by Noah Layton
On the other hand, even if it was just a trinket from a random junk shop in the city, James still felt bad about taking it for free. Even if she had insisted on it, he couldn’t help feeling guilty.
Pocketing the locket and fishing out his wallet from the back of his pants, he took out a ten-dollar bill and slipped it through the mail slot on the door, before taking off down the street, back to his apartment.
Chapter Two
The Locket
Home was a studio apartment that James had to himself just a short walk from the college. After his mom’s passing when he was six, his dad had done a pretty good job of raising him on his own. He had never been more grateful for anybody in his whole life – after his mother had died he could have spent her generous life insurance policy on whatever he wanted, but instead his dad hid it away to help James out a little once he got to college.
It wasn’t a fortune by any means, and by now a lot of it was gone, but it still helped in getting his life started.
Still, he would have traded it all to have had some more time with his mom.
The apartment was pretty small but it worked for him. The whole thing was one conjoined room, except for the bathroom, complete with a bed, kitchen, desk, living room and not a whole lot else, save for his gaming setup. He had tried to leave the hobby behind countless times but eventually just had to admit to himself that he enjoyed it too much.
After a few hours of eating and gaming, he showered and changed into a fresh set of clothes, looking himself up and down in the mirror by the front door.
He was a touch over six feet tall, and around 170lbs the last time he had checked. James had never been overly muscular but never out of shape either. His dark hair usually fell down over his fringe in the same way that it did tonight.
The locket was wrapped up in a small box that he had found in the back of his closet, which James took from his desk and now examined.
A part of him knew that it was a stupid move, but he was going to do it anyway. Maybe deep down he was leading myself along this path in some future-seeking, psychic awareness.
But by the end of the night, nothing would ever be the same.
James ventured through the sorority house, working his way past drunks and more drunks with a beer in his hand. The party was on campus, and it was heaving like crazy. Pushing through the crowds he finally saw Helen, laughing hysterically at a joke somebody had told her.
‘Hey!’ She shouted, running over to me with her arms out. ‘You made it?’
‘Happy birthday,’ James said casually. ‘You here on your own?’
‘I’ve just been making my way around the place. I think Jake and Lauri are around here somewhere.’
‘Right. Think I’ll go find them.’
‘Sure… Are you okay?’
‘Yeah…’ James said. ‘Why?’
‘You’ve got this weird look on your face. The same look you have when you’re thinking really hard about something.’
‘That’s definitely not true,’ he lied, laughing a little. ‘I’ll see you in a little while.’
He headed off, rolling his eyes at how painful he was.
Wandering into the back yard for some fresh air, he found it empty save for the two people that he was looking for.
‘Here he is,’ Jake shouted, holding his arms wide from the swing set he was sat on, Lauri seated on the one next to him. ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Just inside.’
‘Talking to Helen?’ Lauri said. ‘You asked her out yet?’
‘Nope.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m terrified of rejection, just like every other guy in the world.’
‘Relevant point,’ Jake said, wagging a finger at James and looking at Lauri. ‘There’s the reason men don’t do most things.’
‘Sam,’ Lauri started. ‘We’re on a rock floating through nothingness that’s descending into the inevitable heat death of the universe. You ever read Nietzsche? He had this theory about time being a flat circle, where once the universe ends the Big Bang will happen again and eventually you’ll be born again and you’ll eventually live your life the same way again an infinite number of times. Which means that eventually you’ll live this night again. Now do you want your infinite life to be one where you don’t take the risk and never know or the one where you find out whether this girl will just go on a freaking date with you?’
James took a deep breath and looked about the yard before taking three long swigs from his bottle.
‘Hold my beer,’ he said, handing it over to Jake and turning to go back inside the house.
‘Oo-h-h-h shit,’ Jake shouted comically, standing and watching James go. ‘The man’s doing it!’
He paced inside, heading into the huge kitchen, ready to turn the corner into the living room. But he didn’t need to go that far. All he had to was take one step forward and look to his left.
Helen was in the corner, her arms wrapped over the shoulders of another guy. James didn’t even register the appearance of him, only the fact that she was seated on the counter, making out passionately with him.
James nodded to himself, looking down at the ground and taking off.
‘Stupid, stupid, stupid…’ He muttered to himself twenty minutes later, smacking his palm against his forehead as he climbed the stairs to the apartment. Reaching the door he leaned against it, pressing his head against the wooden panels and shaking it from side to side.
Well, that was that. James didn’t feel as bad as he thought he would. His friends had been right – finding out that she was into some other guy was better than not knowing anything at all.
He reconciled with the situation, unlocking his apartment door and heading inside.
Turning on the lights and taking off his jacket, it was only then that he felt it.
The box.
Removing it from his jacket pocket, he threw the package onto the couch and turned on his TV and PC, hoping that playing sniper with a little background noise from the Netflix show he was binging would take his mind off everything.
