I Prefer the Mind Control Rewrite - Chapter 8
This is Chapter 8 of my I Prefer the Mind Control rewrite. I hope you like it!
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When I woke up the next day, my brain wanted to fucking explode. It had passed Critical Thinking Mass and a meltdown of some kind was inevitable, never mind the fact I was probably misusing the phrase “Critical Mass” because, well, my brain didn’t exactly want to work.
I shifted in the bed, only to hit a solid object as I tried to find a more comfortable position. The solid object was my roommate, Preston. My naked roommate. Why was my roommate naked and in the same bed as me? Oh right, we had slept together in the “we fucked” sense of the word and not the “we just shared a bed” sense.
I had fucked my roommate. On purpose. When neither of us were drunk. Does “mentally unstable” count as being drunk? “We didn’t really sleep together because I kinda sorta tried to kill myself and that means any and all immediately subsequent sex magically didn’t happen?” It didn’t work like that, I knew.
Preston shifted in the bed. Sleepily, he murmured, “I had the weirdest dream. I dreamed I was part alien and had mind control powers. Funny, huh?”
I said, “Yeah, that’s pretty weird. I guess I imagined it when I thought you were controlling my mind last night.”
“You must have,” he muttered.
If I were being completely honest, it felt like he were still in my fucking mind, but it wasn’t like Preston was adopted or something. He had two regular human parents, even if the pair of them were gigantic assholes. Therefore, he couldn’t be part fucking Zimaran. It just wasn’t possible. I bet if I asked Xan and Jirrin, they would say half-human hybrids weren’t even a thing.
Preston and I washed up and put our pajamas back on. It might have been rude to wear them, but we didn’t have a spare set of clothes, and I didn’t fucking care. When we exited the bedroom and entered the living room, Xan and Jirrin were on the couch, arguing about something in the Zimaran language. You couldn’t provide subtitles so I could eavesdrop? That’s not very fucking nice of you. Yes, I know eavesdropping is wrong.
“Hey, I have a question,” I shouted.
Wait, what? I had a question? What the fuck was I even saying?
I said, “Biologically, there’s no way for half-human, half-Zimaran hybrids to exist, right?”
They both stared at me like I had lost my mind. Fine, I had recently lost my mind. I don’t have a better expression for how they were looking at me, okay?
Jirrin appeared thoughtful. “Current science says it’s highly unlikely, but it probably wouldn’t be impossible. Our species are rather genetically similar.”
“They are?” I muttered.
“Yes,” Xan said. “But why are you asking?”
That was none of your fucking business, Xan. “I’m asking because I thought Preston was, uh, trying to control my mind last night. It still -- still kinda feels like he is.”
“My -- my parents are human. Just because it feels like -- like I have a lust spell on you, doesn’t mean I really do,” Preston stammered.
Jirrin gave the both of us another thoughtful look. “Why don’t you try taking the spell that doesn’t exist off Dylan? I know that sounds odd, but just try to.”
Xan raised an eyebrow. “What are you getting at, Jirrin?”
Preston shrugged, but he looked at me and I felt a distinct shift. Fucking weird.
Jirrin continued, “Now, I know this will sound silly, but try to put a spell on me.”
“There’s no way that will work,” Preston muttered.
“Just try it. Sincerely try it like you believe it will work,” he murmured.
“Okaaaaay.” Preston stared at Jirrin. He got this disturbingly intense look in his eyes, like the one he had given me before. Jirrin’s eyes widened, and he grabbed the side of the couch.
“It worked!” Jirrin cried.
“Whoa,” Preston breathed. He shook his head and Jirrin seemed to snap out of whatever trance he was in.
“How -- how is that possible?” Preston squeaked. “I’m human!”
“Are you sure about that?” Xan murmured. “I remember when I first controlled you, how -- oddly Zimaran your mind felt. I dismissed it at the time, but Jirrin, what did you feel?”
Jirrin said, “He controlled me. Exactly like a full Zimaran would.”
“But look at me,” Preston insisted. “I look human. My eyes aren’t even a little bit Zimaran. They’re not even an interesting color. They’re gray. My eyes are gray.”
“I know,” Jirrin said, “but I also know what I felt. And humans just can’t do that.”
Preston’s human-gray eyes shined with tears. Not knowing what else to do, I hugged him while ignoring how Xan’s face twitched. Preston’s body shook in my arms, and I let him cry into my shoulder.
