A STORY OF JANE (IN THE FIRST-PERSON SINGULAR)

Chapter Five


SATURDAY, the 21st of MARCH – FULL MOON


Now, to tell you the truth, I’m not a screamer. I’ve been known to let loose with a girlish “eeek” from time to time when I’m really startled, but whether its spooky movies or haunted houses, I tend to cry or shiver rather than actually scream. This, however, was a real, honest-to-God, blood curdling shriek of scream, and I believe it surprised me more than anyone else present. Not only was it a scream, it was the first of a long line of them, and I jerked my hands free from those on either side and crossed my arms in front of my face, palms outward, as if to ward off a terrible blow. I didn’t do this consciously; it just happened. 

Immediately, I felt hands on my arms and back, and heard sympathetic words of encouragement in my ears, telling me that I shouldn’t panic, and that everything was going to be alright. I tried to tell them that I WASN’T panicked, and that nothing was really wrong, but I couldn’t seem to get my hands to move, and I most certainly couldn’t seem to stop that infernal screaming. 

Eventually, Jo, sitting in front of me, took hold of both wrists and slowly pried them apart, saying patiently, “Jane, Jane, it’s okay! You’re safe now, Jane! Stop! It’s okay!”

The others, too, kept calling me Jane, and I tried to tell them they were confusing themselves and me as well, but I just couldn’t seem to get my mouth to work. I looked around at the other very naked women, but I couldn’t seem to get my head to move in the direction I wanted it to go. Finally, however, my screams stopped, and my gaze settled of its own accord on Jean. I whimpered once or twice and threw my arms around her, hugging her tightly. Or I should say that my arms flew around her all by themselves. It finally dawned on me that something was very, very wrong with my body.

“Jean!” my voice was saying. “There was an accident! There was a truck! It hit me, I’m sure! Oh, God, Jean, it was terrible!”

My voice was saying this, but I was not. I could feel everything. I could feel Jean’s arms holding me, her breasts against mine, I could smell her hair, but I had no control whatsoever over what I was doing or saying.

The others were crowding around, holding me as well. Everyone was crying. Everyone but me, that is, and I could feel the tears streaming down my cheeks unbidden, as well. I wanted to say something silly to break the tension, yell “Group hug!” as a joke or something, but of course, I couldn’t do anything. It’s common knowledge that quite often, when something strange is happening to a person, it is the person herself that is often the last to figure it out. So it was that I finally began to realize that Jane, their Jane, the fifth sister Jane, Herman’s Jane, had somehow taken firm possession of my body. And yet, I wasn’t to be the last to know, after all.

(I should mention at this point that the remainder of this chapter is going to appear a bit disjointed. The warning I gave you about tense at the beginning of this narrative is slowly coming to the fore. For now, when I say that “Jane” did or said something, it’s important to stress that it was MY body that did the acting, MY voice that did the speaking. The fact that “I” had no control over those actions or words was, without a doubt, the most confounding and frustrating thing that I have ever experienced. I have never been so utterly helpless.)

“I DIED?” my mouth was saying. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, and at last, Jo, the oldest and the leader, moved back and called for order.

“Jan came up with the plan,” Jo was saying, as the group finally backed away from the person who had been me. “She found a spell that would hold your soul in limbo until the next equinox.”

“Equinox?” asked Jane. “How long have I been ....”

“Four months!” chimed Jan and Jill, together.

“Before we go further,” Jo said seriously, “we are all dying to know. The other side, Jane. You were there! Tell us! Tell us everything you remember!”

I felt my brow furrow, my eyes shift. “I ... It ... It just happened!” said Jane. “Just now! There was the truck, and I screamed ... and ... and I closed my eyes, and ... and ... I was here! There WAS nothing else!”

From the look on her face, Jo was immensely disappointed, but she tried to take this in stride and continued. “We all worked together to get you back among us,” she said. “We cast the spell at the instant the spirit left your body. Jill spent weeks in Mama’s library and found several ways to transfer your soul to another entity, but there was only one spell that would return you to human form. It hadn’t been done in centuries! And with good cause. The donor had to be perfect, but we found her!”

“Donor?” asked my voice. My eyes moved downward. “Oh! Oh, Jean! I’ve got boobs!” My body jumped to its feet, and immediately, my hands began roaming over my body. The others were giggling uncontrollably. Holding a breast under each palm, my hands bounced, felt, tweaked and caressed them. “My God, they’re huge! They’re TWICE as big as mine!” Well, I wouldn’t go THAT far.  “A mirror!” Jane shouted. “Where’s a mirror?” 

