What happens to your soul when you die? Heaven or hell, perhaps, or maybe a ghost? Either way, most people don't have to worry about it, as they don't have to interact with souls while they are alive, and once you're dead you find out yourself. Most people, that is, except for me. Unfortunately, I seem to have been born with a rather special kind of soul. I once heard it described as a revolving door, which I'd say is pretty accurate, except no one could tell me how to lock it up. Which is why, every so often, I get stuck with a temporary squatter - a soul, that is. That's right, I, Erin Tate, am a medium.
Now you might think that's not so bad, I could parlay that talent into holding dubious seances for gullible occultists, or maybe use knowledge gained from the dead to swipe a fortune, but there's no such thing as a free lunch. You see, it wouldn't be so terrible if I only had to deal with mental effects of having wandering souls take up residence from time to time. Nope, not that lucky. It so happens, whenever a loose soul happens to work its way into my body, something rather strange happens. My body will change in completely random ways to accomodate the soul, and it happens to be in ways I can't control.
I was pretty aware something was different about me as a kid, and I managed somehow to keep my little ability hidden from my friends, my siblings, and even my parents. Of course, it took a helluva lot of ingenuity and quite a bit of lying. For example, once I was possessed by the soul of a stray cat that just happened to get run over in the neighborhood. The unexplainable attractions to fish and catnip were bad enough, but that wasn't all. I ended up having cat whiskers for three days. Honest-to-goodness whiskers on my face! I had to go around wearing a doctor's mask and pretending I had a cold.
Another time, it was the soul of a frog whose swamp got dredged. I mean, really? A frog? It took every bit of self-control not to try to catch flies, but that wasn't the worst of it. My neck and chin stretched out, and all I could do was "ribbit" for a good thirty-six hours. Come to think of it, I also pretended I was sick that time: laryngitis. Managed to get away with wearing a turtleneck in the middle of summer and not saying a word to anyone. Of course, I nearly passed out from heatstroke, but that helped to sell the "being sick" shtick.
It wasn't any better when it was a human soul though. How do you explain to your teachers and parents when your hair goes from long and brunette to short and blonde overnight? Or even worse, when you have to wear sweats because your body suddenly expanded? By the time I was 16, my parents probably thought I was on drugs or something, and my siblings just thought I was weird. Therefore, as soon as I could get a side job, I moved out. While living on my own does make it easier to keep my secret under wraps, it's still not that fun waking up in the morning with a random appendage or someone else's face and trying to figure out how to hide it before school or work.
Not to mention, I can't get rid of the soul until I find out what linked it to this plane of existence and kept it from moving on, and then satisfy its desire. You try sorting through the memories of some old geezer who died a century before you were born while attempting to hide the liver spots that popped up on your arms. I had to spend a whole week and a half with that senile guy yammering away inside my head.
Like what happened to me the other day. I was headed home after my part-time job, minding my own business. I didn't even realize a soul had decided to latch on to me. It wasn't until I got home and changed my clothes that I noticed I was...