Mia drove us to my house. We reached my block, and I could see Brittany sitting on my steps, waiting for us.
"Park right there," I said, referring to an open space. We passed a few parked cars. I noticed two guys sitting in a black car, looking like they were waiting for someone. I didn't pay it any other attention, though.
Mia parked the car, just to the right of my house, and I stepped out. Trisha stayed behind. I saw her roll down the window in order to hear what I was going to say.
I walked up to Brittany, who was wearing a trench coat as I commanded. She stood up and said, "Here I am, ready to go." She seemed a little too cheerful about the whole thing.
"Let me examine you a minute," I said. I walked up close to her and untied the belt strap on the coat. Being careful not to let anyone see that she was naked, I opened it slightly and saw that she was naked, like I had asked. I tied the coat back up and took a step back. "Glad to see you listened," I said.
Suddenly, I heard Trisha's voice scream, "Joe, look out!" I turned around just in time to see two guys coming at me, some kind of weapon in their hands. They were about six feet away. The weapons were raised in the air, prepared to strike me. Thinking quickly, I wished they were frozen into place.
They were almost on top of me. One was preparing to lower a blow against my skull, and was just inches away from doing so. But they were stopped dead in their tracks. I quickly looked them over and recognized them as the two men I saw in the parked car. It was obvious that I had been set up. Suddenly, it struck me that it might raise some complications if two people frozen stiff were seen by other people. Knowing that my mother wasn't home, I wished they were inside my house.
After they vanished, I quickly turned to face Brittany. She had an extremely worried look on her face. She was about to run away. But I was too quick for her, and wished that she would not be able to flee. She went to turn and run, but her feet did not move. She attempted to tug them off the ground, but to no avail. I walked up to her as she continued to struggle.
She looked at me and saw the look of anger on my face. "So," I said, "You tried to set me up?"
"No, I-I w-would never--"
"Shut up!" I shouted. "Just stop your lying!" I think she was about to wet herself. "Who the hell were those two?" I demanded.
"My friends," she said. "They helped me store the loot from my robberies."
"Wait," I said. "I wished that the police knew they caught the Door-To-Door Robber, and that everything you had stolen was returned. So how did they know you?"
"They didn't," she snapped. "I had to do a lot of convincing for them to help me out."
"How?" I asked, curious to know.
"First, I had to blow both of them." She looked disgusted as she said it. "And fuck them, too. After that, I promised them half the stuff we were going to steal from your house and other houses. And a substantial sum of money I had stashed away."
"What the hell is wrong with you?" I asked. "You practically promised them everything you have. And for what? For revenge?" Suddenly I realized that what she did wasn't a far stretch from what I was doing. No, I reasoned. She robbed people and victimized people. The girls victimized others through their words. I was just teaching them a lesson, as I was planning to teach Brittany a lesson. But I was also going to take responsibility for all of them. So I wasn't like Brittany. In my mind, at least.
Brittany found that she was not able to defend herself against my accusations. "Yes," she said. "For revenge."
"You should have known better after Saturday," I said. By this time, Trisha and Mia had both gotten out of the car, obviously concerned. Trisha clutched at me again, worried that I might be in trouble, I guessed. I continued talking to Brittany. "But you didn't, so now you're in trouble."
"What do you mean, 'now I'm in trouble,'" she asked.
"I wasn't going to do anything else to you," I said. "As far as I was concerned, you paid enough on Saturday. But now, you're coming with us. And you're not coming whole." My mind laughed maniacally as I made my wish.
"Not coming whole?" she asked. "Wait, what the heck?" Prior to this moment, only her feet were stuck in the ground. Now her whole body under the neck was immobile. "What are you doing?" she asked frantically.
"Turning you into a mannequin," I said. "After your body becomes made totally of plastic, we're going to take you apart, throw you in the trunk, and go from there." I wished her trenchcoat to fall of her hardening body. She looked down and saw that her nipples were gone. If she had been able to move her arms and hands, she would have found that her entired body felt like hard plastic.
I touched her on the breast and asked, "Can you still feel that?"
"Yes," she said.
"Good," I replied. "That way you'll feel what it's like to be in several pieces."
She was about to scream, but her mouth had frozen into plastic, too. She could still make slight noises with her throat, but those stopped as well. Her entire face and head glazed up and changed into plastic. She was completely made of plastic now.
"Alright," I said to my counterparts. "Let's take her apart."
"How?" Trisha asked.
"Good point," I said. I wished that we could disassemble her body simply by unscrewing the limbs and her head. "Like this," I said. I grabbed Brittany's right arm at the shoulder and started to unscrew it. Her arm rotated in a huge windmill on her joint. As I turned it up and down, we could see it separating from her shoulder. Soon it popped right off. "There we go," I said. "Hope you're not too uncomfortable in there," I said to the mannequin. "But remember, you deserved this."
Mia unscrewed her left arm. Trisha seemed to afraid to touch the mannequin that was once a woman. I took of Brittany's head and handed it to Trisha. She looked back at it in horror. Seeing that she was shell shocked, I took it back from her. Mia picked up the arms and opened the trunk of her car. She threw them in. "I better keep the head out of the trunk," I said. "Wouldn't want any permanent damage to happen."
"I'll put it in the front seat," Mia said. She took it from me and did so.
"I need your help now, Trisha," I said. The naked girl snapped out of her trance and walked over to help me. Mia rejoined us. "I'll hold up the torso. You two take off the legs." They did so quickly. Trisha took it off quickly, eager to finish the job. We took the legs and the torso and placed them in the trunk with the arms. Mia closed the trunk.
"What about those guys?" Trisha asked. "Where are they?'
"They're in my house," I said. I couldn't keep them there, though, since my mother would be home eventually. I wished that they were standing in an otherwise empty room in Erika's house. I would deal with them there. "We'll deal with them at Erika's. But first we need to get there." We got back into the car and drove on.
Trisha's mind was still unsettled. "Joe, who is that girl?" I told her the story from Saturday and how Brittany tried to rob me. She understood why I did what I had just done to her. "But what did you mean when you said you weren't going to punish her?" Trisha asked. "What were you going to do with her then?" She looked at me with sad puppy dog eyes. The feeling she had in the bathroom was obviously not going away.
"I wasn't exactly sure yet," I said. In all honesty, I was not. My best plan so far had been to make her my real girlfriend. But I wasn't sure I could trust her with that. And now, besides, it seemed there was someone else who wanted to fill that role. "Whatever I had decided," I countinued, "is certainly going to change now."
Trisha seemed satisfied with that answer and laid her head on my lap. I ran my hands through her hair, trying to help lull her to sleep. My own feelings were conflicted now. I hadn't intended to fall for any of these girls, or to even really be that nice to them. But there was something about Trisha. She felt something for me. And let's face it, she had just saved my life. As Mia drove to Erika's house, I tried to decide what I was going to do.