Chapter 2 – Contact

Seth wandered around in the dark, feeling nothing in his way and hearing only his footsteps until the whispered words…

*Never open the box…*

“Who said that? Who’s there? What box?”

Silence answered in the void. He turned in place. Even little flashes of afterimage light behind his eyes were gone. Just darkness.

Sighing in frustration, he muttered, “Nothing at all. I don’t know where I am… I should’ve stayed inside…” Granted, he had to admit that he didn’t know where he was inside the cube either but at least the dimensions were perceptible and somewhat familiar.

Continuing to talk to himself with his words dying just past his ears, Seth admitted, “Bit too late for that though. Now I’m stumbling in the void….”

He mulled to himself, “If only it wasn’t quite so dark. I’d love to have a wall….” Miming in front of him did nothing to attract one.

Along with all that, he tried turning around to catch a remnant of the glow from the cube room. Surely there would be something with all this darkness. But he couldn’t see a single trace of light from the room he’d left.

Letting out a long puff of air, Seth had to admit, “I guess I’m stuck till I run into something…”

And he did, a moment later. Cursing to himself and puffing, he felt around at what he’d made contact with. It felt hard. Quite hard against his shin. Reaching down to touch the phantom contours of the object, Seth mulled, “It’s a footstool…”

The floor had also changed consistency, but he wasn’t sure when that had happened. He just knew he needed to search more. If there was a footstool then there were sure to be other things around. At least, that was his hope.

With his efforts came much crashing and banging along with falling into even more hard objects before he found a comforting wall. It was as even and smooth as the one inside the cube. His hands traced along it but especially at height level. It was a long-shot to gamble on. Soon, he felt the cool, familiar contours of what he’d been hoping to find.

He declared happily, “That feels like a switch…I just hope it’s a good switch…” He hesitated pressing it. It could turn on the lights, but it could also lead to something horrible or deadly or horribly deadly. The alternatives were few, so he flipped it.

Instantly, Seth was awash in light, not from above this time but from a set of lamps around the room. He rubbed at his eyes. They ached and watered from the sudden glow but gradually adjusted and allowed him to resolve more around.

The new area he was in appeared as a normal living room. The ceiling was blank but different from the one in the cube. This one felt like your average ceiling in any house.

There were lights on tables around the room. The tables themselves were small, wooden, and rather typical. Aside from some sparse furniture, the room was relatively bare. The footstool he’d stumbled across lay to one side behind him, near a large sofa. He approached a countertop that looked like it’d been abandoned from a kitchen. Gazing at the arranged furnishings, he pondered a bit and soon realized what it reminded him of. It was like one of those phony displays that stores put together for how furniture might look rather than any reasonable living room arrangement. It was on display, in holding, with no real reason as to why one thing was placed next to another.

The walls were bare, with one exception (aside from the switch): a large mirror on a nearby wall. Having not seen his face yet, he approached the mirror.

He looked into it. His eyes widened and then narrowed. Then he felt around himself and dipped his head to look down. Looking back up, he turned his head and frowned as he said, “Wait a minute…why is there a girl in the mirror?”

[Art by Alexis Rillera/Anirhapsodist]

As Seth perceived it, the image in the mirror was of a young woman. Her hair was a sharp, reddish color and hung past her shoulders. She was dressed in a gray tank top with a pair of cut-off blue jeans. She had (in his opinion) a nice bust with defined cleavage. Her face had a soft, elfin, and vaguely-unnatural beauty. She was made up nicely with big, pink lips. He noticed her frowning at him as he frowned at her. He leaned around the edge of the mirror and so did she. He poked his tongue out and she mimed it as well.

“Excellent trick mirror.”

The woman in the mirror mimed the words as he spoke them. He tried reaching out for the mirror but stopped short of touching it.

Aloud, he mused, “Should I?” On the one hand, it was just a mirror. However, it wasn’t like any mirror he’d ever seen in his life so there was no telling what it might do.  

The lady in the mirror gave no answer. Seth stepped away and the girl did likewise. Then he bolted closer. The girl matched him move for move impeccably. This all reminded him of a comedy bit from an old black-and-white TV show he must’ve seen ages ago. He found it funny, out of all the gaps in his memory, that he could recall that.

He wasn’t sure how it was done. His best guess was some sort of advanced video overlay or a really good actress on the other end.

To strike out the later possibility he made a few motions in the mirror he wouldn’t mind seeing a girl make in front of him. He cupped at his flat, manly chest and the reflection girl cupped at the curve of her breasts. Seth watched closely. Next, he hopped around and made a sucking motion. It still didn’t beat the system.

