First Possession/Part 2

"First Possession" is the first story of the Universal Clarification Series.

Story
In class at 8:15am, he sat at Jonathan’s desk and examined all the various marks and scratches his counterpart had made in the wooden rim. He wondered what the significance was behind the deeply-dug hole made by at least a dozen pencils from previous occupants in previous years. Sock had never done these sorts of marks himself – he usually just doodled blood and guts on his papers back when he used to be a student. Still, he found Jonathan’s markings quite amusing in their own way.

“Dude,” whispered the Asian girl in the desk in front of him. She was holding out the quiz the teacher was passing out, so Sock took it. She turned back around while he skimmed the numbered questions, vaguely remembering some of the information from last Friday’s in-class assignment that Jonathan had loathed doing.

“Hm…” he thought aloud. He briefly contemplated answering the first question seriously, but then he figured it would be too easy to play “good student.” Instead, he smiled and started drawing a dead squirrel that was cut in half with its organs spilling out. He tried not to laugh as he finished and started another doodle of a deer with a sword through its skull, complete with dripping blood and brains.

I should’ve done this sooner, he mused. This lady’s gonna have a heart attack when she sees this stuff. . . . By the time PE came around, Sock had felt a slight twinge of head pain that was no more than a mild nuisance, so he didn’t think twice of the occurrence. He found himself on a dodgeball team in the gymnasium stripped down to Jonathan’s gym shorts, white T-shirt, and Converse with several kids around him pensively waiting for the other team to throw the ball.

The game went underway and Sock managed to avoid being hit when the ball whizzed past his leg, which meant another kid was taken out behind him. He glanced back to watch a taller boy with short brown hair jog out of the court. At first he wondered why he crossed the boundary line with the ball, but the kid hit someone, so he was able to return to the active team.

He felt another twinge of pain right before the ball drew near, so he could not react quickly enough to dodge it again. He was out and the teacher instructed him to take the ball to the other side. Sock mimicked the other kid and blinked as he surveyed the awaiting rival team members.

So I just throw it at someone, right? he asked himself. One of the other kids yelled, “Throw the ball,” so he lifted his arm, but stopped when he saw the basketball hoop to his left. Or that could be fun!

With a smile, he rushed to the hoop – ignoring the confused noises coming from everyone around him – jumped up with the ball above his head, and then smacked it against the court as he landed. Everyone went silent, watching the ball sail through the air…and then it plunged through the basketball hoop.

Bewildered and upset, the other kids stared at Jonathan. Sock was bouncing on his heels and celebrating an imaginary point scored with that shot.

"Combs!"

He stopped as the teacher approached, who was certainly not about to congratulate him. The guy’s face was turning red behind his bushy black eyebrows, and Sock knew he was frowning underneath that mustache. But even he should have admitted that he had made a great shot. . . . After PE, it was lunch time and Sock took a seat at an empty table in the middle of the room. It was the furthest from the window behind him, but smack-dab between both entrances at either side. The cafeteria bar stretched across the room in front of him, but he knew Jonathan had a lunch sack in his satchel; he eagerly pulled it out.

“Another day, another sandwich,” he joked. “How long will it take before this habit kills ya, Jonathan?” With a shrug, he put it back into the sack, rolled the edge twice over, and stowed it back into the satchel. “Today we’re eating what I wanna eat.”

He walked up to the back of the line, having observed other students entering from one end, taking a lunch tray down the bar, and picking whatever small dishes were available. He followed the crowd and decided to try the cheese pizza calzone with a side of chicken nuggets; frankly, the macaroni salad looked questionable.

“That’ll be $6.25,” the Latino student cashier stated.

"Oh, okay."

Sock dug through Jonathan’s satchel pockets until he found his black pleather wallet, and then stuck his tongue out while removing a five-dollar bill and two singles: “That’s seven, right?”

“Yeah,” the kid replied as he handed back his seventy-five cents in change, flashing a smile. “Thanks a lot.”

“You too,” Sock said cheerily. The other kid gave him a strange look as he walked away. Jonathan reclaimed his seat, putting the satchel between his feet. With the tray set in front of him, he picked up the calzone and studied it.

This looks greasy, he thought. Then he bit into it. Ah, classic cafeteria quality…

It wasn’t too long after he finished and brought the tray to the drop-off point that the food fought back. . . . It was nearing the end of the school day. Jonathan’s last class was math, which had to be at least Level 9 on the boredom scale. Sock found it much easier to tune out from the teacher’s lesson – especially since he had not been taking notes – but one subject that held his interest was a girl in the next row to his right. She was seated two desks away, but would sometimes look up and glance around the room.

