You think that getting some tattoos might help you get back to your own body. You just hope Cecile doesn't take over before you've finished.\n\nThe tattoo artist listens to your needs and tries to talk you out of it. But you insist.\n\n"Okay, I guess," he sighs.\n\nHe draws a series of wavy lines across your forehead.\n\nYou look like this now:\n<html><img src=http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b314/silversword888/oldcecile.jpg></html>\n\nCecile takes over just as the tattooist is finishing.\nShe freaks out and grabs the tattoo needle from him. She jams it into the tattooist's throat and watches him die.\n\nShe begins clawing at her forehead in an attempt to remove the lines but she still has the needle in her hand so she's making it worse.\n\nShe stares at her reflection for a moment. Then she spies a huge vat of tattoo ink and jumps into it. She splashes around for a while. The thrashing stops.\n\nCecile has died.\n\n<html><img src=http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b314/silversword888/12_11_17_heaven_hell.jpg></html>\n\n[[go to heaven]]\n[[go to hell]]
<html><img src=http://www.diggingthedirt.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/alg_resize_angry-boss.jpg></html>\n\n"What are you doing here?" rages your boss. "The bank is on fire! Go and check it out! Christ."\n\n[[go to the fire|fire]]\n
Cecile's unnaturally large feet take you in the direction of the local newspaper where she works.\n\nNear the office you are astonished to see a building on fire, a riot, and an old woman posting a letter.\n\n\n[[investigate the riot|riot]]\n[[investigate the old woman|crone]]\n[[investigate the fire|fire]]\n[[go straight to the office|office]]\n
The old woman tells you that she has sold her soul to the devil in order to keep her forehead wrinkle-free.\n\nYou ask if there's a way the devil can send you back to your own body.\n\n"Of course not," snaps the old woman. "You're the victim of a curse. There's no escape. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go sacrifice a piglet."\n\n\nGloomily, you realise that you will spend the rest of your life trapped in the mind of Cecile. You long for death, and hope it will come soon.\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\nBetter endings may be possible. Why not restart and try again?
Your poker face lasts until you get to the toilet. Once there, you cry //hysterically//.\n\nYour tears are so bitter they melt away the dead skin on your cheeks and cleanse your pores. Your sobs are so violent the United Nations holds a meeting to discuss taking sanctions against you.\n\nYou feel a bit better.\n\nTeaching didn't help you get back to normal. Maybe something else will?\n\n[[try doing some journalism|journ]]\n[[get a tattoo|tat]]\n
\n//(Note: As you make progress with the story, you'll be able to use the rewind button to return to key branches in the story and try new things.)//\n\n\n\n''BEING CECILE MEIER''\n\nYou wake up with a terrible headache. You touch your forehead. It feels unnaturally smooth, and your skin has a moist, cave-like quality.\n\nThere is a man in bed next to you.\n\nWhat on earth?\n\nYou see a [[mirror]].
Cecile doesn't have any friends.\n\nShe used to have friends but she abandoned them thinking it would be easy to make new ones. It wasn't.\n\n[[check email before you start crying|check email]]\n[[check twitter]]\n
You get out of bed and look in the mirror. Shit! You've got curly hair and no wrinkles on your forehead. It can mean only one thing:\n\nYou are trapped in the mind and body of Cecile Meier, a French journalist living in a city in New Zealand. (You know, Wellington or Christchurch or Aukland or one of those places you've seen on maps while waiting at the dentist.)\n\n<html><img src=http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b314/silversword888/c2.jpg></html>\n\nThis is //bad//. You have to find out what has happened and how to get back into your own body. Meanwhile you'll be living her life and experiencing her emotions.\n\nWaaah!\n\n[[after dwelling on the horror of this, read on|exposition]]\n
The bank is on fire. You interview some people. You write down what they say. It will be an okay story.\n\nSuddenly, you hear a cat from inside the burning building.\n\n[[save the cat|save]]\n[[interview people about the cat|talk]]\n
No good! Cecile takes control and before you can resist, she's heading in to Starbucks.\n\nSIGH\n\n[[go into stupid Starbucks|coffee]]