“It’s -- it’s true, isn’t it? I -- I felt it. And I know something’s been weird with me since I can -- since I can remember,” he sobbed. “And none -- none of my relatives are anything but human, I’m sure of that. Why -- why wouldn’t my parents tell me I’m adopted? I have to be, don’t I?”
Jirrin muttered, “It’s the only logical conclusion.”
“I’m sorry,” Xan said.
Preston cried and cried into my shoulder. I hugged him tighter, having absolutely no fucking clue how to help him out. I wasn’t in a position to be helping anybody out. My brain had enough shit to deal with, and now I had to add Preston’s shit? I wanted to help him, but I knew I would fail at that like I failed at everything else.
Xan interrupted our sobbing embrace. “You can have some of my clothes, if you don’t want to go home in what you wore yesterday.”
“That -- that would be nice,” Preston sniffed.
True to his word, Xan offered us some clothes. Of course, they were huge on me, but what wasn’t? While he was handing us the new clothes, Xan and I didn’t speak or look each other in the eye, or anything. There was this...crackling weirdness between the two of us. I would have called it sexual tension if I thought Xan had any real interest in me. Sure, he had stared in that odd longing way before, but I figured it was just guilt over how he had treated me.
* * *
After an awkward drive home when I said not a word to Xan, Preston and I finally got back home.
“Some night that was, huh?” he muttered.
“Some night” was the biggest fucking understatement. It wasn’t just “some night,” it was the kind of night that made you brain fucking explode.
I said, “I’m not sure why my brain hasn’t fucking exploded yet.”
Preston flopped onto his bed, while I yawned. Sure, I had slept, but I hadn’t gotten enough sleep for how fucking scrambled my brain was. I stumbled around until I found the bag of SynthBrew from the coffee shop on campus. I quickly started brewing us some because we needed caffeine, and lots of it. Preston didn’t move, just stared up at the ceiling. He still had his fucking shoes on. While the SynthBrew, well, brewed, I went over to him and squeezed his shoulder.
“It’s okay Fine, it’s not remotely okay, but I’m, like, here?” I said. Wow, I would make an excellent counselor.
“Yeah, you’re here,” he mumbled.
I said, “If you wanna be alone or anything, I can leave, if that’s what you want.”
Preston hissed, “Don’t you dare leave me now.”
I murmured, “I certainly wasn’t planning on it.”
The coffeemaker beeped, and I poured us each a mug of SynthBrew, in a pair of hideous bright orange mugs. Oh, our lovely school colors. Go team? I knew Preston liked his coffee black so I handed him a mug without adding anything to it. He would eat the coffee beans right out of the bag if I didn’t buy it pre-ground. I needed my coffee in liquid form, so it was quite a pain in the ass to find half of it gone because my roommate ate it. As annoying as that could be, it gave me an idea of how I could cheer him up.
I added some milk to my coffee and sat down on the bed next to Preston.
“Thanks,” he said as he took a sip of his coffee. He looked like his brain had broken, but at least he was sitting up now?
I sipped from my own mug. “I wish I could, like, actually help. Your parents? They suck for multiple reasons, but fucking hiding you were adopted? I don’t even get it.”
Preston sighed. “It’s a pride thing.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Pride thing?”
“I don’t -- don’t actually know, but my guess is Mom or dad couldn’t have kids and didn’t want to admit it. It doesn’t ‘look right’ not to have your own,” he muttered. “Adopted kids don’t really count, they’ve said as much. But they couldn’t be childless; they’ve said that, too. So they probably just decided to pretend I was ‘their own’ to make themselves look good.”
“That’s bullshit,” I spat.
He sighed. “That’s gotta be why my parents liked Hannah so much better. She was born practically right after I was ‘born.’ She had to be a surprise pregnancy. It all makes sense now.”
I said, “It may ‘make sense’ but that is eleventy billion different flavors of awful and stupid. You didn’t deserve that.”
He didn’t even seem to hear me. “And then it turns out I’m not even -- not even properly human.”
Preston had such a look of fucking pain on his face that it hurt me to watch him. I saw self-hatred there; I recognized that feeling easily enough. And, oh no, he wasn’t allowed to go there. He had no reason for that, not like I did.
“Don’t you dare start hating yourself for that, man. Just -- don’t you dare,” I muttered.