She began running (which is not a graceful sight when my breasts aren’t restrained in a bra – they tend to bounce in all directions at once), looking first in the kitchen, then down the hall and finally into the master bedroom. The sisters, laughing, followed. There, on the back of the bathroom door, was a full length mirror, and she stopped my body in front of it, obviously enraptured by the sight of me. 

“But it IS me!” she proclaimed with my voice. “It’s me with red hair and big boobs!”

As her sisters giggled, Jane made my body turn this way and that. She played with my breasts. “Do you think they’re TOO big?” she worried. Then she ran my fingers through my hair, and finally dipped one of my digits into my most private part. I tried desperately to stop this process, but all my efforts had absolutely no affect on her control over me.

She removed my finger, rubbed it against my thumb, and sniffed it. “There’s been a fox in my hen house,” she said.

“It was HERMAN!” shouted Jill, giggling.

“Herman?” my voice questioned. “MY Herman? Herman with this woman?” My hand waved toward the mirror.

“It’s all really very complicated,” Jo said. “The spell Jan found was so difficult to arrange it was almost impossible. We had to find a doppelganger, a woman who was so like you she could be your twin. But it would only work if she loved, and was loved by, a man who had loved and was loved by YOU.”

That took awhile to sink in. I replayed the sentence in my mind several times before I could get the gist of it.

“And Herman was in love with her?” Jane said at last, staring again at the mirror.

“Through mutual love spells,” Jo continued. “Jean set it all up, casting the characters in a rather elaborate little play. She set up the woman’s actions, then arranged for Herman to be in the right place at the right time. He’s been pretty distraught, as you can imagine, and it was easy to guide his actions through hypnosis. He was very reluctant, but he did exactly as we’d planned. When they consummated things last night, all the elements of the process were completed, and the mutual spell took effect. Then, after they did it again this morning, we lured him away for the real spell. You see, his seed in her was the catalyst, the link between the two of you: you and this woman. We cast the spell that would bring your soul into her body at the exact moment of the equinox.”

“And she was OUT, and I was IN,” Jane said triumphantly through my lips, studying the mirror, running my hands up and down my sides. It took her several seconds to realize the guilt behind the look the others were giving her. “What?” she asked, facing them uncertainly. “What is it?”

Since Jo, Jan and Jill were glancing accusingly at Jean, Jane turned my head to look at her, as well. “What is it, Jean?”

Jean looked down at her feet for a few seconds, building up her courage, then shifted her gaze directly into my eyes. “She isn’t out, Jane,” she said resolutely. “She’s still in there. She’s in there with you.”

My eyes blinked several times. My lips moved without sound.

Finally,  Jane spoke accusingly. “You left her in here? You left her in my body?” She spun to face the mirror. She was looking directly into the eyes of the reflected woman, trying to seek me out and find me. I tried with all my might to show her that I was, indeed, in there. Nothing. I couldn’t blink or shout or call her a bitch (which was what I really wanted to do). I was just along for the ride.

“Why?” she said. I could almost feel her anger. “How could you leave someone else in the body you picked for me? And someone who’s been with Herman?”

“She’s a good person,” Jean said resolutely. “She didn’t deserve to be cast out. We’re not even sure where she would have gone. The spell book didn’t say.”

“ANYPLACE but in here with me!” My body rounded on Jean, my eyes compressed to angry slits. I’ve never spoken to anyone in a tone like that. Never. “How could you Jean? You love me! And how could you guys LET her talk you into it?”

“Told you so!” Jan spat at Jean.

“It took five of us to make the transfer,” Jo said patiently. “The girl and the four of us, as the five points of the pentagram. Jean refused to sacrifice the girl, and we couldn’t complete the spell without her. We HAD to do it this way.” Jo took a deep breath. “Look,” she continued. “You know Jean. She has trouble stepping on a bug! You can’t really expect her to kill another human being. She kept saying that to do so would be stepping into the Black side, and maybe she’s right.”

“She’s an innocent, Jane,” Jean implored. “She really is! I’ve never met anyone so ... so ... sweet!”

But Jane was silent in my body, and turned back to study the reflection in the mirror once more.

“It won’t be for long, anyway,” Jo said, matter-of-factly. “Two individual souls can’t inhabit the same body for long. It’s possible to separate them on the next full moon, and that happens tonight.”

That got her attention. “What?” she asked, spinning me back toward Jo. “How?”

