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What are they doing to my eyes?
Elias had thought this when he'd found himself, suddenly, strapped to a table. The bright light above him had been partially blocked by the silhouettes of figures with various sharp tools at the ready, pointed towards his face. Perhaps the memories of his senses had gotten mixed up, and that was why he remembered already feeling a pang of sharp pain deep in his skull before they'd even begun their work, but perhaps not. Perhaps his body simply knew before he did.
He knew now, of course, of what they'd done with his eyes. And he hated it.
It was a strange sensation, being in a body you could not control. Elias had to keep telling himself he wasn't simply watching a film of some kind; he was forced to sit back, unable to ever take action against the ongoing events, even if he could feel his fingers grasp a pen, or his feet against the ground. Sometimes he liked to think he was dreaming, but the other voice that now had seemed to worm its way into his head- the voice, he assumed, that belonged to the eyes also now in his head- disagreed with that notion. It never let him believe for too long that this wasn't truly happening. Maybe it sort of got a kick out of it. Actually, based on the fact that they now shared a brainspace, it definitely got a kick out of it.
“My name is Jonah Magnus,” the voice had introduced itself not long after the procedure had been completed. “Thank you kindly for your… donation, shall we say.”
What?! No, no, this isn't- what's going on? Elias stuttered out his thoughts. They never came out of his mouth, only ever bouncing around his own skull, and yet he still struggled to piece words together. I'm not donating anything!
“Oh, you already have. You did as soon as you signed that contract.” The damn bastard was smug.
…the contract?
Oh, the contract. The one the man with the frightening eyes had gotten him to sign upon being hired. What had he said his name was, again? It didn't matter much at this point, because Elias was becoming increasingly sure that that was not his name. Maybe that name belonged to the face or the body, or maybe even the voice. But certainly not to the eyes. He was starting to suspect who it was, though.
I don't want this, Elias tried to protest. Somehow, despite not being spoken aloud, his voice seemed to strain as if to cry. Meanwhile, his face- beyond his control- only slightly twitched away from a smug smile.
“I know,” Jonah answered.
*****
“You've changed a lot,” Elias’ mother told him.
She sat across from him, cup of tea in her hand, with that hard look she got when she was talking about something serious.
Because it's not me you're talking to! Elias wanted to cry out. But he could only think it. Instead, the mouth of his body moved into a slight smile. Not a smirk- something strangely gentle. Something kind and easy to love.
Mentally, Elias was pounding his fists on the glass. He craved so badly to break free, to tell his mother that it was him, her son, and he'd seemed so strange because of something beyond his control. But he couldn't do that at all. Instead, he could only watch as his mother's features contorted into something strange and unfamiliar.
The Bouchards- at least, Elias’ parents, and their parents before them, and so on- very rarely smiled, except for in family photos. In those photos, their smiles were the most fake you could imagine; they needed to look like the perfect family and that had to extend to their expressions. Elias remembered how his cheeks hurt as a child when they took photos because of how he'd had to hold it so they could get it all just right. It hurt less these days because of how used to it he was. Otherwise, every Bouchard had hard lines carved into their faces from a life of serious expressions and hard work. They never cared about anything other than hard work- or, well, as difficult as old money, academics, and stock markets could possibly be. They were working to achieve the best of the best, because a Bouchard could never have anything less.
That was why it looked very strange when Elias’ mother smiled. Genuinely smiled. There was even a soft glimmer in her eye as she said, “You're finally doing some good.”
…what?
“Although it isn't the absolute best, you're finally applying yourself like I've always told you to,” she continued. “You've become head of that silly institute, and I hadn't thought that job would go anywhere until now. You even cut that terrible, ratty hair of yours.” Elias had really liked his long hair. He'd thought it made him look cool. He was sad the day Jonah had decided it had to go.
That's not me. Can't you tell it's not me?
“Overall, you seem much more focused these days. We're proud of you.” This was probably the first time she'd used the word ‘proud’ to describe her feelings toward him. She didn't even seem to detest the feeling of the word on her lips.
That's not your son you're talking to!
“Of course,” Elias’ body answered. Elias did not want to say this. “Thank you, mother. I promise I don't plan to stop here.”
“You'd better not,” his mother looked a little sterner as she said this, but then she laughed a little, and Elias’ body did, too. They were acting like they were close all of a sudden, joking and laughing here like this!