Sock was thoroughly enjoying this girl; she had thick black glasses, cobalt blue hair tied in a high ponytail, a lime-yellow turtleneck sweater with a warm grey pleated skirt, and little black flats. He reminded her of that one smart, geeky girl from the mystery-solver gang cartoon series he used to watch as a kid.

At one point while the teacher was writing something on the whiteboard, that girl noticed him staring at her. Sock chuckled quietly when she ducked her head. He gave her a winking smirk the next time she looked at him, which coaxed out a nervous giggle.

“Jonathan,” the teacher warned, “One more sound and I’ll send you out of this room, do you hear me?”

Sock puts his hands on his knees under the desk as he responded with, “Oh – right, sorry,” so they resumed writing. He continued showing that one girl quirky expressions until they were dismissed.

He grabbed Jonathan’s satchel and waited for the other kids to meander away so he could clear his own path to the door. He saluted the teacher at their desk on the way out, and then ventured down the hallway just in time to see the blue-haired girl standing in front of her locker. She seemed to be organizing her books.

Sock could not resist the temptation any longer. He had to talk to her, but he was flustered by the very thought because, in life, he only ever talked to girls if they addressed him first. Now he was the one to initiate a conversation – and his human counterpart provided the perfect façade.

“Hey there,” he started to say. She was less alarmed than he had expected even though Jonathan was taller than her.

“Oh – uh, hello!” she responded cheerily. “What’s up?”

Suddenly Sock blanked out; all it took was looking down into her sweet blue eyes as she smiled up at him. He felt another twinge of pain across his forehead and started fumbling with his words.

“I, err…um…wait, hold on, I got this – I was gonna say something funny.”

She slowly zipped up her red rolling backpack and extended the handle, preparing to leave. His head pain receded, so he blinked and burst out, “I just wanted to tell you that…that y-you’re really pretty!”

That stunned her. He stared at her for a moment; then made a mad-dash for the nearest exit. . . . He stepped off the bus with a bounce in his step and hummed along to the song on Jonathan’s music player. Luckily before lunch, he had asked one kid if he could borrow a charger, so now the battery was up to thirty-six percent. He figured he had enough to last the rest of the walk back home and enjoyed the sensation the song’s bass provided. It helped him understand his counterpart’s love of Valhalla Soundbox.


 * Strike me down, but I’ll just get back up
 * Baby you can’t win, I’ll never let up
 * The money you want, you’re never gonna save
 * ‘Cause all you ever did was misbehave

Sock hummed along as best he could and swayed his hips as he walked. Suddenly a much stronger pain erupted in his head. He frowned and slowed his pace, just barely able to pause the music so he could focus on healing, but this time it was not a mere twinge for several moments. This time, his headphones fell back around his neck as he brought his hands up to push back Jonathan’s wild bangs.

Agonizing pressure engulfed his head and chest, and then Sock realized he was struggling to maintain control over his counterpart’s body. He held his breath and trembled, slowly lowering onto his knees as a fiery surge shot down his spine. With one final cry, Sock was expelled and phased through the sidewalk into darkness, recovering from a daze.

“Wha – hey!” He exclaimed, zipping back above-ground. His frown vanished when he saw Jonathan on his knees, staring wide-eyed at the ground with a hand clutching his shirt and shaking like a leaf.

“…You mad?”

The teenager slowly lifted his head, shooting an icy glare at his demon, which made him tug his scarf knot. He sat up, holding his head and wearily admitted, “I’m dizzy,” so Sock drew near to offer his assistance. Instead, he was greeted by a tight fist to the nose.

Once Jonathan recovered, he trudged home, silently fuming as he reached the front door to his house.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Sock told him. “I just wanted to see if I could do it! I didn’t mean to –”

“Stay outta my house,” Jonathan snapped. “We’re never talking about this again.”

He slammed the door on the demon’s face, which made him lower his head. He sighed and drifted away, deciding perhaps it was best to give his counterpart some time to calm down. That blow to the face had actually hurt – a lot. Regardless, possession was thrilling.


 * And this had only been his first time.

~To Be Continued~

Continuation

 * Part 1
 * Story Two -- "A Little Death"