Bad omen

Sure enough, the next morning I awoke to find myself in a body that was not my own. Though, this time there was something that felt strange.

I dragged myself out of Rachel’s bed to find that I wasn’t wearing the pair of pyjama’s from last time. Instead, I was wearing only underwear. What’s more, the bra and pants that Rachel had gone to sleep in weren’t just on her body. They were stuck to her- or, me I suppose- and completely unable to be removed. Peeling at them achieved nothing but hurting the skin. 

She glued her clothes to her own body?

In my confusion, I looked around the room to find that she, like me, had left a note at the end of the bed. Hers was… more concise than mine, to say the least.

“Stay out of my body, creep!!”

I sighed. It was pretty clear what had happened here. She had stuck her underwear to her body so that I would be unable to see any of her intimate parts. Either she didn’t think that idea through very well or so she had a very warped sense of priority, because that meant I would be unable to use the toilet at all while in her body.

I couldn’t lie and say I wasn’t a little agitated.

I was far from comfortable with the idea of a stranger inhabiting my body too. Especially one who hacked away at it like a slab of meat the first time. But I was doing what I could to make it work. She seemed uninterested in doing the same.

I picked up her smartphone and unlocked it with face recognition. Hoping beyond hope that she was calm enough for some level of rational thought, I input my own phone number and hit the call button.

The phone rang. And rang. And rang.

No answer.

The time was once again past midday. With my circadian rhythm, there was no chance she was still asleep. And my phone was definitely not on silent. The only possibilities were that she was for some reason too far from my phone to hear it, or she was ignoring me deliberately.

That, or she was too busy having a psychotic breakdown.

I grew more and more concerned, but I was aware that there was little I could do about it. I could tell by the local accents that we were in different parts of the country, so it’s not even like I could simply drop in at my house and check up on her. I had to keep up the act of being Rachel for the day, just until I could get back to my own body.

I threw on some clothes and wandered downstairs. I felt incredibly hungry. It was clear that Rachel hadn’t eaten much the day before.

Down in the kitchen, I found Rachel’s mum once again milling about the house. I figured making conversation with her was the natural thing to do, so I addressed her with a weary early morning smile.

“Morning. Breakfast ready?”

“Tch. After how you acted yesterday? You can get your own bloody breakfast.”

Rachel’s mum spoke with venom in her tone. She passed by me to get to the front door, and as she did I saw a look of scorn on her face. She looked like she was struggling to choose between shouting and crying, but seemingly choose neither and disappeared out the front door.

What the hell did Rachel say or do? What could make a mother talk to her own daughter like that?

It felt like a bad omen.