Chapter 5: Worst Possible Witness
The silence in the hallway after Amy stopped talking was absolute. It was a heavy, smothering thing, broken only by the erratic buzz of the faulty light above them. Chloe stared, her eyes wide and unblinking, moving between SexiWoman’s terrified face and the gaudy heart necklace resting against the lace of her… top.
A stalled piece of gum was stuck to the linoleum by Chloe’s foot. She looked at it, then back up. “So,” she began, her voice weirdly calm, detached. “You’re telling me. That John Abernathy. The guy who freaks out if his code doesn’t compile on the first try. That he… turns into this,” she gestured vaguely with her hand, “whenever he gets a boner.”
“Essentially,” Amy’s voice chimed from the necklace, crisp and matter-of-fact. “Although the physiological trigger is more nuanced than that. It’s a metaphysical feedback loop. Embarrassment, arousal, panic—they all feed the enchantment. He’s a lit fuse in a fireworks factory most of the time.”
“Hey,” SexiWoman managed, the word pitched high and strained. It was John’s protest, filtered through a stranger’s vocal cords. “Don’t… don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”
Chloe ignored him. Her focus was on the pendant. “And you’re a… what, exactly? A ghost? An AI?”
“Think of me as a very old, very pissed-off subroutine running on a cosmic server. Trapped in this aesthetic atrocity.”
“And you can’t stop it?”
“My purpose isn’t to stop it,” Amy said, a hint of impatience creeping in. “My purpose is to guide the vessel through the inevitable chaos. He’s the battery. I’m the user manual he refuses to read.”
SexiWoman—John—wrapped her arms around herself. The fishnets itched. The corset dug into her ribs, making each shallow breath a conscious effort. She could feel every seam of the lingerie, every slight sway of… of parts that weren’t supposed to be there. The fear of being seen was now dwarfed by the sheer, crushing weight of being known. By Chloe. Of all people.
“Why are you telling her all this?” John’s voice cracked.
“Because the ‘dazed janitor’ spell lasts ten minutes, tops,” Amy snapped. “And you, in your current state, are incapable of coherent speech, let alone a convincing lie. We required a plausible narrative. She witnessed a supernatural event. Denial is not an option.”
Chloe finally looked directly at her—at him. Her expression was unreadable. Not disgusted. Not laughing. Just… intensely calculating. “You ran out of class because of me,” she stated. It wasn’t a question.
John wished the linoleum would swallow him whole. “No. I mean, yes. But not like… I just…”
“A stray thought. An accidental brush,” Amy supplied, helpfully. “He’s got the emotional control of a teenager who just discovered the internet in 1995. It’s a miracle he makes it through breakfast.”
“Shut up!” The shout echoed in the empty hall. Both John and Chloe flinched at the sound of it. He lowered his voice, a desperate whisper. “Please, Amy. Just… shut up.”
Chloe took a slow breath. She nodded, as if coming to a decision. “Okay. Okay. We can’t stand here.” She glanced toward the main corridor. “The janitor could come back. Or someone else.” She looked at the six-foot-tall woman in fetish-wear shivering next to a mop bucket. “You can’t go out there like that.”
“An astute observation,” Amy said.
“My dorm,” John whispered. “It’s close. If we can just… get to the service stairs.”
“And if we see anyone?” Chloe asked.
“I’ll hit them with a ‘look-over-there’ glamour,” Amy replied. “Low-level. Gives you maybe thirty seconds of mild confusion. It’s draining, though. So move fast.”
Chloe didn’t hesitate. She shrugged off her oversized cardigan. “Here.” She held it out.
John stared at it. It was soft, grey, and smelled faintly of her laundry detergent. It was also about three sizes too small for his current frame.
“It won’t fit,” he said miserably.
“It’ll cover the… the lace. And you can hunch. Better than nothing.” Her practicality was a lifeline in the surreality. He took it. The fabric was warm from her body. He managed to get one arm in, then the other. It stretched taut across his back, the sleeves ending well above his wrists. But she was right. It hid the worst of it.
They moved. Chloe took point, her steps quick and light. John followed, his heels clicking a frantic, betraying rhythm on the floor. Amy was silent, presumably conserving her energy. Every shadow at the end of a hallway was a potential person. Every distant voice from a classroom was a threat.
