OK – we last left off which Danny trying to learn how to sit (he succeeds in pretending there is a quilt over what he wants to sit on) and Ronda falling asleep. After a few tries, he manages to sit down without sinking into the chair and learning that it takes a special person to exist in a chair for anything longer than a few minutes. He experiments with stepping into the knives, the pitcher and some other minor things – Danny learns that when he’s inside the object, he’s still cognizant of what is going on around him and if he concentrates long enough, he can feel weaknesses and flaws – Ronda’s knife is developing a crack in the metal, the chair is starting to crack under the weight of the various people who have sat in it. He gets out of the chair and walks to the bed. He reaches down and touches to bed…and gets sucked down into the bed rather than passing into it.

Startled, he looks around – this isn’t the cramped confines of the bed, but he’s standing in a field next to a brook. Sitting on a rocky over hang is Ronda, a fishing line dangling on her hand. She looks up at Danny sits next to her. She is surprised about this – she’s asleep and Danny has managed to get around her mental defenses to get to her little area of peace. She says that Danny managed to do something that no one else has been able to do. She says she’s not mad, but startled and quickly sets some ground rules: don’t do this again unless asked. Don’t take anything – it’s not the principle of theft that she’s adverse to, but the notion that someone has come in and changed her mindscape. She also warns him that it’s a two way street – she knows what’s going on in his head, too. She pulls the line back up and lays on him a painful truth. Village Cutie isn’t interested in him – she’s just using him to get under Brock’s skin when she’s mad at him for whatever. Danny sighs and scratches his head – he doesn’t want to admit it, but deep down he knows she’s right. She also says that he needs to get a backbone and stand up to Brock, Old Man Ebenezer (the old man who runs the counting house) and most of the other people see him as a squishy accountant type. Danny shrugs his shoulders and asks how he’s going to go about it. Ronda smiles and says that by the time they’re done, he’s gonna jack Brock’s jaw just for looking at him funny. She stands up and pulls Danny to his feet. He asks why she’s helping him out. One: she feels sorry for the guy a little – no one deserves to get treated like that. Two: she knows Brock professionally and he deserves to get taken down a peg or three. Danny asks what the first lesson of the day is going to be. She says you’re doing it now – learning to get into someone’s head (literally) and soon he’ll be better able to control someone. He asks what the difference between getting into someone’s body and getting into someone’s head is. Getting into someone’s head will keep them alive, but it’s trickier to control them and make them move around. Getting into their body makes it easier to control them, but will kill them. Danny says he wants to work on that – especially the not killing aspect of it. Ronda tells him that they will start in the morning, right now – out he goes.

And out he is tossed from the bed and onto the floor. It is still late at night and quiet. Danny stands up and decides to poke around. Experimentally, he walks through the door and out into the hallway of the travel house.

Thoughts? Comments? All are welcome. I’ve got to go shower and get ready for work. Thanks for reading.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy