Teen Witch: Possessions

Amy thought Esme looked furious.

“Listen,” Amy said, trying to smooth things over and start the night off on a positive note. “I don't plan on bothering you. I'm just going to hang out, and you can do what you want.”

If looks could kill, Esme would be a murderer.

“I know,” Amy said, continuing despite it all. “You're a teenager now, and you could probably stay home alone without any problem. I get it. I'm just here babysitting to make your mother happy.”

Esme had no response, not even a change of expression, just pure hatred and disgust in her staring eyes.

“Right,” Amy said. “I'm going to go watch some TV. Just let me know if you need anything. Okay?”

Esme stared a few seconds longer. Then, she turned and marched upstairs to her bedroom and slammed her door shut.

Amy sighed. She wondered why she had agreed to babysit for her odd neighbor's goth daughter. The kid was already in high school and was barely five years younger than Amy. Still, the girl's mother had been called away on some unspecified emergency, and she insisted that someone needed to mind her daughter until she returned, most likely, later that night or, possibly, the next morning.

Amy was home from college and available. She had no plans, no good excuse why she could not help. Out of kindness, she had accepted the babysitting job, but she was already regretting it.

“It'll be fine,” she told herself as she figured out how to turn on the TV and the sound system. “She can be angry at me all she wants. I'll just keep out of her way, and she'll hate me all by herself. Just need to get through the night.”

Amy found some reality show to stream and began playing a season to listen to in the background as she scrolled feeds on her phone. Soon, she had drifted off into the unreality of screens that insulated her from her actual life. Her sense of time drifted, and she only noticed that the sun had set when she looked up for a moment at the TV to find that the room had gone dark. She went around the first floor, pulling curtains shut and turning on lamps. Then, after taking a deep breath, she headed upstairs to check on Esme.

The aged steps creaked menacingly as she ascended, giving the already creepy old house a horror movie feel. The sound betrayed her approach, like an alarm, and Esme spoke before Amy could even knock on the girl's bedroom door.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Can I come in?”

Esme sighed loudly enough to be heard through the door. “Fine.”

Amy opened the door and found the goth girl at her desk, focused on reading from a dusty old book with yellowed pages. Her eyes remained glued to the pages as Amy stood in the doorway.

“Just wanted to check in on you, see if you wanted to have some food,” Amy said, while not daring to enter the room.

Esme was quiet for a long while, so long that Amy began to wonder if the girl had heard her. Amy was about to speak again, when Esme replied, “How does it feel?”

Confused, Amy replied, “How does what feel?”

“How does it feel to have a body like that?” Esme said, turning her eyes to Amy at last.

Amy looked down at herself, only now noticing how much cleavage was showing from the low neckline of her top. She had not dressed to be a babysitter as this had been a last-minute job, and only now had she begun to realize why the girl might be irritated by the sight of her.

“W-what do you mean?” she asked.

Esme replied with only the faintest of smirks.

“I mean…” Amy searched for a diplomatic response. “I put on a little weight,” she said. “My freshman fifteen. I'm not particularly happy about that.”

“Maybe not the belly,” Esme said, still smirking. “I bet you don't mind having a little extra weight on your chest and backside, though.”

“Uh…” Amy said, wishing she had just put on a hoodie and sweatpants. “I don't think we should be… you know… talking about…”

“How does it feel?” Esme asked again. “Be honest.”

Amy was not sure how she was supposed to respond as a babysitter, so she just defaulted to honesty. “It feels… good,” she admitted. “I want to be more fit, but I don't mind how I look all that much.”

“Bet the guys like it,” Esme said, her smirk growing into a wry smile.

The girl stood up from her desk, and Amy took a good look at Esme's body if only to take her attention off of her own. Clearly, the girl had just been through a cruel growth spurt, leaving her looking like a child whose limbs had been extended too long, having not yet grown any thicker as they lengthened. Despite being just below five-and-a-half feet tall, she seemed lanky and too thin, an awkward age to be for sure. Amy could see why the girl would envy the surplus weight on her taller body.

