Fair Warning by Patrick S. (popular e readers txt) 📕

air chilled; shivers swam under his skin. Where had the child gone? Was he lost? Terror fell on him as he thought of never seeing the child before understanding the intense feelings he brought out. He had to know why his brain nearly oozed out of his skull at the very sight of the boy, and how so much of his life could be an open book to an oddly familiar stranger.

Then everything around him melted into pasty, vague silhouettes. As if a thick sheet of wax was pulled over his eyes, the landscape drifted away from clear images into murky shapes and primordial sludge.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” He felt dizzy, tried to grab something, but there was nothing to hang on to.

Scott flailed his arms as visibility in the encompassing cloak dimmed even more, until the only things that remained in his sight were thin lines and dull smears, like broken neon signs reflected in a pool of water.

Sounds failed. Darkness all around.

The boy, somewhere. Calling faintly.

Where? He tried to call out, but his voice was trapped inside him. Couldn’t move anymore.

Then, a voice, spoken from no discernable center: Are you prepared to know?

It had no body, no tone--expressionless scratches somehow manifested as sound.

You spoke with me. Now you must be shown; there is no other way.

The darkness, punctured only by those hovering afterthoughts of objects once corporeal, tightened its hold. Was he standing up? Sitting? Floating endlessly?

“Show me, then!” he shouted, though no actual sound escaped his lips.

With flashes and whirs of colors, shapes, objects, as though he were the sole occupant inside inside the tumbling washing machine of the universe, Scott soon found himself lying on his back, staring up at a sparkling golden nugget flanked by pale blue oceans.

Where...? Though he was grounded once more, there was something different now that was both disquieting and intriguing. It felt as though a part of him had been lost in the stupor.

The sun shone bright in a clear sky with only a few tattered puffs of clouds drifting alongside. Heat pushed around him, stifling and humidified.

Then, without telling it to, his head raised and he was staring at a great hunk of rusted metal in a small clearing.

He had been here before, but the crispness of colors and clarity of vision indicated that this was not a dream or vision: this was real.

The hunk of metal was an old cab from a rusted pickup. Missing both doors, its seat, mirrors, and dashboard, the hollowed-out rustbucket only retained the steering wheel and part of its back window. A large red cloth had been draped over the empty space where the glass should have been, held together by duct tape and pieces of string. A few empty pop cans lined the front edge below the windshield where the wipers should have been.

Red Wing Tower. This was the place the boy had mentioned, the place that sparked recollections within him. Somehow, he was looking at a place he visited often as...as a child...

He tried to call out, but found no voice. He tried to move but had no limbs with which to do so. Instead, he felt the strange body underneath him rise to its feet and walk slowly towards the browned, hollow cab, scratching at the head-that-was-not-his.

He felt the head turn, and from a small, cracked windshield lying on the ground--perhaps taken from the old cab itself--caught a glimpse of his reflection. He

was the boy. Blonde hair, freckled face, and round blue eyes scattered themselves across the broken glass, but it was undeniable: he was inhabiting the body of the boy on his porch.

“There you are,” a girl said. Scott felt his body turn and found himself staring at Krista, now as solid as anything else in this world--hazel eyes, round cheeks and dimples beside her thin lips, dressed in the iconic flowery shirt. She was smiling at him.

With a jolt of recognition, like the shock of a battery on the tongue, Scott realized that this was him. This blonde, freckled boy was who he had been as a child, and he was in that body once more as a witness only, a tag-along.

Through floodgates long ago closed, memories and feelings and images crept out, as if the gates of his mind were being wrenched open by godly hands. He suddenly knew things that he did not know before. Krista was his step-sister. He was adopted. This was their hideout, the car they named Red Wing Tower. This was his life at twelve years old.

The boy-that-was-Scott moved forward and gave Krista a high five. “I’ve been waiting here for you,” he heard himself say, and in that voice he found another memory uncovered, then another, like drips of a faucet onto his parched brain.

Then his body turned and walked back over to the shade of the old cab. He turned to look at Krista.

“What should Red Wing be used for today?” she asked, leaping up onto the edge of the windowless hunk. “How about a fighter plane, or a dungeon? Oh, how about a hospital for the crazies! Yeah, the crazies could come here and be operated on.”

I’m reliving my past

, the part of Scott that was still an adult realized. This is what happened to me. Oh God, this must be where something happens to Krista, and I’m not able to stop it!

That was what he always assumed the girl served as, a memory of his incapability to defend her in the time of desperate struggle. This must be that time.

Scott struggled against bonds that were unseen, chains that might have been tied to the stone of the earth itself.

Trapped inside a body that was his own body more than fifteen years ago.