You smash your handbag on the back of Mechagodzilla's head.\n\nThere's a sickening crunch and the man falls to the floor as though in slow motion. There's a second ghastly crunch as his crushed head hits the pavement.\n\n"What have you done?" says Godzilla, accusingly. "That was my brother! You've killed him!"\n\nEnraged, he attacks you. You try to flee but your feet are the wrong size for your body and you trip. Godzilla clambers onto you and suffocates you.\n\n<html><img src=http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b314/silversword888/12_11_17_heaven_hell.jpg></html>\n\n[[go to heaven]]\n[[go to hell]]\n
Even though she abandoned him, Cecile's best friend Andrew Girardin has sent her an email.\n\nThe subject line is:\nURGENT gypsy curse information! Pls read ASAP\n\n"Aw", you hear Cecile think. "That's sweet of him. I'll read it later."\n\nBut every time you try to make her read the mail, you lose control of her.\n\n[[check twitter]]\n[[call a friend]]
"I don't have to work for //hours//," says your boyfriend - that is, Cecile's boyfriend, Nick. "Let me sleep."\n\nGah! You'll get no help there. But you sense you should stay in character. What would the real Cecile do at this point?\n\n[[throw water on Nick|water]]\n[[break Nick's ankles with a sledgehammer|sledge]]\n[[wail and gnash your teeth|wail]]\n
You realise that you sometimes you are in control of Cecile (or The Cecile as you are beginning to think of her), but sometimes Cecile controls herself. Sometimes it isn't quite clear which one of you is experiencing what.\n\nShe seems unaware that you are in there.\n\nYou are in control for the moment. What do you want to do?\n\n[[talk to the man in the bed|nick]]\n[[check your phone|phone]]\n
Being Cecile Meier
You run into the bank and grab the cat. The bank is full of falling beams, smoke, flames. All that jazz.\n\nHowever, it's simplicity itself to escape. All you have to do is stay calm.\n\n[[stay calm]]\n[[panic]]
You panic and are consumed by the flames.\n\n<html><img src=http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b314/silversword888/12_11_17_heaven_hell.jpg></html>\n\n[[go to heaven]]\n[[go to hell]]\n
<html><img src=http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b314/silversword888/Cloud-Heaven.jpg></html>\n\nHeaven isn't //real//, silly.\n\nYou blink, and realise you are back in your own body.\n\nYou have escaped Cecile's body, and all is well in the universe.\n\nGood job!\n\nTHE END
Just as you try to think of something fun and educational for the students to do, Cecile takes over.\n\nShe wedges the muffin into her mouth and throws the wrapping at the student. Then she grabs all her things and runs into the toilet.\n\n[[go to the toilet|cry2]]\n
It takes 15 minutes to get your coffee, a toasted snack, a double chocolate muffin, pay by credit card, and flirt with the waiter, who is gay but you're sure you could convert if you wanted.\n\nSlightly late for class, but no worries!\n\n[[go into classroom|class]]
The riot turns out to be two Japanese men dressed in costumes. One is dressed as Godzilla. One is dressed as Mechagodzilla.\n\n<html><img src=http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sSU6A8LGAnc/Tti1lTwTo8I/AAAAAAAAAFY/lqctxjwsWMg/s400/Godzilla+x+Mechagodzilla+001.jpg></html>\n\nIt seems comical, but the fight is deadly serious. Someone is going to die.\n\nYou have to intervene.\n\n[[help godzilla|god]]\n[[help mechagodzilla|mech]]\n
You keep it together just long enough to get to the toilet. Once there, you cry hysterically.\n\nYour tears are so bitter they melt away the dead skin on your cheeks and cleanse your pores. Your sobs are so violent the United Nations holds a meeting to discuss taking sanctions against you.\n\nYou feel a bit better.\n\nAs you clamber out of the bathtub, your phone plops onto the floor.\n\n[[check your phone|phone]]\n
Good idea! But you can't find a sledgehammer.\n\n[[throw water on Nick|water]]\n[[wail and gnash your teeth|wail]]\n
Horribly mangled, Cecile's body is rescued by a fireman. She spends the rest of her life on a hospital trolley being wheeled from darkened room to darkened room, fed through tubes.\n\nYou spend the next 40 years inside Cecile's mind. You have no outside stimulus - it is just you and Cecile. And while you must listen to everything she ever thinks, she can't hear you. Your screams are silent.\n\nTHE END\n\n\nBetter endings may be possible. Why not restart and try again?