…why haven't you noticed? Do you even want to notice?
His mother stood from her seat, and set down her tea. She didn't even finish it; it wasn't like a cup of wasted tea meant anything to her, or her wallet. “Now, I have things to attend to, as do you. Don't slip back into those nasty habits of yours, alright?”
“I wouldn't dream of it,” Elias’ body grinned as she departed.
My own mother likes who I'm possessed by better than she likes me, Elias thought. He felt like shivering. Why did his own mind feel so cold and empty?
“It's alright. This means you won't have to worry about impressing her anymore. I know how much of a problem that was for you before,” Jonah cooed to Elias, his smug voice echoing inside of a mind that was not his. “I have everything taken care of from here.”
I don't think that's what I want. There was a resigned sadness to his thoughts. He knew his opinion didn't matter.
“I know,” Jonah answered.
*****
Jonah had very different tastes than Elias did, both figuratively and literally. When he wasn't busy doing work that Elias didn't understand, he listened to boring classical music (the kind Elias’ parents had made him listen to when he was a child, thinking it would make him smarter) while he sipped on terribly bitter wines. More than that, apparently his body, even when possessed, still needed food, and Jonah liked to eat very different things than Elias.
He liked to eat things with complex flavours and… acquired tastes. It wasn't that Elias was not used to eating expensively- in fact, there were quite a few things he preferred on the expensive side, much more than the average newly graduated college student could afford. But Jonah ate strangely. He tended to eat things with too little spices, or with spices, but ones that created strange combinations on the tongue. He also tended to eat things Elias just didn't like; fancy blue cheeses, escargot, and various pricy seafoods. He also refused to eat anything he deemed to be ‘junk food,’ much to Elias’ chagrin. All in all, he had the eating habits of a rich, pompous ass. Elias hated it.
Can't we at least smoke? Elias asked. It'd always made him feel better, to get high, and he had been growing more and more distant here inside of his own mind. It couldn't hurt to at least feel a little good while he drifted away from the world.
“No,” Jonah answered bluntly. The body's eyebrows furrowed to match his displeasure. “It's rather foul. You're lucky I stopped that nasty little habit of yours. I would say I'd snipped it in the bud, but it'd grown far past that, hm? It's for the best.”
But at least being high makes things taste better. Maybe then this food would be palatable. Elias would frown if he had his own mouth to move anymore.
“You can't taste it, though, can you? So there's rather no point to that.”
…what?
Elias’ body smiled to itself. Elias, despite having no control over his body, swore he could feel the muscles in his face as they moved if he focused enough- but only if he focused enough.
“You're drifting away from yourself,” Jonah continued. He seemed so pleased as he continued to slice up pieces of pheasant and eat it. Elias’ fear was just as much a meal for him as the meat was.
He was right, too. Elias couldn't really taste it. He couldn't feel the texture of it on his tongue, either- speaking of which, why couldn't he feel the way he gripped the fork and the knife? He could see these things as they happened, but he could only barely convince himself that he was getting any sensations out of it, if at all. This was supposed to be his body. Why couldn't he feel what was happening to it?
Suddenly, Elias terribly missed the taste of poorly seasoned pheasant.
Why can't I…? I want to taste it! I want to feel it! This is my body, not yours! Elias so badly wanted this feeling to be rage, to have something he could utilize, but he found that all he grasped was fear.
“I know,” Jonah answered.
*****
“Um… Mr. Bouchard, someone is here to see you,” the receptionist had called in from the front desk. “Mister… Peter Lukas?” There was a pause as if she were confirming with him. “He'll be down with you shortly.”
Peter instantly appeared in Elias’ office with a fizzle- he needn't bother with ordinary means of travel. Whenever he did that, it'd always made Jonah's previous bodies’ ears ring, and this one was no different; Elias was just too far gone to pick up on the sensation.
“Hello… Elias,” Peter said, with a light tone of hesitance. His eyes, each of them different colours- one brown and one blue- looked up and down as he took in the new appearance. “That's what it is now, yes?”
Elias’ body confirmed with a nod. He sat at his desk (was it his now? Had it been his?), hands coupled atop it. “I was due for a change. James Wright was getting a bit old, you see, and after too long people tend to form… opinions. Anyway, it's good to see you again, Peter.”
“Likewise.” He didn't sound like he meant it. He sounded like he wanted to be somewhere else.
