We wrapped filming up just before 3, when the change in lighting would have been far too glaring to continue shooting. As Jaz and I had expressed to the two of them repeatedly, it wasn’t a long scene by any means. Two hours of shooting to get it done was all it would really take, and we managed to get it done perfectly on time. I was glad that we managed to pull it off. It was something that all members of the photography club were a part of. Even if Zoey wouldn’t be able to make everything work together by tomorrow, at least we’d have the satisfaction of knowing we had created that piece of art together.

The most uplifting part of today, however, was that Lance and Naomi had at long last cleared everything up. It’s funny, with everything terrible that’s happened these past few weeks, it was nice to have some kind of good news to balance out the bad thoughts of Zoey I’d been tormented by lately. I think I’ve accepted that I probably still love her. But ever since the incident with Gwen, my love had warped into something darker.

Back then, before I met her, just thinking of her was enough to get the butterflies in my stomach going. I would have been satisfied just holding her in my arms, caressing her soft hair, and being enveloped by the hypnotic scent of cinnamon. She was an angel and my savior, and nothing would have made me happier than a life together with her.

But recently, I’ve had thoughts. Darker, more sinister thoughts. Thoughts were more in line with making her suffer. My love for her has slowly warped into something more sadistic. I wanted to drag her down from the heavens and bring her over to my level. To make her grovel. Laura and Jaz mentioned changing her. Yeah, I guess I might have wanted to too. I wanted to make her regret it all. I wanted to change her from that terrible human being into someone who might have offered something resembling consideration or respect to other human beings. Only such thoughts could get the butterflies in my stomach going anymore. The days where I fantasized about an innocent love with her were dead. She had pulled the trigger on that herself when she chose to do what she did with Gwen, and then it was buried with Laura and Jaz’s confessions to me. All that was left was the twisted fantasy of a twisted person.

I didn’t have the strength to make that fantasy into a reality, however. She still frightened me. But the anger I felt was unmistakable. It wasn’t just the story about Tanner, or the fact that she tried to associate her behavior with Jaz’s orientation.

“There’s something I need to tell you about Zoey.”

Really, it was what Naomi had said it to me in private before we left the lake that had plunged the final nail in the coffin. She pulled me aside while Lance and Jaz went over the footage. I realized that the two of us hadn’t spoken since the mall incident, so I decided to hear her out. What I hadn’t realized, however, was the truth behind Naomi’s actions in the past week.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Please don’t hate me for telling you this.”

“What… is it?”

“I’ve been keeping it a secret, but it’s about when Zoey made the bet with Bennyben… the one where she’d date him if he won the homecoming game. The truth is, I was there. Lawrence, Gwen, the two of them, and I.”

“Why were you there…?”

“Well, because SOMEONE told Ben that I was fishing for information about him for Gwen.”

Her pouty expression made it difficult for me to hide the guilt from my face. Something like that did happen, but it was the furthest thing from my mind at that point with everything that was going on.

“Oh, sorry about that.”

“It’s fine, I get it. That’s not important, though. I’ve been meaning to ask you all this time, but… what do you have on Zoey?”

“What do I…?” My voice trailed off.

“Tristan, she’s scared of you.”

“Scared…?”

“I thought she was in love with you at first. The reason she made the bet was to protect you from him. I was there, and so was Gwen. Even Lawrence agreed as much when I asked him about it this week. That girl, Zoey wanted to protect you from Bennyben.”

Naomi had even asked Lawrence about it?

“You thought she was in love with me but, what… why did you change your mind?” I asked.

There was a pause. It was the first time I had seen her hesitate that much to tell me something.

“Please don’t hate me, Tristan.”

“I won’t, okay? I promise. Just tell me.”

“Do you, um… remember when Lance and I got into that huge fight at club last week?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Well, the day before that, Zoey suggested something to help us work things out. It was a suggestion that… probably could’ve ended any chance of us ever getting back together.”

I didn’t like where this was going.

“Oh… oh yeah? What was it?”

“She told me to make him jealous by talking to Lawrence.”

My mind went blank. Lawrence? That Lawrence? The guy Zoey had a deal with to send girls his way? It couldn’t be, could it? Was she seriously trying to sabotage their relationship?