“I have a book in my bag in the living room,” Jo told me. “It’s a codicil to the original spell. I found it in Mama’s library yesterday before we all drove out here. You can transfer her into the body of another, or an animal, if you’d prefer; or you could just cast her out and let her soul find its own way. It’s all explained in the book.”

“No!” shouted Jean. “You can’t do that! You promised!”

“We promised we wouldn’t interfere with the original soul during the casting of the spell,” Jo told her. “We never said we’d stand in Jane’s way if she wanted to cast her out.”

The phone rang. We all turned to look at the thing on the bedside table as it rang again. Without a word, my body walked to it and my hand picked it up. “Hello?” Jane spoke through my voice.

“Molly?”

Without answering, my head turned to the four staring sisters, and I felt my lips form the silent word “Molly?” toward them. Of course! She didn’t know her own name! None of them had used it since the spell had been cast. Jill and Jan nodded furiously.

“Molly?” the voice on the phone said again into the silence.

“Herman?” Jane cried. “Herman, is that you?”

“Molly, I can’t believe it! This whole meeting I was suppose to have seems to have been some sort of hoax! I’m way out in the country somewhere, and the place this lady told me to meet her doesn’t even to exist. I made the whole trip for nothing! Ah ... no, that’s not quite right. I did happen to meet you! I’m coming back there to pick up where we left off. I can be there in twenty minutes.”

Jane couldn’t seem to think of anything to say.

“Molly?”

“Yes!” said my voice at last. “Yes, come back soon! I want you, Herman!”

“Make that fifteen minutes!” he said, and the line went dead.

“Herman’s coming,” Jane told the others as my hand put down the phone. “He’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”

The entire congregation rushed back out to the living room, where the four naked females began hurriedly putting their clothes back on. Jean was pleading with first Jo, then Jane, to please, please don’t sacrifice me like they had mentioned. As Jan picked up the candles and peeled the tape off the carpet, Jill enlisted Jane’s help putting the sofa back where it belonged. She, of course, had no idea where things had been before the little ceremony. Finally, fully clothed, Jo pulled a large, thin, very old looking leather book from her black canvas bag and handed it to the person in my body. Several runes were pressed into its surface. 

“I’ve never seen this before,” said Jane.

“Mama kept it locked up,” Jo replied. “She didn’t trust us to know she kept such things. I explained what we were trying to do here, and she said that she trusted you to make the right decision.”

“No!” Jean screamed at us. “Listen to me! You can’t DO this to her!” She was crying now. “Jane, please!”

Jane had my eyes scanning the surface of the book, my hands running over it in reverence. She lifted my gaze to Jean briefly. “I’ll deal with YOU later,” she said.

Jill took one of Jean’s arms, Jan the other, and together, they physically led the sobbing woman to the front door and out of the house. “I’m sorry, Molly!” she wailed over her shoulder.

“You don’t need any of us for this,” Jo told me, indicating the book. “The full moon occurs at 8:52 tonight, about an hour after sunset. We’ll see you when you get back home.” She walked to the front door and paused, looking back at me. “Give our best to your husband.”

My body laughed. “I’ll give him a lot more than that!” Jane said.

Alone, she walked around the house leisurely, exploring, stopping here and there to pick up a knick-knack, setting it back down. She found the robe on the back of the couch, smiled, and tried it on my body. Back at the mirror in the bedroom, she took it off again, and studied my complexion, my hair, my hands, always returning to my breasts and playing with them idly. She got very close to the mirror’s surface and stared into my eyes. “Are you in there?” she asked me. She paused a long time, looking, thinking. “You in the mood to learn a few things?” Another pause. “Stick around!” She made my mouth smile.

In the bathroom, she turned on the shower, adjusted the water temperature slightly too hot, then stepped in and stood under the spray for long seconds. Taking a bar of soap, she washed thoroughly, again taking slippery joy in soaping my breasts several times. I’d be glad when she outgrew that fascination. Between my legs, she seemed to find a spot she particularly liked. I could tell this because it was a spot that I particularly liked myself, and it was very obvious that the distraction she was forcing me to feel, she was feeling, too. 

The doorbell rang. With a twist, my hand turned off the water, and she stepped out of the tub. Ignoring the bath towels, she made my body walk down the hall to the front door, where my hand turned the knob and pulled it full open. Herman stared at me open-mouthed. Quickly, he glanced behind him to make sure there were no neighbors about, then he turned back and raked me with his eyes. I stood there, dripping, letting him leer. At last, with a voice I’d never used before, a voice oozing with sexuality, I cooed “Hermy!” and pressed my body into him, soaking him, and wrapped my arms around his neck.

