"Get out of me!"
--I can't!--
"Get out of me!"
--Just calm down!--
"Mom! Make her get out of me!"
--Will you stop saying things like that out loud! They already think you've gone crazy!--
Danny Rozelli was a willful little kid, who was still too teed off to be reasonable. He had already discovered the trick of thinking out loud. It gave him more power over his own body--it helped him to stay in control. Unfortunately, when you think out loud, people can hear you.
"Danny, honey, it's all right--everything's going to be all right." But clearly Danny's mother didn't believe this, because she turned to her husband and cried, "What do we do? What do we do?"
Allie fought against the boy, and regained control of his body long enough to say, "Nothing's wrong with me. Everything's fine," but Danny fought back, his body went into convulsions, and he wailed, "Make her LEAVE!"
It was all Allie's fault. If she hadn't fallen asleep in his body, and skinjacked him for seven whole hours, none of this would have happened.
She should have tried to peel out of him the second she woke up that morning in her parents' house, but no, instead she asked her parents to feed her, and over a bowl of Apple Jacks they told her that she was still alive.
Alive!
The news was such a sudden shock that it not only echoed in her own mind, it also woke Danny up, and he began fighting his way to the surface. She tried to run, but when she opened the front door, she ran right into the policeman standing there. In a second even more police cruisers were showing up--one of them bearing a distraught couple, who had woken up two blocks away to find their son missing. When Allie's father had called 911, the police had apparently put two and two together, and raced Danny's parents over for a family reunion.
was in control, but the boy's body was still full of fear and heaving with sobs. She looked to her father who was holding the phone in one hand, and in his other hand ... in his other hand ...
... he had no other hand.
His left arm now ended just past the elbow. As Allie tried to process this, she saw that his left hand was shifting the phone in his palm, preparing to dial with his thumb. He was poised over the 9 button.
Calling 911 was definitely not part of Allie's damage control.
"You're calling the police?" Allie screeched, using the boy's wild state to her advantage. "I don't want the police! I don't I don't I don't!" She screamed as loudly as she could, and her father looked helpless.
"Put down the phone, Adam!" her mother ordered.
"All right, all right!" He dropped it on the desk like it was about to explode. "There, I've put it down."
Allie stopped screaming, and took a minute to calm the boy's body down, allowing her mother to hold her. Allie hugged her back, and took more comfort from it than her mother could possibly know. The convulsive sobs eased until they were nothing more than shallow sniffles. "Can you tell us your name?" Allie's father asked.
Allie did know his name, because if there's one thing that little kids fill every thought with, it's their identity.
"Danny," she said. "Danny Rozelli."
"Well, Danny," said Allie's mom, "I think you did a little bit of sleepwalking last night."
"Yeah," said Allie, "sleepwalking, yeah." She was always impressed by her mother's ability to be logical against all reason.
"Could you tell us where you live?" Allie's father asked.
She knew where Danny Rozelli lived, but wasn't ready to share that information, so she shook her head, and said, "Something street."
Her parents sighed in unison.
Allie looked at the stump of her father's arm. There were indentations in the skin that must have been from a prosthetic arm, but of course he hadn't had time to put it on before finding little Danny Rozelli screaming in their dead daughter's bed.
"How'd that happen?" Allie asked, realizing that a seven-year-old's lack of tact was an asset now.