Beatrice could hear birds chirping around her. That was the first sound she heard when she woke up. The first sense to return to her as she exited her sleep was her sense of sound.
Next came touch. She felt a slightly warm sensation on her arms as the sun bore down upon her. And then she felt a cold, damp sensation around her left leg. It seems that her pants were wet… but from what?
"Why… why do I feel this way?" she thought to herself. Though for some reason, the thought felt foreign to her even though she was sure it was her own.
Following her sense of touch came her sense of taste. Her own mouth didn't taste any different from how it normally did – just that normal, neutral taste with maybe a bit of egg in there from her breakfast. Yet for some reason, it felt foreign to her. It didn't feel right.
"What is this taste?" she thought. Despite knowing the answer, she still had that thought anyway… how unlike her, she thought.
Then came her sense of smell… and what a sense it was! The first thing that greeted her nostrils was the strong scent of the coffee she had dropped earlier. She could barely smell it when she bought it, and that was when it was fresh out of the pot! Yet now she could smell it so clearly it was as if she was drowning in it! Figuring that her nose was right next to her coffee, she tried to get up, but the smell didn't get any weaker. Rather, she was instantly greeted with even more smells. She could smell the soil in the greenhouse, fertile and freshly watered. And then the flowers! There were so many different pleasant floral scents that greeted her nose that she almost gagged from the shock! And they were all just as strong as the scent of the coffee she had smelled first.
"Hungry…" she thought, listening to the growling of her own stomach. But she had just eaten breakfast; why was she hungry now of all times?
After that came her sense of equilibrium. She suddenly felt dizzy from jolting upright from the strong scent of the coffee that assaulted her nose like smelling salts, and as she tried to regain her balance despite still sitting on the ground she only had one thought in her mind.
"Dizzy! Can't see!"
"Dizzy! Can't see!"
Suddenly, she opened her eyes and saw the world around her. It looked… strange. Or rather, it felt strange. Something was off, and she couldn't put her finger on it. It almost felt to her like nothing looked the way it should, but she didn't know why. Everything looked the way it had looked when she first entered the garden. Nothing looked different… so why did it feel different? The first thing she noticed was the bench to the left of her, which she tried to grab on to for support. Strangely, though, her hand missed the first time by a few inches and she had to reach higher to latch on to it. As the world stopped rocking around her, the next thing she saw was that her left leg was drenched in her spilled coffee.
"Defibrillator!" she grunted. "Though I suppose it did live up to its namesake; I'm wide awake now!" she thought.
She gripped the bench tighter as she stood up so she could walk back home. She supposed she'd have to go home to get changed and hopefully clean the coffee stain out of her pant leg before it settled in.
She reached her arms out to stretch her stiff joints and suddenly felt something move swiftly along her back. She turned around to face it, but saw nothing. It must've been the wind blowing.
She didn't know when she fell asleep or how long she had been sleeping for. The last thing she remembered was seeing a fight between a freaky-looking hornet and a weird bee-like insect. She knew she had just had a strange dream… but she couldn't remember any of its contents. She hoped she hadn't been sleeping in the coffee for long… but judging from how cold it felt, she probably was.
"Dammit, I- WHOA!" she yelled as she suddenly fell to the ground. She had tried to walk, but her leg got caught on something. She reached her arms out in front of her to brace herself for impact. She had expected the fall to hurt… but in the next moment, she found herself surprised by how the ground felt when it hit her elbow. It felt… harder than normal – like her elbow had made direct contact with the ground instead of being cushioned by a thin layer of skin.
"Ah!" She yelled. "That hur-"
And then she paused. Her arm didn't look right. As her vision came back into focus, she couldn't believe what she saw.
"What the fuck!?" she yelled, jumping back to her feet. Holding her arm in front of her, waved it back and forth to check if it was really hers.
"My arm is yellow!? Am I dreaming!? Oh my God, do I need to go see a doctor!? And what's this on the back of it!?"
Turning her arm, she saw that atop her forearm was a weird, dark brown protrusion with a large spike poking out of it. She reached out to touch it with her other arm before stopping and noticing that it looked the same.
"What the…!" she then looked down and noticed that her shirt didn't seem to be on right, like it was too tight, but when she tried to adjust it her back suddenly started hurting.
"Ow!"
"Wait, this isn't right! What's going on!?" she thought. Suddenly, a panicked emotion welled up within her and for a brief moment the fear overtook her and she lost control of her own actions.
"Where is it!? Where is it!?" she thought, though what her body was crawling over the ground looking for she didn't know.
