The Dark of the Moon: Josette's Story, Chapter 2

  12-06-24

 
[Author's note: Far from catching up with my work, I fell further behind this month. A publisher suddenly offered me an opportunity that I want to make use of. But the extra work will tie me down for a while. In the meanwhile, I'll continue with "Josette's Story," which is written and partially polished and won't take so long to get ready to post. By the way, I'm learning how to use AI image creation apps and I added an illo to this story, and also one to Chapter one. I've always liked illustrating my stories, but I lacked good Paintshop Pro skills, and also didn't feel right about using copyrighted sources as a picture source. But AI is much faster to use and AI creations are legal to use (at least until government gets around to making a mess of things). By the way, I created a new illo to add to my old story posted here called THE TOY SOLDIER. Take a look at it. I'd like to improve every picture in that tale, but I don't have enough free time these days. Anyway, I'll get back to TWILIGHT OF THE GODS as soon as I can, but until then enjoy JOSETTE'S Story.]

 

THE DARK OF THE MOON: JOSETTE'S STORY, Part Two

 By Christopher Leeson 

THE DARK OF THE MOON: Josette's Story Chapter 2

Because she was wearing short pajamas, he didn't at first notice her face. When he looked higher, he saw her goddess-like face what had a bewildered expression. He glanced over his shoulder and realized he was in a girl’s room, which would be impossible unless this was a dream.

So far, it was a good dream. It had the makings of being the most fun lucid dream he'd ever had. But he knew lucid dreams never lasted long, and they always ended just before the real fun got going. To make this dream last, he didn't dare get too excited or else he'd wake up. Could he in invite his dream girl to in and join him? 

"Miss, can you come around to the door so I can talk to you?" he asked. "You're super-hot and I just know I'm right guy for you. I bet we share a lot of interests!"

But while he was speaking, the blonde girl was talking, too, but he wasn't hearing anything. And, now that he thought about it, his own voice sounded funny. What a minute!

His mind was less woolly now. He was standing in front of a window and talking to his own dream reflection. It was crazy, but he was dreaming about being a girl— and not just a girl, but one of the prettiest blondes he'd ever been close to. For some reason, he thought that the situation was a hot one and wondered what he could do with while it lasted.

Loren thought might be dreaming about being a girl because he had had fallen asleep thinking about that silly sex-changing oil. Maybe the strange oil induced lucid dreams. He reminded himself to keep calm again, to keep the dream from ending.

On impulse Loren felt the bust that the dream had given him, using both hands. Wow! What a sensation. Squeezing them made a shiver run through him.

Now Loren took a hard look the room around him. It was definitely a girl's room in disgraceful ill-array. It was off-putting, in fact. It reminded him that girls should be tidy. He didn't he could get serious about a slob, no matter how pretty she was.

The teen crossed to full-length mirror in the room, and suddenly became aware of how strangely his body was moving. Loren went to stand in front of the mirror, thinking that in lucid dreams a person could do anything he wanted. Cautiously, he touched himself between the legs.

He found that he was missing what a girl should be missing. Though there wasn't much there, it sure felt good when he rubbed it. The more vigor his stroking became, the more intense was the pleasure.

"Oh, this is kinky," Loren whispered, amused how girlish and sweet his voice was.
 

Loren suddenly realized was that this was no stranger's room. It was his own room, but it had been repainted, refurnished, and redecorated to be a girl's bedroom.

Crazy. It was like the room he knew so well had put on drag for Halloween. Everything in the messy place was cloyingly feminine. He frowned. The silly tastes of girls didn't appeal to him.

Loren looked at his reflected legs. Man, they looked good! But there were a couple things he wanted to see even more. He pulled out the neckline of his slip-over to take a gander at the real live girl inside. Was he saw would do credit to a photographic layout in a male magazine.

"Kinky," he whispered to himself.

Loren glanced at an envelope on the floor by his feet. It was addressed to Josette Melford.