“I went along with it for my own reasons… I wanted to find out more about what happened at the mall from him. I wanted to make sure that you’d be okay once Bennyben’s suspension was up. I wanted to ask why he was so crazy about Zoey in the first place. Look, I know you hate him, and you have every reason to. But I’ve known him for a long time. He might be a bit obsessed, but this was the first time I’d ever seen him act out like this. I just wanted to understand how things turned out this way, and so I asked Lawrence who was always close to him. I didn’t get much information about Bennyben himself, but from what Lawrence told me… you’re the first person he’s seen Zoey kowtow to like this. I mean, she staked her entire reputation to protect you.”

It's because of Dream Paralysis. That was the only answer that fit everything. But without her knowing about its existence, she had decided that it was either love or me having something on her.

“But then, it could just be that she really did have feelings for me, right?” I turned to face her. “Why do you think I might have something on her?”

“Because… she told him after the mall thing that…”

“That?”

“She said she wasn’t in love with you. She loves someone named Oliver.”

It had been almost 5 hours since then. The sun had already set for the evening. And yet, I could do nothing but dwell on her words. I had nothing to do but anxiously wait for the results of the editing. I had no idea if it’d be done in an hour or five. But it didn’t matter. I wanted to screen it. I wanted to see what kind of art we’d ended up creating. I could have played video games with Lance, but I couldn’t think of anything except for Naomi’s words. As soon Zoey’s done with the editing, as soon as she sends it over, I’m going to confront her. I was going to ask her who this Oliver was, and I’d tell her how I really felt. That was what I thought.

But I needed the film first. I had been passing the time by staring at my texts with Gwen. I hadn’t responded to her last message. I wanted my response to be of the finished film. There was so much going on in my head though, that I was tempted to call her despite everything. And if not her, then I needed to talk to someone. Lance? Jaz? Naomi? Hell, I’d have taken Lawrence at that point.

As I was pondering for a moment, whether it was a good thing or not, my phone did begin to ring, and the word “Captain” flashed across my screen. We hadn’t ended our last conversation on good terms, so I was hesitant to answer, but if it was related to the film then I needed to know what was up. I pressed the answer button.

“Hello?”

“Tristan, I messed up.”

Her voice sounded frantic. It sounded exactly like when she saw the creature at the game two weeks ago. Regardless of whatever it was she was about to say, it was obviously not the usual, level-headed Zoey on the other side of the line.

“What? What happened?”

“It’s Enzo. Krista told me about it today. Apparently, he’s been in contact with Jacob. Something’s going to happen tonight.”

“Something? Something like what?”

“I don’t know. But you need to hack Jacob right now.”

“What? Right now? I… You know I can’t just…”

“Tristan, listen to me. I don’t care about what you think you can or can’t do. You need to do it right now, okay? You need to protect Laura.”

Protect Laura. That was all I needed to hear. The thought that something bad was about to happen to her didn’t sit well with me after our conversation yesterday. She was a good person at heart, a lily that deserved to be protected and cared for.

“Okay, I’ll do it.”

“Thanks, I’ll send a picture to help you.” She went quiet for a moment. I half expected her to hang up. She’d never thanked me like that before. This really wasn’t the same Zoey. Was she already changing?

“No problem,” I said.

“And remember, don’t reveal Dream Paralysis. No matter what.”

“I won’t.”

“Good. Contact me after everything’s done.”

She hung up, as she usually would. Naively, I expected her to tell me about the film process, but it was understandable that this took priority over everything else. I needed to sleep as soon as possible. Dr. Santana said I should avoid taking melatonin with my meds, but this was an emergency. There was no time to think about anything except for sleep. Whatever it was that Enzo and Jacob had planned for Laura, I needed to be there to prevent it.

With that in mind, I swallowed the melatonin then rolled over, falling into a deep sleep while pushing thoughts of Jacob to the forefront of my mind.

---

I felt myself drifting through a deep tunnel.

A dark, familiar cave with no end in sight.

I had no idea where I was headed, but it couldn’t have been any good.

No, it wasn’t good.

Where am I going? I thought.

Wasn’t I trying to get to Jacob?

Where is he?

It was just like that day in the forest.

An out of body experience.

“Oh, mm…”

A voice?

A familiar voice.

“Mm, ah…”

It was getting louder.

