Edgar | Self-Helped?

Edgar felt like a character from one of Stephen King’s novels.

Which would be totally fine if he, y’know, liked Stephen King novels. He was a weenie. He would admit it (under duress, your Honor). It was fine! Mama always said that he had a tender heart and if he didn’t like scary things, he didn’t have to consume scary media.

No one warned him about a fucking self-help book.

Where was Mama’s warning about that?

Truthfully, if the weird shit hadn’t been happening to him, he wouldn’t have believed it. For one, the development was so slow that he hadn’t really picked up on it until his hand started going numb. Even then, he just thought it was carpal tunnel. He did spend a lot of time on his computer, writing his sci-fi book. He definitely didn’t sit right in his chair, either. Then again, he’d never met another PC user that didn’t sit like a whole ass cryptid.

He barely registered the customer when they walked in the door, eyes darting up from the POS as he checked the listings, seeing which numbers he needed to call for their courtesy reminders. Bachelor, Colborne, Edwards, Finch, Jeffries...

His hand twitched. He looked down at it, trying to force it down. It didn’t work. With a grimace, he held it up, massaging it with the other hand to try to get some feeling back into it. His hand decided that was an apt time to move, pinching the hand he could feel right on the pressure point in the webbing between his thumb and index finger. He hissed out a curse. What the fuck?

“Ahem,” said a customer at the counter that he didn’t notice walk up. “If you’re done playing, I need to be checked out.”

“S-sorry, ma’am,” he said, giving her his best smile, even though he had the feeling it just made him look constipated. “Let me get this for you.” He reached his hand out and took the DVD case from the woman (who honestly looked like she’d eaten a lemon and it was gross, her lipstick was bleeding into the cracks in her lips), swapping it out with the actual DVD in the drawer under the register. He scanned her membership card, then the barcode on the DVD before sliding it over top of the alarm deactivator. He read out the price for a 3-night rental, taking the cash from her when she held out a twenty dollar bill.

He counted it back to her, bidding her a good day before sighing and looking down at his hand again. Why had he pinched himself? His hand was, essentially, a dead weight attached to his arm. He tried to flex his fingers. It didn’t work.

After excusing himself to go to the break room, making sure there was at least one person to man the register, he briskly walked down the narrow hallway. The door was open--the door was always open, and he felt weird about shutting it all the way. Instead, he pushed it to a crack, a sliver of room between it and the strike plate, and stared at his hand. It was still the same long-fingered, hairy-knuckled hand he was used to seeing, the freckles hidden under the strawberry blond fuzz on his fingers. He murmured a soft, “what the fuck” to himself, flipping his hand and arm over.

In the middle of all this, his hand shot out, wrapping around a BIC Cristal ballpoint pen, pulling it to himself before it grabbed a small notepad. This isn’t me, his hand wrote of its own accord. This isn’t me, this is Eddie, I’m fuckinG TRAPPED IN HERE HELP ME--

Edgar let out a shocked cry, slapping the pen out of his own hand and backing away from the table. He looked on in horror, eyes widening. What the fuck. What the fuck? None of this shit had started happening before he started reading that book. The one with the fucking cheery-ass girl saying “You can become a better you in three steps!”

Bullshit. Bull-fucking-shit, he was living a nightmare and he had the feeling it had only just begun for him. Since when did his hand write on its own? When did he pinch himself? How could he when he didn’t even have the ability to feel it anymore? He couldn’t stop spiraling. What had the book said? Was it cursed? It had to have been cursed.

What the fuck kind of spell was on it? “Three steps to an All-New You!” Well it was certainly a new something, alright, and that was not what he signed up for. He couldn’t remember the face of the customer who had given it to him, from what he thought was the kindness of their heart. He realized now he might have been made a fool of--again--and gritted his teeth. There wasn’t anything he could do now. Would burning the book make whatever was happening stop?

He didn’t really wanna burn the book, though. He would feel guilty.

His hand was writing again. He didn’t even remember picking up the pen. Gibberish, from the looks of it, but then he noticed it at the bottom. {{user}}’s name, and a filthy, raunchy comment under it, referring to their round, supple ass. At least that’s something they could agree on, whatever demon was controlling his hand.

What followed that was more commentary about their assets--their belly, their chest, thighs. After that was a dirty fantasy, with far too much detail, but Edgar couldn’t look away. At least, not until he heard a knock behind him at the door. He turned his face over his shoulder, eyes going comically wide, the hand never letting go of the pen. He spun, sitting on the notepad and his hand, the pen surely leaving blue streaks on the ass of his khaki pants. “{{user}},” he breathed. “You’re early.”

.