Hssss.
James looked over at the TV screen, scanning it carefully. What the hell had made that sound? No, it couldn’t have been the TV. Analog didn’t exist anymore. There was no static.
A pipe, maybe?
And then it sounded again. Tracing the room carefully, he kept being led back to the centre.
And the one thing in the centre was the couch, upon which only one thing was resting.
Picking up the box and placing it to his ear, it sounded out once more.
‘What the fuck…?’ James muttered to himself, spinning it around in his fingers.
No, it’s just a locket, he thought. There’s no reason for me to be afraid of this freaking thing.
He removed it from the packaging and examined it, the hefty weight still apparent.
This whole time it had never occurred to him to actually open it.
His nails were too short to slide into the gap between the two sides. Retrieving a knife from the kitchen, he lodged the locket in place and touched the tip of the blade to the opening.
‘Come on…’ James muttered to himself, getting more and more frustrated at the thing as it kept slipping from his grasp. Finally he gained some leverage, forcing it further and further until-
‘… There!’
Click.
BOOM.
Two huge clouds of smoke suddenly burst from the locket, pluming up into the air. James wasn’t exactly sure what had just happened, but if anybody had forced the truth out of him he would have said that it felt like they went through him. He could feel the wisps of strength exploding through his torso as both clouds phased through his body and streamed through his back.
The force of the blast knocked James onto his ass, sending him flailing across the apartment floor.
In his disorientation, he only had a moment to see the color of the smoke.
One plume was an unnatural red, like the
color of Jessica Rabbit’s dress. The other was a hellish blackness. Both were writhing around the apartment insanely, like a pair of helium balloons with the knots untied, trying to find a way out.
Then there was the sound – deep, brutal hissings, mixed with words in a foreign language James couldn’t even remotely begin to recognise filled the room, rising quickly in volume to the point that he had to clasp his hands over his ears. It stemmed the tide of pain for a moment, but the volume continued to crank up.
Finally the sentient clouds of smoke found an exit, rushing out of the small gap of the window that he had left open on the other side of the room.
As quickly as it had begun, the hissing sounds and the inaudible words came to an end, nothing but an echo in James’s mind, and he was splayed out against the cabinets in the kitchen, a hand clasped to his chest as he frantically scanned the apartment.
‘What the fuck…?’ James said, his hands shaking as he tried to gain his breath back. The force of the strike against the wooden door had winded him; sitting forward and checking the cabinet, he found that he had actually dented it a little. He ran a hand over his back, feeling the cut and the bruise next to his spine where he had struck it. A few inches in the other direction and it could’ve done some serious damage that James didn’t want to think about.
He staggered to his feet, forcing the air back into his lungs before examining the apartment further. Nothing seemed to have been damaged by the smoke that had exploded through the apartment. Nothing, except for the locket, which was now sitting in the centre of the coffee table in the living room.
It was mangled to pieces, bent out of shape, with the chain charred and burnt with blackened marks. He had no interest in touching the thing just yet, but looking more closely at it he saw the small ovals where the pictures should have been.
Instead, though, there were two ovals of color matching the smoke that had exploded from it – one black and one red.
Briefly it occurred to James that this might have all been a drunken delusion, but then he hadn’t had that much… And it was way too vivid to be something like that.
He grabbed some paper towels from the kitchen and covered his hand with them, before returning to the locket and carefully picking it up. He half-expected the thing to shock him or burn through his skin, but nothing happened at all. Wrapping it up in the towel like a dead spider, he kicked open the trash and dumped it to the bottom of the bag, shaking his head in the process.
James groaned to himself, laughing nervously at the ridiculousness of it all. The problem, of course, was that he had watched way too many movies where people responded to the supernatural in a really normal way, and that was something that he had a problem with.
There’s no way that any of that was supernatural, he thought. No… I’m drunk. That’s all there is to it. It was an old locket, it was filled with dust, and I was drunk. That was all that happened.
James staggered to the bathroom, kicking open the door in frustration before pulling his jacket and t-shirt off. His front of his torso was just fine, but the same couldn’t be said for his back. There was a scarred bruise sitting right next to his spine, around the size of a dessert plate. Bringing his fingers to the spot again he touched it, wincing at the jolt of sharp pain that ran through him, but managing a laugh at his own stupidity; it was just like when a waiter told you that a plate was hot. You had to touch it, just to make sure, even if it meant burning yourself in the process.
A dig around in the meagre first aid kit beneath his sink later and James was patched up. A bandage wouldn’t do much to sort it, but the cut looked sensitive, and damn well felt sensitive too – if it broke he would wake up in a bed stained with blood.
Exhaustion had begun to set in after everything that had happened. Despite the chaotic and borderline unexplainable nature of it all, James had his mind set on reaching one thing alone; the bed.