There was a light at the end of the tunnel.

My destination was at hand.

“I love this…”

My body was slowly being overcome by insatiable lust, pleasure beyond my understanding.

“Yes, yes…”

The sense that I had been doing something wrong, that I was stepping into a taboo world, was slowly being overwritten by that sense of pleasure.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Oh, ah…”

I was at the end of the tunnel.

My body glided through the end, enveloped by a blinding light.

---

After a single meeting, Laura Young had become an object of worship for me. It might sound like an exaggeration, I know. A girl drenched in dark makeup, wearing revealing clothes, a black rose tattoo down the side of her stomach. She probably looked like a sort of pagan to someone who grew up religious. But the truth is, I knew her kindness. I felt it when I became her. She had an unparalleled ability to understand those around her, and to care for them from the bottom of her soul. To anyone else, caring deeply for the self-destructive, foolish people besides them was a task akin to Atlas carrying the weight of the world.

And yet in just one hack, I understood that it was genuine. I verified it myself, both by becoming her and by talking to her. She really did love everyone. And yet…

“I’m almost…”

My mind must have been blank throughout the entire thing.

As I felt the pleasure heighten in Jacob’s lower region, the contractions as the liquid escaped from his member and he thrust his hips one last time.

“Haaa…”

After a moment of recollecting himself, my vision twisted as he rolled himself off Laura’s body and fell over to her side. His breath was ragged, as was hers. It was done. She had sinned one more time. But all I could feel within myself, within Jacob, was the joy of finally having conquered a woman as fine as her.

“How was it?” he asked, smiling next to her.

And in turn, she rolled over, pulling the sheets over her nude body. “It was breathtaking...”

“You were amazing too, you know.”

She pulled the sheet over her face. “I was excited, but I got nervous.”

“Really? I didn’t notice.”

“Yeah, right.” She touched his cheek. “I could’ve been braver if you’d just turned the lights off.”

“And miss out on seeing my wife during her first time?”

“Aren’t you quite the gentleman?”

Laura’s uncanny neutral expression still shone. But there was a tint of red coloring her complexion. Like a blooming rose that had just seen the sun for the first time. That coloring caused Jacob to lean in for a kiss.

I knew that it was wrong for me to be there. I shouldn’t have been here. I knew that, if I were in my right mind and not Jacob’s, I would probably feel guilty for even sticking around like I had been. But it’s a good thing that I wasn’t in my right mind. After all, I had a purpose. It’s no coincidence that they had sex on the exact day that Zoey warned me that Jacob was up to something. Though I wish she had been a bit more specific about what that ‘something’ was. I needed to keep an eye out in order to decipher what exactly it was.

“I really am sorry, you know,” she said.

He pulled her head closer. “I know. It’s fine.”

“It’s not, I shouldn’t have betrayed your trust like that.”

“Zoey’s an interesting person, I get it. You were curious.”

“Oh, really? And were you?” she asked.

“Do you want me to lie or do you want the truth?”

“Oh, come on.” She shoved him playfully.

“It doesn’t matter. She’s dating Tristan, remember? Though, I don’t exactly know how that happened.”

“What do you mean? He seemed nice,” she said.

“Yeah, he’s nice. But since when has being nice on its own ever been attractive?”

“He’s also a curious person. He really wanted to learn about the church, you know.”

“I think he was more interested in what was in the church.” He nuzzled his head against hers, and she rolled her eyes.

“Oh, please. You’re being unfair to him.”

“Wait, why are we talking about Tristan right now?”

He got out of the bed, still naked, then rolled the condom off to throw it in the trash.

“Sorry, did I upset you?”

“No, it’s fine, I just need to piss.”

The truth is, however, it wasn’t fine at all. For some reason, the thought her bonding with me had bothered him far more than the fact that she had cheated on him with Zoey. No, it wasn’t ‘for some reason’. He was secretly glad that they had done it. For what reason that was, I didn’t know. He grabbed his cellphone from inside a stack of clothes and went to the bathroom.

Once inside, he closed the door, turned the faucet on, and let out a sigh. His nude figure’s presence filled out the mirror as he brooded over the vast counter laid out before him. I could tell that he had been working out for a while just by looking at his body. He was living a life that would make most guys my age green with envy. He was spending the night in a fancy hotel judging by the decor, together with his beautiful girlfriend. Why would anyone be anxious on a day like this? And yet, he was anxious. His heart was pounding. Which meant that something was coming.

