“The Statement of X--- Y--- Z---" Part 5

by Seuzz

I was telling you last time about the start of my high school years. I think we can cover them quickly.

I started high school in a new place, a little town in Nebraska. I don't know why my dad chose to move, or why he chose to move there. He didn't have a job there. He never had a job.

I've no idea, but we were never seriously short of money. He would disappear for months on end. My mom would go on relief. We would scrape by. Then my dad would show up again. I think he would have money with him, because things would get a better for us. Food would be better. He would get a new car. It would be used, but it would be new for us.

I didn't have much to do with my parents. My mom was a hopeless alcoholic by the time I was out of elementary school, and when my dad wasn't around she and I didn't have much to do with each other. I'd make my own meals, keep to myself in my room. After we moved to Nebraska, my dad, when he came back to town, would pretend to have an interest in me. He'd check up on my schoolwork, ride me hard to make sure I was going to school. But it never lasted long. Eventually he'd forget about me. I could always tell when he was about to take off again, because he'd move into a motel room a few weeks before going off again.

Mm, yes, the thought occurred to me. But I never talked to him about crawling. I think I was afraid of the answer, whether "Yes" or "No." See, if he didn't know about crawling, and I told him what I could do, then what would he do? He might regard me as a monster, and try to do something to me. Or he might decide to use me, to force me to crawl certain people so he could get money or something. I didn't want to do that, not when I was a teenager. I mean, I would have liked to have money, to have the things that other people had, but not as a job, and not to bring stuff back to him. And if the answer was "Yes" ...

Well, it would explain a lot, wouldn't it? It would explain where I got the ability, it would explain why he was always going off and returning with money--he was himself crawling people, but doing it out of sight, in strange cities, where no one would know him. If I told him what I could do, and he was doing it too, he might be able to help me with it, to train me. It's likely he would have made me a partner. But I didn't want to have anything to do with him.

Oh, God, yes, wouldn't that have been lovely? I'm being sarcastic, in case you can't tell from my tone. To crawl my own father. Ychh!

Alright, the thought occurred to me, but only as a method for finding out what he was up to. But I didn't, because, again, what if it was something he could do? Could a crawler crawl another crawler? If he could do it too, if that's what he was doing, then I'd be exposing myself and my ability to him, and I didn't want to do that. And if he wasn't a crawler-- I didn't like him, and I certainly didn't want to be inside him, even for a little while. Snooping was the only reason to crawl him, and it would be very risky with little possible payoff. Let him have his own life and his own secrets. I'd keep my own.

If he was a crawler, he was better than me, wasn't he? He never got caught. Or, I don't know, maybe he did? Is that why you were on the lookout for me? You knew there was another out there?

Yes, I'm very bad at winnowing information out of others. I have my own way of learning what I want to know, and it's left me very unskilled at other methods.

But if you asked me to speculate, I'd say he wasn't a crawler. If he was, he'd have tried harder to get me to reveal myself. I think he was probably just a grifter. Maybe he had another family, a richer family, somewhere else. It's a big country, and back then it was much easier to maintain a double life.

As for where we wound up, it was a shitty little town in Nebraska, a rural community, a place where everyone knew everyone else, where it was the same few hundred families and had been for decades. Newcomers didn't fit in, especially in school, where the kids had their longstanding cliques and habits. I was a novelty for a few days. If I'd been good at sports or just had decent social skills, I guess I could have found a place and fit in. As it was ...

Naturally, I thought about trying to fit in by finding someone to crawl, like I had with Tommy. But there were no opportunities. It had been pure luck that I'd found Tommy, and after a few weeks I really regretted not staying in Tommy when I'd had the chance. And when I did take a chance it backfired horribly.

His name was Robin. He was a sophomore and I was a freshman. He was a bully, but I hadn't been on his radar. He hadn't been on mine. But like with Tommy, I caught him alone in the gym. I leaped at him. He caught sight of me as I lunged at him, but I managed to knock him back, and once I had my hands on his face he couldn't do anything. A few minutes later I was able to stand up in my new body.

It wasn't much to brag on. He was a big kid, one of those corn-fed farm boys. Husky. He had a squashed up face that fell naturally into a squint or a leer or sneer. His arms and neck and face were tanned red, but everything else was a pasty white. He had zits, bad.

My dad was out of town again by that point, so I had the run of my new home for as long as I wanted, but I didn't stay in him long. It wasn't pleasant. He had a big family, and though I had his instincts, I didn't like the horseplay, the pushing, the sibling-on-sibling tortures. School wasn't any better. Him and his friends were crude and boring. They all chewed tobacco, took shop classes, worked on machinery, talked about the hogs they had to take care of. I had something like fun for one afternoon, pushing others around, but even he didn't have a lot of fun doing it. He only did because he was bored.