Pausing, Seth mused to himself, “She’s good but…” Then he smirked along with her. He moved to casually roll up his sleeve and make it look like a complex hand motion was next. Instead, darting, he yanked up his top to expose his chest. His eyes widened and he stared (and so did the reflection girl). He hadn’t tricked it/her, although he didn’t feel like he’d lost.

Admiring the view, the girl gawked too. They both tapped their lips as Seth still felt confident, “I think she’s gonna blink first…” A staring contest had them evenly-matched as Seth pressed himself as close to the mirror as he dared to go.

Eventually, he gave that up and loudly proclaimed, “Now I think I’ll strip down!” The girl just mimed the same thing. He considered going through with his proclamation but simply remained topless. Glancing between the reflection and himself, he made a few moves to touch his body. At points where he grasped the air, her flesh shifted. For him, he didn’t feel any pressure or reaction from his flesh (other than some predictable ones from seeing a topless girl in front of him).

She behaved the same as a reflection but he didn’t see breasts when he looked down or feel long hair over his shoulders. Choosing a big chair with heavy armrests, Seth put his top back on and settled down to ponder, “So, then it has to be a video recording…” But the idea was ridiculous, though no more ridiculous than anything he’d experienced since waking…

…Since 'perhaps' waking. He lifted his head up and posed the possibility, “Or I’m just sleeping and I’m about to wake up. Any…time…” He held his hands, ready to poke at the absurdity of his situation but only grasping at still, unshifting air. Time passed…

No sign the world around him was ready to fade away and reveal his warm bed. No phantom sensations of covers. No sounds of alarm clocks breaching the walls of this space. All was silent, but for the noises he made and it didn’t seem ready to go anywhere.

After waiting a long spell to make sure the alarm wasn’t just a moment off, Seth sighed and stretched. As he stretched, a sensation, a familiar one, suddenly seemed wrong. He reached around and gently grabbed hold of his behind.

He asked no one but himself, “Is that bigger?” The contours felt different, but he had to admit he hadn’t been paying much attention to it. Checking other places, he found similar oddities. While he wasn’t a hairy man, the darker hairs he’d seen on himself inside the cube now looked silvery and much sparser than before. Several more touches confirmed what he was sensing as he noted, “Everything else feels softer…”

Then, his hand reached his hair. It slipped through layers that dipped further down his neck. He posed the question, “And is my hair shaggier?” The mirror on the wall would be no help in revealing any changes. Still, as he ran his hands through it, he was certain it had changed. Several weeks of growth in a very short time.

On a normal day, he would’ve panicked right then, but the pieces and the feelings came together for him in a different way and a particular conclusion. Sighing again, he announced, “A sex change dream? Really?” He said it with all the enthusiasm of someone who had such dreams unceasingly every night of their lives. However, he did reserve some curiosity by noting, “Could be interesting.”

He assumed that the visage in the mirror was what he was intended to look like in this dream, if it followed any sense of logic. If it didn’t, he could wind up a human roach girl. Immediately, he flushed that idea from his thoughts.

Then, he was suddenly struck by a long yawn. With a little laugh to himself, he quipped, “Am I getting tired even in my dreams?”

Blinking a bit, he scanned the room and noticed something had changed around him. There was a bathroom sink to one side of the room which wasn’t there before. It was a standard setup, with round handles and a pipe under the ivory basin but with a hairbrush, toothbrush, and some other common items to the sides of it. Unfortunately, there was no mirror.

Its appearance gave him a tingle of comfort as he noted, “This being a dream makes sense with stuff appearing and disappearing…”

Rubbing his neck, he approached the sink and muttered, “You’d think realizing a dream would wake you up from it.” Not that he remembered how his dreams typically went. Still, he had a vague sense without any specifics that his dreams were usually more boring than this. Then, with sudden inspiration, he said clearly, “Or turn it into a flying dream instead!” Alas, he remained firmly rooted to the floor.

That possibility shot down, he reached to turn the knobs of the sink when he suddenly frowned. There was a prickling on the back of his neck, like a small but steady laser beam focused on his skin. Not enough to burn or hurt him but enough for him to notice something was pressing at him. He mulled over this strange sensation and noted, with goosebumps rising across his silken skin, “…It’s like someone’s right behind me.”

He turned to check, expecting nothing at all. Instead, he staggered backward and gaped wide-eyed at a disembodied eyeball staring blankly in front of him, looming as large as a beach ball, against all reason.