And it took me no time to realize the truth of it.

All because he hit the “stop recording” button on his cell phone.

And then…

It hit me.

It was a sex tape.

He was recording a sex tape without her knowledge.

Jacob was going through the newly recorded video to crop out the unnecessary bits at the beginning and the end to save a new copy.

And then, he opened up his messages with Enzo.

He was going to send it…?

To Enzo?

But why?

What did Enzo have on him, exactly?

Were they setting up some kind of deal?

No, it didn’t matter what the truth was.

I had to stop it.

I had to, and yet…

I couldn’t think of a way of doing it without revealing Dream Paralysis.

Putting someone onto its existence could lead to a bad ending for both Zoey and me.

But what should I do?

No, there’s no question about it.

Fuck keeping it secret.

I had to save her.

“Huh?”

I held his thumb in place as it hovered over the send button.

I needed to delete it.

“My thumb… fuck, this is so weird.”

I exited the text messages and moved towards the files folder to try to delete it.

“What the fuck is going on right now?”

It was only when he uttered those words that my vision began to fade.

He was rejecting me.

“Shit,” I muttered using his voice.

I couldn’t wake up. I needed to delete this.

But his body was rejecting me.

Was there anything else I could do?

I would wake up in just a moment if I didn’t do anything.

And then I realized it.

I needed a new body.

---

Once I switched over to Laura Young’s body, there was a recognition within myself that I had failed.

The video was probably going to be sent.

And most likely, he would wonder why his body had acted like that.

Perhaps if he was delusional, he would assume that it was his conscience stopping him?

But either way, I had to accept the truth of the situation.

I had failed Zoey.

I had failed Lawrence.

And most importantly of all, I had failed Laura.

The sound of the bathroom faucet disappeared, and the door opened to Jacob, where he found Laura looking up at him as she always had. He met it with his smile, despite the guilt that was probably rummaging through his chest. Oh yes, he felt guilty. I felt it in him when he was about to send the text. And of course he did. He just betrayed the trust of that honest, loving girl who gave it all to him against her own values just moments ago. He stared back down at the phone, most likely absorbing the images on the screen from the video he’d just taken.

“Come Jake,” she said, arms stretched out.

Her loving voice pained him. It was causing his remorse to take firm root on his heart. And in that remorse, I found my chance. This, this was easier to take advantage of. The regret that had suddenly hit him after seeing her face once again had hit him like a raging bull. Ordinarily, he would have been able to suck the pain in and carry on with his life until it was buried underneath whatever reward he reaped for sharing that video with Enzo. The guilt would still be there, but he would be able to function within the mountain of lies he had built for himself. But, even if I couldn’t have stopped the text from going through, I could still take advantage of his disorientation and swipe the phone from him using Laura’s body once he got close.

“Huh?”

In his moment of shock, I flipped through his file history until I found the video.

“Wait, Laura stop-“

“Hmm?

Her eyes finally focused on what was being displayed on the phone, and she realized it.

But as her brain had just barely managed to recognize it, the phone was snatched from her hand just as quickly as she’d gotten it.

The room went quiet. Laura’s eyes were still firmly focused on the spot where the phone had just been. Her hands were still transfixed in place. It’s like she was frozen in that moment of time. And emotionally, she was. Like the world around her had just shattered into a billion pieces.

“Jake?”

“Uh, what is it babe? What’s up?”

The nervous smile she saw in her peripherals told the entire story.

“What was that on your phone?”

“What was what? Did you see something?”

“Jake, are you pretending not to know?”

He went quiet. Her body still hadn’t moved an inch. She had been speaking the words into her hand while frozen like a statue. No, her body was moving. I could feel her arms trembling. She was doing everything in her power to hold it together.

“I don’t…”

“Jake, give me the phone.”

“Laura, babe. I really don’t think…”

“Jake?”

She looked up, finally finding the strength to break free and confront the reality of the situation. She found him wearing an expression so guilty that it caused even more turmoil inside of her. The wrinkles on his forehead, his furrowed brow, the frown that he was trying so desperately to cover up. If it really was nothing, then why was he looking at her like that?

