For a while Trent, now sporting the heads of his brother Dave and another boy, unknown to him, on his shoulders just stood there, unsure about how to react to this development, unsure if he wasn’t dreaming even.
“Oh great!” scowled the brown haired boy that now grew out of his left shoulder, “I can’t even move my side of the body anymore. You didn’t fuse us with your brother, you fused us INTO your brother. We’re part of him now!”
“Shut up!” snapped Dave back, “Just give it a bit. Maybe it takes a while to fully merge us.”
They continued to quarrel for quite a bit, with Trent being caught in middle of it. Now Trent was a patient and disciplined man but having a pair of teenagers screaming into your ears can wear out the anybody after a while. With a quick movement Trent raised his arms, and gripped Josh’s and Dave’s mouths, silencing them.
“Now listen up, boys,” he said, dragging their faces closer to his, “I have no idea what’s going on here, and I’m sincerely hoping that I’m asleep and dreaming this whole thing. When I remove my hands from your mouths I want an explanation as to why the two of you are growing out of my shoulders now and I want it delivered calm and in turn, understood?”
The two boys nodded and Trent released them. “So Dave, let’s start with the basics; who is this guy on my left shoulder and why were the two of you conjoined and why do I have your heads on my shoulders now?”
“This is Josh, my friend Kyle’s younger brother,” explained Dave, “the Eagle Chain you are wearing now fused us together. We searched that translated manuscript you told us about for a way to split us up again. And well...” Dave bit his lip.
“Go on,” commanded Trent.
Josh snorted and took the word, “He thought the book said the only way for him and me to not be conjoined anymore was finding a third guy to fuse with us. He thought this would merge our heads and minds too, turning us into one new guy.”
Trent cocked an eyebrow, “And you wanted me to be that third person I guess.”
“It would have made sense,” said Dave defensively, “you and me are already brothers, it wouldn’t have been that disruptive to our lives to fuse us.”
Trent chuckled, “Not that disruptive! I’m a Navy officer you little shit! And anyways, how about asking my opinion before you fuse me with you and your friend, uh?”
“You would have said no!” cried Dave
“Of course I would have!”
“It’s a moot point anyway,” chimed Josh in, “it obviously didn’t work. Instead Dave and me are now stuck us a part of your body.”
Trent snorted. God this really better be a dream. He didn’t know what he should be more worked up about, the fact that his kid brother and some other high school punk were now attached to his shoulders, or the fact that he had almost had his identity erased by those two guys. Not to mention that he now couldn’t go to his friend’s wedding, he couldn’t show up there as a three headed freak. His eyes widened. Screw the wedding! What would he do for work? He couldn’t deal with this shit.
He produced a cigarette from his uniform and attempted to light it, hoping that it would calm him down a bit.
“Uhm, excuse me,” said Josh, “I’d appreciate if you don’t fill our lungs with cancer.”
Trent took the cigarette from his mouth and look at Josh, “Pardon? First of all, it’s my lungs, not ours. And second of all, you said yourself that you’re part of me now, Girly-Locks, so I get to decide what we are doing or not. And if I say we smoke, then we smoke.”
“You might not want to antagonize Josh and me too much, Trent,” suggested Dave, “we might not be able to control your actions, but we’re still all stuck together until we find a way out of this.”
Trent glared at Dave, “Well, and you might want to think those things through before you merge with people.” He was seriously getting annoyed with those two little freaks. If he ever got out f this again he’d....
That was when the, now three headed Eagle Chain started to glow again. Astonished all three heads looked down at the pendant on their chest. The middle head of the pendant, the largest opened his beak and, to Trent’s, Josh’s and Dave’s surprise, produced a high, thin cry. The two other hands opened their beaks two and joined the middle one in the cacophony. Slowly the three heads grew together. Like if the metal had somehow melted the three heads melded into each other, mixing together into a single one. The now one headed eagle closed its beak and was silent.
The three conjoined young men suspected very well what that might mean for them. Dave’s plan had merit after all.
To his horror Trent noticed that Josh’s and Dave’s heads started to glow and grew closer to his own head. Their cheeks touched, liquefying and flowing into each other. Trent’s vision started to blur and he became light headed as their brains touched each other and started to mix.
“Yeah it’s working!” he heard Dave’s voice in his head. He was hearing his brother’s thoughts!
“Dude, this is weird,” chimed Josh’s voice in. Soon their merging minds became a hopeless chaos of thoughts, emotions, impressions and sensations. Nothing fit together; they had conflicting memories, hopes, dreams, likes, dislikes and opinions and those extremes warred against one another as the spell attempted to melt Trent, Josh and Dave down into one coherent personality.
Trent’s last thought as himself was “Fuck...” Then the avalanche of chaotic thought that their mind had become came crashing down on his consciousness and subsumed him completely into itself.
The Merged Man sat up on the floor. His past three selves had apparently collapsed when the sensation of the merger had overwhelmed them. He rubbed his head, his gloved hand gliding through a thick mass of auburn curls that reached past his ears. He looked down at his body; he was still wearing Trent’s white dress uniform, but it was way too big for him, the sleeves and legs of his pants as well as the general wideness. Standing up he noticed that the hallway looked strange, which was probably because he shorter than Trent (who had been a veritable giant), but taller than Josh and Dave, giving him an unfamiliar perspective of the room. He returned to Trent’s room and looked at himself in the mirror. The first thing he noticed was that he had either grown younger, or older, depending on the point of view, he supposed. The ages of Josh, Dave and Trent seemed to have evened out at about twenty. At a ratio of 2 against 1 the similar features of the brothers Dave and Trent had clearly won out when composing his new face, as had their light skin tone, but he did have Josh’s green eyes rather than Dave and Trent’s blue.
What was the strangest thing however, was his mind. He was full of memories that were his and not his, he stood in a room that was his and not his wearing a uniform that belonged to him yet did not. He was three people now, three individuals, three lives irrevocably fused into a single one. He buried his head in his hands. What was he going to do now?