Chapter 3 – Change

Since he was back in the room, the old priorities returned as he asked himself, “So, where is the exit?” Unlike the last time, he was somehow dropped into a place from his memories. The walls didn’t open. Not even a crease appeared, let alone something as hopeful as a door. Just the doorway joining the bathroom and the main room. And even that was sealed together in one flawless piece without seams he could pick at. A test strike at a random patch of wall revealed it was as indestructible as the cube.

Panting, he turned the faucet and cupped water in his hands to splash his face. It was cold and as sharp as needles but didn’t wake him up or dislodge this vision of the world. He offered up his brother’s name again with cupped hands, “STEVEN! ARE YOU THERE?”

He glanced around but his eyes widened as he looked down. His hands had changed. The palm was smaller and narrower, but his fingers were longer. The nails looked different too, like they were better kept than his own, which he remembered often biting down to the stubs. At least they weren’t long daggers.

Seth stepped away from the sink with its slow, faint drip. He eyed the chair he’d sat in and inspected himself. He washed his hands and they’d changed. He didn’t want to look at any further changes to his face in the mirror from the splash. And then his backside and sitting in the chair. Too connected to be coincidental. What he touched in the room was changing him.

Grimacing, he presented the solution with a mutter, “Okay…don’t touch anything…I guess.”

It was easily said. He bit his lip, which felt fuller, and brushed back his longer hair, declaring, “Annoying hair…scissors maybe?” He thought about it and resolved, “It may not change if I cut it. It already looks like…hers.” Of course, he had little certainty of the rules in a place where eyeballs could suddenly appear.

He cautioned himself, “Gotta find a pair first.” And so, the search began.

With girly hands, he didn’t mind pulling open drawers. The hands were just like the reflection girl’s hands, so he theorized that contact on the hands wouldn’t change anything else. Some of the furniture drawers didn’t want to open. They were either sealed or the drawers were false.  

Looking everywhere, he did find some he could open but all he found were clothes, women’s clothes. Some of it was close to gender-neutral, although in stronger colors than he was comfortable wearing. He gave a long, suspicious stare at a lone bra in a top drawer. It sat there, a light shade of blue and without the ornamentation of lace but glossy enough to glimmer under the scattered, irregular lighting of the room. He scowled intensely at the bra, shut the drawer firmly, and said, “NO WAY!”

Returning to the middle of the room empty-handed for scissors, he set his feet flat on the floor and curled his toes a bit. Something else felt amiss. He gave a slight look of confusion as he glanced down at his feet. The floor, which he hadn’t paid much heed, was densely carpeted like a silken animal pelt. His feet were different than they’d been before.

Staggering, he lifted one up to get a better look at it. It was an awkward motion, but he only softly touched a dresser to steady himself. His toenails, which had been plain and short, looked glossy and cared for like he’d recently had a pedicure. The foot had received the same treatment as his palms. They were smaller by several sizes with a different arch. His ankle was free of hair and slender.

Gasping, he cursed the carpet. Hopping around would not be an option. He had to think. He had to cover his feet.

Gritting his teeth, he looked at the walls and yelled, “You crazy-ass…giant-eye, nut-house!”

Tiring, he stopped hopping but kept off the balls of his feet. Looking around, he knew he couldn’t trust anything in the drawers. With a sigh, he took off his shirt, ripped it in half, and wrapped the halves around his feet. It wasn’t much and it looked like something out of a survival movie, but it kept his skin out of contact with the carpet, although he could still feel the dense texture of it. At the very least, it was a mental reassurance.

Topless, he remembered the bra and examined his chest. Compared to what he’d seen in the mirror before, his dark body hair was gone, seemingly absorbed back into his body with no trace it had ever been there. Cautiously, he touched at his nipples. They didn’t feel sensitive or otherwise altered. They did rise from being exposed to the air but were normal. By now his hair was long enough to touch his chest. He brushed it back and away from there, not sure if things that had been changed might have an effect on things that hadn’t been changed. The hair was soft and felt like velvet down his back.