Screeching, “SHIT!” with a higher tone than he wanted, he reached his hand around for the hairbrush. It wasn’t a weapon, but it was something. After catching his breath, he took a moment then firmly asked the eye, “What are you?”

The eye didn’t move. It kept hovering exactly where it was. He swung the brush at it in a hesitant motion and felt a sudden jolt through his entire body. It was harsh, painful, and it startled him like a blast all over his body. He screamed and bowed to his knees.

At the moment, all notions of this being a dream vanished from his head. That was far too painful compared to anything he’d experienced in a dream. That was like a blast arcing across all his neurons.

Trembling and twitching, he tried to steady his body as he spoke to himself, “That felt too real. I should’ve woken up. It hurt like hell!...This…can’t be a dream…but THAT!” He looked up at the eyeball. It hadn’t moved or wavered. It was deeply unsettling to look at.

He stood up and shifted sideways and away from the eye but the prickly sensation of static rushed along his fingers and he moved back to where he’d been standing a moment before. It seemed he was trapped by its gaze, though none of this made any sense to him.

Defeated and feeling the constancy of the eye fading from fear to bitter annoyance, he glared and quipped, “What are you staring at?” The eye made no motion to respond to him.

Folding his arms, he figured he had nothing to do but offer up a few more.

“So…contacts or glasses?”

“Want some carrots?”

“I think you’ll blink first.”

“You must go through Visine like water.”

“You were probably a very good pupil in school…Alright, I’m done.” Naturally, the eye didn’t respond to any of his comments.

Leaning his head back, Seth shut his eyes and sighed as he said softly, “I wish Steven was here…”

A familiar voice said, “Is my little brother taking a nap in the bathroom?”

Opening his eyes, Seth noticed he was in a normal bathroom with Steven standing and smirking in the open doorway. The sink was the same but with a shower to one side and a toilet behind him. He pinched himself hard, chuckled, and said, “I might be.”

Steven rubbed at Seth’s head. Despite his concerns about what was going on, Seth gave a little smile to his brother and asked, “Do I look any different to you, Steven?”

With one eyebrow raised, Steven noted, “No…why?”

Seth turned to look at the mirror. The hair on his head was back to normal and his skin had dark fuzz again. He sighed softly and told Steven, “No reason. Just a strange dream.”

Steven held his hands up and said, “Whatever, man. Just don’t lose your mind while I’m gone.”

He turned to look at Steven, his brow furrowed as he asked, “Gone?”

Waving a hand in front of his little brother, Steven told him with a teasing tone, “Me getting deployed? Away for nine months? Saving the world for freedom?”

As soon as his brother said it, there seemed to be a spark in Seth’s thoughts. “Of course…” He said the words but without confidence. He surmised his brother was in the military but there came no expected rush of memories to tell him for sure.

“How could I forget? I’m gonna miss you.”

Steven gave a wide, toothy grin. “Aww. You gonna get all girly and sentimental on me?” Considering the contents of his ‘dream’, Seth gave his brother a displeased, narrowed expression and told him, “No. I’m just gonna miss kicking your ass.”

With a hearty laugh, Steven smacked Seth on the shoulder and said, “Good one! Oh, man! That’s gonna keep me going.”

Rolling his eyes, Seth noted, “Glad to help.”

Turning to go, Steven said, “So yeah, no more sleeping. Finish up in here…cause we gotta go soon.” He shut the door behind him as he left. Seth looked to the sink. The hairbrush seemed the same as in his dream. He shrugged.

He checked himself in the mirror and found his hair could use a good brush. He moved it through his hair, trying to tame the wild parts. Still, they just remained spiky. He pushed on the spikes with his hands, but they refused to stay down.

Sighing…he looked…and watched as his hair swelled out. The spiky parts softened to flow down his back. Frozen in horror, he clutched the brush and stared as his hair flowed down his neck and over his shoulders.

“NO!”

He yelled and chucked the brush across the room…where it spiked a floating eyeball that wasn’t there a moment before. He was back in the other room. The dream room, same as he had left it.

The eyeball sparked around itself like something out of a movie and hissed like a steak on a grill. It began melting into a pool on the floor. The pool sat there for a moment then slowly faded away to nothingness.

Panting, Seth turned around to look in the mirror. His skin was soft again and now his hair was long and silken with the same color and form as the reflection girl’s hair.

Mouth hanging open, all he could ask himself was, “The hell is going on?”