I should have used him to get into a better place, but I hadn't figured out how to use my talent properly, not yet. So I just ditched him.

But like I said, he'd caught sight of me before I took him, so after I was out of him--

I don't know what he thought had happened to him. I'm sure he didn't tell anyone that I'd managed to possess him, even if he recognized that's what happened. But he had a grudge against me from that day on, and he got a lot of others to help out. I kept to myself anyway, so I easily got a reputation as a weirdo, and him and his friends nailed it in place.

Three years of absolute hell followed. I was a faggot, a homo. I guess that's what Robin had told everyone, that I'd made a pass at him in the gym. The details of what they did to me aren't important. Him and his friends weren't ingenious, but they were persistent.

The only friend I had was a kid named Lee. Another shy, loner type. I don't think we really liked each other. We didn't have anything in common. He was a good student and I wasn't. He studied music and I didn't. I read science-fiction and fantasy books, and he didn't. I hate to say it, but I think the only reason he hung around me was--

Well, we were hanging out one night, late, and he told me he thought he was gay.

Mmm, I suppose if you tell another guy you're gay, it's in the same way you tell a girl that she's pretty. You're hoping it leads somewhere. Maybe you're not even hoping, you're just hoping it opens up a path, and at the end of that path is ... the conclusion of a dream. But you can pass it off casually if the other person doesn't reciprocate. On this night, we were sharing confidences. Exchanging secrets. Sharing the really deep, important stuff. He told me about his dreams and ambitions. I told him about my home life. He told me some other boring shit about himself, I told him more about myself. Eventually it reaches a pitch where you feel like you can drop some pretty big bombs and it won't freak the other person out. I'm sure it was enough for him that he got to unburden himself. And since I was a guy regularly tagged as a fag, that made it easier for him to unloose himself. So he told me.

And then I made the mistake of telling him my big secret. Yeah, I told him I could crawl people. Described how it worked and what I'd done.

Skeptical? You know, I could have handled it if he were just skeptical. If he'd just said "Prove it," I could have asked him to let me demonstrate it on him. But no, he had to get creeped out. Jesus Christ, you'd think a gay teenager living in rural Nebraska--and this was back in the days when everyone pretended Paul Lynde was just a funny guy with a fussy manner! You'd think he'd have a little sympathy, especially after I'd shown him sympathy. But no, he shut down the conversation real quick. And we didn't talk or hang out much after that. After that, he thought I was a weirdo too.

Oh, please. No, I don't feel like I'm a victim of bigotry. Being bigoted against me is like being bigoted against pickpockets or serial killers. I do what I do, and I do it with my eyes open. If people fear and despise me--if you fear and despise me--I'd say you have every reason to.

Yeah, I got back at him. Eventually. Indirectly.

It was a two-fer, or a dividend. It came after I found a way to get out of high school.

See, I hadn't given any thought to what I'd do after graduation. I wasn't cut out for college. By the time I was a senior, I knew that whatever I did after high school, I would do it as someone else. That someone else turned out to be Peter Isaacson.

He was one of the jocks. Football player, wrestler, basketball player, etcetera. Not because he was an all-around athlete, but because in a small school all the jocks did all the sports. He was a decent guy, never made my life hard. Had a girlfriend, had prospects. He'd be going to college, a state school, but he wasn't going to be going directly into the family business, not yet.

Anyway, my senior year I was working in the library as a school aide. One day I'm working after school--something I never did--because I'd gotten behind in my library chores. Isaacson comes in to do some studying. There's hardly anyone else around. I see him disappear into the one blind corner in the place. And just like it had been with Tommy, I got a strong feeling, that this was a chance that I should take. So I quietly followed him, took some books with me, like I needed to reshelve them. He glanced back at me, turned back to the book in his hand. I looked over my shoulder real quick, to make sure the coast was clear. And then I took him from behind. He sank back in my arms as I liquefied. It was silent, swift, powerful. I got back on my feet quickly, looked around again. No one had seen. I put his book back on the shelf and hustled off to the bathroom to take stock.

I had to check out my new home, because I knew it wasn't going to be like the other times. The other times I was just experimenting, or taking vacations, or playing around. This time there was no going back. I remember gripping the sides of the sink--he had powerful arms and hands--and stared into the mirror. He had sandy hair, close cropped. A strong face, with a square chin. Pale blue eyes. I just kept staring at my new face, even as I slowly pulled his letterman jacket on over his t-shirt and hitched his backpack onto my shoulder. I didn't do anything to fight the hard-on I was getting. He was--I was--going to see his girlfriend after leaving school, so why force it down? Another guy came in, said something to me, I said something back, totally in character. Trudged slowly back out into the hallway. I didn't do anything to clean up the remnants of my old life. Left my locker and all my stuff without looking back. There was none of it I wanted.