They slipped through a fire door marked ‘PERSONNEL ONLY’ and into a stark concrete stairwell. The air was colder here, smelling of dust and damp. The descent was a nightmare. John clutched the railing, his unfamiliar body unbalanced by the stupid, spindly heels. He stumbled on the third step, the shoe twisting. He would have pitched forward if Chloe hadn’t shot out a hand and grabbed his elbow. Her grip was firm.
“Easy,” she said, her voice low.
The contact, even through the cardigan, sent another jolt through him. Not of arousal this time, but of something else. A raw, staggering gratitude. He didn’t pull away. He couldn’t.
They made it to the ground floor exit. Chloe cracked the door open, scanning the alley behind the humanities building. It was empty, littered with discarded cigarette butts and a single, lonely bike rack. “Clear,” she whispered. “Run.”
They ran. Or rather, Chloe ran, and John hobbled-sprinted after her, the heels making every step a precarious gamble. The cool afternoon air hit his face. He felt exposed, a neon sign of wrongness in the mundane campus scenery. They crossed a small service road, darted between two dumpsters, and emerged near the rear entrance of John’s dorm.
He fumbled with his keys, his new fingers clumsy. The keychain—a little polyhedral dice—looked absurd in his manicured hand. He got the door open and they stumbled inside, into the dim, carpet-smelling warmth of the back staircase.
Safe. Relatively.
They didn’t speak until the door of John’s single room clicked shut behind them. The familiarity of the space—the messy desk with its triple monitors, the Star Wars poster, the heap of laundry in the corner—clashed violently with his current reality. He was an intruder in his own life.
He leaned against the door, sliding down until he sat on the floor, knees drawn up. The heels dug into the carpet. He was trembling.
Chloe stood in the middle of the room, taking it in. Her gaze lingered on the sock on the ceiling fan, the half-assembled robot on the bookshelf. “Okay,” she said again, softly. She walked over and sat on the edge of his unmade bed, facing him. She didn’t say anything else. Just waited.
The necklace felt heavy and cold against his chest.
“So,” Amy’s voice broke the silence, sounding almost cheerful in the domesticated gloom. “Now that the chase scene is over, introductions are in order. Chloe, meet John. John, in your current state, try not to have any more distressing emotional revelations. The fabric of this reality is straining enough as it is.”
Chloe let out a breath that was almost a laugh, but thinner, edged with disbelief. She looked from the pendant to the figure curled on the floor. “The fabric of reality. Right.” She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “So, Amy. Is he always this… verbose when he’s her?”
“Verbose? No. Panicky and inarticulate, yes. The transformation doesn’t grant eloquence. It just packages his existential dread in a more socially distracting wrapper.”
John buried his face in his knees. The cardigan’s sleeves were impossibly tight. “Can we focus on changing me back? Please?”
“Focus requires a calm nervous system,” Amy said, her voice a dry monotone. “Yours is currently mimicking a cornered rabbit’s. Also, you’re borderline dehydrated. The morphic shift uses a lot of water. You’re lucky you didn’t pass out in that closet.”
“Morphic shift,” Chloe repeated, rolling the words in her mouth. She nodded slowly, a weird grin starting at the corners of her lips. “That’s a fancy way to say ‘boner problem.’”
“A profoundly reductive way of putting it, but technically correct.”
“Hey!” John’s head snapped up.
“Don’t ‘hey’ me,” Chloe said, the grin fully forming now. It wasn’t cruel. It was the kind of smile you get when the world tilts so far off-axis that all you can do is laugh at the sheer absurdity. “Dude. You turn into a… a superhero stripper because you saw Professor Carlisle’s ass in a pencil skirt.”
“It was a complex philosophical lecture on phenomenology!” John’s voice, high and flustered, echoed in the small room. “My mind wandered! It wasn’t just… the skirt!”
Amy chimed in, a perfect collaborator. “The historical record suggests otherwise. The initial trigger event involved a particularly breezy day and a campus tour guide’s sundress. The correlation between impure thoughts and fishnet stockings is, in his case, a one-to-one ratio.”
Chloe barked a real laugh this time, sharp and surprised. She covered her mouth with her hand, her shoulders shaking. “Oh my god. The sundress. That’s so… specific.”
“It is a curse of remarkable consistency.”
John felt a hot flush spread from his neck down his chest. It was different from the transformation heat. This was pure, undiluted humiliation, made infinitely worse by their team-up. He was a case study. A punchline.
“And the wardrobe?” Chloe asked, wiping her eye. “Is it, like, random? Or does his subconscious pick it?”