“Listen,” Amy said, trying to sound comforting. “In time, you'll-” 

“Want to play a game?” Esme asked, interrupting. She took a seat on her bed and patted the space beside her on the mattress, inviting Amy to sit with her.

Amy was confused, but she took this invitation to be a sign that the girl was warming up to her and decided to go along with whatever this game was. “Okay,” she said, and sat on the bed leaving a foot of space between them.

Esme grabbed a golf-ball-sized ruby red jewel from her desk and handed it to Amy. “Look into this.”

“O-okay,” Amy said, playing along. She lifted the jewel up close to her face and gazed into it. “What am I supposed to see in…?” But, her voice trailed off as she noticed the jewel begin to glow a faint red, which gradually brightened until it felt searingly brilliant. She found that her eyes were so transfixed by the jewel, though, that she could not look away or even squint. The jewel seemed to drift closer to her. Then, gravity shifted, and suddenly she was falling down into the bright red glow.

The glow faded, and when Amy could see the room around her again, she realized that everything now had a red tint to it, as if she were wearing rose-colored glasses. She tried to speak and ask what was going on, but she soon became aware that was not possible. Something had gone seriously wrong.

Not only would her mouth not move, but she did not sense that she even had a mouth anymore, or even lungs to breathe with. In fact, she could not feel her body at all. She could see, but she had no eyelids to blink with or even eyeballs to turn. Her sight seemed to be directed any way she thought to observe. It was then that she noticed something that made her want to scream.

Beneath her was fabric, and above her were a pair of giant mounds. Breasts, she realized. Below her, she could see the fabric switch to denim with a pair of enormous thighs beyond. It seemed as though she were laying on the belly of a giant woman. She tried to move, tried to call for help, but she had no way to do anything but observe her surroundings.

Then, she noticed another giant beside her. The girl, Esme, smiled down at the face of the giant body Amy was resting on. Then, the giant girl looked down at Amy and smiled even wider.

“Feeling a little cramped in there?” Esme asked, reaching her enormous hand down to wrap around Amy and lift her immobile self up. It was then that she became aware of the shape of the translucent red container she was in. It was about the size and shape of a golf ball when compared to the giant girl's hand.

The ruby! Amy thought, realizing what had happened. I'm inside the ruby somehow!

As impossible as it seemed, that was the only explanation that made any sense. She looked back at where she had just been and was horrified to discover her own giant body lying motionless on the bed below, her legs bent at the knees, feet resting on the floor. Somehow, it seemed, the gem had pulled her mind out of her own body!

“It's magic,” Esme explained, as if responding to an unspoken question. “I'm a witch. I've trapped your soul in this gem.” The girl looked around and added, “Unfortunately, I can't keep you in there for very long. I'll need to give you a more person-shaped container if I want to store you for a while.” There was a moment of silence as the girl considered what to do. Her face brightened up and she said, “I think I should have just the thing in my closet… if I didn't already throw it away.”

The girl stood up and Amy felt herself being carried across the seemingly giant room over to the closet. She watched helplessly as the girl dug around in old boxes, kicking up dust, until at last, she said, “There it is!”

Esme pulled a dress-up doll from a box, a smiling plastic Babra wearing a red dress, although it might have been any color as everything looked red from Amy's perspective.

“Here's your new home for the night,” Esme said, pressing the gem against the doll's torso. Again, the gem began to glow around Amy. That falling sensation returned and Amy felt herself drop, exiting the redness of the gem to the emptiness of the air between herself and the doll. She felt like panicking and trying to resist in some way, but there was little she could do with no limbs to flail or mouth to scream. She just sank into the plastic of the doll, her single point of perspective spreading outwards, filling the shape of the doll's body as it expanded. Then, the hollow plastic body was hers, the doll's eyes her only perspective, fixed and unmoving, the doll’s smiling mouth, her mouth, also fixed and unmoving. She tried to move her plastic limbs, but even though she could sense these stiff arms and legs she had no control over them. She could feel the girl's giant hand wrapped around her body, but she was as paralyzed and powerless as any other doll.