Without a word, he found himself handing her the phone. The screen was still displaying the video he’d just taken. Was he too anxious to delete it in time, or did his guilt prevent him from doing as much? Either way, it was now too late to hide it from her. She scrolled through the timeline of the video.

Watching the two of them engage in that sinful act before marriage. An act that, if exposed, would probably ruin her life. And in fact, it had been exposed. She just didn’t know it yet. Her life was already over.

“Get out.”

“Laura, listen…”

“Get out, please.”

“My phone…”

With almost robotic ease, she deleted both the original video and the cropped one from his phone’s gallery then removed them from the trash folder afterwards. Once she was done with that, she tossed the phone his way. When he caught it, the guilty-looking spheres in the sockets of his head were both still pointed her way.

“Laura, I’m sorry. I just-“

“Get. Out.”

There would be no talking his way out of this, and he seemed to realize it. With great reluctance, he found his clothes and slipped back into them. Laura was holding it all together. She needed to. She refused to be emotional before the man who had just betrayed her like that. She kept her eyes on him as he grabbed his belongings and finally went towards the door. He looked over her one last time, but the tense face she was wearing dissuaded him from saying anything. With the guilt of his own sin still coloring his face, he left through the door.

In the midst of the emotional turmoil was a sensation in her lower region that I couldn’t quite place. It was a discomfort that was both physically and emotionally tangible. A gut wrenching, nauseating kind of discomfort that I had never quite experienced before. It wasn’t just that she had just had sex. It was as if the sex had suddenly taken on a whole new meaning, and that sensation had turned into something nasty. Laura suddenly felt the urge to throw up.

I wanted no part of what was about to come next, so I disconnected completely.

---

The nauseating sensation followed me back to my body. With all the strength I could muster out of my fatigued, half-awake body, I ran over to the bathroom and leaned over the toilet. At first, I had thought that the feeling was purely the feedback from the hack. That nothing would come out even if I leaned over. But I quickly realized that I really was ill, because the dinner I had earlier came lurching out of my mouth. The taste of stomach acid and a half-digested slog of my mom’s cooking splashed into the bowl like a waterfall without an end in sight. I must have been there for about half a minute before I’d spat all of it out, the remains of saliva and vomit still dripping from my lip. I was very sick. And what made me feel sick wasn’t the vomiting, it was the fact that I had been inside Laura in a manner of which I was neither welcomed nor intending for. It took me all of five minutes to recollect myself, to center my mind to the point where I was able to actually speak before I reached for the phone in my pajama pocket and call Zoey.

“Tristan. What happened?”

“Zoey… I-I…”

“Spit it out. What did you see?”

“They had sex.”

“That’s it?”

“No, he recorded it. A-and he sent it to Enzo.”

The line went quiet for a moment.

“You didn’t stop it?” she asked.

“I couldn’t. Not without revealing Dream Paralysis.” For some reason, I found myself lying to her. I did try, but I didn’t want her to know that I risked it. Why was that, I wondered? “But… I did let her find the video.”

“I see.”

She said nothing more. She might have been thinking of a way to rectify the situation. If that video got out, then Laura’s life would be over. She has no idea what’s in store for her.

“Zoey, I can go back to sleep. I can hack Enzo. I’ll delete the video. I-“

“Don’t waste your time, Tristan. Just let me handle it.”

“But…”

“You won’t be able to do anything if he’s awake. Just let me talk to him. I can handle it.”

“Are you sure…?”

“Have you ever known me to not talk myself out of a bad situation? Plus, I’m close to Krista. He won’t risk me getting in her ear.”

“I… I guess.”

“Just trust me. You’re better off keeping an eye on Laura. Make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid.”

“She wouldn’t.”

“Can you guarantee that?”

I didn’t respond.

Of course I couldn’t.

I still felt the sensation from what happened earlier.

I don’t have those parts anymore, but I still feel it.

“Are you crying?”

Apparently, my sobbing had become audible now.

I had been crying ever since I threw up in the toilet.

“I… I raped her, Zoey.”

She sighed on the other line.

“You didn’t rape her, Tristan.”