He looked shocked, unsettled, for a moment, then gathered me in for a kiss. I felt good, a little dizzy, just like I did when he’d kissed me that morning in the kitchen. He scooped me up in his arms, kicked the door closed with the toe of his shoe, and carried me back into the bedroom. 

He set me down on the bed, but Jane made me bounce right back up again and begin undressing him. I kissed him over and over again, every part of him, as he allowed his clothes to be pulled away. I kissed his back after his shirt was off, his arms, his sides. I tugged his belt loose, then worked on his trousers snap and zipper. With his pants around his knees, he was forced to sit heavily on the bed as my hands worked on his shoes and socks, then pulled the pants and underwear free. 

I pushed him onto his back. In an instant, my mouth engulfed his cock. Two years ago my drug-dealing asshole of a boyfriend had made me do this, but I’d obviously been so bad (or stoned) that he hadn’t asked for a repeat performance. I hadn’t remembered this taste. It wasn’t too bad, and the obvious pleasure it gave Herman made me wish I’d done it to him before now. Of course, I hadn’t really known what to do until now; didn’t know exactly what it was I was doing even at this moment. Suddenly, in Herman’s eyes, I was an expert. She used my saliva to lubricate the fleshy pole until it was very slippery, and my right hand pumped up and down slowly, then more rapidly, as I sucked and gently squeezed his balls with my left. Soon, he was groaning very loudly. He seemed to swell in my mouth, and I guessed he wouldn’t last long. But Jane had other ideas.

“Inside me!” she gasped, letting go and making me spring on top of him. “I have to know what it feels like inside me!” She grasped him and worked the swollen member into my opening. Just as I had done the night before, she pushed down onto him slowly, and the fullness of it felt just as I remembered. It seemed to be something entirely new to her, though. “Oh my God, you’re big!” my voice moaned. ‘Oh, Hermy, this feels SO good!” He stiffened again for a moment, and then slowly regained the rhythm my body was beginning to demand. She made me lean forward, riding him in long slow strokes, until I felt him rubbing me along his entire length. She kept shifting slightly, until the combination of friction and fullness was sexual perfection. Before, it had never occurred to me to experiment to achieve the maximum enjoyment for MYSELF. Then she made me reach back and grasp his balls.

Soon, all three of us were lost in passion. She was making my body pound itself down onto him; he was getting close and swelling inside me, ready to spill his body’s pleasure into mine; and I (the real me, I mean) was just along for the ride (if you’ll pardon the pun), having no control whatsoever over my movements, or the orgasm that suddenly wrapped itself around me. I felt him pulse. For a few minutes, at least, the impossible situation I was experiencing ceased to matter at all.

After she’d moved my body off of his and snuggled into his shoulder, she sighed in contentment. My mind was spinning. That had been the best yet. She was MUCH better than I was. He had obviously enjoyed a more intense orgasm than the one this morning, and quite frankly, so had I. She not only could please his body more, she could please mine more, as well.

“Molly,” Herman said hesitantly, “that was tremendous.” He DID like sex with her better! “I’m sorry if I seemed a little distracted there once or twice, it’s just that ....” He paused, looking for the right words. “Well, what you called me ...  and the way you ... it was .... That is, you see, my wife ... she ....”

Jane made my body sit up, and rolling over, she propped herself against his massive chest, gazing into his eyes. “Herman, I need to tell you something,” she said in my voice.

“Yes?”

“It’s going to be a real shock. I want you to be calm, now. Don’t freak out on me.”

“You’re really a man!” he guessed, laughing up at me. She made my face look at him soberly, letting him know she was serious, until the smile left his lips. “Hey, what is it, Molly?”

She let another half minute go by. “Hermy, it’s me! It’s Jane, Herman! I came back!”

Slowly, he sat up, then very purposefully took me by the shoulders and pushed me away. “This isn’t funny.” He looked hurt; truly hurt.

“I’m serious, Herman. You know you always accused me and my sisters of ‘witchy’ stuff ... remember? That’s what you called it! Well, you were right, Herman. I never really talked about it, but we really ARE witches. We’ve always been witches. Mama’s a witch! I’m sure you could believe THAT if you tried; and so was HER mother. Today was the equinox, and my sisters brought me back in this body because it looks so much like mine did before ... before ... you know.”

Herman was looking at me with a little of the wild look he’d had the night before. Was he buying any of this?