Josette? Could that be the name of the girl whose room this was? It was funny that she would be named "Josette." It wasn’t a common name, but it had been the name of his mom's favorite character on the soap opera Dark Shadows. She had told him that if he had gotten a sister, she'd want to name her Josette.

Now Loren looked up at the poster hanging on the wall, showing some too-pretty male teen heartthrob. He was holding a mike, so he must have been some singer he didn't know. There were guys that made music for teen girls. He believed that chick music was for chicks, and guy music was for guys, and never the twain shall meet.  

On impulse, Loren crossed to the closet to see if it was loaded with sexy things. And was it ever! The closet was just as girly as the rest of the room. It was full of girl's clothing, and a lot of it looked hot! The mini dresses looked child-sized, but he wasn't complaining. They were the kind of dresses girls wore when they wanted guys to notice them. Most guys Loren knew like girls in bikinis, but really short dresses revved him up more than bikinis did. A bikini was a kind of outer wear, meant for public display. But the girl's with high hemlines had to walk carefully in fear of showing too much. There was a special trill in glimpsing undergarments that a girl didn't was trying not to show off.

Suddenly, Loren felt like exploring the rest of the house in his girl shape. He stepped into the hall and went to the stairs. This part of the house looked like the same home Loren was used to. He noticed that went he walked his hips had a funny sway. And his breasts reminded him that they had weight by the way they bounced. Girls wore bras, after all, so they wouldn't jiggle so much.

While descending in the near dark, the girl stepped on a can opener left on one step and it hurt like hell! "Ouch!" she yelped.

"Josette! Is that you?" called someone in his mother's voice. Mrs. Milford came out of the kitchen like a first responder. "Did you hurt yourself, darling?"

It surprised Loren to be called Josette. And embarrassment made her face flush being seen wearing girlie pair of pajamas.

"I s-stepped on something," Loren, or rather Josette, replied. "Why are you up so early, Mom?"

"We're having a morning presentation at the lab and I have to check in by six. Why are you still in your pajamas?"

"No reason," he said.  

"Well, if you're up you can join me for breakfast. But put on a robe to keep your jammies clean."

Josette went back upstairs, but when she reached the upstairs landing, she was fully awake. "O.M.G!" Josette thought. "This feels too real!" It was also feeling creepy, so she decided to wake up after all. His mom showing up had sort of ruined the fun.

To make himself wake up, Josette slapped herself and jumped up and down, too, repeatedly whispering, "I want to wake up!"

It didn't work. Poking himself with a nail file didn't help either.
 

He fell into Josette's disordered bed, his mind spinning. Was he in a hallucinatory delirium?


His mother called from the foot of the stairs. "Josie, honey! Have you fallen asleep again?"

Josette struggled to sit up, remembering that the paper said that he couldn't explain things to anybody, including his mom. The instructions for breaking that taboo would be dire.

With nervous hands, he took a robe off a wall hook and struggled into it. On the floor was a pair of fuzzy slippers made to look like lambs, and he slipped his feet into them. Then, taking a deep but shaky breath, he went downstairs more carefully this time.

As he stepped into the kitchen, Josette heard the toaster pop. There was a plate on the table and he sat in front of it. When the food reached his mouth, it tasted like actual food and that worried him. It wasn't like a dream anymore and he so much wanted his girlhood to be a dream.

"You don't look well, darling," Lynette Melford said. "Are you ill? Is that what made you stumble before?"

"Yeah," he answered. "I felt woozy when I got out of bed. After I eat, I want to try to get back to sleep."

"Unless you're very sick, I have to go to work," Mrs. Melford said. "Check in with me often until you're feeling better. If I don't hear from you, I'll call you. If you don't answer, I'll rush home. If you start feeling really sick, call 911. Keep your phone with you all the time!"

Her mother ate quickly and then grabbed a jacket and hurried out to the car. Josette was glad to be left alone. She went back upstairs and tried to sleep, thinking that might end the yard lighted up with daylight, he -- she -- was still a girl.
 

Josette was getting afraid that this wasn't a dream. What if the worse thing possible were true and the magic oil had done just what the paper with it said it would do!

