this just stormed into my head and I have no idea what I'm going to do with it
It's like that story about the guy who woke up as a cockroach. Or the guy who stepped into the quantum accelerator and vanished. Except Walton Kemp's body didn't vanish; it slumped to the ground, an empty husk, heart stopped and eyes bulging in surprise. The medical examiner commented to his assistant that he'd never seen a corpse look so surprised.
Walton Kemp (as far as this sentient but unformed entity could be called Walton Kemp) was flung from his body and skipped across countless millions of minds like a stone skipping across a very large pond until he settled with a plunk into the mind of two and a half year old Gaelle Headly, almost obliterating her consciousness and and causing the small girl child, all slim arms and shoulder blades like butterfly wings and warm, dark skin and eyes like dark coffee to stiffen and fall in a heap, so that her mother cried out, thinking she was dead.
Gaelle wasn't dead but she wasn't Gaelle any longer. Or rather, she was Gaelle and would remain Gaelle, but she was not the Gaelle who would have been if Walton Kemp hadn't landed in her head. It was all rather confusing even after she woke up from the six week coma and even after she looked out at the world in horror and it was still confusing after she came to terms with it a year later. Grandmother Tizzy, who held the little girl and looked into her dark, veiled eyes, claimed that she wasn't right. Gaelle only blinked and nodded but Mama told Grandma Tizzy that if she was gonna be that way she could just get herself back to Detroit and nobody would miss her.
Walton Kemp (as far as this sentient but unformed entity could be called Walton Kemp) was flung from his body and skipped across countless millions of minds like a stone skipping across a very large pond until he settled with a plunk into the mind of two and a half year old Gaelle Headly, almost obliterating her consciousness and and causing the small girl child, all slim arms and shoulder blades like butterfly wings and warm, dark skin and eyes like dark coffee to stiffen and fall in a heap, so that her mother cried out, thinking she was dead.
Gaelle wasn't dead but she wasn't Gaelle any longer. Or rather, she was Gaelle and would remain Gaelle, but she was not the Gaelle who would have been if Walton Kemp hadn't landed in her head. It was all rather confusing even after she woke up from the six week coma and even after she looked out at the world in horror and it was still confusing after she came to terms with it a year later. Grandmother Tizzy, who held the little girl and looked into her dark, veiled eyes, claimed that she wasn't right. Gaelle only blinked and nodded but Mama told Grandma Tizzy that if she was gonna be that way she could just get herself back to Detroit and nobody would miss her.