The Second Shapeshifter

I like a good prank as well as the next person. And since I can shift skins, my pranks tend to be better than most. But it was only supposed to be a harmless prank. I didn’t know I was the one being tricked.

I should have been suspicious. After all, Ashley had been introduced to me by a mutual friend who’d told me, “She can do the same thing as you! Useful, in her line of work—she’s a con artist.” Ashley told me as much herself, when I finally met her, but it didn’t really bother me. She had a good sense of humor, and though we didn’t became close friends, we always had fun when we hung out.

It was my idea to take each other’s shapes, and Ashley enthusiastically agreed. “And then we have to do something totally outrageous as the other person, and then when people get upset, we can show that we were somewhere else!”

“Like what?”

“We can each decide what the other person does, in our shape. C’mon, Nick, it’ll be fun.”

“I didn’t say I don’t want to do it. I’m just thinking about what “Nick” should do.”

She laughed. “I’m sure you’ll come up with something good.”

We spent some time thinking about it. Finally, Ashley suggested, “We can go over to your girlfriend’s; me as you and you as someone else, and see how long until she realizes I’m not you.”

“That seems kind of unfair to Melissa.”

“C’mon, it’s a joke. It’s not like you won’t be there, and we don’t have to keep it up if it gets uncomfortable.”

I agreed, eventually, because I knew Melissa’s expression when she realized would be priceless. Ashley took my shape, and I took the shape of one of my friends, Jacob. Ashley knocked on the door.

Melissa opened it. Her gaze briefly swept over us before settling on me. “Hi, Nick. And, Nick’s friend who looks just like him.” Her face registered nothing. Ashley, however, was gaping. I am rarely shocked, so it was weird to see the expression on my face.

Melissa invited us in, and Ashley and I returned to our normal shapes. I introduced them, and explained what we’d been doing.

“Obviously,” said Melissa. “So what are you going to do as her?”

“The deal is that I get to chose,” said Ashley.

“So what should I do?”

She considered. “Get arrested. Go to the police station and confess to… murder.”

“Don’t you think that’s going a little too far?” Melissa asked.

I agreed. “How about I confess to something less serious? Theft, or I don’t know, something else.”

“C’mon, it’s not like we’re actually killing anyone! I’ll very clearly be somewhere else, somewhere with lots of people that will recognise me, and cameras, and everything.”

“But Ashley, it’s not when I’m confessing that you’d need an alibi; it’s when the murder actually takes place. And how would we know?”

“Oh.” She thought about it. “We’ll have to stage a murder!”

“Or, I could just do something besides confessing to a crime.”

“No; this’ll be so cool. You could pose as a body, and we could leave all kinds of fake fingerprints, and then you can go in as me and confess!”

“But that’ll waste so many police resources!” Melissa protested.

“Yeah. I can’t say I’ve never done anything like that before, but not without a good reason.”

“Oh, fine. We’ll wait until you have a good reason; then do it.”

I should have been suspicious about how insistent Ashley was, but I thought it was just her stubborn nature. So about two months later, when a girl asked me to help her escape her life, I called Ashley.

The girl’s name was Amy Dellon. She’d ran away from home twice, and had attempted suicide. A friend of mine who was her psychologist said that the problem wasn’t with Amy, it was with the situation that drove her to that point. He asked me to help her escape it. I do that kind of thing all the time.

So I took Amy Dellon’s form and played dead. I can’t take a form that’s not alive, or if I did I wouldn’t be able to shift back. But I can take a form that’s injured, and like Amy with slit wrists, and my psychologist friend called in some favors with a friend in the ME’s office. Amy was declared to have died by exanguination, apparently self-inflicted. Of course, at the time of her death, the real Amy was far away. And, as far as I knew, Ashley was at the mall, asking for help from salesclerks, displaying herself to security cameras, and paying for things with her credit card.

So the next day, I took her shape and went into the police station. “I killed someone,” I said, pretending to be distraught. “I can’t live with the guilt.” I said I’d killed Amy and made it look like a suicide.

I was arrested, of course. I could have gotten out of jail, but as I was being brought there something distracted the guards, so I took advantage of it. I took the shape of a guard, uniform as all, and was gone before they could even realize it.

Once I was home, I called Ashley. She didn’t answer.

The next day, an article in the newspaper told about the murder, confession, and escape. And one more thing. According to the article, Ashley Littlecomb had been arrested again later that day, at her home.

Okay, I thought, maybe she wanted that to happen; she can prove her innocence. But really, who would want to spend months in jail, waiting for a trial?

I went to visit her, in my own form. “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“What do you mean? I didn’t do any of it! I never killed anyone, or confessed, or ran away! This is all some huge mistake.” There was a desperation to her voice that was not the mischievious Ashley I knew.

