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So you lay flat on your back and test in your own way. You clench and flex your limbs and your jaw and your stomach, relaxing at unpredictable intervals. You get up, walk around, and do your best to run around (your top speed right now is a light jog). You perform more DEEP STRETCHES, double-confirming that what you've lost in strength you've made up for in flexibility. And you mean <span class="mu-i">flexibility.</span> Forget squats: you can jackknife backwards, scalp to tailbone, without a twinge of pain or a drop of sweat. You could probably literally tie yourself in a knot, if you wanted. Shit. Is this why Pat fucks that guy?
The whole thing, the stretches and the jogging and whatever, probably looks ridiculous to anybody watching. But who's watching? <span class="mu-i">Maybe</span> Lester Six, if he's not still sulking by the door, but that's not a person. The other Lesters are even less of people. Pat's gone. You carry on, then, until you begin to draw a conclusion: <span class="mu-i">goo changes consistency under pressure,</span> becoming firmer and more solid when you clench a fist or take a step. When you jackknife backwards, there's a palpable thickness at your midsection, even as the rest of you slides evenly toward your head or feet.
This is what keeps you upright, you think— and more importantly, this is great fucking news for the door. <span class="mu-i">The puddling's not irreversible.</span> If you can apply enough pressure, and do that dumbass visualization trick you tried the other night, you might be able to resurrect yourself out of it. You don't plan on testing that all in one go, though. (Again: not Ellery.) Instead, you slink up to the water tank, hike yourself onto the stepstool, and dip your left forearm in. And wait.
It takes a little while for the water to penetrate, and longer for it to eat away at the sturdy kind-of skin the curing process left you with. Eventually, though, you feel a sagging and a looseness and when you pull your forearm out you don't have one anymore, just ropy, formless, flesh-tinted goo. It flops around as you haul it back to the couch and lay it carefully on the low table.
And then you concentrate hard, which feels real fucking stupid— but what's more stupid, this or not having an arm? Having Pat walk in all fucking smug? You imagine yourself with two perfectly good arms— good, human meat-arms— and flex your bicep-equivalents so hard you tremble.
It takes way, way longer than you'd like. And the end result isn't perfect: your knuckles and fingernails and palm-lines are all smoothed out and missing. But eventually the goo-which-was-your-forearm shrivels and reforms itself into your forearm.
It's been a few hours. Where <span class="mu-i">is</span> Lester Six?
(Choices next.)