He rechecked the shirt-shoes he’d made for himself and felt his legs. The hair was still there. At least the changes didn’t seem to be advancing. The plan was working perfectly. He stood there with relief. A moment of relief, which soon passed into a new anxiety. His leg bobbed. He tried to put the feeling out of mind. But trying to put it out of mind only called more attention to it. He clenched his teeth and tried to will the issue away. But no amount of willpower could overcome biology. He had to admit to himself, “I really need to pee…”

He wished that he’d just let loose in the darn cube where it didn’t seem like anything was out to change him. Heck, he could imagine pissing on the eye, a stream of water on a charged object probably would’ve fried it just as well as the brush. Yeah, all he could think about was peeing. Peeing here, peeing there. Spraying the walls. Waterfalls, pools, so much water everywhere. No thoughts could keep them down.

He danced a little in place like a tip-toe run. He’d have to go somewhere, not that there was a toilet to tempt him in this accursed place. Or rather, as he leaned to look through the doorway again, there hadn’t been one a moment ago. But now there was one right next to the sink. He made a stern face and took a deep breath. There were few things which more obviously screamed “trap”.

He entertained the possibility of just letting loose behind one of the dressers but if the toilet worked then it was a much better, more hygienic option. Besides, he told himself, he wouldn’t need to touch it at all. He’d just need to stand over it and aim. If his pants got wet then well, he wasn’t going anywhere so he could wait for them to dry.

Taking his first steps towards the toilet, he felt his walk suddenly become unsteady. It wasn’t as though the cloth across his feet had become uneven or bunched, rather it felt like the cloth had shifted, becoming more even and cushioned. That unexpected change caught him off-guard. He saw that his torn shirt had swiftly become a pair of sneakers with several yellow and white flowers as part of the encompassing design. He noted, adjusting his feet, “That could’ve been worse…” Worse, of course, was right before him.

Wincing, he knew he couldn’t hold it anymore. He stood before the toilet, undid his waistband, and unzipped to relieve himself. He lingered in the relief and the comfort of distance. As soon as the sound of water on water ended, however, he realized something was terribly wrong. What he was holding to aim had curled up in his grasp like it had been struck by something cold. It was retreating through the flaps of his fly.

Panic gave way to terror. He screamed and flailed. Caught off balance by the new texture of his shoes and paying more attention to his groin than which foot was where, he took a tumble to the floor. The fall came quickly but the cool, constant presence of the tile floor lingered like a slow-motion film scene. He was too frozen to move, feeling and glimpsing the edges of what came next.

His smooth chest rested against the tile floor, touching as it pushed back against it with a warm swarm of twin masses. He could see the sides of them, swelling outside the close confines as tingles and sensitivity rose too. When he finally eased the shaking long enough to cough and push up from the floor, he knew that everything had changed. He could see and feel the shifting of his chest as he settled into a sitting position. His cheeks hot, he immediately cupped them with his hands in a frail effort to hide what had formed there. Even trying to hide it only highlighted it.

Standing before the normal mirror in the bathroom, Seth could only offer the same thought he’d offered when he saw the girl’s reflection, “Holy crap, they’re big…” However, the feeling was emphasized by the fact he could see and feel them as a warm, soft part of his body.

Just as that notion was beginning to sink in, he swallowed and slipped a hand to his groin. His voice caught in his throat and his cheeks were hot with embarrassment. Nothing remained, although he valiantly searched for some sign that things had just made like a tortoise into its shell and would retract with just the right poke. But that wasn’t the case.

His shoulders dipped with resignation. In any practical sense, he was no longer male. 'She'…the word ground in her thoughts like wind-whipped sand. Seth leaned back against the wall of the bathroom. There was no point in hiding from touch now.

Standing slowly, she zipped herself up. However, the clothes she wore were not meant for her. They felt uncomfortable, tight in some places but loose in most. She went through a mental assessment of what was left of her body. She brushed her legs. They felt like a girl’s legs. She set her hands at her hips. Those hadn’t shifted yet.

Seth made her way from the bathroom into the main room. She had to hitch up her pants along the way and she crossed her arms over her chest since she was still topless. Pulling open one of the drawers, she gazed at the bra she’d run from before. She stared at it like it was mocking her. She sighed and admitted, “I guess I need this now…”

At first, she handled it like a glossy fish instead of a garment. She laid the material across her body. At least it didn’t further change her chest from the first touch. With all the gaps in her memory, it amazed her that finding a way to put it on didn’t give her much trouble. Getting it to fit comfortably was the hard part. It didn’t seem to be made for her (too large by a little bit), which was a small comfort. She would’ve been far more creeped out if it was the perfect thing for her to wear.