I left the prison and went to Ashley’s house. I took the form of a delivery person, and knocked on her door. She opened it.

I put my foot in the door, and shifted to my own shape. “What did you do?” I demanded.

She laughed. “I think you mean, what did you do, framing poor, innocent little Ashley for murder.” She shifted, into a form similar to the one I’d thought was her true form, but clearly not the same person. A relative, probably. “I’m Carliza.”

“So this whole thing was a trick, to get me to set her up?” I didn’t wait for Carliza’s response. “Why couldn’t you do it?”

“I needed to keep her from establishing an alibi. And she knows I can shapeshift, so if I hadn’t been with her, she would have known it was me.”

“What was the point? Why do you want her in prison?”

“She called the police on me. Just because I swindled one lousy millionaire out of his hard-stolen savings, my own sister tried to send me to prison. I’m just returning the favor.”

I’d expected it was something like that. I knew she wanted me to be angry at what she’d done, or at least how she’d used me, so I said politely, “Goodbye. Nice meeting you,” and left before she could respond.

I had to make up for my mistake, of course. I could go to the authorities and tell them what I’d done—if I wanted to be considered crazy or a criminal, or both. I could reveal that Amy wasn’t dead, either by bringing her back or by impersonating her—but the whole point had been for people to think she was dead, and I wasn’t going to call that off.

So I’d have to play Carliza’s own trick back on her.

I let Ashley out first—she shouldn’t be in prison, and her presence would make the rest of my job harder. Once the hue and cry had been raised, I took Carliza’s shape and went into the police station.

I made sure none of the officers involved in “Ashley’s” first arrest were present, then went up and said, “Excuse me, there’s been a mistake. My name’s Carliza Littlecomb; I killed Amy Dellon, and came in here and confessed, but I said I was my sister, and then I escaped.”

They arrested me. I stayed in jail for a few days, so they didn’t get too suspicious about how exactly I’d escaped. They didn’t catch Carliza, of course, but that wasn’t the point. She’s wanted by the police, which isn’t much of a problem for her, except she won’t be able to use her natural shape.

Not that I thought Carliza would leave Ashley alone. So I arranged for her to go stay with Amy. They were about the same age, and I thought they’d get along. I won’t say where—that’s the whole point of faking deaths and hiding people, after all—but they’re safe, and when I talked to them they seemed to be doing fine.

It’s not that I think Carliza will leave me alone, either. And sure, I could go into hiding easily, but I’m not. I have a few extra identities stashed away, of course—anybody who can shift shapes would—and I could always take one if I need to. But I can take care of myself.

It Must Be a Mistake

I was just walking down the street, minding my own business. I know, that’s what they all say, right? But I really was. In a way, I wish I had done something wrong—mouthed off in class about the government, or hacked into classified documents, or jaywalked in front of a security camera—anything to explain why they took me. But I hadn’t. I was walking home from school, just like every other day of my life, when they jumped out of the van and grabbed me.

They were obviously government agents, in their black uniforms armed with guns and high tech radios and little computers clipped to their belts. Their voices were those of authority as they barked orders- “Hands in the air! Against the wall! Don’t move!” They patted me down and restrained me with the brusqueness of people who did this kind of thing every day, just doing their jobs. The van they shoved me into was grey and unmarked, the kind everyone knows is seen right before the kind of disappearances that aren’t talked about.

I think the man in the back of the van must have been some kind of doctor, but that part is woozy. I vaguely remember him leaning over me, and I know he must have injected me with something, because my panic began to dull and everything went very fuzzy and finally faded to black.

When I woke up I was strapped to a chair in an interrogation room. Everything was still fuzzy, and I still can’t remember that part with any clarity. They questioned me. I can’t remember what they wanted to know. I think that was probably the point of the drug; that I wouldn’t remember afterwards. Except, if they expected I’d be dead…. I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t plan that far ahead yet, at that point. What I do remember of that interrogation was my terror, and confusion—I had no idea what they were talking about, what they wanted from me. I remember trying to explain in a slurred voice that this must be a mistake, and my outraged indignation at the injustice of it all. I remember the feeling of the hot tears on my cheeks as I cried and tried to answer their questions, “I don’t know! I’ve never heard of that! I’ve never met that person! I don’t know anything about any of this! You’re making a mistake, maybe you have me confused with someone; I would never do anything wrong, I’m a good citizen!”

It was true. I was such a good citizen, that I really believed they must be making some horrible mistake. I thought that maybe there was someone who looked like me, or had the same name, that had done something really, really terrible—so bad as to deserve the treatment I’d been getting, and far worse. I imagined their apologies when they realized their mistake. They’d be truly, honestly, sorry; they’d drive me home and explain to everyone that they’d made a horrible error, and I’d been so brave, and they’d eventually caught the real criminal. Maybe they’d give me some kind of compensation—money, or an award, or something to make up for it all. After all, they weren’t bad people, and they were trying to do the right thing, they’d just made a mistake.

