He tore the receipt out of the machine after it was done printing and handed everything over to me.
It was all fine and dandy that he was doing his job, but I made sure to count the change right in front of his face. I was still extremely irritated, so one extra microaggression just to rub it in his face should do it. And once I was done counting, I stared back at him in frustration.
“My change is $3.37. You gave me $3.27.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes really. What, are you going to give me attitude now? Over a count you fucked up?”
He eyed me with anger for a split second, then opened the register to grab a dime. However, I didn’t really care. Once I confirmed that he had looked for the change, I grabbed the 6-pack and walked out of the store. Of course, he hadn’t miscounted. I just felt like getting him back, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong with that.
I was once again assailed by the chilly outdoors.
“God, car, car….” I hurried over to the car and hopped inside after opening the door, making sure to slam it shut afterwards. “Phew!”
It was mission accomplished. I had succeeded. I placed the beers on the floor of the backseat, and I placed the receipt and change on the passenger seat next to the phone.
The phone, that should have been in the passenger seat.
How strange.
I was certain that it was there when I left the car.
Did it fall out?
“No…” I muttered.
It couldn’t be, right?
I searched the floors and felt around for any sign of the phone.
“No, no, no…”
I was starting to get anxious.
Did it really go missing?
Did it fall out of the car somehow?
No.
No, that’s not it.
Is it because…
Because I left the door unlocked?
Is that really why?
But the gas station was empty! There was no one here! I didn’t see or hear any cars come in.
There’s no way that could have…
Wait, was it him?
The guy who left before me?
“Fuck.”
If that’s the case, then [X]’s phone was gone forever.
I wouldn’t be able to get it back.
“FUCK!!!!”
I slammed my fists into the steering wheel with all my strength. The sound of the car’s horn screeched out deafeningly.
But honestly, I couldn’t care less.
I wanted to die.
I truly believe that if I wasn’t in Mrs. Brahm’s body, that I might have thrown myself into oncoming traffic at that moment.
I was extremely disappointed in myself. I had uncovered such a crazy terrifying power, but I somehow forgot to lock a car door. I was disillusioned by my own incompetence. But more importantly, I wanted to wring the neck of the thief that had stolen [X]’s phone.
And then, it hit me.
“Maybe…”
I turned the car on, then locked all the car doors.
If [X]’s laws were correct, then the only requirements to hack someone are for me to be in REM sleep and for me to think about them a ton before I fall asleep.
So, I thought, if I fell asleep again while in this body, then would it be possible to hack the thief? Or would I just dig myself into a deeper hole by waking up in my real body and leaving Mrs. Brahm at the gas station?
And what’s worse, I didn’t know if I even remembered his face well enough. But there was no time to think. If he really was the thief, then the longer I waited, the further away he’d end up getting. Even if hacking him from here really did work out, he was wide awake, so getting booted out immediately was a very real possibility.
There were too many issues with going that route. But the real problem was, I didn’t have much of a choice. Losing [X]’s phone would be the same as falling out of favor with her.
After taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes, and I did my best to focus on the face of the man who had eyed me when I entered the gas station. Then, I allowed myself to fall asleep.
---
The second I released control of Zoey’s mom’s body, my surroundings changed.
My gamble had succeeded.
However, I was acutely aware of the fact that if I did anything suspicious, I was going to immediately be booted out, so there was no time to mess around. All I could do was get a handle on the situation.
As far as I could tell, the thief was hiding out behind the gas station. There were no lights in the immediate vicinity, but there was a slope a few feet away that led to a small road. And most importantly, the phone was in his hand. I could feel it. I needed to get it back to Zoey’s mom safely.
Now that I knew where he was, I could try to return to her body and confront him, but there was no guarantee that it’d go well. As someone who had experienced both of their bodies, I didn’t think that she could outrun him, nor could she fight him off.
I initially thought about walking him over to the car and dropping the phone off, but it was far too optimistic of an idea. He’d most likely boot me out before I could take more than five steps towards the car. Instead, I came to the conclusion that having the phone stay here while having him leave was the more realistic idea.
But that idea raised another question: how could I have him leave quickly without getting booted? There weren’t exactly a plethora of options. The only ideas I could come up with off the top of my head were related to the slope.
I needed to get him to go down there somehow. If I jumped him down, he’d just climb back up in less than a minute though, so that was out. I needed more time than just that. I needed him to go down there of his own volition. The story of the wind and the sun came to mind. To get someone to do what you want them to, soft persuasion is usually more effective than brute force.
As far as that went, his own belongings came to mind. Just from the feeling of his pockets, I could tell that he had both a phone and a wallet in his possession. They would do. I had already solidified my plan.
There was no time to lose.