That was just before Christmas. His family drove up to Omaha to see his grandparents, uncles and aunts and cousins. We played football in the snow, watched the games. Exchanged presents. I took my littler cousins for car trips, played with the babies. Of course, no one spotted any change in Peter. When we got back home I hooked up again with my girlfriend, to our mutual satisfaction. Worked on college essays.

It helped that he had ambitions. He was going to try out for the university football team, but he was going to be a business major, was already thinking about a family. I had lots to occupy myself, including the team sports I was now doing. Robin, he hadn't any ambitions, maybe because he was just a farm boy, and he'd only been a sophomore at the time.

Robin had been a year ahead, so he'd graduated already, though I still saw him around town. But it would have been out of character for Peter to do anything to my regular tormentors. Still, since I was one of the top guys, I found subtle ways of putting them down. Hurt them a little harder out on the practice field, things like that. As for Lee--

Looking back, I'm not proud of what I did to him, though I've done worse to people since. Usually they deserved it, though. But with Lee-- I waited until we were close to graduation, and then I started cozying up to him. Went out of my way to be friendly to him. Arranged a couple of times to have a burger alone with him. Nothing weird. I just pretended to be interested in him and in his interests. He was flattered. Probably aroused. At any rate, he didn't demur when I invited him out late one evening for a drive.

It was in my early graduation present. A used pick up truck. I'd have to make the monthly payments on the loan, but my dad--my new dad, who was an honest, hard-working sort--had made the down payment for me. We drove out far into the country, then took off across a field and buried ourselves in the middle of it. I had a six pack, but Lee didn't drink. I had a few, not because I needed them, but to make it look ... plausible. It was dark when we stopped and climbed into the back, to lay back and look at the stars and talk.

After some chitchat, I told him I knew he was gay. He jumped a little, but I told him I was okay with that. I told him I wanted him to be happy. He shrugged. I told him I wasn't gay, but I wondered what it was like. He got kind of tongue-tied. I asked him to show me what guys who were gay did with each other.

That did freak him out. He had to tell me he didn't know, he'd never done it. I asked him what he wanted to do. He didn't say anything. I asked him if it was like being with a girl. By that point, I could tell, he was trembling. So I just said, "Let me show you what I do with Christie."

I drew him close to me. He was very stiff and rigid, but not in his pants. I rubbed his shoulders and arms to make him relax. I told him the girl usually did the same thing, asked him if he wanted to. He fumbled at me. I'm sure he thought this was the lead in to some horrible prank. Which it was, though the punch line wasn't one he could see coming.

Gradually, I wore him down, got him to unwind. We ran our hands over each other, though I had to start him off by guiding him, placing my hands over his. We kissed and nuzzled. It was a warm night, so neither of us got cold as the clothes came off. We kept it a hands-only affair. I put him on his back and slowly brought him to climax, the way Christie had with Peter--and with me--so many times. Still, he couldn't bring himself to reciprocate, so I had to jack myself off while he sat on my lap and watched, lightly holding my hands and forearms and elbows while I did it. When it was over, we held each other for a little while, and then drove back to town.

When we got back to his place I got out of the truck, but I didn't follow him up the walk. I just pulled him close before letting go of him. I peered down at him--I was half a head taller--and let my voice get stony. I asked him if he remembered me--the former me, the kid who'd disappeared. He said of course he did. I said, "You told him you were gay. That's how I knew." He said, "He told you?" I said, "He told you, and then he told you about himself. He told you he could crawl into people and take over their bodies, right?" He made kind of a face and muttered, "Something like that." Then I leaned in and said, "You know how he disappeared? What happened to him?" He got kind of a scared look. Probably thought I was gonna say that I'd killed the kid and buried him. Instead, I said, "Well, you didn't believe him, but guess what. He crawled inside me. Or I crawled inside Peter. Doesn't matter which way you put it. I just wanted you to know that it's real." And I remember jabbing him hard in the chest. "And what we did tonight," I said, "Peter never would have done that. And we'll never do it with you again. Too bad you didn't believe me, back then. Too bad you didn't help me get into Peter back then, or into someone else. We could've done a lot more of it, with whoever you wanted."

He took a step back, and stared. Then I got back in the truck and drove off.

I saw him for a few more weeks, at school, but totally blew him off.