Christine watched, numbly, as Bronwyn pulled the skin off of her body. But the moment the pillowcase was separated from the stuffed cylinder inside, Christine could no longer feel it, or move it, like it was her body. Well, that answers my question, she thought to herself as Bronwyn carried her away, limp and scrunched up in her arms, and leaving the naked pillow behind. She was just the image on the pillowcase now, and not the pillow inside of it. That seemed simple enough. So why did she suddenly feel like something was missing?
After what had happened last night, Christine had been starting to enjoy Bronwyn's gentle, sensitive touch – and even starting to admit to herself that she enjoyed it. But right now, as she was being cradled in the girl's arms, she couldn't feel a thing. Not just physically - although she realized as she thought about it that she actually couldn't feel the touch on any part of her body, or the see-sawing motion of being carried down the hallway to the bathroom sink. Emotionally, there was nothing in Christine's heart as she stared up into Bronwyn's anxious, darting eyes. No arousal, and no disgust, either. All of the complicated feelings she had about Bronwyn in the past 24 hours were gone, replaced with a blank.
It was as if her entire capacity for emotion had been somehow scooped out along with the rest of her pillowy innards. The very idea should have frightened Christine down to her very core, but instead, she just calmly recognized that it was happening and went on thinking neutrally. As Bronwyn lowered her partly-folded, flattened form into the sink and grabbed a bottle of liquid detergent, the girl asked Christine, "Are you ready? Are you... okay?" All Christine could think to say in response was a flat "yes." She had no desire to say anything more, to reassure the girl - or to make her feel any more guilty than she already was. She was okay, and she was ready to be cleaned up. That was all.
Bronwyn rubbed the soapy substance against the anime girl's printed crotch, gently at first, but then with more and more vigor as the stain proved to be more stubborn. Christine watched the girl's thorough ministrations and wondered what it would be like if she could actually feel them against her own body. The word "want" had disappeared from Christine's vocabularly all of a sudden, but she knew how much pleasure she was missing out on in this moment. It was a shame, she thought to herself in a completely detached sense, that those feelings were so alien to her now. She realized that she wasn't the pillowcase, even. She was just an image printed on it, and nothing more.
-----
At the same time, back on top of the covers of Bronwyn's bed, a pillow started to move. The pillow had a lot of memories it couldn't comprehend - memories of being a human woman with some sort of name, speaking some sort of language, and then suddenly not being a human woman anymore. But as those images flashed through the pillow's mind, all it could understand was how those moments had made the thing that used to be Christine feel. It was bending itself out of shape, kicking and flailing aimlessly against the duvet it laid on, as those emotions came rushing back to it.
The pillow remembered two feelings most of all, as the experiences of Christine's past 24 hours bounced around in its head - scared, and horny. The pillow was scared and horny, too - both at the same time. The thought could never cross its mind that it should try to calm itself down and understand things rationally. So those intense emotions just grew stronger and stronger, and were left completely unchecked. Scared and horny. Scared, because the pillow had no idea what was happening to it, or why it could no longer understand the things that used to be easy for Christine, and it could feel that something had gone very wrong. And horny, because no matter how much it panicked, the pillow still felt a wave of erotic pleasure washing over it every time it flopped and kicked against itself.
If the pillow had a mouth, it would have been shrieking at the top of its lungs. Instead, the only noise it could make was the soft, cushioned blow of its stuffing against the mattress, which was not nearly loud enough to alert Bronwyn in the other room that something was amiss. Not that the pillow could tell the difference anyway. Stripped of its anime face, which had gone with the other Christine when the two were unintentionally split apart, it had lost almost all of its senses. Blind and deaf to the world around it, all the pillow had were its random flashes of human memory, and its sense of touch. The one sensation that the other Christine had lost.
But even if the pillow had eyes to see with, and a mouth to make a more discernible noise, and the intelligence to understand what had just happened to it, it still could never have hopped off the bed and run into the bathroom to beg Bronwyn to fix this. Its uncomprehending mind was completely consumed by the feelings it got whenever it touched itself. It was currently trying to fold itself in half, bending its flexible spine backwards until its "head" touched its "foot".
Holding that shape required all the force the pillow could muster, and it kept losing its focus whenever another shiver of horror ran through it. It wanted to be Christine again, even if it didn't really understand who Christine was or what had happened to her. But it also didn't want this moment to end. It was chasing an orgasm, not even realizing that it completely lacked any kind of sex organ that would bring any relief from its constant, heated arousal.
-----
Bronwyn looked closely at the pillowcase in her hands. She couldn't see a single discolored spot left on the fabric. Better than that, it was cleaner than it had been the moment she first put Christine into it. It occurred to Bronwyn that maybe she should have washed it before turning Christine into a body pillow. But then again, Christine hadn't complained.
She noticed the zipper that was still stuck to the fabric. As she grabbed her hair dryer and carefully removed all the moisture that Christine was currently soaked with, Bronwyn had to be careful not to touch the zipper. If she pulled it open even a little bit right now, she would instantly be left with a confused leopard squirming in her arms.
When Bronwyn was fully satisfied with the warm, dry, clean pillowcase in her hands, she turned the hair dryer off and smiled for the first time since she first realized the zipper actually worked. Maybe this was all going to be okay. She just had to bring Christine to the Magic Shop, and surely they would know exactly how to fix everything.
But the smile didn't last long. Bronwyn glanced over at Christine's cartoon expression, which was flat and emotionless, and her heart sank back down again. She had started to think that Christine was actually enjoying this, and she figured that an intimate aftercare session like the one they'd just shared would be pleasing to both of them. Christine certainly was warm and comforting in her hands, and the laundry-like smell wafting off of the pillowcase was just as lovely.
The stony look on Christine's anime face batted those hopes back down. It reminded her that Christine was a victim of all this, and Bronwyn felt ashamed of herself all over again. Was she really thinking that the two of them were going to become lovers when this was all over, or something as silly as that?
She carried Christine back to the bedroom, trying not to let her disappointment outwardly show. If Christine could sit there so stoically after everything that had happened, Bronwyn knew she could, too. But when she opened the bedroom door, her jaw fell in shock. "C-Christine," she said hesitantly, "I thought you were there in the pillowcase..."
Bronwyn held the fabric facing forward so Christine could see. There, on the bed, was the naked body pillow, thrashing around like it had a rabid animal trapped inside it. In its furious movements, it knocked the alarm clock off the bedside table, then rolled over in the other direction, seeming to have no idea what it was doing.
Christine - the Christine in the pillowcase - responded matter-of-factly, without a single audible note of surprise in her voice. "I thought I was in here, too."