He felt himself shake his head. “I’ve got a better idea,” he said. “Let’s play doctor.”

The girl scrunched her face in disdain. “Doctor? Not again, Scotty!”

“No, it’ll be fun, you’ll see. I’ll be the doctor, and you’ll be my patient. You’ve got a very bad illness, but I’ll fix you. It’ll be fun.”

Krista obviously didn’t buy it, because she jumped down and stood with her hands on her hips. In the bright daylight, Scott noted that the creases on her forehead and nervous hands fiddling with the bottom of her shirt belied feelings hidden within, most of all fear of something or someone. The girl bit her lower lip, looked around as if to try and find some excuse to leave.

Finding none, she slumped her shoulders. “Well, okay, but just for a little bit. Then I wanna operate on the crazies.”

Scott felt his face crinkle into a smile. “Absolutely. Now come here, patient, and lie down.”

As his hand came up to lead the girl into the hollowed-out cab, it was startling to notice that he could feel the soft fabric of her shirt, the tender shoulder beneath it. This vision was more complete than any dream or memory, if he could experience such tactile interactions with drastically clear presence of mind.

“That’s it,” he heard himself say. “I must examine you, because you’re sick. Be a good patient.”

Krista lay on her back atop the small blanket draped across the dirt-caked floor. Scott came up beside her and knelt down.

“This is lame, Scotty. Do we have to do this again? I really wanna do something else.”

“Be a good patient,” he said, and heard a small bit of frustration creep into his words.

The boy-who-was-Scott reached down and patted the girl’s stomach. “It looks like this patient has an infection. I’ll have to see how far its spread, because there’s a rash on the infected area.”

Then the hand flicked up the bottom of Krista’s shirt. Soon his palm was touching the girl’s skin--soft, delicate, rising and falling with her breaths. The hand ran back and forth across the stomach before rising a bit higher to her ribcage.

“Uh-oh,” Scott heard himself say. “It looks like this is infected too. Let’s see where else the rash got to.”

No! No, what the...! No

! Adult-Scott’s pleas were merely insubstantial bubbles in the sea of the new world around him. He watched helplessly as the boy’s hand--his

hand--slid up and rubbed the girl’s bare chest, her sides, her legs, gentle but probing. He ran his hand down Krista’s side, back up across her chest, then down to her stomach again.

The girl opened her eyes wide in surprise but for a moment let the boy continue the pretend examination.

Worse than the inability to stop his actions, worse than witnessing the growing atrocities here in the cramped cab, was the disgustingly thrilling way it made Scott feel. The duality was wrenching: on the one hand, he felt the adult part of him fill with revulsion and anger, but he also felt the child part of him jolt with exhilaration at the soft skin under his fingers, the textures and curves and bumps filling him with tingling anticipation.

“Scotty, stop now. Let’s get the crazies!”

“No, not yet. I want to show you something. This is new, but we all know that doctors know best.”

Then the marionette that was this boy’s body took his hand from the girl and found its way to his own clothes, began stripping them off. The Scott inside flailed his arms, kicked and screamed, thrashed, but what happened next was inevitable because it had already transpired once before.

The young Scott’s mind surged in breathless elation as he tugged his pants lower than propriety would allow, his hairs standing on end from the sensations reeling across his body.

“Scotty, what are you doing? Knock it off!” Krista protested as he shuffled towards her. The girl propped herself up and suddenly the fear was once again in her eyes. She shuffled away from him, pulling her shirt down once more.

“Now you just stop that, Scotty!”

“You obey me, patient! Come here and see what I have for you.” His words were scalding, angry. He couldn’t see his face, but judging by the contortions on Krista’s pretty features, it matched the words’ cruelty.

“No!” she shouted, then scrambled to her feet and stood facing Scott a fair distance away from Red Wing Tower.

Slowly, as the boy pulled his clothes fully on, there was a terrible changing of emotions inside. Elation and pleasure curdled into a lump of anger that settled deep within him; hate like he’d never experienced before seemed to fuel him now, calling him to action.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m gonna go tell our parents what you did, what you’ve been

doing to me! They’re not going to like it!”

Now the boy-that-was-Scott laughed, a scratchy outburst that had no trace of humor in it. At his sides, his fists were balled, and his mind was alight with thoughts and actions primal in nature, repugnant yet utterly terrific.

“They aren’t my parents; they’re your parents. You’re not my sister, either, which means that I can do whatever I want.”

Krista kept circling around Scott like they were two dogs about ready to attack, but her eyes leaked with tears now as she spoke. “Why are you doing this, Scotty? We have fun together! Why?”

“I’m curious, you little whelp. I wanna know what it