Emergence, Part 6: Under the Hood

Dianne left in the early afternoon and Meghan’s parents were still a few hours away from getting of work. I sat in young Miss Cafferty’s bedroom, laptop flipped open upon her desk, staring at an email in her ‘Drafts’ folder with the subject line: ‘Hey Garner—Read This’. It was undoubtedly another of her cute but confusing missives meant to ease me further into our own private ‘trading places’ reality show.

I was still bikinied, but now had a large beach towel wrapped about me from chest to thighs. Encased in its fluffy moist bulk, I felt like an enormous multi-colored segmented grub. The baby was quite active at the moment, fretting in my belly. It managed to somersault onto its head and now its butt was high and to the left, just under my ribcage. I could plainly feel it’s posterior and lower back jutting toward that side, while the upper right side of my belly was now much less hard.

One never gets used to this sort of thing. Especially when one is not supposed to have a womb in the first place, let alone a womb as full as Meghan’s.

Emergence, Part Five: Afternoon Indiscretions

It had been 4 days since my little adventure in space/time where I’d spent a handful of hours as an 18 year-old Ohioan named Meghan Cafferty. While I had passed a quiet morning as Meghan, my reality, the one I had so mysteriously leaped away from, had advanced 8 full days. This was how, upon my return, I found myself minus several vacation days at work but plus one in the girlfriend department. Perhaps girlfriend is too strong a word. Let’s just say ‘it’s complicated’.

Erica, a sixth year Ph.D student at a local university and I had shared two lengthy phone-calls over the course of my four days back. I was able to deftly play the ‘so tell me more about what you do’ card to get past the fact that I had no memory of what had happened while I was away. I was only very slowly getting access to what Erica and Meghan had experienced together while the latter has been passing as me.

Erica seemed flirty and fun, though a great deal smarter than me. We hit it off pretty well. I already wondered how I was going to mess this up. I wouldn’t have to wait long for my life to present me with just such a chance.

Today, I was busy catching up on budget stuff for the firm I worked at downtown. It was nearing noon, and I eagerly anticipated lunch with Erica, our first in-person get together since I’d fallen asleep next to her the night I ‘got back.’ We’d decided on a quiet little bistro. In preparation for today I had my shirt pressed and everything. Work was flying by with minimal hiccups and intrusions. I’d told my assistant, an obsequious young man named Ian, to deflect and defend as much as possible. Since he loved to talk, almost everyone who dropped by gave up after a blizzard of verbiage.

My office door was closed and I had about 15 minutes more work to do before I could pop out when out of nowhere it began to happen. ‘It’ in this case being a transformation I thought had been a one-time deal. The opening salvo was a quick strike to my groin. By which I mean to say that one moment my business was all there, the next it was gone. And in its place I could feel the unmistakable sensation of young Meghan’s most intimate of areas. 

It all happened so fast it barely had time to register when my phone buzzed to life, 

Emergence, Part Four: Back to Reality

I floundered on the floor of my apartment, elated to be back in my own body, my own time, my own home. Even though I’d just been laying submerged in a bath my skin was perfectly dry. The suppleness was gone and my great quantity of body hair was for once, a welcome sight. I was clad only in a pair of boxer shorts and remembered how passing through the hole the first time had modified my clothing along with the body. I patted my chest which was covered in flat, tough muscle. For the first time in my life I was happy for my hands not to be cupping large breasts.

“Oh thank goodness,” I murmured. 

It was over. The bizarre, surreal, impossible experience was over.

I got up off the ground and grinned. I was tall again, and strong. I flexed the muscles of my arms, my chest, my stomach in turn. It felt like I’d shrugged off a thick layer of fat, not to mention reacquired the trim tight feeling in my gut, replacing the crowded bulk of a baby I had been temporarily forced to carry. Already my mind found it difficult to recall what it had felt like to be a woman, let alone a pregnant woman. 

The experience was so foreign that it took on the quality of a dream.

The suit I had been wearing when I originally passed through the wall and entered Meghan’s world was nowhere to be found and I wondered why I had been deposited back here in just my underwear. In the living room I found my phone, which I instinctively flipped open to check for messages. I was shocked to find the time and date to be 2:00am on a Thursday night. 

According to my phone I’d been gone over 8 days.

Emergence, Part Three: Meet the Parents

((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.

Emergence, Part Two: In the Looking Glass

((Now, readers, a big choice is up to you! Is the strange man a concerned father and the narrator an 18 year-old high school senior? Is the man a boyfriend to a college aged live-in roommate? Or are they recent high school graduates who just tied the knot after learning of the pregnancy? Or something else? You make the call!

Love,

Charlotte))

Wherever I was, I was not alone. I scrambled up onto my feet and rushed to close the bathroom door. With my heart thudding in my chest I poked and twisted the knob trying desperately to activate a lock. My fingers were smaller and a bit more dexterous but the absolute terror in my gut made even the simplest motion hard to pull off.

At some point I remember thinking, “Why am I locking the door? Whoever is out there won’t just come barging in on me no matter what their relation to me.” But this rational line of thinking was soon overwhelmed by fear. I needed to know myself better before I could interact with others.

Finally there was a satisfying click, I was safe. I turned around and put my back to the door allowing my head to rest against it. My breath came in ragged gasps and I was even sweatier now than before. Lord it was hot in here.

“Honey, everything alright?” the strange man said, his voice sounded through the door just inches from the top of my head.

I leapt away from the door. The way his voice had come from above made me realize that I was probably shorter than I used to be. There was no way of guessing how much so as the fixtures and cabinets of the bathroom were unfamiliar to me. Despite some notable additions, on the whole I felt much smaller.

I hazarded a response. “I’m fine,” I said, feeling the way the air of my lungs passed up and out of my altered throat. It filled the air with an unfamiliar tone. It was lighter, crisper, beautiful and entirely feminine. I wasn’t sure why it surprised me so much, after all the rest of me was so feminine now too.

“It’s just that I thought I heard you crying…” the man pressed.

“I’m fine,” I repeated with a bit more firmness. I was far from fine but I wanted some time to myself. “I just… need a moment.”

Emergence, Part One: Through the Rabbit-Hole

((So what happens next, readers? 

Here’s where you have a chance to shape the way the story proceeds. Does the as-yet unnamed narrator scramble up and lock the bathroom door? Does she reply to the stranger? Does she pretend everything is alright? Or does she just lose it and fall to pieces, sobbing on the bathroom floor? Use the comments to help direct where the story will move from here. I look forward to crafting this ‘against my will’ as it were. Let me know what *you* want in the comments. 

Love, 

Charlotte))

I was happy to be back in my apartment after a long day at the office. With the front door shut and locked I was already looking forward to cracking open a beer and taking a seat on the sofa. I went to set my keys down upon a small table in the hall when they fell clattering to the floor. I looked down in time to watch something impossible happen. My keys hit the hardwood, bounced and then passed straight through the wall as if it were perfectly insubstantial.