"What's happened to me!? Why am I like this!? And where is it!?" her mind kept repeating these three questions over and over, and she felt she was going insane. If this was a dream, which it most certainly was given how weird her arms looked, she wanted desperately to wake up from it. So, with all her might, she reared her arm back and gave herself a mighty slap.
"OWWW!" she yelled, stumbling back from the impact. Since when could she hit that hard!? It felt like she had just been punched! And why did her hand rebound from her face like it did? It felt like she had tried to punch hard plastic!
"That hurt… wait, that shouldn't hurt! I'm dreaming! I must be dreaming!" she exclaimed before suddenly something dawned on her. It hurt when she fell earlier, too. And the smells that she smelled earlier… could still smell now… were too strong, too vivid for her to have dreamed up. There were even some smells there that she was sure she had never smelled before… but for some reason, they almost seemed familiar to her. What's going on!?
She raised her arm in front of her face and saw that, indeed, it was still just as yellow and weird as it was earlier.
She then looked down past her shirt which was bulging out over her chest far more than it normally should and saw that her pants were very loose and beginning to sag around her legs. She could barely even see her own feet… that must've been what she tripped over earlier. She did a double-take and saw that her shirt was hanging down past her waist, and she was sure that she hadn't put on a loose-fitting shirt this morning.
"No way!" she exclaimed, pulling her pants up and running to go look at her reflection in the small fountain in front of her. But as she ran, she tripped yet again – this time over her own boots, which felt clunky and wobbled around her feet as she tried to walk. It was like she was wearing shoes at least a size or two bigger than her own feet.
No… no no no no no!" she muttered, shutting her eyes and clutching her face. "This can't be happening, surely this is a dream, I'll just open my eyes and I'll wake up in my bed and everything will be normal… right!?" she thought.
Suddenly, another thought rang out in her mind – one that sounded like it might be her own, but which certainly wasn't.
"Who are you?" it asked.
Ignoring it, she opened her eyes and saw the same sight that greeted her last time – pitch-black hands, yellow arms, weird forearm protrusions – she hadn't woken up from whatever dream this was.
"I said, who are you?"
Her eyes tearing up from the pain and confusion, she continued toward the fountain. Right as she reached its edge, she stumbled and caught herself on the stone lip of the fountain's basin. When her eyesight cleared, she couldn't believe what stared back at her from the water.
"Can you even hear me? I'll ask you once again – who a-"
The voice in her head stopped. By now, Beatrice would have figured out that something was trying to talk to her from within her own mind. But what she saw in that fountain shocked her to her very core; it shocked her so much that she couldn't even hear her own thoughts. It seemed to shock the voice inside of her as much as it shocked herself, too, as the voice didn't even finish its sentence when she saw what was reflected in the still, crystal-clear water of the stone fountain.
It was Beatrice – or at least, it should have been. But it appeared to be more of a facsimile of her own face than the one she was born with. It was sunny-yellow, and her soft pink lips had been stained a bright orange. She briefly removed her sunglasses, which had somehow managed to stay firmly attached to her face all this time, and was momentarily blinded by the bright, summer light cascading down from the sky. When her vision cleared, she examined her eyes. Her eyes were still green… thank God. Wait… no, on closer inspection, they were gold. No, they were still green… what? They appeared to somehow be simultaneously gold and green, as though her irises were a green oil that had been mixed with a golden water that was being drained in whirlpool toward the ink-black abyss of her pupils. She couldn't stop staring into them… the unnatural combination of colors was almost hypnotic. But it wasn't the part of her face that startled her the most.
Her hair had become a bright yellow – though it was darker in coloration than her face was. And sticking out from it were two long, black strands at the top. No, they were way too thick to be hair. The moment she noticed them, they suddenly moved and she felt her hair shift around them as they did!
"AAH! WHA!?" she yelled, jumping back and breaking free of whatever spell the fountain had on her. She didn't know how long she had been staring into it. She shook her head and felt the weird black things on top of her head. They moved when she touched them, and she could even feel her fingers as they ran along them. They felt hard… and weird! So weird!
"That… that can't be me, can it?" a thought entered her head which she wasn't sure was entirely her own, although she thoroughly agreed with the message behind those words.
She put her sunglasses back on and approached the fountain once again to see if this was real, if any of this was real, or if that reflection was somehow some kind of sick prank. But as she looked at herself in the water again, she saw that nothing had changed since the last time she looked into it. Her face and hair were still yellow, her eyes were still weird, and the weird black things were still on top of her head. She could see her own black hand juxtaposed against the bright yellow of her hair. The hand in the fountain moved when she moved hers. It was definitely her hand. The reflection wasn't lying. This was what she looked like.