If the copy were literally true, she would have been stuck as a girl for the rest of her life if she had mentioned to her mom that she was her son Loren. What a narrow escape from disaster!

She was horrified by her close brush with a life-changing disaster. A thing like that could ruin a person's life!
 

Her head spun from fretting. She learned something about her anatomy when she went to the bathroom and relearned the use of a toilet.

Like she'd promised, Josette's mom phoned her every hour. The teen told her that she was getting better little by little to keep her from worrying. What else could she say? Certainly not the truth!

How long would this last? She asked herself. One month? Forever?

What would he life be if she had to stay this way forever?

#
 

Everything about her life was in shambles. School would open soon. Would she have to go to school as a girl named Josette?

Josette thought hard about school. Would the kids there remember Loren Melford? If her own mother didn't know about Loren, how could she expect her classmates to? What about her best bud, Darrell Rivers? Had he also forgotten that Loren existed, too?

She thought and thought about what to do, and finally, a useful idea to mind.

In the days ahead, she would have to impersonate someone she didn't know. Everyone else in school would probably know more about Josette than she would. She needed to find out more about Josie Melford -- as she found herself calling the missing owner of the body she occupied.

Did Josie have a Facebook page? If she behaved like most girls, she would have put a lot of personal stuff online. But when the teen tried to get into Loren's Facebook page, she couldn't. His account couldn't be found. So, what now? Did Josette keep a diary or journal like Loren had?

The girl searched through that mess of a room and eventually found a shoe box filled with letters. She took them to the bed and spent the next couple hours soaking up the facts. Josette was looking for personal information about Josie Melford, trying to figure out her personality and interests so she could impersonate her. Like it or not, to avoid a lot of trouble she had to learn enough so that she could pass for the real person.

Most of the letters were from adult relatives, since younger people used texts and telephones. Not much was said in them except the "How are you and how are you doing?" stuff. Except for her mom's parents, Loren didn't have any relatives who were fun to talk to.

Josette kept looking for sources of information abut Josie, getting more and more frustrated. In his own messy room, Loren had known where everything—or most of everything—was, but this was a stranger's digs and she was clueless about where Josie kept her stuff.

It was about 3:00 p.m. before she found a journal inside a box crafted to look like a stack of books. Josette hoped it would contain the private thought of Josie Melford.

Josette didn't have to read far before deciding that the book was boring. The writing was all about girly dribble. As beautiful as the old Josette had been, the new Josette couldn't imagine that she would have been fun to talk to. She never wrote about interesting things, like science fiction, war gaming, movies, or television.

Josette shook her head. Josie wrote about her friends a lot,  almost always using their first names. Who were all these people? A couple of names sounded familiar from past issues of the school newspaper Loren had read, so they must be from Cantor High School.

But Loren and Josie had one thing in common; both of them had gotten a car from their mother. In general, it seemed like Josie had been popular with the smart set at school. Loren had always wanted to be popular, too, but only on his own terms. Josie put a lot of stock in going to parties. But to the unpopular kids, like Loren, going to parties where the girls would all ignore him was something to avoid.

Eventually, Josette realized that Josie didn't have a special boyfriend. That was lucky, since she didn't want to have to fend off some grabby guy at school. But why didn't Josie have a steady date? The mirror told Josette that he counterpart was a was a girl any boy would want to hang with. Had the teen kept her options open for some reason, or did she have a personality flaw that kept guys away from her?

But, if anything, Josette would have wished her doppelgänger hadn't been a lot less popular. She didn't want to start living Josie's social life, pretending to be someone she wasn't.

Though the reading wasn't fun, Josette forced herself to keep at it. Josie was obsessed with shopping. Her clothes-horse idols seemed to be female rock stars and actresses, which explained the party clothes hanging in her closet.

Josette came upon at note about last New Year's Eve.

"Year in review: January - Oliver and me, Margo and Matt hung out and listened to music. I didn't like most of the it but pretended I did. Tilda is going back to boarding school. I'm not sure if I'll miss her or not. She's cool about some things, but uncool about others."