Elias didn't know who this Peter fellow was, but he certainly did think it strange that he didn't even bat an eye at Jonah's… change. Was he used to this kind of thing? Should Elias be used to this kind of thing? He had questions, but he couldn't ask them. He could only watch.
“Well, to discuss matters relating to funding…” Elias’ body began as he took a stack of papers and set their bottoms against the table, letting them shuffle together into a neat pile.
The two spoke extensively about funding and fees and budgets and other things Elias simply couldn't pay attention to. So he drifted. He felt himself floating. All he could do was watch the moving mouth of Peter Lukas, not listening to anything that was said, and watch as his own hand (was it his anymore?) filled out paperwork. He only zoned back in once Peter Lukas’ large form fizzled away into a fog that hadn't been there previously. It left a quiet behind that Elias hadn't been aware of previously.
I… I want… Elias struggled to find the words. He tried to think of something he could say, to assure himself he was still there, but he couldn't come up with anything; the only thing he was sure of was that he didn't want this.
“I know,” Jonah answered.
*****
Elias didn't think very much anymore. It was hard to. Everything was very far away. Sometimes he was gone, and there was nothing. Other times all he could do was watch. Watching was mostly what he did.
Sometimes there was paperwork. Sometimes there were employees. Sometimes there was blood.
That day there was blood.
There was a metal pipe in the hand of Elias Bouchard. Or something that had been Elias Bouchard. The true Elias, watching from inside, only knew about the pipe and the blood that covered the end of it because he could see it, watching from his tower; he didn’t feel it in hand, none of its weight or coldness.
There was a mangled corpse. It was pulverized and beaten into something bloody and bruised, crimson splattered across a table. Elias thought it looked a bit like a rotten fruit, though something deep in his mind compared the bright reds to a painting he'd seen in a museum as a child.
…Had he been a child once? What a silly thought. There'd never been anything other than his drifting and watching. And there would never be anything else than that.
The body- maybe it was Elias’ once, he wasn't sure- exhaled. It was the kind of sigh one might make after a long day of work; a resigned noise made by a person who'd become accustomed to their circumstances. The pipe dropped and hit the floor with a metallic echo. The viscera drip, drip, dripped into puddles of itself. No words were spoken. There was nothing much to say.
The body turned and left the room. The door slammed shut behind him, the sound already seeming so far away.
I don't know what I want, Elias absently thought to himself. It wasn't related to the scene that just occurred, but the ceaseless drifting meant he wasn't always kept on track.
“I know,” Jonah answered.
*****
The world had ended. Elias thought that was how Jonah explained it. Maybe. He wasn't listening. Had Jonah even bothered to explain it at all? He did dimly recall him using the word ‘watcher,’ though, which made sense to Elias; that was all he did these days. Jonah was doing the same now from his nice new tower.
He was surprised when noise was no longer outside of his body. All noises- or any sensations at all- for a long while had been something too distant, something he was too small and too far to reach. Now, it was inside his head, invading just like Jonah once had. It crept and crawled across and ran and hit and hurt his mind like hot electricity being poured along his nervous system. He couldn't feel his body, but Jonah could, and what he felt was pure ecstasy. Would Elias have felt the same if he were still in his own shoes? Is to drink in deep the apocalypse the same as drinking a finely aged wine?
Max had stopped trusting mirrors. They'd stopped trusting mirrors when they noticed their ears were an inch bigger than they had been the day before, but it didn't help when their right eye had grown two inches bigger after another day. It didn't help when their neck had grown thinner than was proportionate to the rest of their body, their left arm had grown seven inches longer than their right, and their eyes had changed from brown to blue. None of it helped, even if everyone insisted they had always looked that way.
Brian's mother liked to make videos with him and post them online. They'd gotten a pretty wide following; they were even getting sponsors for their videos. She used the money to buy more cameras. At one point, his mother no longer pressed the button to stop recording.
Michelle was pregnant. The baby was not hers. The baby was not a baby.
There was so much of everything. All of it was so loud and so invasive; a technicolour buffet of fear. Elias had already begun to doubt how much of himself there was left, how much of him there still was after Jonah had taken control- or if there'd ever even been a before. But now there was more of everything else than there was of him. And he lost to it.
Elias did not think anything. That was because there was nothing left that was able to think. And yet, amongst all the noise and the static;
“I know,” Jonah answered. And he sounded so, so pleased with that fact.