((That's all for now, folks. No real questions this week, just eager to hear your thoughts if you'd like to chime in!
Love,
Charlotte))
Outside the bathroom I found a hallway with a banister,
beyond which was an open air space and flight of stairs leading down. To the
left the hallway fed several rooms with closed doors. The hardwood floors
gleamed.
I’m not sure what I expected to find but it had not been
this.
Not only had I become somebody else, literally some other
body, but the place I now found myself was also radically different than my old
home. I’d gone from a small modestly furnished apartment in a large urban
high-rise to what, some single family residence? If just one or two things
could be familiar, I thought to myself bitterly, that’d be really great.
When I stepped out into the hallway I was startled to find a
severe looking woman in her mid 40s standing in the doorway of a large bedroom
off to the right. One look at her face and I instantly knew this woman was my
mother. Yes, she was taller and thinner than I was, and gray peppered her hair,
but the resemblance was overpowering.
“I didn’t expect to see you up so early, young lady,” she
said, folding her arms. They looked brittle and cold, like the bare branches of
a tree in winter.
“Mom…” I answered, having no idea what I should say.
“You were out very late last night, not that you seem to
care much for my wishes these days,” my mother said softly. Her body language
may have been frigid but her eyes burned into my skin.
I could somehow recall being out late last night.
My mother was correct, but the specifics of the evening eluded me. Like the
plot of a novel one has read decades earlier, I couldn’t remember any details,
only that I had taken pleasure in disobeying my parents. I kept quiet, knowing
that my mother was in the position of power and that saying anything would only
make things worse. Finally she spoke again,
“Your father is downstairs making breakfast. We’ll be
leaving around 11am for
the wedding. I shouldn’t need to remind you that this is Waverly’s day so don’t
wear anything too tight or revealing. All eyes should be on your cousin, not you.” Her own
eyes fell to my belly, or my shorts, it was hard to tell which from several
yards away.
I automatically ‘sucked in’ my belly, which was a comically
useless act. All it did was kind of make my belly rise up and flatten a few
inches—at least until the effort to keep it this way was too much, whereupon it
fell and fattened, overcorrecting wider by an inch or two before rebounding
back to its natural shape.
I mumbled a meek “OK,” and went down the stairs with my
mother watching intently the whole time. I tried to will my large breasts from
bobbing up and down but they were by this point a force of nature. No matter
what I did they radiated my sexuality, something I’d rather keep from
broadcasting to the world. I could have crossed my arms but I needed to keep
one hand on the railing as my balance was understandably messed up.
Downstairs I wandered into a large sunny kitchen.
“Dad?” I asked.
“Out here, Sweetheart,” a man called from out the backdoor.
There he was, standing on a rickety chair, hanging up a birdfeeder. My father
was tall but slight, with sandy blond hair. He furrowed his brow as he
struggled to get the hook to latch. Seed spilled to the ground. When the
hanging was accomplished he got down, came over to me and kissed the top of my
head. It was such an unexpectedly tender moment after so much confusion and
fear that I nearly blushed.
“So what are you having? Pancakes? Eggs? Any special
requests from the peanut gallery?” my father asked, brushing by me and into the
house. When he said peanut he lightly poked my belly. Now I actually was
blushing. I was also starving.
“Pancakes!” I cheered, following him inside.
“Coming right up,” he said. We did a sort of dance about the
kitchen as he pulled items from the fridge and I grabbed a glass and went for
some orange juice. I was amazed by how safe I instantly felt around my father.
He talked about his birdfeeder and how some squirrel was constantly getting
into it. The simple story soon ballooned to epic proportions.
Soon I was eating and my father continued to ramble on and I
began to think that perhaps my father wasn’t so comfortable around me after
all. Was the wall of sound he created masking something else while I shoved
heaping forkfuls of syrup laden breakfast into my mouth? Did I make him uneasy?
“Alright, Meggie, you should probably head on up and get
ready. I know how you like to soak,” my father said, pointing at a clock on the
microwave that read a 9:45am.
Meggie.
So I had a name after all. I mean it was only a matter of
time until I got a chance to ferret about my bedroom and figure my name out but
still, it was one step closer to solving my identity problem.
I excused myself and walked with some trepidation back
upstairs. The door I had seen my mother in was closed.
To the left of the bathroom was Meggie’s bedroom. It was a
riot of crumpled clothes, shoes, stuffed animals, bedding, bags, and just tons
of… stuff, a stupefying amount of stuff. So much so that it was hard to walk. I
found what I was looking for on her bed, Meggie’s battered all-purpose backpack/purse/bag
and with it, her phone. When I discovered that the lock on her bedroom
door had been disabled (another troubling sign) I decided to take the phone and
bag into Meggie's bathroom and secure myself in there. After all I did have to get
ready, too.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t tap the wall with my foot,
just in case it decided to dematerialize since I went downstairs for breakfast.
Sadly, all was still solid.
I sat on the edge of the tub and found what I was looking
for in Meggie’s bag—her driver’s license.