Did Tilda stand for Matilda? Josette wondered. What parents would have named a kid of the 21st century Matilda?

#

Rang again. Previously, Josette had ignored it, preferring to be "radio silent."

But she realized that could be a mistake. Silence might induce a concerned friend to come to the house and check on her. What if she didn't know the name of the person who dropping in? Word could spread that she having mental problems. So the girl looked at the cell's screen and saw that it read "Leah."

"Leah?" she spoke into the device.

"Oh, Josie! I haven't heard from you for a couple of days."

"Ahh...I haven't been feeling well. I'm staying in. In fact, I haven't even changed out of my pajamas. I tried to read a little, but I'm too blah even for that."

"That's too bad. Have you been thinking about this weekend?"

Josette had to bluff. "Unless I feel better, I'm not sure I'll be up for the weekend."

"Oh, it could be so much fun! We still have tons of plans to make!"

"I can't concentrate on planning right now," Josette said. "I get dizzy just standing up."

"Should you see a doctor?"

"My mom's pretty smart about health and doesn't think I've got anything serious."

Wanting to cut the conversation short, Josette said, "Look, I've been running to the bathroom all day and I have to go again. Let's finish this conversation next week when I'm up to form."

"Next week? Do you feel that sick?"

"No, I just mean as soon as possible. But I can't hold back any longer. Got to run. Love you, kid." Then she switched off the phone.

By that time it was almost six. The teen could hear someone walking around downstairs. She could only hope it was her mom and not a serial killer.

Somebody was climbing the stairs and Josette tensed. "Josie!" came her mother's voice. The door swung in.

Mrs. Melford blinked. "You haven't dressed all day, darling. Have you been that ill?"

"I'm getting better, like I said. But I don't feel like going anywhere, so what's the point of getting dressed?

"How are you eating?"

"My appetite's gotten better, too," Josette said.

“Do you think your problem could be mononucleosis?”

"I don't know. Is that going around?" the teen asked.

“Not that I heard. It could be iron deficient anemia.”

“How's that treated?”

“By taking ferrous iron supplements.”

“That doesn't sound too disgusting.”

"Or you could have depression," her mom said. "Have you had anything to be depressed about?"

Oh, brother! If she could only tell... "A little. I don't know why," the teen replied.

"Well, you're facing the start of your senior year. That's when a young person realizes that he's on the brink of adult life, and that's always stressful."

Josette ad-libed. "Yeah. When I page through college catalogs, I can't figure out what I want to study. Everything seems so...dull."

"You were talking about fashion design before."

"Ah, yeah... I was kidding myself about that. Sometimes I think I have no fashion sense at all. And it depresses me to have to leave so many friends behind."

"That's one of the many sad things about growing up. But, you know, if you hit upon a career choice that you really want, it will become fun for you."

"If you say so."

Mrs. Melford smiled. "You don't sound too sick. Give me about a half hour and I'll have something on the table. By the way, what happened to your promise to get this room cleaned up?"

"If I had been feeling better today, I would have tackled it," Josette fibbed.

"I hope you'll get to it soon. How can anyone feel pretty living in a roped-off disaster area? Why don't you dress up your room as nicely as you dress yourself?"

Josette looked askance at her mom. "Do you like the way I dress? I mean, do you approve of...my fashion taste?"

"I wasn't sure about teen fashions, but all the women's magazines tell us there's no way to fight back against the youth culture. Think of when Victorian-born women had to raise flapper daughter! In your grandma's day, her folks were dead set against miniskirts, but she wore them just the same.

"Think that with all the problems this country has, high hemlines are the least of our problems. Anyway, I feel proud when I see you outshining the Hollywood starlets."

"I'm feeling worse again," Josette said, not liking to continue this conversation.

"We'll get some iron into you. If you're still unwell in the morning, we'll have you checked out."

Mrs. Melford went out into the hall, but looked back and said, saying, "I'm doing the wash Sunday. Please put your dirty things into the machine as soon as you feel strong enough."

"Okay, Mom," said Josette forlornly.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 3