The Stone Man - A Science Fiction Thriller (58 page)

Stunned so much that he almost felt calm, the bizarreness of the situation passing straight out of
this is crazy
and out the other side into the utterly incomprehensible, Charlie stared dumbly for a several seconds as his mind was caught in a feeble loop, trying and failing as it to get its bearings (
What...sorry, what....sorry, WHAT...
) Whilst, in that moment, he never really came any closer to coming to terms with the situation, his mind did at least manage to reach the next inevitable conclusion: this wasn't his body.

The loop got louder as these unthinkable, too-big-for-conscious-process thoughts instantly doubled in size, but got nowhere (
WHAT...WHAT...WHAT THE FUCK
) and all Charlie was capable of doing was staring at the view, as the image before him changed from a downward angle, swinging upwards to reveal a door that was already being opened onto a view of a narrow hallway. A second doorway was then passed through, and now Charlie found himself in a bathroom. He wanted to look down again, to see the feet that were carrying him forward, to help understand that he wasn't doing the walking, to aid him in
any
kind of conscious comprehension of his situation, but realised that he couldn't affect the line of sight in any way. The viewing angle was completely out of his control. Instinctively, he tried to move the arms, to take control of the limbs that were attached to him like he would have done on any other minute of any other day since his birth, but there was no response, only the illusion of control; the moment when one of the hands reached for the door handle at the same time that he would have, as he reflexively thought of performing the motion simultaenously. What the fuck was going on?
What the fuck was going on?

The crazy, unthinkable answer came again, despite his crashed mind, even in a moment of sheer madness—what other conclusion was there to reach?—as he saw the feminine hands reach for a toothbrush on the sink: he was in someone else's body—a woman's body—and he was not in control.

Incapable of speech, Charlie watched as the view swung up from the sink to look into the plastic-framed bathroom mirror, and whilst he began to notice and detail  his surroundings properly—tiny bathroom, cheap, slightly grubby tiles, and candles, candles everywhere—the main focus of his concern was the face looking back at him.

The eyes he was looking through belonged to a woman of hard-to-place age; she looked to be in her mid to late twenties, but even to Charlie's goggling, shell shocked point of view, there was clearly darkness both under and inside her green eyes (physically
and
metaphorically speaking) that made her look older. Her skin was pale, and the tight, bouncy, but frazzled curls of her shoulder length black hair all added to the haunted manner that this woman seemed to possess.

All of which Charlie didn't give a flying shit about, of course; thoughts were beginning to stir, his mind already rallying and coming back on-line. Whilst Charlie would never describe himself as a practical man, having spent most of his life more concerned with where the next laugh was coming from rather than the next paycheque, he had always been resourceful, capable of taking an objective step back in a tight spot and saying
Ok, let's have a look at this.
Whilst he was beyond that now—had he been in his own body, that body would have been hyperventilating—he was aware enough now to want to know, as he’d asked rapidly himself many times already, what was going on.

As the woman continued to brush her teeth, Charlie watched, and thought one thing to himself that instantly made everything else easier:

This is probably a dream. This is fucking mental, so it's got to be a dream. So there's nothing to worry about is there?

Whilst he didn't fully believe that—the view was too real, the surroundings too complete and detailed, the grit and grime too fleshed out and realised—it enabled him to take the necessary mental step back, and put his foot on the brake of his runaway mind a little.

Okay. Think. Think. This can't actually be happening. It can't. It's a lucid dream, that's what it is. Calm down. Calm down. That means you can decide what happens, right? You're supposed to be able to control a lucid dream, aren't you? So let's make...the wall turn purple. That'll do. Wall. Turn purple... Now.

The wall remained exactly the same, and the view shifted downward briefly to reveal an emerging spray of water and foaming toothpaste. The woman had just spat.

Right.
Maybe it's not quite one of those dreams, just a very, very realistic one. Don't panic. You can prove this. Think back. Think back through your day, think what you’d been doing, and you'll remember going to bed. Think, what were you last doing?

He'd met the boys, gone for a drink that he'd been excited about turning into many, the first night out for a little while. Jack had been over from London too, which was both a good excuse and good news for the quality of the night. They had been on a heavy pub crawl and somebody had said something about going back to their place...Neil. That guy Neil had said it. And they'd gone to Neil's, and then...

Nothing. Nothing from there. And now he was here. As he felt hysteria start to rise again—escalating from the panic he already felt—Charlie frantically tried to put a lid on it before it could get badly out of control.  

You passed out. You had some more and you passed out. That's why you can't remember what happened at Dan's, and this is the resultant booze-induced crazy dream. So wake up. Wake your ass up. Slap yourself in the face and wake the fuck up.

Charlie did so, his hand slamming into the side of his head with the force of fear behind it, and as the ringing sting rocked him he became aware that he suddenly had a physical presence of his own. If he had a hand to swing and a head to hit, then he had a body. Where the hell had that come from?

There'd been nothing before, no response from anything when he'd tried to move the woman's arms earlier. He'd been a disembodied mind, a ghost inside this woman's head, but now when he looked down he saw his own torso, naked and standing in a space consisting of nothing but blackness. Looking around himself to confirm it, seeing the darkness stretching away behind him and to his left and right, and now having a body to respond to his emotion, Charlie collapsed onto an unseen floor and lay gasping and whooping in lungfuls of non-existent air, his body trembling.