Well done! Very much in character. Nick jumps out of bed, astonished and aggrieved. He fumes at you for a moment, then grabs some clothes and leaves.\n\nGood! You didn't want to look at his toned, lithe body for a second longer.\n\nYou decide to go to work.\n\n[[go and teach French|teach]]\n[[go and be a journalist|journ]]\n
You pick up your phone. Perhaps there will be some vital information that will help you understand your current predicament.\n\n[[check email]]\n[[check twitter]]\n[[call a friend]]\n
Annoyingly, Cecile takes control of her actions and you can only watch in dismay as she tweets a reaction to a tweet from a local journalist.\n\nWithin 30 seconds, Cecile is engaged in a full-on flame war, a small-minded internet battle in which both sides are in the wrong. And all because Cecile assumed that 'wizened' should be spelled with an 's'.\n\nWithin two minutes, she is hiding under the duvet and sobbing. You dimly hear Nick sigh and leave for work.\n\nSuddenly, you realise that you are back in control.\n\nWork! That sounds like a good idea.\n\n[[go and teach French|teach]]\n[[go and be a journalist|journ]]
You arrive at the school ten minutes early. Great!\n\nShould you go into the school and quickly prepare a lesson? Or go to Starbucks and get some coffee and food?\n\n[[prepare]]\n[[get coffee|coffee]]
The old woman tells you your whole life story.\n\nIt's utterly tedious.\n\nBut every time you try to move away, you feel resistance coming from Cecile. She clearly feels a connection with this old crone.\n\nBut why?\n\nYou realise - the old woman's forehead is completely smooth and she has moist, cave-like skin.\n\n[[ask about forehead|head]]\n[[ask about skin|skin]]\n
Coffee and snacks in hand, you enter the room in a bouyant mood.\n\n"Bonjour!" you say. They don't reply. You can't think what's wrong with them. Ah, well. You press on with the lesson.\n\n"What do you want to practice today? Never mind that, turn to page 10 and do that while I eat my muffin."\n\nOne of the students is slightly flushed in the cheeks. It must be because he is in love with you! "We did page 10 two months ago," he says, trying to talk in a sexy voice that only comes out as angry. "You're late and you don't have a lesson plan."\n\nTears well in your eyes. This is so unfair!\n\n[[run and cry in the toilet|cry2]]\n[[apologise and try to do the best lesson ever so that the students leave happy|happy]]\n
<html><img src=http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-I4FUYcLJyRs/UeM8NNhdmeI/AAAAAAAAEYE/Aw65qX8SoZU/s1600/azab+neraka.jpg></html>\n\nHell isn't //real//, silly.\n\nYou blink, and realise you are back in your own body.\n\nYou have escaped Cecile's body, and all is well in the universe.\n\nGood job!\n\nTHE END
You smash your handbag on the back of Godzilla's head.\n\nThere's a sickening crunch and the man falls to the floor, his body limp and lifeless.\n\n"Ha!" says Mechagodzilla, in triumph. "That'll teach him to steal my crabs!"\n\nHe shakes you by the hand and waddles off.\n\nWhat now?\n\n[[go to the office|office]]\n[[see if that old woman is still around|crone]]
You stay calm.\n\nYou calmly stroke the cat to keep it calm, and calmly walk towards the door.\n\nBut a falling beam brings down with it some glass, and in this glass you can see your reflection. With your hair made messy by the heat, your skin dry and dusty, you look like an extra from the Thriller music video.\n\nThis image awakens The Cecile Within.\n\nShe drops the cat, screams, and runs into the fire.\n\n[[get horribly burnt|burn]]\n\n
The old woman tells you that she eats 2kg of crab a day in order to keep her skin moist and cave-like.\n\nCecile sets off in the direction of a shop or restaurant that sells crab, but you take over in time to take her somewhere else.\n\nBut where?\n\n[[go and get a tattoo|tat]]\n[[investigate the riot|riot]]
by Andrew Girardin
The good citizens of Hobbiton (or whatever the capital of New Zealand is) are disgusted that she would use this tragedy to further her career.\n\n"Hey! She's writing a human interest story instead of helping the cat!" shouts someone.\n"She's everything that's wrong with modern journalism!" shouts another.\n"Let's get her!" shouts a third, and the cry is taken up by the whole crowd.\n\nSoon, you are atop a bonfire, and the mob is chanting and waving torches. A journalist sees what's happening and tries to rescue you, but he is beaten back. Admiring his integrity, the crowd spares his life. Meanwhile, the bonfire has been lit and the flames are creeping higher.\n\n[[burn to death|burn]]\n