It was not acceptable for him to start hating on himself for something that wasn’t even his fault and wasn’t even a bad thing.
Preston said, “Why not?”
“Because that’s stupid. You’re allowed to freak out because duh, but you’re not allowed to start thinking you’re, like, less than or any bullshit like that. You’re just -- just not, okay?”
“Again, why not?” he muttered. “I’m allowed to have feelings.”
I took a deep breath. “Sure, you’re allowed to have feelings, but -- it doesn’t make sense for you to hate yourself because of your DNA. Besides, people fucking love half-human hybrids. They’re all over popular culture.”
Preston laughed. “You have a funny way of trying to be helpful.”
I said, “This is why I’m not a fucking counselor.”
“You would make an absolutely terrible counselor,” he muttered. “But it’s not like anyone else is gonna understand. I can’t exactly go to the Counseling Center here and say ‘oh I’m half-alien’ and expect them to help me.”
That was all too fucking true.
“No, you can’t. But despite my ineptitude, I am, like, around,” I said.
“Shit!” Preston hissed. “What if, like, the media finds out?”
I hadn’t thought of that.
He said, “I have no desire to be the next tabloid sensation. Or -- or worse, what if the government decides I’m not a citizen?”
“What?”
Preston continued, “You know what President Bradley’s like. You have the wrong -- the wrong anything, and you’re hardly human. Me? Who actually isn’t human?” He shuddered.
I got the worst sinking feeling in my stomach. Preston was fucking right. The President of our lovely National States would use legal trickery to decide Preston wasn’t legally afforded human rights, if she didn’t outright kidnap him or something.
“At least nobody knows yet?” I offered.
He said, “They’re gonna find out soon. I mean, every time I went to the doctor, the readings -- would be off. My parents sucked, so they never followed up on anything, since I ‘seemed healthy’ to them.”
I asked, “What do you think we should do?”
“I don’t know,” he cried.
My stomach sank farther as I realized what we would have to do. I imagined the only people who might understand without shipping Preston off to some government facility were Xan and Jirrin. I did not want to talk to them, but I wasn’t going to let my best friend lose his entire fucking life.
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written for 500themes prompt #343 - "Whisper of the Wind"
next chapter
previous chapter
---------
When I woke up the next day, my brain wanted to fucking explode. It had passed Critical Thinking Mass and a meltdown of some kind was inevitable, never mind the fact I was probably misusing the phrase “Critical Mass” because, well, my brain didn’t exactly want to work.
I shifted in the bed, only to hit a solid object as I tried to find a more comfortable position. The solid object was my roommate, Preston. My naked roommate. Why was my roommate naked and in the same bed as me? Oh right, we had slept together in the “we fucked” sense of the word and not the “we just shared a bed” sense.
I had fucked my roommate. On purpose. When neither of us were drunk. Does “mentally unstable” count as being drunk? “We didn’t really sleep together because I kinda sorta tried to kill myself and that means any and all immediately subsequent sex magically didn’t happen?” It didn’t work like that, I knew.
Preston shifted in the bed. Sleepily, he murmured, “I had the weirdest dream. I dreamed I was part alien and had mind control powers. Funny, huh?”
I said, “Yeah, that’s pretty weird. I guess I imagined it when I thought you were controlling my mind last night.”
“You must have,” he muttered.
If I were being completely honest, it felt like he were still in my fucking mind, but it wasn’t like Preston was adopted or something. He had two regular human parents, even if the pair of them were gigantic assholes. Therefore, he couldn’t be part fucking Zimaran. It just wasn’t possible. I bet if I asked Xan and Jirrin, they would say half-human hybrids weren’t even a thing.
Preston and I washed up and put our pajamas back on. It might have been rude to wear them, but we didn’t have a spare set of clothes, and I didn’t fucking care. When we exited the bedroom and entered the living room, Xan and Jirrin were on the couch, arguing about something in the Zimaran language. You couldn’t provide subtitles so I could eavesdrop? That’s not very fucking nice of you. Yes, I know eavesdropping is wrong.
“Hey, I have a question,” I shouted.
Wait, what? I had a question? What the fuck was I even saying?
I said, “Biologically, there’s no way for half-human, half-Zimaran hybrids to exist, right?”
They both stared at me like I had lost my mind. Fine, I had recently lost my mind. I don’t have a better expression for how they were looking at me, okay?