He probably felt off already as it was.
I decided to quickly put my plan into action.
In one quick movement, I tossed Zoey’s phone a way’s off, then reached into my (his) pocket, and tossed his wallet off the slope.
I thought back to the picture of Zoey’s mom that I had been holding before I fell asleep. I did my best to imbue it into my mind, then forced myself to get booted out.
---
I returned to Mrs. Brahm’s body.
I couldn’t tell if projecting my consciousness worked, or if I was merely sent back to where I started, but that wasn’t important. I hopped out of the car and rushed towards the back of the gas station. Once there, I peeked around the corner and found the man looking down the slope where his wallet had fallen.
I could have waited for him to go down, but there was no guarantee that he would. He might just turn back and grab [X]’s phone first before heading down. If he did, I would have to yell and scare him off. I wanted to avoid doing that though, since it was a gamble whether he would fight or flee. My gaze turned to the wall. Unfortunately, despite having a general idea of where the phone landed, I couldn’t see a thing. I made a mental note to let [X] know about her mom’s awful vision.
I decided that I needed to go. I took my (her) shoes off and quietly walked close to the wall, searching with my (her) feet for any sign of the phone.
“Why the fuck…” he mumbled.
It wasn’t at me. He was still staring down at the cliff. No doubt, he was confused about the situation. But even while he was distracted, I found it difficult to locate the phone just by blindly searching. I was having no luck. Just as I was losing hope, a small, rectangular light beamed outward from the ground. I had found the phone. It was about six feet away, a distance I could easily clear. And once I did, I reached down to grab it.
“Ow…”
My (her) hip screeched in pain.
It was unbearably painful. So unbearably painful in fact, that I accidentally let out a groan. My body froze up. If he had heard me, then I might have to defend myself. But could I in this situation?
I turned back to face him.
Thankfully, he was already gone.
As far as I could tell, the back of the gas station was now empty. He must’ve gone down the slope then. With a sigh of relief, I picked the phone up and eased the tension on my (her) hip.
“Ow, ow, ow…”
I hoped from the bottom of my heart that Mrs. Brahm was having her hip looked at. The pain was seriously unbearable.
After shaking my head in order to psych myself up, I walked back over to where I left the slippers, put them back on, and I immediately went back to the car.
“Phew!”
Once in the driver’s seat, I let out a sigh of relief.
[X]’s phone was secured.
Apparently, the hotspot had disconnected from the glasses. The reason the phone lit up in the dark at the time was because I was close enough to connect again. So in other words, [X] hadn’t seen anything aside from me retrieving the phone. It was probably for the best, I thought. I’d just have to relay everything that happened later.
After strapping the seat belt on, I finally drove off and returned home.
Once there, I recalled the instructions I was given. I grabbed the six pack and exited the car. The walk to the bushes was quite scary at that time of night thanks to the lack of visibility.
However, compared to the situation with the thief earlier, it was basically nothing. I couldn’t believe how close I was to losing [X]’s phone. Would she have hated me for it, I wonder? Probably. Her entire network at school is on that thing.
With a heavy sigh, I simply dropped the beers at my feet once I arrived at the bush. They landed with a heavy ‘clank’, but nothing more. My (her) body was far too tired to do much more. She wanted nothing more than to go back to bed, I could tell. I continued walking back to the car where I grabbed [X]’s keys and her phone, and headed back inside.
The first thing I noticed once inside was how dirty my (her) feet were after taking off the slippers. That was evidence if I’d ever seen it. The slippers themselves could be cleaned later, I needed to get her feet cleaned asap. I took the glasses off and dropped both the keys and the glasses themselves, back in the case that was still behind the coffee maker, then I headed back upstairs.
I assumed that Mrs. Brahm should have the master bedroom in the house, so there should have been a restroom attached to her bedroom.
And sure enough, I found it.
I washed her feet and dried them carefully, then, for the sake of leaving no evidence behind, I wiped the tub down with the body towel she used earlier after her shower. That way, even if she woke up and happened to check the tub, she wouldn’t find any evidence that it was used recently.
My job had ended at last.
All that was left to do was hope that [X] was right, and that she wouldn’t suspect anything. Once I climbed into her bed, consumed by the darkness for the final time, my consciousness faded, and I was engulfed the sensation of being sucked away.
---
For some reason, when I woke up, I was greeted by the strangest sense of deja vu. There I was, lying on my back, barely conscious, with Zoey, seated above me, staring into my eyes with a curious expression. Had I dreamed of such a scenario before? My still fuzzy mind couldn’t put two and two together, and the feelings quickly escaped me before I could figure it out. Zoey, however, unaware of the complicated feelings I was being swamped by, simply grinned and waved an unopened can of beer at me.