There once was a town which was unhappy with their mayor, because the mayor was greedy and corrupt and liked to impose all sorts of unfair rules and taxes. Then, one day, there came a Jester to the town. The town, being quite remote, had not seen a Jester in many years. At first they treated the Jester with mistrust, and the Jester, knowing his trade well, feigned not to care and carried on with his jokes.

The Jester quickly gained fame in the town for poking fun at anyone who might pass him by. The trick of the Jester's trade was that he only said true things, and thus the townspeople quickly found themselves startled by the things the Jester would say about them because, somehow unbeknownst to them, the Jester had a way of learning their deepest darkest secrets.

So, the townspeople came together and decided to do away with the Jester, since none in the town quite liked being poked fun at. But it was on the day the townspeople had decided to get rid of the Jester, that the Jester began to poke fun at the mayor of the town.

Now, the things the Jester said about the mayor were both true and biting, and were heard by the entirety of the town. And it was the Jester who revealed to all the people in the town that the mayor had, unbeknownst to them, stowed away a good deal of their tax money for his own retirement. Upon learning this, the townspeople banished the mayor from the town, telling him never to return again. And he never did.

For a time the townspeople were happy to be without their mayor, but things needed to be done around the town and without a mayor such decisions, even about trivial things, became impossible to reach a conclusion.

And then it was the townspeople came up with an idea. What if they made the Jester the mayor of the town? Because the Jester spoke only true things, and seemed to know things as if by a strange magic. And thus it was the townspeople appointed the Jester their mayor, a role the Jester readily accepted. And for a while all was good, because the Jester was quick to make decisions on behalf of the townspeople.

And then, not too long after, a great famine took hold of the town. Because the townspeople had poorly managed the year's crop. And flooding, which had occurred because routine maintenance of the local dam had been neglected in favour of trivialities, had ruined a good deal more of the town's food supplies, leaving none left for the winter. And worse, roving bandits were soon to steal what little stores of food remained to the townspeople because the police charged with protecting the town hadn't been paid for several weeks.

And so the townspeople sought answers for what to do from the Jester, who was their mayor.

And the Jester laughed, and laughed, and laughed. When the townspeople asked him what was so funny, he told them, 'What do you expect me to do? I'm just a Jester!' and so the Jester, as was his nature when he had the last laugh, giggled his way into the night never to be seen again by the people of the town, which, shortly after, was no more.

My memory of the nightmare I had just had was vivid and would, for a long time after, be crystal clear in my mind. What I didn't know then, was if I had been the one to create the story of the Jester and the Townspeople, or if it was some other part of me which had done so, that is, assuming there was any substantial difference between the parts to begin with.

I forgot the nightmare for a short while because Tennessee Ernie Ford's rendition of Cry of The Wild Goose had just started to play on The Shops pub speakers.

My immediate field of vision was of darkness. This was expected, considering I was still encased in the transformative resin cocoon I had fashioned for myself.

Were I still entirely human, I would likely have been trapped within the resin casing.

Crack-crok.

The strength of my new body created pressure from within the resin-cocoon. More cracking and crystalline crunching followed until, slowly, with the oh-so-coolly played string instruments and Tennessee Ernie Ford's golden voice playing like a supernatural summons, I rose out of the cocoon.

The resin I had created and used to push forward the next step in my progression towards better harnessing the power had created resin stalagmites and stalactites, and even stallag-whatevers extending horizontally across the office in a way which gave no mind to matters of health and safety.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

To get the full experience of my new self I would need a mirror. And those were downstairs; either the large one behind the pub counter, or the several which were in the men's toilets.

Better go and see, I thought, making my mind to venture out of the office.

I stepped over more of the resin which crunched and cracked underfoot on my way out.

The door was closed, and barred shut by the resin.

I inspected the palm of my peachy, caucasian-skin-coloured hand, and saw the rubber-like padding at my fingertips - five shiny blackish-gray dots in total.

I placed my fingers against the hard resin crusted over the door and, upon contact, I felt a renewed sense of connection with the resin I had created before and expunged from my body.

Break, I thought.

And in the next instant the resin casing crumbled into a powdery dust. Not just at the door, but throughout the entire office as a knock-on effect from me using my power.

