Wanda’s voice called out to him, “Tomas?”

His consciousness returned slowly, alongside copious amounts of pain, “AHHH!” His body struggled to move, “Ouch! Oh god! Ow ow ow! Everything hurts! I thought you said it was safe!” He stopped talking. Something was wrong. Completely wrong. His voice, his body, the number of hands, and the number of clothes: all wrong. He forced open his eyes and looked down at himself.

He gasped, a burst of adrenaline gave him back full control of his body. He scrambled back along the floor, trying to escape from the huge naked body below him. Of course, he wasn’t able to because it was attached to him, or rather, the pale-skinned, abnormally muscular body was him. His voice came out in a stuttering shrill “W-W-What…??? What’s going on!? Why am I…!?” He looked up and saw he was still in Wanda’s shop, she was standing over him. She had been crying, “This isn’t my body!”

“Tomas! Get yourself together, there’s no time to explain. You have an important job to do,” Wanda snapped, “You need to go outside, get the gun from Wally, and finish the Matriarch before it’s too late!” she was not the sweet carefree lady he had met only a few moments ago.

“THE MATRIARCH?!?! SHE'S HERE?!” Tomas screamed!

“Apparently yes. You need to go get the gun from Wally and shoot her.”

“Go where? Who is Wally? What gun? If the Matriarch is here, I’ve got to escape,” whined Tomas.

Wanda reached down and picked up a stick with what looked like a human eyeball hooked on the end. She pointed it in Tomas’ direction, “I’m not asking Tomas. Get out of my shop, go get the gun, and shoot the Matriarch! Don’t come back until you’re finished!” A tear rolled down her cheek. She took a step forward and stabbed the eyeball at him.

Thomas got up and backed away, “I can’t. Seriously. She’ll eat me. Don’t make me go out there. I’m naked! Please, Wanda, I’m begging you! At least let me put on pants.”

Wanda took another step forward, jabbing the eyeball again.

“Jeez, stop it! You’re crazy!” he complained, backing up.

Wanda screamed and charged forward. Tomas screamed too, turned around and fled out the front door of the shop. He leapt through the broken door and stopped in his tracks at what he saw. Standing just outside the door, leaning back, having a smoke, was himself. Is that my body?!

“Hey!” Tomas hissed, “What are you doing?! Put that cigarette out!”

His doppelganger looked at him with one eyebrow raised, “Hey mate, back already? What’s that about my smoke?”

“You’re…” Tomas suddenly slammed his mouth shut and looked in wide-eyed terror at the Matriarch who was crouched down only a few metres away.

“Actually, while you're here, there's something I gotta tell ya. I ain’t Tomas. You just called me by his name before, so I figured I’d clear all that up.” His copy said, shifting his gaze between Tomas and the Matriarch.

Tomas shushed the man and whispered as loud as he dared, “I know you aren’t Tomas. Wanda messed up! I am Tomas!” He glanced at the Matriarch then took another step closer to the man, "Give me that body!”

“Whoa! Stay back pervert! I don’t swing that way,” the man stepped back pulling a coat hanger out of his pants and brandishing it like a sword.

The Matriarch let out a growl, warning them. Loud buzzing sounds drew their attention up. Above all three of their heads there hovered several little flying saucers, no larger than dinner plates.

“What now?” The doppelganger whined moments before the flying saucers unleashed lightning bolts down upon all three of them. Their bodies convulsed as their visions faded. They all slumped to the ground unconscious.

🛸🛸🛸🛸🛸

Tomas roused from darkness for the second time in recent memory and regretted it even more than the first. He hurt everywhere. Lightning burns joined the collection of cuts and bruises covering his body.

He lay, face down, on a solid, cool surface. It smelled like antiseptic. Perhaps I’m in a hospital? He thought. The only sounds were that of several people snoring loudly and a familiar buzzing from above.

Prying his eyes open, he saw he was laying on a pure white floor. He raised his head and wiped away the drool from his mouth with a muscular arm that didn’t belong to him. He experienced a moment of startled confusion until his sluggish memories caught up and reminded him why the strange arm was to be expected.

With a groan, he pushed himself up off the floor, or rather, he peeled himself up off of it. There was a lot of dried blood sticking him to the floor. He got up and sat with a thud. The bright lights of the room pierced his skull. Blocking the light from his eyes with his huge arm, he squinted up and saw the source of the buzzing sound.

He was startled by four of the little flying saucers that had zapped him unconscious, hovering back and forth above him. Lowering his gaze, he saw that he was not in a hospital; it was a jail cell.

The cell was oval-shaped, about six by four metres at its widest and narrowest points. There were no walls, instead, it was surrounded entirely by white bars with no discernable way in or out. Tomas felt exposed (more than just being naked), by the fact that someone could walk around the outside of his cell and look in at him from any direction. Adding to this feeling of exposure, was that the cell was completely empty except for Tomas and the flying saucers.