Suddenly, the water began to ripple around the reflection of her eyes. As the ripples spread, her reflection distorted and her vision started to blur. She felt dizzy… and sick. She wanted to throw up. She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. No… she was already crying.
As her tears continued to hit the water, her heart began racing and her breaths became ragged. She couldn't believe it. She wasn't dreaming. She had to call someone. Wait, no, who should she call? Who would believe her? Who wouldn't freak out seeing a woman who looked like this walk down the street? How was she going to get home without being seen like this? What was she going to do?
She slowly slumped down with her back against the fountain, but that only caused her back to hurt for some reason. Her arms and legs were trembling like she was in an earthquake. She couldn't move. She tried to speak, but couldn't. Her voice caught in her throat and she tried in vain to choke back her tears. But all she could do was dam them up, and like a mighty river they soon overwhelmed her dam and burst forth.
She lay like this for some time, not knowing what to do or who to talk to. All she knew was that the life she had was going to change forever. What would Jonah think when he saw her? What would Alice think? What would her future clients think? And what would happen if the news caught wind of her? Surely her private life would cease to exist. "Breaking news: Weird-looking prosecutor with weird skin and a weird face and a weird head represents the State in murder case!" That's what the headlines would look like. No, she'd be lucky if the State would even hire her looking like this.
Such was the self-destructive chain of thoughts she led herself down. But amidst all of this, a small voice kept trying to reach out to her.
"Calm down… please calm down… CALM DOWN! I NEED YOU TO FOCUS RIGHT NOW, OKAY!? YOU CAN PANIC LATER, ALRIGHT!?"
Suddenly, Beatrice sat up and looked around her. As she sat up, it felt like part of her back was still on the ground even though she was sitting fully upright. It felt really weird, so she fully stood up to relieve the sensation. She then looked around her for the source of the voice, but to her relief she didn't see anyone. After all, she couldn't let anyone see her like this!
"This is… going to be a bit difficult for you to understand, but you're not able to see me because I'm you," the voice said in her mind.
Startled by the voice, she jumped back and looked around again. "I don't understand this… who are you?" she asked, her voice quivering.
"…did I not just tell you that you can't see me?" the voice grunted. "As for who I am… I believe I already told you that as well, although I didn't exactly give you a full answer. I'm not sure I can fully trust you with that information yet. For now, just call me, 'Am.'"
Beatrice continued worriedly glancing around her, although now she was trying to determine if anyone would hear her talking to this strange voice. She didn't want anyone to overhear her talking to herself and find her like this. She also hoped she'd find someone filming her who would jump out at her and yell that this was all an elaborate prank but sadly, no such person was to be found.
"I don't understand… what's going on? Did you do this to me?" she asked, walking back up to the fountain and pointing at her reflection. "Change me back; I don't want to look like this. Please!"
"…I'm really, really sorry, I truly am, but I don't know how to do that. I'm not even fully sure how we became like this to begin with," the voice answered, forlornly. It was at this moment that Beatrice noticed what the voice sounded like. It was a soft, feminine voice, although it had a sense of authority to it that she hadn't picked up on until now. It even almost sounded somewhat like her own voice, though she was sure she was just imagining that part.
"What!? Wait… we!?" she choked.
"You don't have to speak so loudly! And I'd prefer you don't. I don't want anyone to see us like this. You can speak at any volume and I will be able to hear you as long as you yourself are able to hear your own words," 'Am' said.
"You still didn't-," Beatrice started to exclaim, then quickly lowered her tone, "uh, I mean, you still didn't answer my question. What do you mean by, 'we,' and 'us?'" Beatrice asked, continuing to glance around for other people as she grabbed her purse off the bench she had slept on and walked toward the small unisex bathroom near the fountain to hide herself.
"Wait! I need you to find something! Don't go into that place yet!" the voice suddenly yelled, sounding rather urgent.
Stopping suddenly, Beatrice groaned. "Look, you still haven't told me what's going on. Why do I look like this? And why do you keep saying, 'we?' I don't have to do a damn thing you tell me, and my current priority is hiding myself until I can either find a good place to keep talking to you or call somebody I can trust to help me work through this. So far you've given me nothing but more questions and exactly zero help, so why should I- whoa!"