“You DO know it’s me!” she accused. “I gave you a blowjob just like this one on our first date! Only, of course, I didn’t stop that time. And on our honeymoon, remember doing it in that little lake by the cabin in Wisconsin? Remember how the water was glowing while we were getting close to coming? How you said later that it must have been some sort of algae or something? It was me! I did that using a spell to make us cum harder. And we did, didn’t we? You’ll never forget how intense that was, will you?”

Slowly, the wild look was replaced by one of hope, then sadness, then curiosity, then hope again. “Jane?” he asked in a little-boy voice. “It’s really you?”

“Yes!” She made my arms move a little toward him, as if she wanted to hold him, but drew them back again, wanting him to make the first move. And, of course, he did. He smothered me in a hug. And I could feel his tears on my neck, and my heart sank. He loved her. He really loved her. 

We held each other for a very long time, and when he finally held me at arms length by the shoulders again, looking at me, his first question threw me right back into a quandary.

“Molly. What happened to Molly?”

It obviously wasn’t the first thing Jane had expected, either. “Uh ... she ... she just sort of vanished.”

Say what?

“Vanished?” his eyes took on a sort of quizzical, panicked look. “Jane, what happened to her? She can’t be ... dead, can she? I mean, your sisters didn’t ... didn’t kill her!” He made it sound like a demand.

“No, no, of course not.” Was she making this up as she went along? “Jo and Jan and Jean and Jill, they sat down with her after you left this morning, and explained it to her. She must really like you a lot, because she volunteered to let me return in her body, and now her soul is sort of in limbo, like mine was. We’re going to try to find something ... er ... somebody for her to transfer to, you know?”

The bitch!

He looked at me suspiciously. “Jane,” he said levelly, “I know that sometimes you haven’t been entirely truthful in our relationship ....”

“What do you mean?” she interrupted.

He shook his head, refusing to be swayed. “Nothing else matters to me right now,” he said sternly. “I love you. I’ve always loved you; more than anything; more than life itself. No one means more to me than you.” My heart was in the dumps again. I wanted to tell him not to believe the lying bitch. 

“But this girl, Molly,” he continued. “Jane, she’s a good person. I was in pain, and she helped me. You have to find her. You have to help her the way she helped me. I’ve never really asked you for anything in my whole life, Jane, but I’m begging you for this. Promise me you won’t leave her in some kind of limbo.”

“Of course, I won’t,” Jane said through my smiling lips. “I’ll find her, I promise. In fact, I think I know where she is right now. Please trust me.” She was coaxing him in a sexy voice I didn’t know I was capable of producing. “For now, please just hold me. Please?”

She lay my body back on the bed and held out my arms to him. He seemed to hesitate, then lay down beside me and let her arms draw his head onto my soft breast. I had never been able to act this sure and self-confident in my life. Now I realized that it was simply a matter of who was in charge.

As soon as his cheek was against my chest, she began humming a little melody I had never heard before. He started to say something, but she pressed a fingertip to his lips to stop him, never pausing the haunting tune. After a little while, words were being sung from my lips; strange, foreign words, to accompany the melody. And in less than two minutes, he was asleep.

She continued to sing as she gently pushed him over onto his back and studied him carefully to make sure he was really out, then she kissed him tenderly on the lips and got out of bed. In the bathroom, she used a washcloth to clean my body, and then spent several long moments studying my reflection in the mirror above the sink. My hair, having just been washed before Herman arrived, was still a little wet, and a mass of tangled curls. But she seemed to like the wild look, and spent less than a minute with a brush, leaving it in a state I would have never settled for.

In the closet, she found a wrap-around skirt, which she put on without underwear, then scowled at my choice of shoes, finally settling for the highest heels I own (which obviously were too short for her liking). She picked a very thin silk white blouse, one that is definitely meant to be worn with a bra underneath and with a jacket or sweater over it. She tucked it into the skirt, then walked to the full-length mirror.

Now, I really should say a few words about life as a “well endowed” woman. It’s really a pain. I’ve often considered breast reduction surgery, but always dismissed it because it’s not covered by my medical insurance. You’ve probably read stories that refer to breasts that “defy gravity.” Well, let me tell you, NOTHING defies gravity, and my boobs are no exception. I work hard in the gym, and I keep them as firm as I can, but a little bit of sag is inevitable. I’ve mentioned previously that they tend to bounce when I walk, and no large-breasted girl with even a modicum of modesty would ever consider wearing a thin silk blouse out in public without a bra or jacket. Jane obviously fell into the no-modesty category.