Through the bars, he saw the room his cell was in was a large white dome. Three more cells like his were spaced evenly around the circumference of the room, a few metres apart. They were all occupied, and loud snoring came from each. Tomas stood up and moved closer to see who was in the other cells.

First, he approached the cell to his right. His stomach dropped, it was the Matriarch. She slept on her back with several flying saucers hovering above her in her cell too. Tomas would best describe her snoring as dangerous, yet elegant.

He ducked his head and tried to make himself look small as he tiptoed away from her cell to the other side.

The cell to his left held what looked to be a broken white robot sprawled out on its back, it was also snoring. There weren’t any flying saucers in its cell, “Lucky robot,” Tomas murmured, turning back to eye the ones in his cell warily. Tomas would describe the robot’s snores as angry.

He looked over at the last cell, on the opposite side of the room from his. It held his doppelganger and twice as many flying saucers as his and the Matriarch’s cells combined. Despite the buzzing from so many saucers, he heard his body’s snores loud and clear across the room. The snoring was straight-up obscene, “I do not snore like that!” pouted Tomas.

Tomas didn't want to be stuck in a jail cell next to his mother when she woke up. The bars would do little to stop her. Also, he had unfinished business with his Wanda and the body mix-up to take care of. So, the choice on what to do next was simple: it was time to escape!

He reached out and touched a bar of his cell, then pulled his hand back quickly, looking back at the saucers. He was worried they’d zap him for trying to escape. No attacks came, they made no irregular movement, and the jail bars weren’t electrified; so far, so good. Keeping cautious, he stuck a hand through the bars, grabbed a hold of one and gave it a shake. Both the bars and the saucers stayed where they were. Satisfied that he wasn’t likely to be zapped mid-escape, he set to it.

“Can I even transform in this body?” Tomas activated his power and was pleased to see that he could still change into his were-octopus form. He approached the bars and paused. Octopi were famous for being able to squeeze through small gaps, however, his new body was a lot larger than his previous one which also applied to his octopus form. Still, Tomas believed in the power of octopus and went about escaping.

He slipped all of his tentacles between one gap of the bars. He stretched and reached out, grabbing the bars of the cell to the left of his, using it to pull himself through. He squeezed and compressed his body through the tiny gap in the bars. After several minutes of struggling, he popped out the other side, “Heck yeah! OCTOPUS!” He cheered. Octopus power really shone today; he was so proud.

Sneaking around the outside of the cells so as to keep away from the one containing the Matriarch, he made his way over to the one containing his original body. It was laying, head against the bars, neck bent uncomfortably with its mouth wide open. His stump wrist was stretched above his head through the bars, the other hand was down his pants having a scratch.

"Hey!" Tomas shouted, "Get your hand out of my pants!"

His body responded by snorting and smacking its lips twice before resuming its snores.

Tomas was about to reach a tentacle in and smack him when a voice came from behind.

“Einstein? Edison? Is anyone there?”

Tomas spun around and leapt up backwards like a startled cat into the bars of the cell he was standing by. His eyes darted around the room, looking for the source of the voice. The broken robot in the cell nearby spoke up again, “I can't move. Please, anyone, answer me.”

“Hello?” Tomas called out.

“Who’s that? I need help. It’s getting hard to breathe. Please, I don’t want to die,” the robot said.

“Uh.. ok. I’m Tomas. What do you need?” Tomas asked. He wasn’t the kind of man who left a desperate robot in trouble!

“Tomas? Please come manually open up my suit. The computer is busted.”

Oh, It’s not a robot; it’s a suit! Tomas wondered who was inside as he approached the bars, “Ok hold on, it’ll take a few minutes to get there,” he told the robot and then squeezed his way into the cell. Upon closer inspection, the suit was in a worse condition than he originally thought. There were claw marks, burns, and shattered pieces all over it, “I’m here. What do I do now?”

“There should be an aquamarine button under a panel on the chest. Press it and type the code ‘√𖢘𖢐𖢤’ into the display that opens up.”

“Looks like the panel fell off because I can see the button already. ‘√𖢘𖢐𖢤’ was it? Easy-peasy, done,” Tomas pressed the button, typed the code and stood back as the chest of the robot split open.

Inside its chest, sitting on a small pilot chair, was a little green man, no taller than a toddler. He gasped in deep breaths of fresh air. He had yellow bruises all over and he leaked orange blood from his nose and eyes. He looked up at Tomas, “Oh, it’s you. You’ve rescued me twice now! Thank you, I owe you my life. My name is Fred.”

📖📖📖📖📖

Howdy y’all, Narration Fish here, again. Wow, an alien! I guess all those flying saucers should have clued me in. But still, wow! Let’s put a pin in Tomas’ tale here for a bit. I wanna learn about aliens now! Oh! Before that, let’s find out who the heck’s body Tomas is in. Sounds good? Good! See y’all next week!