Suddenly, Beatrice stumbled to the ground. It was a rather clumsy fall, as if she'd suddenly forgotten how all of her limbs worked. Her elbows were starting to hurt quite badly from the amount of times she'd fallen on them within the last ten minutes.
"Owww… wait, what the fuck happened!? Wait, WHY CAN'T I MOVE!? HOW CAN I HEAR MY VOICE!? WHY IS MY MOUTH NOT MOVING!?" Beatrice shouted. For some reason, she had suddenly fallen to the ground and she couldn't get herself back up. She was still moving, but she wasn't controlling any of her limbs. It was like someone was puppeteering her own body and she had to sit back inside of it and watch. She could still see, feel, hear, smell, and taste, but for some reason she couldn't move. And any time she spoke, she could hear her voice but her mouth would not move to form the words she spoke.
"WHY AM I NOT SPE- oh," she yelled, clasping her hands over her mouth as she realized she had regained control over her own body. She quickly got up, brushed off her elbows, and glanced around to make sure nobody had heard her. Thankfully, it appeared that she was completely alone in the garden.
"What you just experienced is what I've been experiencing ever since we woke up. That feeling of helplessness, of not being able to even move your own limbs, of somebody else controlling your body – that's how I feel right now. I say, 'us,' and, 'we,' because, 'we,' is the correct word to use. I am in this body and so are you. I can see everything you see, hear everything you hear, feel everything you touch, smell everything you can smell, and taste everything you taste. Everything you experience, I experience too in real time. I can even feel your emotions," 'Am' stated.
At that, Beatrice was stunned. She didn't know what to say. She suddenly felt dizzy, as if her entire world had turned upside down. She stumbled to her knees and clutched her head as she tried to process this revelation while the voice in her head kept speaking.
"…I am choosing to let you use it right now and simply ask you to help me because if I tried to control our body, what just happened to you a few seconds ago would be the result. I don't know how this body works. I don't know how to work its limbs, its mouth parts, its speaking function… none of it. I know that's a lot to take in, and I hope you understand that while you were panicking earlier, I was coming to terms with what had happened to me. I sincerely hope that you're able to come to terms with it as quickly as I did because I'm not sure how much time we have. Now-"
Having regained some mental clarity, Beatrice suddenly interrupted 'Am.' "Wait, you mean to tell me that we're sharing the same body right now!? Are you serious? You mean you're… you're in my head!? What the fuck!? How does any of that make sense!?" Beatrice at this point was making no attempt to be quiet anymore. This was all too much to take in. First she wakes up and her clothes don't fit, then she looks like a freak, and now she's got somebody else living in her head!? What was next, was she suddenly going to start shooting laser beams out of her eyes!?
"… yes, I'm afraid that's correct. I hope you understand that don't want to be in this situation any more than you do, but at the moment I'm not sure how to fix this. But as I was going to say earlier, I really need your help. There's a very important spear – it has a silver handle and a gold tip that resembles a flame and it also has several jewels in it. It's probably only about the size of one of your - what do you call those – the little things at the end of your limbs that you use to grip objects. It's about that size probably," 'Am' replied.
"Wait, do you mean fingers?" Beatrice asked, holding her hand up to her eyes so 'Am' could see it as she wiggled her fingers.
"If that's what they're called, yes," 'Am' replied.
"Hold on, 'Am,' are you not human?" Beatrice gasped, her eyes practically jumping out of her skull in shock.
"Right, I forgot to mention that. I am not human. I'm a creature very similar in nature to a bee, which is probably why we have a yellow exterior and antennae," 'Am' replied.
"Wait, that's what these are!?" Beatrice exclaimed, reaching her hands up to grip the two black things on top of her head. Suddenly, the air around her smelled a lot like dust and sweat.
"Yes. Look I really need you to start looking for that spear, it's really important. It's more important than you could possibly imagine, so please start crawling on the ground to look for it. You can continue asking me questions while you look and I'll answer them to the best of my ability," 'Am' said, getting annoyed.
"Why should I…" Beatrice started to ask, but then she shut her mouth and reconsidered her current situation. She was currently sharing a body with a weird bee-creature who could talk to her and take over her body at will. It was probably not a good idea to make 'Am' angry. "Sorry, sorry, if we're going to share a body then we should definitely try to get along and trust each other. I'll start looking."
While she crawled on the floor looking for the spear, her mind was racing as she tried to figure out why Am's description of the spear sounded so familiar to her. Suddenly, it hit her: she had seen a spear that fit that exact description not too long ago and it was being clutched by a very wounded bee. Suddenly, she crawled over to the bench where she found the bee. Sure enough, there it was, stranded next to a spilled cup of coffee and the headless corpse of a strange hornet.
"Yes! That's it! Grab it!" Am's voice gleefully shouted in Beatrice's mind.
It looked exactly like how 'Am' had described it and how Beatrice remembered it: gold tip, silver handle. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to have several small jewels encrusted throughout the handle and on the tip as well. The moment Beatrice touched it, it suddenly grew to match her current size. The shock sent her reeling back.
"AAH! What the hell!?" she screamed, crashing backwards.
"Sorry, I should have mentioned that it would do that," 'Am' said, sheepishly.
"You think!?" Beatrice exclaimed. But then picked herself up and approached the spear. She felt… drawn to it, like she was meant to hold it. She reached down and picked it up. It was surprisingly lightweight given that it was comprised of several heavy metals, and it handled perfectly. It was covered in several intricate designs that got more intricate the closer they got to the jewels.
"Whoa…" she said, thoroughly entranced by how the jewels dazzled in the sunlight.
"I'm so glad it's still safe," 'Am' said, relieved.
"What even is it? And wait, were you that bee I saved earlier from that hornet?" Beatrice asked, still engrossed in the intricate channels that ran throughout the spear. They almost looked like blood vessels, with the jewels being their destinations.
"That is… no, I'll tell you what it is when we have to use it. But suffice it to say that I will never forgive you if you lose it," 'Am' replied, her tone solemn. Beatrice was a little frustrated that 'Am' wouldn't tell her why the spear was so important, and she was a little concerned about what 'Am' might have meant by, "…when we have to use it," but she could tell by Am's solemn tone that the spear was not an object to be taken lightly. Beatrice's and Am's emotions and sensations were linked, and Beatrice felt a strong sense of relief in the back of her mind the moment she had laid eyes upon the spear. She hoped it was just some kind of ceremonial heirloom important to wherever 'Am' came from, as it looked too ornate to be used outside of anything other than ceremony. If she didn't have to fight anybody with it, that would be best.
"I can tell you're feeling a bit worried by what I just told you," 'Am' said, apparently having felt Beatrice's worry alongside her. "This spear's purpose is not combat-related, so rest assured that I won't be having you fight with it."
At that, a profound sense of relief washed over Beatrice. She was a lot of things, but a fighter was not one of them. As if sensing this relief, though, 'Am' continued before Beatrice could get too carried away.
"Don't feel too relieved just yet. I'll still need you to protect me as I'm incapable of fighting on my own in this body. There are certain enemies who have been trying to kill me for the past several weeks, and I'll need you to protect me if they find us," 'Am' said.
At that, Beatrice was alarmed. Her eyes widened, but suddenly, an idea occurred to her. If the spear being held by that bee earlier was the one she was holding right now, and 'Am' was some kind of bee, then was 'Am' the one she had saved earlier? Kneeling back down to where she found the spear, she picked up the two halves of the hornet she killed earlier and held them up to her eyes for 'Am' to see .
"Enemies!? Wait… do your 'enemies' look something like this?" she asked. Suddenly, she felt a small sense of panic within her as though she were being made to relive a traumatic memory. Startled, she clutched the hornet tightly within her hand and stepped back.
"Ah! Yes, that's it! Wait, how did you know that?" 'Am' asked. "Wait a moment… are you that human who tried to help me earlier?
"Ahh, I was right, then. So you are the injured bee I saw in that hornet's jaws when I woke up," Beatrice recalled. She was happy that her deduction was correct. But still, why were they both now a single person when they had been two only a few minutes ago? This clearly required further investigation.
"Well, at least I now know that what happened to me wasn't completely random I don't really remember anything after I picked you up, so maybe that's when it happened? Either way, it's definitely got something to do with you, and maybe with this weird hornet," Beatrice pondered aloud, reopening her hand and lifting up her sunglasses to get a better view of the mutilated insect. The world suddenly got a lot brighter around her, and suddenly the hornet seemed to change in front of her eyes! Certain parts of it seemed more illuminated than she remembered them, and some were even an entirely different color! She suddenly started to panic, instinctively shaking her hand to drop the hornet and jumping backward a few paces. The world suddenly seemed out of focus and her heart practically began jumping out of her chest! Her skin became covered in a cold sweat, and her sunglasses fell back over her eyes as she seemed to instinctively begin holding her spear in a fighting stance. She didn't know why looking at the hornet like that made her feel this way… sure, it had changed color, but that should have startled her at most, not given her a panic attack! Though in the next moment, she discovered the reason.