Chapter 9: The Blowjob Incident

Marianna spiked Arjun and Paco forward, towards the bedroom. The three of them stood a few feet away from the bed. Arjun — the replica in the bed — was fast asleep. His phone laid on his chest, and tiny washes of light leaked out onto his naked chest.

Arjun — the real one — looked at himself cautiously. It wasn’t every day he got to see himself sleeping. The only times he had gotten to see himself sleep was when his mother had decided to record him sleeping to tease him later. That couldn’t compare to what he was experiencing in his own mind, thanks to Marianna.

“Arjun,” Paco said, turning his head towards Arjun. “You said that you were texting your girlfriend, right?”

Arjun nodded.

“Hmm,” Paco turned towards Marianna. “Marianna, could you go back a few minutes?”

Marianna nodded. The bedroom immediately began to change chaotically. The comforter Arjun had been sleeping under was pushed out towards the end of the bed, and Memory-Arjun was missing. There were no signs of his body anywhere near the bed, or in the room itself.

“Might be a little too far back,” Arjun said, looking at the time on the clock on his night stand. It read nine O’clock. “I went to sleep a little after nine-thirty, I think.”

“Oh, right!” Marianna said. “Oops! Going back is a little tricky.”

She lifted her fingers up and swiped at the air, as if there was an invisible glass in front of her.Against a mostly-static background, Memory-Arjun and the bed’s blankets shifted quickly but fluidly, hurrying towards the suggested time. “You see,” she said, noting the vast improvement in the visual experience, “some people are really good at going backwards, while others, like me, are better at going forwards.”

“You mean the memory?” Arjun asked, looking at the forming bedroom.

Marianna nodded. “It’s a quirk each telepath has. Everyone has a different one.”

Arjun turned his head towards Paco with a curious look on his face.

“Yeah, no,” Paco said, waving his hand in the air. “We don’t have anything like that. Apart from the life risk one.”

Arjun cringed at the thought.

Memory-Arjun held his phone in his hand. Its bright blue lights flooded his face, flickering occasionally. There was a video playing on the phone, and a quiet moaning sound emanated from its speaker. Real-Arjun cringed seeing Memory-Arjun’s juvenile excitement.

“Uh,” Marianna said with a blushing, sly smile, looking at the bed. “How long until it happens?”

Arjun — the one next to Marianna — shook his head. “Not sure. But I remember it happening while I was...”

“Watching an educational video,” Paco said with a stifled laugh, finishing Arjun’s sentence.

“Sounds like it was very educational,” Marianna teased.

Arjun lowered his head, blushing hard. I guess this is what Meera feels like all the time, huh?

Suddenly, the phone Memory-Arjun had been holding fell down onto his chest. His hands dropped to his sides and eyes shut. It looked as if he had suddenly died, but his breathing confirmed to the onlookers that he was still alive. Well, and the fact that I’m here to watch it, I suppose, Real-Arjun thought to himself.

“Mrs. Garcia,” Arjun said, looking at his motionless body.

“Huh.” Marianna walked to the sleeping Arjun’s side of the bed, examining his body. Aside from regular, shallow breathing, the body seemed unearthly still. As surely as Marianna could tell a dead body from a live one, she could tell the difference between regular sleep and Memory-Arjun’s altered state. “Paco, did you notice anything?”

“No,” Paco said, narrowing his eyes, looking at Arjun’s body from the foot of the bed. Paco turned his attention towards Real-Arjun, asking, “So, you’re in your dad’s body right now, right?”

Arjun nodded.

“Marianna.” Paco looked at his wife, signalling something to her.

A diorama-like room of Arjun’s parents’ bedroom appeared right beside the recreation of Arjun’s bedroom that they were standing in. Marianna pulled the three of them back so that they could see it taking shape. Arjun’s heart skipped a beat. He knew exactly what was going to happen next, but he had, surprisingly, forgotten about what had happened with his mother and him while he’d been in his dad’s body. He’d been through a lot since entering his mindscape. Upon seeing the copy of his parents’ bedroom, however, it all came rushing back.

Shit!

Marianna turned her head towards Arjun with a raised eyebrow and a faint sly grin. It looked like she had heard him. In his moment of panic, he had unknowingly collapsed his Wall. Arjun blushed.

“Mari,” Paco said, “is it possible for you to time Arjun falling asleep and him waking up in his dad’s body, together?”

Marianna cringed. “Not exactly my specialty, amor, but I’ll do my best.”