His wide, terrified eyes stared straight ahead, the view that had previously seemed to be going directly into his own eyes now appearing suspended in the air, a vast image the size of a cinema screen with edges that faded away into the inky black space around him. Its glow was ethereal, like nothing he’d ever seen before. How had he thought that had been his own-eye view? It had clearly been there all along, hanging there in the darkness. Had just been standing too close? Had something changed? Either way, there was no mistake now; it was just him, the enormous screen showing the woman’s point of view, and the black room in which he lay.

Charlie pulled his knees up into a ball and could do nothing but watch as he lay there whimpering. That slap had hurt, and badly, and instead of waking him it had added a whole new dimension to the situation. He was terrified, in mental and physical shock, and for now at least, everything was beyond him. The words he feebly tried to repeat to himself fell on deaf ears—
It's a dream it's a dream it's a dream
—and so he lay there for a while, doing nothing but watch and tremble as the woman fed her cat, looked at her watch and moved to sit in front of her TV, flicked through channels, checked her phone for texts, thumbed through her Facebook feed. As this time passed, and Charlie watched, incapable of anything else for the time being, he came back to himself a little more. He noticed that, whilst he was naked, he wasn't cold. He wasn't warm either, however; in fact, the concept of either sensation seemed hard to comprehend, like trying to understand what Red sounded like. Thoughts crept in again.

You can't actually be in her head. You can't actually be INSIDE her head. People don't have screens behind their eyes or huge holes where their brain should be. You know that. You haven't been shrunk and stuffed in here, as that's not possible. So this...HAS...to be a dream. Right? You have a voice, don't you? You can speak, can't you? Can you get your breath long enough to speak?

Charlie opened his mouth, and found that speech was almost outside of his capabilities. A strange, strangled squeak came out of his throat, barely audible, and he felt no breath come from his lungs. He tried several more times, shaping his mouth around the sound in an attempt to form words, but got nowhere.

Focus, you fucking arsehole.
Focus
.

Eventually, he managed to squeak out a word that sounded a bit like 'Hey' and, encouraged by that success, he tried to repeat it. He managed it again on the third try, then kept going, the word getting slightly louder each time until something gave way and the bass came into his voice.

'Hey...'

With that, the ability dropped into place. He knew how to do it, his mind remembering the logistics of speech like a dancer going through a long-abandoned but well-rehearsed routine. He looked out through the screen with sudden purpose, determined to find out if she could hear him.

“Hey...
hey
...” he gasped, his lips feeling loose and clumsy, new to his face almost. Charlie sat up, hoping to get more volume behind it, more projection. He had to at least be as loud as the TV for her to hear him, if she was even capable of doing so.

“
HEY
,” he managed, but there was no external response. Charlie's heart sank, and almost abandoned the whole attempt, resigning himself to the only hope he had; that this truly was a dream, and thus something he could hopefully wait out until his alarm clock broke the spell, returning him to blessed normality. Things might have turned out very differently if he had, but instead Charlie found the strength to kneel upright and produce something approaching a scream.

“
HEY!!
” he squawked, and fell back onto his behind, exhausted. Staring at the glowing screen before him, dejected, Charlie then saw a hand come up into view, holding the remote control. A finger hit the mute button.

Charlie froze.

The image on the screen swung upwards, showing the white ceiling with faint yellowed patches on it here and there, and hung there for a second or two. It then travelled back to the TV screen, and as the hand holding the remote came up again, Charlie realised what was happening and felt a fresh jolt of panic. Without thinking, he blurted out a noise, desperately needing to cause any kind of sound in an attempt to be heard, a fallen and undiscovered climber hearing the rescue begin to move on.

“
BAARGH!
BA BA BAAA!”
Charlie screeched, falling forwards as he almost dove towards the screen in his clumsy response to the images upon it. The hand hesitated, and then the view was getting up and travelling across the living room and down the hallway. The woman was going to look through the spyhole in her front door, and as she did so, the fish-eye effect of the glass on the huge screen made Charlie's stomach lurch, but he still saw the fairly dirty looking stairwell outside and realised that they were in some sort of apartment block.

Charlie stared, trying desperately to pull himself together, and assessed the situation. She could hear him then; but she certainly didn't seem to be aware that he was there. So she could be as unwilling in all of this as he was? Did she know nothing about this?

It'sadreamitdoesn'tmatteranywayit'salladreamsowhocares-

He didn't believe that though. He couldn't. There has to be some sort of explanation, and he couldn't be physically
in
her head, so this was...an out of body experience? Some sort of psychic link?

Charlie surprised himself with his own thoughts. Where the hell did all that come from, all of those sudden, rational thoughts? True, he'd been confronted with something so impossible that he didn't really have much choice but to look at the available options, but...was he adjusting again? When this all started, he didn't even have a body, but that quickly followed. Was his mind following suit? He was still trembling, his shoulders still rising and falling dramatically with each rapid, shallow breath of nothing, but his mind was at work now, the shock suddenly absorbed and moved past far more quickly than it would have been, he was sure, were he in his own body. Whatever was going on, being here was...different. He felt his equilibrium returning, his awareness and presence of mind growing. He was scared, and he was confused, but he was getting enough of a grip to at least function.