Jirrin appeared thoughtful. “Current science says it’s highly unlikely, but it probably wouldn’t be impossible. Our species are rather genetically similar.”
“They are?” I muttered.
“Yes,” Xan said. “But why are you asking?”
That was none of your fucking business, Xan. “I’m asking because I thought Preston was, uh, trying to control my mind last night. It still -- still kinda feels like he is.”
“My -- my parents are human. Just because it feels like -- like I have a lust spell on you, doesn’t mean I really do,” Preston stammered.
Jirrin gave the both of us another thoughtful look. “Why don’t you try taking the spell that doesn’t exist off Dylan? I know that sounds odd, but just try to.”
Xan raised an eyebrow. “What are you getting at, Jirrin?”
Preston shrugged, but he looked at me and I felt a distinct shift. Fucking weird.
Jirrin continued, “Now, I know this will sound silly, but try to put a spell on me.”
“There’s no way that will work,” Preston muttered.
“Just try it. Sincerely try it like you believe it will work,” he murmured.
“Okaaaaay.” Preston stared at Jirrin. He got this disturbingly intense look in his eyes, like the one he had given me before. Jirrin’s eyes widened, and he grabbed the side of the couch.
“It worked!” Jirrin cried.
“Whoa,” Preston breathed. He shook his head and Jirrin seemed to snap out of whatever trance he was in.
“How -- how is that possible?” Preston squeaked. “I’m human!”
“Are you sure about that?” Xan murmured. “I remember when I first controlled you, how -- oddly Zimaran your mind felt. I dismissed it at the time, but Jirrin, what did you feel?”
Jirrin said, “He controlled me. Exactly like a full Zimaran would.”
“But look at me,” Preston insisted. “I look human. My eyes aren’t even a little bit Zimaran. They’re not even an interesting color. They’re gray. My eyes are gray.”
“I know,” Jirrin said, “but I also know what I felt. And humans just can’t do that.”
Preston’s human-gray eyes shined with tears. Not knowing what else to do, I hugged him while ignoring how Xan’s face twitched. Preston’s body shook in my arms, and I let him cry into my shoulder.
“It’s -- it’s true, isn’t it? I -- I felt it. And I know something’s been weird with me since I can -- since I can remember,” he sobbed. “And none -- none of my relatives are anything but human, I’m sure of that. Why -- why wouldn’t my parents tell me I’m adopted? I have to be, don’t I?”
Jirrin muttered, “It’s the only logical conclusion.”
“I’m sorry,” Xan said.
Preston cried and cried into my shoulder. I hugged him tighter, having absolutely no fucking clue how to help him out. I wasn’t in a position to be helping anybody out. My brain had enough shit to deal with, and now I had to add Preston’s shit? I wanted to help him, but I knew I would fail at that like I failed at everything else.
Xan interrupted our sobbing embrace. “You can have some of my clothes, if you don’t want to go home in what you wore yesterday.”
“That -- that would be nice,” Preston sniffed.
True to his word, Xan offered us some clothes. Of course, they were huge on me, but what wasn’t? While he was handing us the new clothes, Xan and I didn’t speak or look each other in the eye, or anything. There was this...crackling weirdness between the two of us. I would have called it sexual tension if I thought Xan had any real interest in me. Sure, he had stared in that odd longing way before, but I figured it was just guilt over how he had treated me.
* * *
After an awkward drive home when I said not a word to Xan, Preston and I finally got back home.
“Some night that was, huh?” he muttered.
“Some night” was the biggest fucking understatement. It wasn’t just “some night,” it was the kind of night that made you brain fucking explode.
I said, “I’m not sure why my brain hasn’t fucking exploded yet.”
Preston flopped onto his bed, while I yawned. Sure, I had slept, but I hadn’t gotten enough sleep for how fucking scrambled my brain was. I stumbled around until I found the bag of SynthBrew from the coffee shop on campus. I quickly started brewing us some because we needed caffeine, and lots of it. Preston didn’t move, just stared up at the ceiling. He still had his fucking shoes on. While the SynthBrew, well, brewed, I went over to him and squeezed his shoulder.
“It’s okay Fine, it’s not remotely okay, but I’m, like, here?” I said. Wow, I would make an excellent counselor.
“Yeah, you’re here,” he mumbled.
