Chapter 3: The Phone Call
The silence after felt heavier than the act itself. I’d staggered to the shower, turned the water scalding, and scrubbed until my skin was raw, as if I could wash the imprint of her—his—mouth from my body, the guilt from my cells.It didn’t work. The phantom sensation remained, a ghost of pleasure that felt like a stain.
I’d given her—Bindi—a t-shirt and pointed silently to the bedroom. She’d padded in, the shirt swallowing her small frame, casting one last look over her shoulder that was all doe-eyed devotion. I slept on the couch, if you could call the stiff, paranoid twitching I did sleep. Every rustle from the bedroom, every sigh, snapped my eyes open in the dark.
Dawn finally came, a slow seep of pale gold through the blinds.I moved like a thief in my own apartment, escaping to the kitchen. The normalcy of it was a cruel joke. The chrome kettle, the bag of decent coffee, the particular click of the cupboard door—all familiar, all now part of a world that had cracked open and swallowed my best friend.I needed the stick.The stupid, carved piece of wood. Maybe there was a reverse incantation, a way to snap my fingers and have Bear back, grumbling about my taste in coffee, his large frame taking up space at the breakfast bar.
The coffee maker gurgled to life.In the quiet hum, I found the shop’s smudged receipt in my wallet. The font was ornate, hard to read. My thumb trembled as I punched the numbers into my phone.It rang seven times. I was about to hang up when a voice answered, dry and crackling like dead leaves.“Yes?”
“Uh, hello.I was in your shop yesterday. I bought a… a wish stick.” My voice sounded thin, desperate.A long pause. I could hear the whisper of fabric, the clink of distant glass.“The one that crumbles. You used it.”
It wasn’t a question.“It… it worked. But it worked wrong.Terribly wrong.I need to undo it. How do I undo it?”
The old woman’s chuckle was devoid of warmth.“You cannot unbake a cake, boy. The ingredients are changed.The wish is the recipe.”
“There has to be something. Please.” I was begging, my forehead pressed against the cool granite of the countertop. “The person… they’re not themselves.”
“They are exactly what you asked for,” she corrected, her tone sharp. “The magic doesn’t judge.It sculpts.It is a very literal artist. You provided the clay and the desire.” She sighed, a sound like wind through a hollow tree. “The binding stabilizes with the new identity. Every moment they live as the wished-for thing, the less of the original remains.Like a path in the woods. The more you walk it, the deeper the ruts, the more defined it becomes.Other paths grow over. Disappear.”
A cold knot tightened in my stomach.“How long?”
“There is no clock.It is a contest of wills. The wish’s will is very strong.It is born of a singular, potent desire. The original’s will… that depends on what it has to cling to.Memories.Sense of self. Connections.”
Connections.Bear’s connection to me.To his life. To the person who had done this to him.“If I still had the stick—” I started.
“It is dust.The power is spent.All that remains is the consequence.” Another pause. “The new identity craves validation.Reinforcement.To be fed. Every time you… indulge the wish, you water the new path. You let the weeds grow over the old.”
The call ended with a soft click before I could say another word. I stood there, the phone a dead weight in my hand, the hopeful smell of coffee now smelling like ashes.The soft pad of bare feet on hardwood floor.
She was in the doorway, naked. The morning light from the window caught the soft curve of her hip, the dip of her waist, the shadow between her small breasts. Her hair was sleep-tousled, her bangs slightly askew. She smiled, a slow, soft unfolding of contentment, and walked toward me.There was no seduction in her walk, not exactly.It was a presentation. A fact.She slipped her arms around my waist from behind, pressing her front against my back. Her skin was warm from the bed.She nuzzled between my shoulder blades.
“I dreamed about you,” she murmured, her voice husky with sleep. “Nice dreams.”
I stood rigid, the phone still clenched in my fist.The old woman’s words echoed. You water the new path.“You should put some clothes on,” I said, my voice strained.
“I like it better like this.” Her hands slid flat against my stomach.“You’re so tense. Let me make you feel good.” Her fingers began to trace lower.
“Stop.” The word came out too loud, a crack in the quiet kitchen.Her hands froze. She didn’t let go, but she stilled.I felt her press her forehead against my spine. When she spoke again, her voice was small, thin.“Did I do something wrong last night? I wanted to make you happy. I live to make you happy, Alex.”
The sound of my name in that tender, broken tone was a lance.It was the most horrible thing I’d ever heard. Because it was sincere.
“It’s not… you didn’t…” I couldn’t form a sentence. I stared at the half-baked scone cooling on the rack, a domestic detail from a life that no longer existed.She turned me around gently. Her eyes, large and shining, searched my face.There was no artifice there, no game. Just a desperate, hopeful need to please.To be what I wanted. The perfect, submissive toy, crafted from my loneliness and my friend’s body.
“I love you,” Bindi whispered, her hands coming up to cradle my jaw.“I know it’s fast.But I feel it. Here.” She took my hand and placed it over her heart. It beat a rapid, birdlike rhythm under my palm.“You’re all I am for.”
The words were a soft, venomous kiss. And in her eyes, as she said them, something fractured.
For a fraction of a second, the devotion shattered. The hazel irises widened not with love, but with a pure, primal horror.The voice that came out wasn’t Bindi’s soft, seductive whisper. It was Bear’s—strangled, deep, trapped under glass.
“ALEX, FOR GOD’S SAKE, DON’T—”
And then it was gone.Smothered. Blinked away. Her expression softened back into adoration, as if a cloud had passed briefly over the sun.She tilted her head, smiling. “You’re so handsome when you’re worried.”
My blood had turned to ice.I’d seen him.I’d heard him. He was still in there, screaming, watching this… this thing use his mouth, his face, to say words that would make him vomit.
She rose on her tiptoes, her lips seeking mine.I turned my head at the last second. Her kiss landed on my cheek, a soft, misplaced seal.She pulled back, confused, a flicker of hurt in her endlessly forgiving eyes.
The coffee maker finished its cycle with a final hiss.The mundane sound was a lifeline.
“I need coffee,” I said, my voice a hollow thing.“You should… get dressed. Please.”
I pulled away from her embrace, turning my back to her, to the living proof of my crime, and poured a cup I didn’t want.The liquid was black and bitter. I drank it anyway, staring out the window at a world that had no idea what was in my kitchen.
I could feel her standing behind me, her unspoken confusion and need filling the space like a scent.Bear was in there.Drowning. And every second Bindi breathed, every second I failed to find a solution, was another shovelful of dirt on the person I’d known for fifteen years.The path was being walked.The ruts were deepening.
I had no idea how to stop it.