He stumbled over to it, his duvet feeling more enticing than ever as he sank into the mattress and drifted off.
Chapter Three
Heat
Caught on the plain between sleep and wakefulness the next morning, when for three seconds the world and all its problems were a perfect blur, James longed for it to last a little longer. No matter how much he fought against it, though, reality came rushing back in through one ear and refused to leave through the other, dwelling in his mind like a head cold.
James was lying on his front, the cold Autumn light spilling in through the apartment window. Rolling over onto his back, he stared up at the ceiling. Like every heartbroken guy who just needs to let the damn thing go, James tried to cast his mind away from her, but his pride had taken a hit. Stab a man in the back and he has a chance at recovering. Make him feel small and he’s that height forever, at least around the girl in question.
Speaking of being stabbed in the back-
James remembered… The smoke, the fall, the huge bruise on his back.
The smoke he set aside, again resigning it to nothing but a drunken hallucination, but the fall? That had been real.
But he couldn’t feel the bruise, even with the weight of his body resting on it.
James sat up promptly, his body flipping up like an opening trapdoor, and ran a hand to that same spot to find… Nothing.
‘What the hell…?’ He said quietly.
Had that even happened?
Looking over at the kitchen he saw the dented cabinet. It was still there.
No, it definitely happened… So why can’t I feel the mark?
A surge of terror moving through him, James looked down at the bedsheets. His toes moved up and down beneath them, and he felt his heart begin to settle as sharply as it had risen.
For a second he thought that his spine had actually been injured, and that he couldn’t feel the bruise because he didn’t have the ability to feel anything at all.
But your arms are moving, dumbass.
James shook his head at the stupidity of the thought, throwing the sheets back and climbing out of bed in his jeans. His body felt tighter and heavier than usual as he moved to the bathroom, likely a result of the fall.
Hitting the light by the door he staggered to the sink and the mirror before it, eyes flickering groggily as he took in the blurred image of himself.
But that isn’t me… Is it?
His eyes went wide as he took in the clarity of the image, the brightness of the overhead light completely secondary to what he was seeing in the mirror.
Holy shit… He thought. I’m fucking jacked.
He had never been fat, but then he had never been skinny – just regularly in-shape.
Now James was looking at an image of a guy in his early twenties with a toned chest, broader shoulders and arms swelling up with the pump of a just-finished workout.
‘What…?’ He exclaimed quietly, shaking his head and looking himself up and down again. James tapped his temple a few times with the palm of his hand, clenching his eyes shut to make sure that he was, in fact, awake.
He turned to look at the bruise on his back only to find a broad pair of lats that were well on their way to becoming figurative wings more than anything else.
His jeans felt tighter against his skin too – not only on his legs but below his waist, too.
‘Something definitely isn’t right…’ James said, his voice going high with shock. He had a deep tone usually, but the bafflement still came through – that was one thing that hadn’t changed. He undid his pants and looked down into his boxers in the overhead light. ‘Okay, something definitely isn’t right…’
Or it really, really is. It depends on how I want to look at it.
He was an even 170 pounds on a normal day, but retrieving the scales from beneath the sink and standing atop them, he found a hugely different number.
190.
I’ve put on 20 pounds overnight… How the fuck does that happen?
Spending a few more minutes staring at himself in the mirror in disbelief, James eventually
realised that he had to get ready for classes.
Even his face seemed different. It hadn’t changed, so to speak, but his skin had a clearness to it and his brown eyes seemed to have darkened to an almost blackened shade.
The morning shower took a little longer than usual as he looked down at this strange new body before getting dressed and gathering his stuff together. As he undid the lock on his front door James thought back to the smoke from the night before, bursting free from the locket the moment it had popped open.
The window was closed – he remembered shutting it, too. But on the panes condensation had amassed, even with the heating turned up. He touched the back of his hand to his forehead and found what felt like the start of a fever..
There was that documentary about bodybuilders where most reported feeling a lot warmer than when they were smaller… Wait, bodybuilder? Who the hell am I kidding?
James shook his head again and headed out, locking the door behind him.
***
‘The prodigal son returns!’
James slid into his seat in the 100-strong lecture theatre a few minutes before it was due to begin. At first he thought that he was going to be late, but the fifteen-minute walk had turned into a five-minute jog. He had suddenly found himself bursting with energy, and the additional 20 pounds of weight that he was carrying had done nothing to slow him down.
Even still, he felt wide awake.
Jake batted him on the shoulder before handing him a cup of coffee.
‘Who’s this for?’
‘You, you ungrateful son of a bitch,’ he smiled. ‘Figured you could use it after last night. What the hell happened to you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well… You took off.’
‘I know exactly what happened,’ Lauri said, leaning past Jake and looking over at James. ‘Helen. Something happened.’