“There you go,” Esme said, turning the doll's unmoving eyes to face her huge face. Amy could hear the girl from her plastic ears and see her through her plastic eyes, but her smiling mouth could make no reply no matter how desperately she wanted to beg to be put back in her real body again. “Better get comfortable,” Esme said. “You're gonna be in there for a while.”

Esme walked over to her desk and sat Amy's doll body down on it, bending Amy's straight legs up, spread-eagle, to balance her on the desk top beside the huge old book. Esme carefully directed Amy's perspective to force her to look at the bed, where her true body lay, still breathing but unconscious.

Esme walked over to the bed and lay down on it, her head resting comfortably on her pillow as her calves rested on the belly of Amy's real body. Satisfied that she was comfortable, Esme sat up and placed the ruby between her ankles on the belly of Amy's body beneath them, putting both bodies in contact with the gem. Then, she lay back down and shut her eyes.

The ruby glowed again, lighting up the room in red. Then, the glow vanished.

For a moment, there was silence and nothing in the room moved. Amy's real body and Esme's body lay just as motionless as the doll body Amy was trapped inside. She wanted to look around and figure out if there was anything around her that might help her, but she could not turn her perspective at all. Her eyes were fixed looking in one direction, unable to even blink.

Then, she watched in horror as her human body began to move on its own, as if she were watching herself wake up from a nap from the outside.

Amy's real body sat up, shifting Esme's feet to its lap as it did. The body's eyes blinked and lifted its hands up, flexing its fingers. The body's mouth smirked in a way that Amy recognized. It was the same expression she had just seen on Esme's face, looking even more disturbing now that she was seeing it on her own face.

The body’s hands explored the shape of itself as if it were unfamiliar, spending a good deal of time on the softer places.

She's in my body! Amy thought, wanting to jump up and fight the little witch. She's taken control of my body. Get out! Don't you touch me! As outraged and furious as she was, Amy was powerless to do anything. In fact, as an even greater indignity, she was forced to watch as the little witch controlled her real body.

Esme in Amy's body carefully repositioned her unoccupied body's little girl legs and feet behind her on the bed and stood up.

“Whoa,” she said with her stolen voice, holding out her arms to balance the unfamiliar bulk of this bigger body. “I'm huge!” She looked down at her feet. “So tall! So… grown up!”

Amy wanted to cry in frustration, but she knew her dry plastic eyes would not be capable of tears even if she had control over them.

Esme in Amy's adult body then turned her attention back to her girl body below.

“Look at little me,” she said. “Such a shrimp.”

Esme sat Amy's big behind down on the bed next to her original body's little behind. She used Amy's fingers to probe her original face, feeling the shape of her young features, poking her own nose, tracing the shape of her ears, opening and closing her mouth as if she were playing with a puppet.

“So, weird,” she said. “I look like such a little kid.”

Amy could only watch as Esme shifted her abandoned body to the side and lay down on the bed, positioning Amy's body shoulder to shoulder with her own. Esme looked down, and wiggled Amy's toes as she marveled at how much longer her new legs were than her old ones. She lifted up her little girl hand in Amy's adult hand and placed palm against palm, marvelling again at the relative size of the two bodies’ hands.

“I'm an adult,” she said, blissfully, as she returned Amy's hands to touching Amy’s body. This time, though, the intent was not just to explore.

Amy felt like crying and screaming and attacking the girl all at once. Trapped as she was in the doll body, her frustration and fury only grew stronger as she was unable to even shut her eyes to what was happening, forced to watch as the witch amused herself.

