Disappearing Act

My head hung, A stray leaf toppled through the air at my feet, and I was watching it. But I was also thinking.

Chain reactions were funny, sometimes.

Have you ever avoided 6 cracks in a row on the way home from a fair and only realized it 8 cracks later? Have you ever just dodged a car that missed the stop sign? Or caught a glimpse of the sun without blinking your eyes? Or drew straight lines each and every time on a sheet of paper? Or found yourself making wittier comments than usual?

Or suddenly found yourself with a pen in your hand, and the rewriting of all you know just a scrawl away?

What if that was not all luck, or sheer coincidence? What if I told you that was by design?

I rubbed my hands together, letting the breeze swathe my face. I was in an oddly contemplative mood. One step, two steps, three steps over the occasional littered can and tumbleweed as the streets whistled under the whoosh of the sparse-skied wind.

Another breeze passed, and I looked around, knotted my lips, and relented. I brought my hand up, as if performing a summon ritual, and removed the imaginary blanket I had thrown over the households here.

Relinquishing the change I had inflicted on the neighborhood, I decided the test was good by itself. It would be fun for use in the future -- but for the time being, everyone could put their shirts back on. Besides, it was pretty cold.

To my surprise, reverting back to normal was not, in fact, of that much difficulty. It felt quite like sucking up the bubble and letting it pop. No complaints here. Perhaps I was growing used to my little gift. Perhaps it was growing used to me. Who could say.

Either way, the fact that I was rather better at this than I would have guessed only an hour or so ago was a welcome revelation. Minor headaches. Minimal strain. And my mind hadn't broken.

I was just slowly being corrupted into a darkening abyss swirled within miasma after contorted miasma of vice and reveling in the thick of it all like the cackling tragic heroes of Faustian myth.

All good.

When I had made it back to the familiar, poster-boy house of mine, I kicked a pebble through the hole of a fence and stepped onto the pathway. My eyes automatically scanned the area. There, parked by my sister's Kia, was an unfamiliar blue vehicle. One guess was tossed in my mind regarding who it could've belonged to.

The door creaked open softly as I entered the home and closed it. What I was met with was a flurry of shouting.

"What are you talking about, Abby? We were supposed to go out, just the two of us, maybe with Sammie and them too, but..."

"Trust me, Hana! It'll be good. It'll be fine."

"No it won't! And not with your clothes all wet and wrinkled like that... jeez, girl, what did you do? Fall into a... into a vat of soda?"

My sister and, as promised and physically winsome as ever, the woman of the day, Hana the blonde hotshot city girl of yore, were standing in the living room in some kind of mid-class women's Mexican standoff. Abigail had her arms folded in front of her. I veered my eyes over her standing body and with one look I could confirm her clothes were indeed still Coked. Hana had her back to me, and she had on one of those one-piece dresses that looked like two, with a yellow flowing skirt bottom and a white, well-fitted top.

Apologies in advance for my wandering demeanor; I couldn't help but stop and appreciate how nice it looked on her -- a real girl next door type like her, with a figure such as that, and, well... she just walked into the wrong story.

Having an idea, another one of many in recent memory, and in this particular case probably one that would go into a top-five locker room fantasy list on a young men's magazine, I breathed in, thought, and concentrated.

Lock it in, magical Arbiter gift-giving leprechaun people. It was time for a swell trip into perception-twisting candy town.

Directing my thoughts to the ladies, I pushed, You two will not see me or notice my presence or what I'm doing in any alarming way. You can not suspect anything as it concerns my being here, or being responsible for what you feel. Even though I am here, you will think that I am not. You will act as if it were only you two in the room.

I lifted my mind, and exhaled.

"Okay okay," Abigail finally flailed a hand or two in response to her riled friend. "I'll go change if you're that concerned about it."

"It's not just that I'm 'concerned'," Hana deflected, "you're seriously acting weird. First, I come here to see you drenched wet top to bottom and with your nips showing 'cause you don't even got a bra on, then you tell me we're going to be accompanied by your brother who's gonna help look for clothes, 'special clothes' that you won't even tell me about..."

As Hana continued her harangue, I took the chance to test and see if my effects had already taken root. I took one tempered step forward. My eyes flashed across the room. No acknowledgement came from Abigail as I inched forward. Taking that as encouragement, I took another step, and then another, until I was barely a foot away from her blonde beaut of a friend. I breathed in. A peachy aroma filled my nostrils.

Her perfume was nice. Smelled like mall. Shouted, 'I'm a woman. I take care of myself. You can't resist.'

One intrinsic shrug to that.

I mean, it wasn't wrong.

With one average-Daniel hand, I dropped it down and let it hover over her dress-covered buttocks. A pause took me, as the sounds of her voice and my sister's scoff faded in the background and I was swallowed in my own waterfall of thoughts. No matter what, it was always an interesting situation to be in, here, with people at my whim due to something -- something -- that had either went horribly right, or horribly wrong. I was altering a living person in a reality that all my life I had lived in, occupied, inhabited, been subject to. No dream. No fantasy. Bohemian Rhapsody said it first; this was the real life.

Real perfume.

Real hair.

The way the dress looked under the natural indoor lighting, and how, up close, it hinted at the curves and tightness and bulging flesh underneath. When you stopped and thought about it, the way such stimuli affected and stirred and drove us to such a crippling, lust-stricken vapor -- it was all so animal.

But be it animal or deity, give them a reality-altering button, and they will press it until it sullied the switches.

