A History of Widges

Chapter 2 - Sensations

Dedicated to @Navinal for being so excited about my stuff xD Thanks, buddy. 

I bunched my hands into fists experimentally. I could feel my muscles tense. My breathing shift. This was certainly different from inhabiting a squirrel. It took me a moment to figure out how to get this body upright. Too many muscles were involved. My stomach became hard. My back curled. And only when I had the agency to put my elbows on the ground was I able to do this thing that humans call ‘sitting up.’ Strange.

A girl. A girl named Myra. Chest contracted with fading adrenaline. Stomach complaining of hunger pangs. I was human, but this human felt empty. And in her memories, I felt hollow as well. I was not a thing. I was the absence of a thing. But now I was an absence with thoughts and recollections. Did this make me her?

Rule #6: Remember – you are not your host.

“Hah.” I opened my new mouth and emitted a sound. “Aaah.” The way I spoke made this body sound older. Not like the squeak I’d faced before possession. More…eighteen? Her actual age, I realized as I racked her brain. And there was the woman. Mother, I thought as I looked at the door Myra had stumbled through before she became me. Before I became her. I felt a mixture of sadness and hatred toward the dying woman in the room. It was exhausting. 

What had Myra’s life become? It was an army of Widges, waiting to emerge from her consciousness. Giving up college to take care of her mother. Giving up her life, her happiness, to this woman she used to love. Used to because she now resented her. She hated her mother’s every dry whisper and hated herself for feeling that way. She had already relinquished her thoughts, her dreams, her every fiber of sanity to this secluded house in the middle of a rural state. Tending to her mother’s every need. Watching the poor woman die.

Stray droplets of water dripped out of the corners of Myra’s eyes despite myself. They stung and I made her blink them away. Why was her throat closing? It felt like every tendon was contracting into a ball, fighting to get to her stomach. I coughed. What kind of an existence was this?

Wait a moment. I flexed the thin muscles in her legs and forced her tired body to rise to its feet. Mine. She was now mine. Her existence was mine. This realization was accompanied by a feeling of sheer euphoria. I would change everything.

With an experimental spring in my step, I strode down the hall in the direction of the kitchen. This body needed nourishment; Myra’s stomach felt like the insides had been scraped clean.

Her legs buckled and she fell against the wall before I could even reach the door.

My thoughts went black. Instead of memories, I was faced with vivid sensations. A want. A need. An insatiable longing. A slip of paper in my hand. Untidy scrawl. ‘Follow me.’ Feeling stuck. Feeling trapped. A blinding pain in my abdomen and a scream before nothing. Nothing at all.

I was Mary. Those were her last moments. I was my creator.

Rule #8: Flashbacks to moments leading to your creation are perfectly normal. 

Stupid rulebook.

 No, no. I was back on the floor, whimpering and clutching the place in which my appendix was buried under layers of flesh and fluid. The pain was gone, but I could still feel it. I could remember it. But I was Myra again. I was Myra. I raised her aching head off of the floor. I just needed to focus.

“Hello?"

A voice. A whisper. Not the croak from her mother’s room that she so despised.

“Is someone there?”

A squeak. Quiet. Terrified. Her mouth was moving. Speaking. Without my permission.

“What’s happening?” 

Rule #...Rule#...As I searched for a response, I came to the hard truth that no rule addressed such a situation.

Crap.