Changes

Chapter Five

Lilah groaned and sat up, reaching to rub her head but instead knocked the top hat off, causing the shack to tip sideways. Her single eye widened in surprise, and snatched up the hat and shoved it on her head before too much more damage could be done. Everything had ended up on the floor, including Mabel. She was gasping like she was drowning in air, and as Lilah's friends sat up they saw Mabel and her empty fish bowl. Ford came running up from the basement, glasses askew , as Stan scooped Mabel off the ground and half sprinted and half flew up the stairs to the bathroom. They were followed 20 seconds later by Dipper towing Mabel's now full fishbowl up the stairs. Another 20 seconds passed and they bumped back down, glaring at Lilah. 

"What did you do?!"

"Why would you do that?"

"You could have killed her!"

"Yeah, I almost suffocated! Not cool!" She was bombarded with angry statements and questions, and was apologising profusely. "I'm sorry! I just knocked it off by accident and the whole shack tipped sideways! Why do you keep yelling at me, I said I was sorry, what more do you want from me?!" Her apologies were getting angrier and angrier, and soon enough she just snapped.

"I ALREADY APOLOGIESED TO YOU PEOPLE, STOP SCREAMING AT ME!" Her eye flashed crimson and blue flames exploded out from her hands, scorching the roof. She glared at everyone, the flames fading and her eye flickering back to white and widening as she realised what she did. "I- I'm sorry. I was- j-just stay away from me." She was shaking like a leaf as she retreated up the stairs to her room, hiding under the blankets as if it would stop her exploding like that again.

Under the covers, she wished with all her heart that she could go back to being herself. This heartless time bomb that she had turned into was frightening her, making her afraid that she might hurt someone for real. She made a decision. The air crackled around her and the room went fuzzy. Her single eye was shut as she strained, desperate to become herself again. A flash of light, and BANG, Lilah 

was sitting under the covers of her bed, completely in her own body.

"Huh. Look at that." Lilah stretched her freckly arms out in front of her and frowned slightly, extremely underwhelmed. She threw the blankets off and stood up, almost losing her balance because she forgot gravity existed. She wobbled over to the bathroom to get a look at herself, but on the way out of the room she tripped over a discarded blanket and landed hard on the floor of the dark room. She glared at the floor as she stood up, rubbing her elbow. She had hit her funny bone on the corner of her bed. It throbbed, but the pain was kind of funny, and imagining her ungainly trip and splat made her giggle. Soon she was laughing uncontrollably, unable to stop or even get up. She didn't even notice the pull on her stomach through the hysterics.

Her sides hurt and tears were rolling down her face, when Dipper, towing Mabel, cautiously opened the door. They lurched backwards, aghast at the sight of their best friend in their arch enemy's body laughing like a maniac.

"Lilah, what are you doing!?"

She jerked upright her laughter fading immediately. "I, uh" She coughed. "I hit my elbow."

"Lilah, please" Mabel said, propping herself up on the side of her fishbowl. "You need to try and change back, we hate seeing you like this."

"Yeah, it's like you've changed into an entirely new person in the last few hours."

Lilah realised that she had changed back into Bill, and sighed in relief. But she was torn. She hated being like this. She was traumatising her friends, and she wanted her old personality back, but her old body was just so, boring. She could barely do anything! She loved the newfound power she had, the ability to do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted and nobody could do a thing to stop her, but her change in mannerisms was frightening to her. She wondered if, with her recently acquired power, she could make a Lilah-demon, with all of Bills power, but all of her personality and values. She decided there was nothing wrong with trying.

"Guys, I have an idea. I am still too weak to change back into myself, but it takes less effort to change bits of me, like my colour and maybe my personality. I could try turning into a me-demon!" She tried to feel guilty at lying to her friends, but the emotion just wouldn't come to her.

"Yeah, actually, that might work" Dipper said, his ears perking up a bit. "We better tell Grunkle Stan and Ford about it first."

Lilah floated down the stairs, followed closely by Dipper and Mabel. Stan and Ford seemed to be discussing something very serious while Stan was pushing the fridge back upright when the three of them came crashing into the room. "GRUNKLESTANGRUNKLEFORDWEHAVEANIDEAYOUGOTTAHEARIT!"

"Woah, Mabel, slow down!" Grunkle Stan said, chuckling a little.

"We have an awesome idea! It's almost better than glitter! Lilah, tell them!"

"Well" Lilah started. "I hate having Bill's body. It's just so frightening, but I'm still too weak to change back into myself, so I had an idea. It takes less effort to change parts of me at a time, so why not turn into a Lilahfied  dream demon?"