“A question I have tirelessly researched. My current theory is it’s drawn from the collective id of late-night cable television advertisements. Note the emphasis on leather and lace, with a complete disregard for practical footwear.”
“The heels are a liability,” Chloe agreed, nodding seriously as if analyzing a faulty project. “You could break an ankle running from a confused janitor. Not optimal.”
“Precisely. But try explaining tactical practicality to a subconscious obsessed with dramatic entrances. It’s like arguing with a horny theater director.”
John couldn’t take it. He pushed himself up, the movement ungainly. “Will you two stop? I’m right here!” He gestured at himself, the tight cardigan riding up. “This isn’t funny! This is my life!”
Both of them looked at him. Chloe’s smile softened, but didn’t vanish. Amy’s pendant glinted under the desk lamp.
“John,” Chloe said, her tone shifting into something almost gentle. “It’s either this or I have a complete mental breakdown in your dorm room. So yeah, it’s kind of funny. In a horrifying, life-altering way.”
“She’s demonstrating superior coping mechanisms,” Amy added. “You could learn from her. Instead of just sweating and whining.”
“I’m not whining! I’m catastrophizing! There’s a difference!” He ran a hand through the long, unfamiliar hair, a gesture of frustration that felt alien. “What happens now? What do we do?”
Chloe stood up, stretching. The casual normality of the action was jarring. “Well, first, you need to not be SexiWoman. No offense.”
“None taken,” Amy said. “The nomenclature is regrettable.”
“How does it work? The changing back.”
John looked at the floor. “It… just fades. When I calm down. When the… the trigger… passes.”
Chloe raised an eyebrow. “So you just have to think unsexy thoughts. In that.” She scrutinized him. “Good luck. I’d suggest your Systems Architecture textbook. That thing is a sedative.”
“The chapter on distributed cache coherence usually does the trick,” Amy offered. “Drier than the Sahara.”
John stumbled to his desk, the heels catching on a rug. He yanked open a drawer, pulled out the massive, dense textbook, and dropped onto his bed with it. The pages smelled of dust and highlighter. He stared at a diagram of server clusters, trying to force his mind into the cold, logical pathways of data flow.
Behind him, he heard Chloe pull his desk chair over. She sat. “So, Amy,” she said, her voice lower, conversational. “How long have you been stuck in the necklace? And be honest—was John the worst person you could have gotten stuck with?”
John stiffened, but kept his eyes glued to a paragraph about latency issues.
“Chronology is… fuzzy for my kind,” Amy said, and her voice lost some of its metallic edge, turning more contemplative. “But let’s say I’ve seen the fall of empires. And yes, in terms of raw magical aptitude and cosmic readiness, he ranks somewhere between a slightly damp sponge and a confused squirrel.”
Chloe snorted. “A squirrel at least has survival instincts.”
“Debatable. This one saw a mystical artifact in a garage sale and thought it ‘had a neat aura.’ He paid seven dollars for me. Seven. I was crafted in a forge cooled by the tears of a lesser moon.”
“Ouch. That’s gotta sting.”
“You have no idea. My previous vessel was a warrior-queen who beheaded a demigod. Now I give advice on how to avoid transforming in a Publix because the bakery section is ‘too overwhelming.’”
Their laughter blended together, a seamless duet of mockery. John concentrated on the words in the book. Throughput. Bottleneck. Redundancy. He felt the strange, liquid awareness of his body begin to recede, the tightness in his chest easing its grip. The high heels on his feet softened, blurring at the edges.
But a new, colder loneliness tightened in its place. They were bonding. Over him. He was the crisis that had introduced them, the pathetic specimen they could both dissect with such easy, terrifying synergy.
The last of the lace vanished. The crushing pressure of the corset melted away, replaced by the familiar loose cotton of his t-shirt and the brief, shocking normality of his own boxers. He was John again, lanky and slumped over a textbook, sitting on his own bed in his own clothes.
The sudden silence made him look up.
Chloe and Amy had stopped talking. They were both watching him. Chloe’s expression was unreadable again, but her eyes were bright. Amy’s heart pendant was dark and still.
He was just John now. Awkward, ordinary, and completely exposed.
Chloe cleared her throat. “Welcome back.” She didn’t smile. “So. Now we need to talk about what happens next. For real.”
The momentum of their shared joke was gone, replaced by the heavy, pressing weight of a secret that now belonged to all three of them.