She’d left the top two buttons of the blouse unbuttoned, showing the tops and inner sides of my breasts. I tried with all my might to will her to button one of them, only to find her reaching for the third button and uncovering me even more. Then she jerked the bottom of the blouse out of the skirt, unbuttoned the bottom two, and tied the two ends together just above my navel. I looked like a tramp. Worse, I looked like a prostitute out to make a sale. She bent over and looked up at her reflection, smiling at the idea of others being able to see all the way between my boobs. 

She turned and spent another long minute studying Herman’s sleeping form. “Take a good look,” she said softly. “This is probably the last time you’ll ever see him.” And it took a moment before I realized she was talking to ME. Then she was walking down the hall and into the kitchen.

She found my purse and rifled through it until she located my keys. Inexplicably, she opened the pantry door, then slammed it and looked around. It took me awhile to realize that she had absolutely no knowledge of this house, and she muttered a satisfied exclamation as she finally found the door leading out to the garage. Taking only my purse and the old leather book, she went through several little trial-and-error attempts, but finally got the garage door up, the car started, and soon she was driving away toward the edge of town. She pulled over at the first gas station she saw, and flounced inside.

I couldn’t believe she was going to show me to people while I was dressed like this! My nipples are very sensitive, and the cool March air made them stand out almost painfully. Even worse, as my breasts bounced and slid against the inside of the smooth silk, my engorged nipples sent little shivers of excitement down my spine. Had it been just me inside my body, I would have been blushing crimson to even THINK about someone seeing me in this state. But I could tell that there was no blush on my cheeks at all. She was really enjoying this!

“Hi, Molly!” shouted Gil Smith, a regular at the library. But as soon as he got a really good look at me, his jaw fell and he openly leered me.

Jane never missed a beat. “Hi!” she cooed sexily. “Say listen, you know how ditzy I can be sometimes! I’ve forgotten ... What’s the best way to get to Chicago?” She waited, smiling for a few seconds as he ogled my ample cleavage, then waved my hand in front of his face. “Yoo-hoo. Chicago?”

He blinked. “Chicago?” His eyes never left my breasts. He pointed. “The interstate. Two hours, tops.”

“Thanks!” and she spun on my heel and walked back to the car. In ten minutes, she was on the freeway.

She poked a couple buttons on the car radio, frowning at my choice of classical music, and finally changed the station manually to ... oh my God! Country western! To my utter horror, she began singing along with some guy who had hung his heart on a clothesline to dry the tears. Then, just as she started listening to a song called “Laundromat Love,” and I began thinking that perhaps having my soul cast into limbo might be preferable to listening to any more of this, she turned into the shopping mall that’s just east of town. I had been here the week before, picking up a book I’d ordered from the bookstore. She parked, grabbed my purse, and headed inside.

In the candle shop, she picked out the inevitable black candle and iron holder and took it up to the counter. Then, thinking twice, she went back and got two more of each, and paid for it all with my credit card, scribbling my signature on the receipt. The clerk never even checked the signature against the one on the card. He was too busy drinking in my cleavage with his pig eyes. 

In the mall’s most expensive department store, she went first to the Boy Scout section and bought a compass, then found the home decorating section and purchased a mirror, which was 18 inches square in a thin frame. She flirted with the male sales clerk until he agreed to tie the mirror in heavy cord, so she could carry it like a narrow suitcase.

The last stop was a pet store, and she walked around, seemingly muttering to herself, but she was really whispering to me. “What do you fancy being for the rest of your life?” she said softly, smiling at several snakes in a large glass enclosure. She took a long look at a white parrot on a perch in one corner. “Molly want a cracker?” she asked gaily. And finally, she stopped her aimless stroll in front a large enclosed cage of kittens, which was the center of attraction for almost every customer in the shop. They were about five weeks old, incredibly cute, and I knew which one she would choose before she finally spoke in my voice.

“The black one,” she told the sales clerk (another man!). He almost tripped and wiped out the entire feline population trying to please her, and Jane waited patiently while he filled out the “adoption” papers, stole a peek at my cleavage, filled out the $100 credit card charge for the kitten (another peek), plus the $50 pet carrier (peek),the $20 litter box (peek), food (peek), litter (etc.), bowls (etc.). Then, he enthusiastically agreed to escort her out to the car, carrying the whole lot in one of those wheeled dolly gizmos.  With the kitten sitting in the passenger seat in its carrier, and to the strains of “Cowboy Kisses in Kansas City,” she again headed east along the freeway.