As the song finished playing, I opened the office door with ease, though I couldn't see the door and had to grope blindly because the resin had become a mist-like powder instead.

Finally, I stepped out into the upper pub hallway.

The lights were on in the pub proper. Bright and gold and inviting.

The carpeting was soft, but my foot touched something even softer. Looking down, beyond the resin-visor which covered half my face, I saw neatly folded clothes had been left for me.

Clothes weren't entirely necessary for me since, though my body looked peachy-flesh coloured like human skin, there were no visible sex organs. It had been similar to when I had the Slip-suit and the Slip-body; both of which were worn like a second-skin. It wasn't so much that my sex organs were gone, they were simply covered for obvious modesty reasons.

Even so, a part of me felt naked stepping out into the upper pub hall and, I knew without having to make sure, Xandra, AKA Miss Toontastic, AKA Snap, had gone out during the many hours I had been alone in my cocoon-state and had brought back clothes for me to wear.

She knows me well, I thought.

Because she had gotten me a single white vest, as well as blue denim jeans.

Perfect, I thought.

And I put on the clothing items right then and there. Doing so had just one minor obstacle which didn't bother me in the slightest: my hair. It was a good deal longer and fluffier than it had been before, having an almost 80s action movie star mane to it. The hair, in combination with the vest and denim jeans, seemed like one of those happy coincidences.

My body was leanly muscled, more on the wiry side than the bulked out muscle I had toyed with at other times.

Room to grow, I thought to myself.

The vest and denim jeans fit perfectly.

Dressed, I listened out for where Snap and Clang might be. It was then, to my surprise, I noticed they were out in the pub garden in the midst of a fight.

"You're not attacking hard enough!" Clang's voice rang in the open air.

My hearing was even better than it had been before. I still had ears, though they were hidden beneath my large mass of fluffy brown hair.

SNAP!

CLANG!

SNAP!

CLANG!

They were exchanging blows, and I could hear Snap was hitting harder just like Clang suggested.

Not wanting to intrude on their sparring, I forced my body into a silent-moving-mode.

And then I leapt off the upper floor, over the banister, and down to the ground floor. There was only the slightest of thuds which one would need superhearing to notice. Thankfully, with Clang and Snap hearing plenty of loud noises up close due to their sparring, they hadn't noticed I was awake just yet.

The music changed over to another favourite song of mine; Dark as a Dungeon by Johnny Cash.

The song was incredibly soothing to listen to, not least because I was, despite outward appearances, quite nervous about whether my new form was a success.

I approached the pub counter and then, at last, I got my first good look at my new face.

As intended, the top half of my face was obscured by a dark resin in the shape of a visor. Only at the fringes of my face, near the temples then down the sides, was there the resin. The back-side of my head was still fleshtoned.

The resin-visor, which I could see through just fine without any hindrance, was like a one way mirror in how it gave very little of the face beneath it away.

At best an external observer would see large empty eye-sockets.

The lower half of my face looked peachy-toned and showed a good jawline.

Of course having a permanent face-visor wasn't the plan. Just like how I had touched the hard resin in the upstairs office, all it took to remove the visor from my face was willing the resin into a fine powder.

The visor left my face and pieces of it powdered the top of the pub counter as I reached over for anything to drink. My fingers found the neck of a lukewarm bottle of a juice-drink with a questionable percentage of actual orange in it.

I uncapped the bottle with a quick twist, and then drank. In the mirror I saw the face which had been The Handsome Mask drinking from the bottle. The only major difference to the face was the constant smile-like shape where the lower half of the visor had been. Because the way the bottom-half of the resin-visor met the upper-half of my mouth, it gave the uncanny effect of creating a smile-like shape in line with the rest of the visor. The skin, as an unintended side-effect of where the resin met the skin, created a vague, almost scar-like whiteness.

It was, I realised though it hadn't been my intention at all, quite Jester-like.

The fruit drink tasted nice. For a while I just sat on the stool by the counter taking sips from the bottle.

I raised the bottle to my reflection in a toast.

"To Burgess," I whispered.

And drank again. And whilst I drank, I sat with uneasy thoughts about my nightmare involving the Jester and The Townspeople.

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