I said, “If you wanna be alone or anything, I can leave, if that’s what you want.”
Preston hissed, “Don’t you dare leave me now.”
I murmured, “I certainly wasn’t planning on it.”
The coffeemaker beeped, and I poured us each a mug of SynthBrew, in a pair of hideous bright orange mugs. Oh, our lovely school colors. Go team? I knew Preston liked his coffee black so I handed him a mug without adding anything to it. He would eat the coffee beans right out of the bag if I didn’t buy it pre-ground. I needed my coffee in liquid form, so it was quite a pain in the ass to find half of it gone because my roommate ate it. As annoying as that could be, it gave me an idea of how I could cheer him up.
I added some milk to my coffee and sat down on the bed next to Preston.
“Thanks,” he said as he took a sip of his coffee. He looked like his brain had broken, but at least he was sitting up now?
I sipped from my own mug. “I wish I could, like, actually help. Your parents? They suck for multiple reasons, but fucking hiding you were adopted? I don’t even get it.”
Preston sighed. “It’s a pride thing.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Pride thing?”
“I don’t -- don’t actually know, but my guess is Mom or dad couldn’t have kids and didn’t want to admit it. It doesn’t ‘look right’ not to have your own,” he muttered. “Adopted kids don’t really count, they’ve said as much. But they couldn’t be childless; they’ve said that, too. So they probably just decided to pretend I was ‘their own’ to make themselves look good.”
“That’s bullshit,” I spat.
He sighed. “That’s gotta be why my parents liked Hannah so much better. She was born practically right after I was ‘born.’ She had to be a surprise pregnancy. It all makes sense now.”
I said, “It may ‘make sense’ but that is eleventy billion different flavors of awful and stupid. You didn’t deserve that.”
He didn’t even seem to hear me. “And then it turns out I’m not even -- not even properly human.”
Preston had such a look of fucking pain on his face that it hurt me to watch him. I saw self-hatred there; I recognized that feeling easily enough. And, oh no, he wasn’t allowed to go there. He had no reason for that, not like I did.
“Don’t you dare start hating yourself for that, man. Just -- don’t you dare,” I muttered.
It was not acceptable for him to start hating on himself for something that wasn’t even his fault and wasn’t even a bad thing.
Preston said, “Why not?”
“Because that’s stupid. You’re allowed to freak out because duh, but you’re not allowed to start thinking you’re, like, less than or any bullshit like that. You’re just -- just not, okay?”
“Again, why not?” he muttered. “I’m allowed to have feelings.”
I took a deep breath. “Sure, you’re allowed to have feelings, but -- it doesn’t make sense for you to hate yourself because of your DNA. Besides, people fucking love half-human hybrids. They’re all over popular culture.”
Preston laughed. “You have a funny way of trying to be helpful.”
I said, “This is why I’m not a fucking counselor.”
“You would make an absolutely terrible counselor,” he muttered. “But it’s not like anyone else is gonna understand. I can’t exactly go to the Counseling Center here and say ‘oh I’m half-alien’ and expect them to help me.”
That was all too fucking true.
“No, you can’t. But despite my ineptitude, I am, like, around,” I said.
“Shit!” Preston hissed. “What if, like, the media finds out?”
I hadn’t thought of that.
He said, “I have no desire to be the next tabloid sensation. Or -- or worse, what if the government decides I’m not a citizen?”
“What?”
Preston continued, “You know what President Bradley’s like. You have the wrong -- the wrong anything, and you’re hardly human. Me? Who actually isn’t human?” He shuddered.
I got the worst sinking feeling in my stomach. Preston was fucking right. The President of our lovely National States would use legal trickery to decide Preston wasn’t legally afforded human rights, if she didn’t outright kidnap him or something.
“At least nobody knows yet?” I offered.
He said, “They’re gonna find out soon. I mean, every time I went to the doctor, the readings -- would be off. My parents sucked, so they never followed up on anything, since I ‘seemed healthy’ to them.”
I asked, “What do you think we should do?”
“I don’t know,” he cried.
My stomach sank farther as I realized what we would have to do. I imagined the only people who might understand without shipping Preston off to some government facility were Xan and Jirrin. I did not want to talk to them, but I wasn’t going to let my best friend lose his entire fucking life.
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written for 500themes prompt #343 - "Whisper of the Wind"
next chapter