Several adjustments later, she was satisfied. Not happy but satisfied. For a moment. That was until her body started shifting again. She glanced down, cursing and flailing to remove the bra but it was already too late. She was bigger yet. Not by much but enough to feel like insult to injury. The garment did fit comfortably but she still regretted putting it on.

After she’d resigned herself to the bra, she soon noticed a tank top, like the one worn by the girl in the mirror. She slipped it on without complaint. It was very snug on her at first, but her body slimmed in a dozen small places to better accommodate it.

Defeated, she took her bottoms off. Projecting her thoughts past the swell of her bosom to the unseen mysteries below, she sent a quiet farewell to what had been between her legs before. She couldn’t remember much but she hoped that she’d had fun times with it.

It took a massive reject pile before she decided on a pair of underwear which didn’t make her want to roll her eyes. Jeans followed them as well as a benign pair of socks to make the shoes more comfortable.

With listless steps, she walked over to the mirror on the wall. It still projected the girl, only this time the image she showed, and the image of the girl matched perfectly, even their hair. They both adjusted their shoulder straps.

Seth tried to raise a fist to beat on the mirror. She tried to get angry but the feeling of helplessness, swelling since the first locked room, invaded her thoughts. If eyes could see her at any time, if things could change at a moment’s notice, if anything could cause anything else to happen. If all those things, then what chance did she have against such overwhelming and implacable forces?

The black hole of her memory didn’t help. She felt a bit of pride against her brother’s teasing, but she had no clue if any of those memories were actually real or just illusions. Still, despite that uncertainty, she felt compelled to say, “Well, big bro. Now you have a little sister…somehow…” She had no idea what Steven would say about it or if it mattered. However, she did feel a curious, hopeful glimmer at invoking Steven with the last few strange ‘flashbacks’.

This time, there was no change.

She coughed and rubbed at her narrowed throat. There was a glass on the table near the couch. She picked it up without fear. Returning to the bathroom, she turned the faucet and filled the glass. She eyed it a few moments. The glass was so clear she could perfectly see the wall. The water was similarly translucent. Better, she recalled, than the water in the bathroom he and Steven shared. With a shrug, she drained it in one gulp.

It was cool and wet. No aftertaste. She half-wished it was wine. She wouldn’t mind something alcoholic. She spoke this thought aloud then paused.

Touching her throat, she felt the loss of her prominent Adam’s apple. Her voice had shifted from the voice she’d had since waking to an unfamiliar, girlish timber. While it didn’t sound small or frail, it did sound softer and lesser than it had. A quick attempt to yell left her disappointed. It was a voice and there was nothing wrong with it, but it wasn’t the voice she wanted.

Seth found her way to one end of the couch. She hugged it, sitting deeply in its cushions, and asked the quiet, empty world around her, with delayed bitterness, “Is this what you wanted? What happens now? Where is everyone?”

Silence answered again for a long moment till she heard a voice, artificial and emotionless, blast forth.

“SECONDARY SECURITY SCAN.” The voice jarred her like a gunshot. It came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time, surrounding and looming above her.  

Swiftly, she questioned, “Who’s there?!” She thought about the computerized voice. It straddled the line between a man’s and a woman’s.

Suddenly, a pulse of light washed over her and she had to put a hand up. Before she could resolve what was shining at her, the light vanished. The voice spoke again and in the same way.

“AUTHORIZED. SECURITY QUARANTINE DISABLED.”

She heard a click somewhere to her right. She stood up with her hands clutched in front of her, biting her lip, and asked, “Hello?”

This time, she heard a voice through the wall. She stepped closer and pressed her ear against it. To herself, she asked, “I’m sure I heard something.” She tried again, louder, “HELLO?”

This time, there was a clear answer through the wall. “Hello! Yes! Finally! There’s someone out there!”

Seth relaxed a little as she realized, saying to herself, “I’m not alone…”