"What are you talking about Megan?" Steve whispered.
Inside, the self conscience Steve was wondering if he was really that bad at passing for a woman.
"Remember how you taught me how to read auras six months ago? I can see that something is clearly wrong with
you. Now what is it?"
What the heck was Megan talking about? Auras?
"I...um...uh...well, I'm not quite myself today. I...lost my perspective on things..."
"Mmm hmm?" mumbled Megan, arms still crossed. "What perspective?"
Steve was floundered. If he told her the truth, he would look like a crazy woman, but if he didn't, he would
be trapped this way.
"I...Megan, you said something about auras. What were you talking about?"
"Auras, duh. Y'know what they are, it's like background magic where you can tell if someone is happy or sad,
or possessed by something. It shows a whole bunch of stuff."
"Honey...are you a witch?"
"Ohmigod, you really don't remember, do you?" Megan's eyes went wide.
Steve breathed in deeply, thinking Well here goes nothing...
"Honey, are you OK in there?" asked Janet.
"Fine mom!" shouted Megan. "It's OK, you can go ahead. You were about to say something." said Megan again, her
voice back to a whisper.
"OK, I'm not really your aunt. I'm actually your dad. Not the guy who just left, but your real dad. I was
enjoying some rest and relaxation outside, and I was about to go fishing with Carl next door. Your mom got
upset, so did Wendy, and a few seconds later, I ended up in this body, and Carl ended up in a woman's body
too. I know it sounds crazy, but it happened like ten minutes ago. I swear it. If magic really exists, and you
can do anything about it, please help me."
"OK" said Megan nonchalantly. "This is way over my head. If you really don't know who you are, here's a
refresher. You're my aunt, and yes, I know some magic. You teach me a little more about it every time I have a
sleepover at yours and Uncle Gene's house, which is like once every three or four weeks. Love spells, auras,
and all that stuff. You don't teach me the really dark stuff, but you're into that too. I don't know why you
think you're my dad, but I think I remember you saying that you were working on a spell that would give me and
Alan a better dad and my mom a better husband. It's not like dad is mean or hits us or something, it's just, I
guess my mom and dad don't love each other any more. You said you might have had a way to fix that..."
"Oh God" moaned.
"And who's Carl? Don't you mean Carly, Brooke's aunt?"
Later that day, Gene told Janet that he and Stephanie were heading home. Steve gave one last goodbye to Megan,
as well as to Alan, who had been away all day at a baseball game. Of course, one could imagine this as being
one of the worst day's ever for Steve: not only did he not get to go fishing with Carl, his kids weren't
really his in this reality, his wife was married to some idiot, and worst of all, he was now a strange woman
going home with, eek, a man who said said he was her husband. On the way home, Gene made some small talk about
what they wanted to do, where they wanted to go next weekend, etc. Steve played it by ear and tried to give
vague, appealing answers just to shut the guy up. Yeah, he was nice and all, but Steve Donaldson isn't going
to be a woman for much longer if he could say anything about it.
When the couple reached their home, which was out in the country(and FYI for you frequent readers and trivia
buffs, their home was within walking distance of the so-called "House Of Doom"), Steve immediately searched
around for any arcane stuff or spell books that might help him. He didn't know diddly-squat about magic, he
didn't even really believe in it until today, but if this Stephanie was teaching Megan how to be a witch,
maybe he could pick it up quicker in her body.
The den looked more like a library than anything else. At least ten bookcases filled the room from top to
bottom, some cases stacked right on top of the other. At least three of these bookcases were reserved for
Stephanie's magic books. Steve looked through them, some of them incredibly old and withered, others the
umpteenth "Updated" edition of older books, and so on. In one bookcase, there was a sheaf of papers sticking
out obviously. Pulling on them, Steve read the front page:
"If your name is Steve Donaldson and are currently trapped in the body of Janet Donaldson's sister Stephanie,
I regret to inform you that you are not real. You are an illusion granted temporary sapience by myself,
Stephanie Seaton-Crowley. I designed you and your parallel reality so that my sister could live with a loving,
caring husband for a while, something that I myself enjoy so much. As you might have guessed, her and her
husband's relationship isn't doing so well. Your "time limit" expired the moment that Janet had a quantifiable
amount of anger towards you. In other words, if you had done something recently to her to make her very angry,
that is what caused you to regress back into me. This is not a body swap. I repeat: you are not real. You are
just a figment of everyone's imagination. You will soon turn back into me. Please refer to the spell at the
bottom to delay your eventual termination so you can set whatever affairs you feel you need to deal with in
order. I am sorry Steve.
P.S It looks like I screwed up and made the spell's radius too large. If your name is Carl Matson and you are
currently in the body of a woman named Carly, please refer to the reversal spell below. You were not meant to
be changed. Sorry!"
{Reversal Spell}
The other pages covered how the time, place and process of the spell that brought Steve into being, and some
theoretical stuff about the nature of reality.
What next?