***

In time, as the evening wore on and Esme kept playing inside of her stolen body, something broke inside of Amy's mind. It was too much for her to take. She went catatonic, becoming as thoughtless as her doll body was motionless. Her mind had given up trying to resist or even exist. She wanted oblivion, but the best she could have was dissociation, a complete surrender to this new body. She was forced to be a doll, so that was what she would be, just a mindless, plastic toy. A doll could not suffer. A doll could not feel horror. A doll just existed. It had no intentions of its own. It felt no emotions. It could not suffer. It just… was. And, that was far better than the reality, being a person trapped in a doll being forced to experience all of this.

When, at last, Esme used the ruby to swap them back into their original bodies, Amy did not attempt to move. She just lay there breathing, not thinking, not interacting with life at all. She was not alive, after all. She was a doll. Dolls don't do anything. They just exist and are played with by little girls.

“Come on,” Esme said. “It wasn't all that bad. You must have enjoyed that at least a little bit.”

Amy did nothing. Amy was nothing.

“You awake?” Esme asked, sounding a little concerned now. “You're not still in the ruby, are you?”

No response. No one was there to respond.

“No,” Esme said, having peered deeply into the gem. “Not in there. You're back where you belong. What's the matter? Move. Say something.” She shook Amy's body as if to wake her up.

Amy's flesh moved. She was a flesh doll, freshly showered, technically alive, but a doll, still.

“Oh,” Esme said, realizing at last the severity of the damage she had done to Amy's mind. “Oh no.”

***

Hours later, Esme's mother arrived home. She found Amy lying on Esme's bed, covered only in a towel, with Esme desperately searching through a pile of magic tomes on her desk, attempting to find a way to repair a traumatized mind, or, at the very least, to get Amy out of her bed and back home to be catatonic there instead.

Her mother sighed, realizing that she had just created another emergency as she tried to deal with a different one.

“I didn't mean to break her like that,” Esme said. “It was an accident.”

“What did you do?” her mother asked, sounding more exhausted than worried.

Esme told her mother everything.

“You could have just left her alone,” her mother said, sighing, after having absorbed the whole story.

“I'm sorry.”

“No. You're not.”

“I thought she'd be fine after I put her back.”

“You didn't. You just thought she'd be well enough and scared enough to let you get away with it.”

Esme did not respond.

“This is a real problem you created for us.”

“What do we do?” Esme asked.

After a minute of consideration, her mother said, “She's going back into the doll, and you're going back into her body, again.”

“What?”

“You'll take her home, pretend to be her for a day. Then, you'll take her to the beach. At about noon, you'll walk her body near the shoreline and lay her face down on the sand.”

“And, drown her?” Esme asked, not sounding quite horrified but definitely surprised.

“You'll leave her alive on the sand, clearly in distress,” her mother explained. “Then, set yourself free of her body.”

“But…” Esme said, sounding worried. “I'll just be a floating spirit.”

“Your true body will be here, unoccupied. Spirits always tend to return to their homes. Your spirit will find its way back, naturally. Then, I'll release her spirit from the doll body, and it will find its way back to her true body on the beach.”

“Oh,” Esme said. “They'll think something happened to her there. Like, maybe she almost drowned or something.”

“Exactly,” her mother said, sounding almost proud.

Esme paused and sounded worried again. “What if she starts talking again and says what I did to her.”

“Let her talk,” Esme's mother said. “They'll already think she has lost her mind. No one will believe her if she starts telling wild, perverted stories. Besides, they will have seen her acting normally after leaving here. Who could blame us, then?”

“Right,” Esme said. “Okay. Let's do it.”

When the ruby had done its job and Amy was back in the doll body, she almost allowed herself to feel more at ease to be freed from all that moving flesh. However, that was not something a doll would feel. A doll would feel nothing, so she felt nothing.

Somewhere, in a deep part of Amy's fractured mind, she was aware of the witches’ plans and knew what awaited her in the future. Soon enough, she would be flesh again, and she might even be coaxed into acting like a flesh person again, someday. For now, though, she was a doll, a plastic possession, and in some fundamental way she knew she always would be.