Yeah, I really was that naive.

Eventually they either realized I didn’t know anything or decided that whatever I did know, I wasn’t going to tell them, so they injected me again. When I woke up, I was in some kind of warehouse-like building, slumped in a chair. Across the table from me was a young woman maybe five or six years older than me—in her early twenties. I don’t know how I knew she was a prisoner, not an agent, but I knew. She seemed calm and alert, but wary too. I wasn’t muddled like I had been the first time I’d woken up from being drugged, but I was scared and confused and had no idea what was going on. I realized I wasn’t cuffed to the chair, but after looking around I knew better than to try to escape. I was at a table in the middle of the room, and around the edges of the room was a sort of wooden platform, with maybe twenty agents with machine guns standing all around it. So I didn’t try to move.

I studied the woman sitting across from me, the least intimidating figure in the room. Though after watching her silently for a few minutes, I realized she probably was a criminal. It’s not that she seemed like one, but I didn’t think she was just some innocent person picked up off the streets like me. She had this… attitude of not being surprised at anything.

After letting us stare at each other silently for maybe ten minutes, two of the agents came down from the platform and stepped up to the table. One was a kind of rat-like man, and the other was a small woman with cold eyes. The man announced, “Eya Foxgold, you know why you’re here. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Terror filled me, and I began to babble, panicked, “I don’t know why I’m here! I’m innocent, I didn’t do anything, I don’t even know what you think I did but whatever it was I didn’t do it, this is all a huge mistake, I would never do anything!” I couldn’t look at the agents, so I looked at the woman across the table from me. She gave me a sad, cynical kind of smile, like, Do you really think they care? And I knew, then, that they didn’t, so I shut up.

The rat-like agent then turned to her and said in the same way, “Holly Malacrow, you know why you’re here. Do you-”

She interrupted him, mid-sentence. “Yeah, yeah, I know why I’m here. Fuck you too.”

Just a minute ago, I’d been thinking she was a criminal, and now she was confirming it, but it didn’t matter anymore. I liked her, admired her, wished I could be as brave and cool under fire as her, wished at least that we could be friends.

The agent said, in an authoritative yet somehow mocking tone, “Holly Malacrow, you are being given the honor of ridding this county of a traitorous piece of scum!” He held up a gun, not the machine gun he was armed with but a smaller one. “You understand that if you try anything stupid, you’ll be gunned down by my colleagues. Now you can shoot her, or shoot yourself.” He smirked, and looked me over, and I could feel him imagining my dead body slumping onto the floor. He handed Holly the gun.

She looked me in the eyes, and raised the gun, and I knew I was about to die. I’d never see my family or friends again, never sit down in my desk at school, never have the chance to… so many things. I’d be one of those people who just disappear, and everyone knows what happened to them but nobody talks about it for fear of joining them. I wanted to look away, but I didn’t want to spend my last moment on earth as a coward, so I met her gaze head on.

“Make it worth it,” she said, and before I could comprehend, she raised the gun to her head and pulled the trigger.

I don’t know why they let me go. I think they must have known, probably all along, that I was innocent. Was I just a trap for her? But no, the agent really had expected her to kill me. But they could have killed me too. I’ll never know why they didn’t. I was injected again, and as I slid off into unconsciousness I assumed it was a lethal poison this time. I can’t begin to describe how shocked I was when I woke up on the sidewalk sometime later.

I managed to get home. I’d been missing for a day. My parents were frantic, and demanded an explanation. “I don’t know, I don’t feel good,” I mumbled, still bleary from the drugs. I went to sleep, and when I woke up the next day I said I had no idea what had happened, and I must have gotten really sick and collapsed somewhere. Well, I couldn’t tell the truth. Everybody knows you can’t talk about that kind of thing.

I think about Holly Malacrow a lot. I’d thought she must have been a criminal, but I think now that she was actually a rebel. Before, I would have said it’s the same thing, but I don’t think that anymore. The whole thing wasn’t just a mistake, and if the government really does things that horrible—and now that I’ve been thinking about it, I know they do; not everyone who’s disappeared deserved it, and some of their laws are just ridiculous when you actually think about them—then maybe it’s right to rebel against them.

I want to find Holly’s family, or friends, or whoever her people were, and tell them what happened. I have to be careful to do it without raising suspicion, but I have some ideas. I think they’ll be rebels too, and I’m going to join them. Because what I think about most of all was that last thing she said, “Make it worth it.” And I will.