“I did! I was inside her. She thought she was with Jacob, but I was also there. Right there. I still feel myself inside her. And, and…”

“And what? You’re going to cry yourself to sleep over sex she didn’t even know she had?”

“What?”

“Let’s pretend for a second that you raped her, Tristan. So what? Is it going to traumatize her? She’ll have terrible memories of what happened tonight her for the rest of her life, but it’s not because you happened to be fucking her alongside Jacob. She’ll never know. Torturing yourself over it is pointless.”

“What are you… saying right now?”

Once again, she sighed as if she was being held up from something important.

“I’m saying that you got to fuck Lawrence’s sister without any consequences. Just enjoy it.”

My breathing became ragged beneath my sobbing.

I’d never wanted to scream at someone more in my life. The unbridled anger burning inside of me would put even Lance’s angriest video game rants to shame.

“You’re the fucking devil, do you know that?”

“Oh dear. You sound an awful lot like your girlfriend Gwen right now.”

“Yeah, I sound like her. She’s a hundred times better than you ever will be.”

“And yet you chose me, not her.”

“Not anymore. We’re done.”

“Are you sure? Don’t do something you’ll regret, Tristan.”

“Regret? This is the best decision I’ll ever make in my life. I’m not going to uncritically follow you forever. I’m not Benjamin or Tanner.”

She went quiet for a second. “Tanner? Oh, did Jaz tell you about him? I suppose she did, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, and do you know what else she said? She told me that you’re not actually aromantic. You lied to me to try to get back on my good side. You’re the worst kind of human being, Zoey. Why should I spend my time with an emotionless piece of shit like you?”

“Ouch, I’m hurt,” she said, not even attempting to sound hurt. “Why would my boyfriend say such harsh things to me?”

“We’re not dating.”

“Not anymore if this keeps up.”

“No, we never were. And we won’t be seeing each other anymore,” I said.

“I’ll let you sleep on it. Quitting the photography club would be kind of difficult now that both of your close friends are such involved members now.”

I laughed. “You know, I always felt so afraid of you. At first I was scared that you’d hate me, then I was scared of what you’d do to me if I crossed you. But now it’s kind of funny.”

“Yeah? And why is that?”

“Because you’re scared of me, aren’t you?”

No response.

There it was.

Naomi’s assumption was on the mark.

“What, no clever reply? It’s because it’s true, isn’t it? You have no idea what to do if I actually use this power against you, do you? That’s why you’re trying so hard to control me. No matter what kind of clever ruse you come up with, the only way you’ll ever beat me is by killing me, and even you would never go that far.”

“Tristan.”

“What? Are you upset? Why don’t you go cry to Oliver about it then?”

“How do you…”

My laughter only got louder.

“Know? How do I know? You told Lawrence about him and expected him to keep his mouth shut?”

She sighed. “Tristan, it’s not what you think...”

“Oh, it’s not? Really? Why can’t you just be honest about it? You’ve been hanging your body up as a prize even though you hated my guts. You manipulated me. What part of that isn’t what I think? Oh, that’s right. You’re trying to lie to me because you know that, without that, you have nothing on me anymore. That’s it, right? Hey, answer me. Answer me, Zoey. ANSWER ME!”

There was silence on the other side of the line. I was breathing heavily. My blood pressure was probably through the roof. My heartbeat quickened. There was so much more I wanted to say. So many bad things I wanted to call her. But almost as if she’d sensed it all, she finally spoke up.

“We’re done, Tristan. Don’t call me or hack me ever again.”

The sound of the line going dead. Her hanging up signaled my own victory in the conversation.

And yet, there was a nuclear bomb on the verge of going off inside of my body.

I don’t know if it’s how I truly felt or if Laura’s pain was influencing me too heavily.

But I needed to let all this pain out, and without Zoey on the other line to accept it, I needed to find a new outlet.

I wound up going into the shower and cried my eyes out as the water poured down over my skin. It was frustrating. I never wanted to think about her again. She had turned something beautiful into this. And yet, as much as she had upset me earlier, she was right about one thing. If what happened was beating me up like this, then perhaps Laura needed to be checked on after all. The last thing I wanted was for her to hurt herself. She didn’t deserve to suffer. I was scared of using the power again, but once the shower was over, I went back to bed and fell into a deep sleep, with thoughts of Laura Young filling my head.