Name: Meghan Myrna Cafferty
Birthday: November 4
Age: 18
Height: 5’4”
Address: Fiona, OH, wherever the hell that was.
Birthday: November 4
Age: 18
Height: 5’4”
Address: Fiona, OH, wherever the hell that was.
I also discovered that today was a Saturday in late May,
according to Meghan’s calendar which listed her cousin Waverly’s wedding.
There were so many questions in my mind besides the obvious
one of how passing through an invisible hole in the wall could have changed my
entire life. These were more specific. Was it simply coincidence that Meghan’s
birthday was the exact same day of the year that I passed through the wall back in my former reality?
How had I jumped forward in time? How was it already next May? Why had I been zapped halfway across the country?
And worst of all, how did I get back to my old life?
I shrugged and realized the answers to these questions would
be difficult to obtain if not impossible.
Resigning myself to the present, I
stopped the tub and turned on the water. My father was right, I did want to
soak.
In the cabinet I found a bottle of bubble-bath which I
poured into the tub. White foam began to form right away.
In the mirror I gave myself a ‘let’s just get this over
with’ expression, as I would need to come to grips with the base realities of
my body, and that meant dealing with being undressed. I’ll be honest, I was
conflicted. A part of me was overwhelmingly uncomfortable with this enterprise.
This was the me that refused to submit to this life and continued to view my
current situation from a third person perspective. The one who saw an 18
year-old Meghan as a forbidden sexual object.
Another part of me was simply curious. What did I look like
naked? Did I look like what I felt like? Sex wasn’t an issue here, at least not
directly. This was mostly innocent. I say mostly because when sex did creep
back in it was from a wonderfully new point of view. This was the realization
that I actually was this person, and this person would have its own needs and
desires. And I wondered how or if Meghan’s wants would ever line up with mine.
My gray top slithered up and out popped my bare belly, very
pale and surprisingly tight. I pulled the garment up and over my head and the
next thing I knew I was looking down at my chest. My bra was too tight and when
my fingers undid the front clasp my flesh practically sighed in relief.
I felt my breasts wobble loosely against the slackened cups before
my bra was tossed to the floor. Red striations marked my shoulders. In the
mirror I saw my breasts, very full with little sag, their areolas wide but not
the darker colored pigment I expected. These were a pale rose color just a hint
darker than my cream colored skin. The nubs of my nipples themselves were quite
small. I could see where my bra had bitten into the sides of my breasts.
They were just… so big.
I’d taken my shorts off before and those plummeted easily to
the tiles. I stepped out of them daintily with my back turned to the sink. I
was nervous about what I might see. Finally, with hands clasped comically over
my eyes, I spun around and looked.
I was beautiful in a soft, understated way, even with the
pregnant belly or perhaps because of it, it was hard to say, I wondered what
Meghan looked like before. Was she ever truly skinny? How much had her breasts
and behind grown? I thought pregnancy suited her, or at least this much
pregnancy. Who knew what things would be like a few months from now.
Eventually
I abandoned the mirror and eased into the bath. The hot water felt amazing. I sank down to the bottom and
the suds eclipsed my entire swollen body. I just lay there for a time taking
reprieve from gravity. My hands moved up from my side and rest on my belly. The
skin was wet and tight and the widest pat crested out of the water but not up
and out of the bubbles. My hands then slid down the slope of my belly toward my
breasts and I let my palms cover my chest.
The soft flesh of my breasts felt wonderful. I gently
caressed them, pushed them together, heaved them toward my face, all the while
they remained hidden, covered in foam. It was all too easy to imagine myself
feeling Meghan up. The pleasurable sensation combined with the wrongness of these
thoughts aroused me so powerfully and swiftly that my nipples sprang painfully
erect into my kneading fingers. A rush of blood between my legs drew my
attention elsewhere.
With one hand still massaging my chest, the other rose and
fell along the course of my belly before descending down to the patch of
hair between my legs. My thigh twitched in anticipation and I picked up my
foot, setting it on the back edge of the tub. As my fingers slid lower my free
hand fled my chest to grip the side of the bathtub when the impossible happened
yet again.
Above the rim of the tub my fingers pushed through the tiles
as if they weren’t there. My heart leapt. I forgot about my sexual exploration
and sat up, water heaving everywhere. The hole in the wall was no bigger than
an apple.
With both hands I wrenched the opening bigger and it
reluctantly gave. I tugged and pulled and ripped it open until the invisible
portal was big enough for me to pass through. I didn’t care that the hole was
now on a different wall. I didn’t wonder if I’d jump to yet another different
reality. I had to take my chance.
On my knees in the tub, I pushed off and climbed
on through.
A perfect ending, or an intruiging beginning to the next chapter? Don't know and don't care. I loved it! I really like the family dynamic introduced here, Meggie as a daddy's girl (or is she?) and a mom who's at her wits' end with a daughter that can't stay out of trouble. And the subtle descriptive details strewn throughout bring it to life in that way that only you can. Great story, Charlotte!
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