Twenty minutes later, she had to use the credit card again for gas, and not long after that, she pulled off the interstate once again into the parking lot of a motel. She consulted the Boy Scout compass, and drove all around the building before shaking her head and driving to another motel across the street. Again she drove around the entire building before dismissing this place as well, and she drove further east along the highway before pulling off once more at the next exit that indicated lodging available. 

This time, at the rear of the motel, she seemed to see something that pleased her. She got out of the car and consulted the compass, then looked up at the second story of the building. It was one of those cheap motels that have walkways on the outside of the structure, and rooms that have large picture windows looking out over the parking lot. I imagine this is so people can keep an eye on their cars, but it also means that anyone walking along the exterior “hallway” to their room can look into yours, unless you keep your curtains pulled shut.

She drove around to the office and let the male clerk drool at my tits for awhile, then said she wanted room 261, or one very near it. The guy tore his eyes away from me long enough to consult a chart, and informed her that room 263 was open. Good enough, she said, and my credit card (which I had worked really hard to finally pay off) had yet another charge rung up against it.

It took her four trips, lugging stuff up the outside stairway to the room, before she finally had everything inside. She set the kitten free, filled the litter box (which it immediately used), and the food and water bowls, and left the little fur-ball to its own devices. Then she pulled the cheap, round wooden table in front of the picture window beside the door, positioned her chair so she could look out the window, and sat down with the leather book open in front of her. The square, framed mirror, she propped in another chair, so she could see her reflection whenever she wanted. And then slowly, silently, carefully, painstakingly, she began to read.

For five hours she read.

I was quickly very bored. I tried desperately to make sense of the Latin handwritten script, but there were no “Tempest Fugit’s” or “Carpe Diem’s” or any of the other scant Latin words I’d heard before. The kitten tried several times to get her attention, but she ignored it totally, and it found a corner and went to sleep. I tried desperately to think of some way out of the predicament, but though I tried and tried, I couldn’t make a sound or even make my eyes move in the direction I wanted to look. There was nothing for me to see except the script she was seeing.

Finally, after more than an hour, I slowly came to realize that the she was moving my lips as she read, and that the words she was forming were in English. She was translating as she went, and silently forming the English words. Reading lips is harder to do than I had ever imagined, and trying to read my own lips when I was not controlling them myself, was exceedingly difficult. Slowly, however, I put together enough phrases to realize that the spell she had to cast had a lot to do with love; love between a man and a woman. But before I could really get the gist of it, she flipped back a dozen pages and started re-reading an earlier part, then flipped forward again to compare various things she had previously translated. She took no notes.

I came to realize two things about her. First, she was much more intelligent than I had previously thought. The bouncy bimbo routine was all an act. This broad had brains. And secondly, she was obviously worried about something. I could tell this by the way she wrinkled my brow, pulled my mouth into a frown, shook my head. From time to time, my eyes lost their focus on the page in front of me, and I could only imagine that she had stopped her reading and was lost in thoughts of her own.

From time to time, people would walk past the window in front of me, but she paid them no heed. One guy in a blue checked shirt, walked back and forth several times and looked in at me (I could see him in my peripheral vision), but she obviously didn’t care. The kitten again tried to get her attention, but she kept pushing it away with her foot, and it eventually gave up and started playing with the fringes of the bed spread.

I got hungry. I hadn’t eaten anything since my breakfast with Herman, and I knew she must feel the hunger as well, since we seemed to share all physical feelings. She ignored it for almost another hour, but finally she got up, stretched, and walked next door to a deli, where she got a salad and roll to go. Back in the room, she ate about half of it, very carefully, so as not to spill anything on the book.

The sun was going down, and she kept consulting the digital alarm clock on the bedside table. She seemed to rush her reading now, and her flipping backwards and forwards became more frantic. And then suddenly, she closed the book and stretched again. And finally, she turned and faced the mirror.

“Okay, Molly,” she said, staring into the eyes in the mirror. “No more act. No more games. Something’s going to happen in ...” (She checked the clock again. It indicated twenty minutes after eight.) “thirty two minutes. What Jo said was correct. Two separate souls cannot occupy the same body after the full moon of the equinox. One of us has got to go, and as you may have guessed, I have no intention of leaving. I could cast you into oblivion, or transfer your essence into the cat. If I did that, I’d give you to Jean – she’d love you, of course. She loves you now, I could tell from the way she talked about you. But then, Jean loves everybody.”