Spurring myself on with the accumulative spur of two tribal rites and a military drill sergeant on either shoulder, I released my eyes from their lidded fastenings, exhaled, and pushed my palm -- gently, deliberately, inexorably, right against the tender, firm curvature of Hana's lovely white girl ass. Like a carpenter shaving his block of wood, I felt its demure shape through the fabric of the dress and had a shiver course down my spine at the titillation. Proceeding forward, my hand gingerly rubbed it, taking my hand above and below the humbly horndog-juicing hump, the kind that drool fell out of mouths for.

One...

I thought, wincing.

...two...

Holding another breath, I pushed my fingers forward. They dug into the young woman's fine, round rear like BB's into a plot of dough. I wriggled them into her flesh, getting flashbacks of my horrible trumpet sessions in a an infamous middle school audition I didn't need remembering now. As I felt up her sturdy butt cheek, I whistled quietly in contentment. A couple seconds later, and no admonishment, scolding, or yelp came. Once again, it was just me, at peace, in my own little world with a slice of heaven coalescing between my fingers.

It was good.

It was heavenly. It was soft. It was in the middle of a live conversation in my own home, in real time, and I was here, invading this woman's own person. Her own behind.

I was squeezing this woman's ass. Right under her nose. Completely without her knowing, caring, crying.

It was the stuff dreams were made of.

...three..!

Finally, Hana's voice came back into focus from the distant auditory fuzz that had presumed the muddle of the background, like an oblivious squirrel to a lost acorn. I wiped a bead of sweat from my brow.

Wow, I mulled. Heated up more than I'd thought from that. I un-clawed my hand from Hana's warm bottom. I flipped it to its palm, and turned it up to study it.

It was like Toby Maguire in a scene from Spider-Man. Oh, which one was it...

Concurrent to my contemplations, a serious conversation was still unfolding before me.

"...because," the tight-bodied -- and now verifiably nice-assed -- blonde in front of me went on, nonplussed, unfettered, one-hundred-percent oblivious, with her conversation with an equally overheaded Abigail, "well, it's been what, 5 months? I just don't want any funny business spoiling our day. And it's supposed to be just that. Our day. I just -- " Restrained sigh. Softer tone. "I missed you, girl. No hard feelings?"

She was as peppy and clear toned as ever, I thought with a nod, wiping my hand on the other. I felt like saying "nice ass, by the way," but decided to let them talk without my dull tenor drowning over them.

"Oh Hana," Abigail's voice breathed, "yeah, I know what you mean. No hard feelings. Sorry for snapping at you. I'll get changed and we'll sort things out once I get back down." Brief pause, for what I assumed was a gesture towards the kitchen. "We got some yogurt and drinks in the fridge if you want any, just help yourself."

Hana looked to the kitchen thoughtfully. Then back at her friend. "You still get those yogurts from the shop across Tristan's Flowery?"

"You know it."

"Well," Hana curled a finger against her chin, "I guess it's good to know some things never change."

The two melted into a cozy fit of laughter and that was that, I figured. They were back to best buds as my sister went up to change. Hana joked about her thighs getting thicker over the summer a couple steps up that the latter brushed off with sharp indignation, covering them with her hands. Sharp, but playful.

Once she left, there was a peaceful, anticipatory quiet that drifted through the room. Finally, Hana stretched and turned back.

I carefully stepped out of the way as Hana took a seat on the couch, the same one Diane had taken earlier. After fiddling with her hair, she eventually went fishing through her handbag and took out her phone. Curiosity took the better of me. Walking over, I fell into the space next to her and scooted up close.

"Well, hi there," I said with a jolly huff, once my arm was comfortably pressed up against her own. She just continued sliding her finger against her phone's touch screen, saying nothing, indicating nothing regarding care for, awareness, or knowledge of my presence or being there. I cocked a brow, continuing the act. "Whatchyu looking at there, cute blonde girl? Sex tapes?" I swatted at the side of her blonde bob as I did. It blew over her cheek, then smoothly settled back in its place beside her ear.

Still nothing. Not a single furrowed brow, or flinch of the eyelash. A reaction as insulated as, well... as a person with their perceptions supernaturally impaired, like so. My words also seemed to have went through an ear and out the other -- as fickle and irrelevant, non-existent as the wind.

Which, ironically, very much existed. Whether you saw it or not.

Swallowing, I brought my head forward, looked at her again for any possible inkling of suspicion, and rested my cheek on her shoulder. My heart beat fast. I had never done this before, with a girl. Other than my friend Elaine, when we accidentally slept through that concert -- which had turned out to be a piano concerto. You should've seen our surprise when all we saw were rows of tuxes and cocktail dresses. Almost matched it when we woke up in that... tangle.

Once the worry descended down my throat and sunk and fizzed into jittery nothings in my stomach, I turned my eyes to her hands wrapped around her cellphone. Unfortunately it was nothing interesting; just her looking through her shopping list and some texts from a Jacob and Aunt Freida.

I gulped again. That serene smell invaded my nostrils once more, and as the stems of her hair trickled against my forehead, I felt my loins shift and stir at the closeness of her fit body, my thighs now touching hers. All without her even knowing -- that I was there, that I was taking advantage of her soft shoulder, or watching her text her aunt for last-minute gift ideas despite probably not even knowing her well enough to ask her for her number. I lifted my chin and slid it up, towards her face. Then with a tight-lidded mouth, I tilted it downward and buried my nose upon the slope of her neck and shoulder, and took in her scent again, giving a hefty sniff, her soft skin cradled under the craters of my nose. There went the loins, stirring again, as I unconsciously tended to them with a hand. It was as if I was a walking, breathing glitch in the matrix, and the upside? Well, I guess you could say it was a wonderful, swift farewell to personal space.

What?

It wasn't like Hana would mind.