“That’s fine,” Paco said with a warm smile on his face.

Arjun’s heart continued to beat faster. The inevitable moment was quickly approaching. He wanted to yell and tell them to stop — yet something within him, within the void, told him it would be fine.

The sequence repeated itself again. Marianna rewound to the moment just before Arjun went into a comatose state. Just like before, she overshot the exact time and had to skip ahead a little. Memory-Arjun fell into a comatose state, just like before, and woke up in his father’s body, in the nearby diorama of his parents’ bedroom. There were a few seconds of delay. Arjun didn’t know if it was an issue with Marianna’s precision, or if it had actually happened like that.

Both Paco and Marianna looked on in shock. The timing was off by a few seconds, but the sequence of Arjun falling asleep and his father waking up looked seamlessly stitched together.

Marianna paused what was happening to allow them to walk up and take a closer look. Most of the detail in his parents’ bedroom diorama was missing. Arjun had been in his parents’ bedroom many times; every time he helped his mother clean the house he took several trips in and out of it. The duplication didn’t feel like their room; it felt empty. He realised that was an odd feeling, given that a copy of his father was there in the bed, and three onlookers were crowded in as well.

Marianna studied Paul’s frozen, perplexed face, searching for something; Arjun didn’t know what. She put her hand on his eyes, lifting the eyelids up. Arjun walked to her side to watch. He didn’t see anything of particular interest, yet Marianna looked at his dad’s eyes with an eager enthusiasm.

She snapped her head towards Arjun, her eyes wide, then looked at Paco. Paco walked over and looked at Paul’s eyes, and, just like Marianna’s had, his head snapped towards Arjun with an equally-shocked expression upon it.

“What?” Arjun asked.

Neither of them said anything; instead, they looked back into Paul’s eyes. Every few moments they’d look at Arjun with an alarmed look on their face.

“What is it?” Arjun asked, this time in an annoyed voice.

Marianna waved Arjun to come closer to them, and asked him to look into his father’s eyes. Arjun looked and saw nothing. It was just his dad’s normal eyes. He looked at the couple with a confused look on his face, wondering what had caused them to be so shocked.

“Arjun,” Paco finally spoke. “If you weren’t here with us right now, we’d never have believed this.”

“Believe what?”

“Can’t you see it?” Marianna asked.

“See what?”

Paco put his arm around Arjun’s shoulder and said, “This,” pointing at Paul’s irises. Arjun still couldn’t see what they were talking about, until finally he could.

“What the...” A faint greenish, shadow-like mist gently gilded inside his father’s pupils. Arjun didn’t know what it was, but he knew that it wasn’t normal. It was faint, and Arjun wasn’t even sure he’d have noticed it if Paco and Marianna hadn’t urged him on.

“That’s your dad, inside,” Marianna said. “His consciousness, at least.”

“How do you know that’s his consciousness?”

“The colour,” Paco said. “Everyone’s consciousness has a colour. Mine, for example, is silvery white, and Marianna’s is a rich, bright green.”

“And yours is a purple and gold mix,” Marianna added.

“But why is his consciousness in his pupils?” Arjun asked warily.

Marianna shook her and said, “Hijo, I don’t know.

“A normal person’s consciousness,” Paco said, “no matter what, is always inside their cerebral cortex, and can only be viewed if you have powers like ours. But somehow, your dad’s consciousness is inside his pupil.”

Arjun blankly stared into his dad’s eye, I could have killed him...

“Arjun,” Paco asked, “did anything happen afterwards?”

Arjun looked at Paco apprehensively. Yet again, some version of his own voice battled against that strange, foreign voice from the void, and the latter won out, convincing Arjun to trust his friend’s parents. He nodded.

Neither Marianna nor Paco asked for any followup. Instead, Marianna played out the memory sequence.

Paul darted his head around with panic on his face. He looked lost and out of place. He looked at his arms as if he was seeing them for the first time.

As Arjun watched the sequence play out, he began remembering the events from his point of view. Seeing it from the outside — watching his past self discover that he was in his father’s body — was just as shocking and upsetting as living through it had been.

His dad’s body moved uncharacteristically as he jumped out of bed and ran to the mirror. Someone unfamiliar with the scene would have probably said it was like someone else was controlling his body — and not doing a very good job of acting like their host. To Arjun’s surprise, though, he’d apparently done a decent job of controlling his father’s limbs, despite how heavy and hard to move the larger body had felt from the inside at the time.