She continued staring into the mirror, but stopped talking. After a full two minutes, I suddenly realized that the girl in the mirror was blinking at MY command; blinking when I felt like blinking. Experimentally, I reached up and felt my cheek. She’d given me my body back! But then, suddenly, my ability to move was gone again. Was she playing with me?

“I can give you control if I want to,” she said to the girl in the mirror. “I find myself in the position of asking for your help. To transfer to the body of the cat, you have to go willingly. I really don’t want to kill you or condemn you to the unknown. I sort of promised Herman I’d help you. But that’s as far as I’m willing to go.”

And then, after another moment, I somehow knew she had given me control again. I just sat there for a long minute, thinking. “Go to hell,” I said quietly. I’d started to cry. “The truth of the matter is that I love your husband. The fact that somebody cast some sort of weird spell to MAKE me love him doesn’t matter at all to me. Life without him doesn’t hold much appeal, especially as a cat.”

My control left me again. I could tell because the tears stopped as she took charge. She thought for a moment, then changed tactics. “Listen, Molly. I know you think I’m a terrible person. But please listen to reason. He loves me more than you. You know that from the way we acted together. What’s more, I can love him better. Maybe not more than you feel you love him, but better. Physically, I mean. You know that’s true, don’t you?” Well, she had me there. “And I DO love him, Molly. I really do. I can’t let you just ... vanish, and then tell him a lie. Please help me!”

The bitch was smooth, I had to give her that. Do it for Herman. She didn’t even know me, but somehow she knew THAT would convince me. As I struggled with what she had told me, I realized the tears were back, indicating that she had given me control again. I couldn’t believe I was falling for her arguments. I just KNEW she was going to double-cross me somehow. Oh, what the heck! Maybe oblivion was dark, and I HATED the dark! Being a cat would be better than being in the dark.

“What do you want me to do?” I whispered through the tears.

Quickly, she took control of me again and opened the book to a certain page. She pointed. “Here,” she said. “These four words. You’ll have to read them. Just sound them out. They’re written in English script, so you shouldn’t have any trouble.”

She gave me control again, and I whispered the words between little sobs.

“Great!” she said, seizing my body’s will again and leaping to her feet. “Just say it again, just like that, when I tell you. Then I’ll read the completion to the spell, and it will be done!” 

Quickly, she corralled the kitten and put it back in its carrier. Next, she place the three candles in their holders and arranged them above and on either side of the leather volume. And finally (Oh, WHY did I know this was going to happen?), she started removing my clothes. Naked, she sat back down in the chair and looked out the picture window. Ah, the moon was rising in the east – that’s why she bought the compass and chose this room! She had a perfect view of the full moon! She checked the digital alarm clock again. The glowing red numbers proclaimed eight-fifty. Two minutes to go.

She lighted the candles using a motel matchbook. Then, in a rather loud voice, she started reading. The Latin words, as usual, meant nothing to me, but I knew that they spelled my doom. I vowed that the first thing I would do once I occupied the body of the kitten was bite her!

In the window, the huge moon was fully above the horizon now; I could see it plainly in my peripheral vision. As she continued to read, amazingly, inexplicably, Herman and Jean appeared and looked in at me. They stared, open-mouthed, at my naked form, sitting in full view of the outside world, bathed in candlelight. 

Dumbfounded, I raised my hand and waved at them. Then, I suddenly became aware that it was ME doing the waving. Jane had given me control again for some reason. Immediately, the control left me, my head snapped back to the book, my finger was pointed at the now-familiar four words, and Jane said “Now, Molly! Read it now! It has to be NOW!”

As she gave me my control back, I looked up automatically. Herman had started banging on the door. Jean was looking in at me, then she turned to stare at the moon, then back at me again. She understood. 

I don’t think I’ll ever really know why I did what I did then. I muttered “I love you, Herman,” and looked back down at the page and read the words.

There was more to the spell, I knew. At least, that’s what she had told me. I waited for her to complete it, but I still seemed to be in control of my body. I looked back up at the window again. Jean was saying something to Herman, pointing toward the moon, arguing. He shook off her hand and pounded on the door again. The most incredible feeling I have ever experienced washed through my body and my mind and my entire being. And suddenly the door exploded off its hinges.

Herman stood in the doorway, breathing hard, staring at me wild-eyed. Jean was just behind him, holding his left arm in both her hands, staring as well, a look of dread and immense curiosity on her face.

“Who ARE you?” she said at last.

I laughed at that. For some reason, I thought it the funniest question I had ever heard.

“Who am I?” I repeated. “Why, I’m ME!”

