It was approximately 4:40 when Parker, my roommate, burst into the little living room that we shared. Well okay I'm not sure exactly when it happened. But hey a best estimate is all you’re really going to get so just roll with it, okay? 

I was sprawled out on the couch, headset on, and in the midst of defending a control point. Of course chatting with my friends while playing Overwatch was taking up the full scope of my mental capacity. Yeah it’s been out for a while and has kind of fallen out of favor. But me and my friends had sunk enough time and effort into overwatch (and maybe more money than we should have on loot boxes) that we kept playing it. Sure it wasn’t whatever game was Twitch’s flash in the pan game of the month, but none of us really streamed that much so it was more for relaxation anyway.

I ignored his entrance like I normally did and focused on setting up a proper defense for my team. A guy has to have his priorities straight, and when someone has a roommate as off kilter as mine they quickly learn the most creative ways to ignore any social interaction whatsoever. “Ooh I’m so sorry, but this game is live and I can’t pause it” was one of my absolute favorites. Other choice distractions were “whoa my parents are calling, you know how they can be” and “aw jeez look at the time I need to finish my [insert whatever chore here].” Classic tried and true distractions, perfect for giving myself just enough time to physically exit Parker’s proximity before he could suck me into hour long one person Ted Talks.

I did my best to ignore Parker as he was waving his book around and babbling on and on. Yes, it was rude, but the match was getting close to overtime and I was sure he would tucker out and maybe leave me alone. If it was a good day, he would make a little speech and then lock himself in his room for a few hours. I knew he had a minifridge in there so usually he wouldn’t come to the kitchen for food. However he seemed to be particularly vitriolic that afternoon and even my buddies on discord could tell.

“I can see your best pal is back,” Nathan chirped in my headset. Smug bastard. It was all his fault that I was stuck with Parker anyway.

“God, he’s really going at it this time isn’t he. What happened, did Spooky Mulder find some fresh virgins to sacrifice or something?” Usually Elle was too distracted playing these games to talk much, but she would never pass up a chance to throw in her ‘hilarious’ nickname for the two of us. “You gonna talk to him Scully or are you going to just keep setting up those useless little sentry guns?”

Har har,” was really all I could say. If I outright insulted Parker I knew he would be insulted and would want to stay around a little longer. This kind of back and forth patter kept up for the rest of the match, which of course given my luck that day ended up in a loss. I took off my headphones, sighed, and rubbed my eyes. When I opened them, I was shocked to discover that Parker was even closer to me than before, shoving his musty old book in my face.

“I HAVE FOUND IT ANDREW! AFTER YEARS OF SEARCHING THE TRI-COUNTY THRIFT STORES I HAVE FINALLY STUMBLED UPON A CERTAIN VOLUME! OH WHAT A VOLUME IT IS!” Yes this was Parker. Yes he is always this loud. Sometimes louder. For the sake of your ears and mine I will turn down the volume a little bit but just imagine that every single line he delivers was with the flourish and restraint of Doctor Doom. 

Also he knows I prefer being called Andy and yet he still calls me Andrew. I always hated when people called me by my full name. It always felt like a suit that never quite fit right, yet everyone always told me it looked so well on me. For the first few weeks that I knew him I would correct him every time and yet he still rolls on. At this point, I’ve just resigned myself to the fact that he would continue to call me Andrew and just stopped bothering to correct him.  Can’t hate the fact that he marches to the beat of his own drum, right? Oh wait, yes. Yes I can hate him. Very much so.

You are probably thinking to yourself, Andy if you hate the guy so much why the hell are you living with him? Very good question. Let’s flash back a few months and see how I ended up in this situation. It all started at the end of the school year. I had just finished up my junior year at State and I was in a little bit of a bind. For the past two years I had been living in an apartment with my good friend Nathan. We met in high school during movie club, and had become close friends despite neither of us actually sharing a class. I ran into him again during college at a party and we both realized that we needed someone to share a room with. It was a perfect combination. Nathan was great with providing alcohol and terrible old movies to watch and I helped introduce him to tabletop gaming.

Maybe not all interactions were always positive between the two of us, but we made quite the pair. We were both about 5’10 and had brown hair. That was pretty much where the similarities between the two of us ended. Nate was generally pretty fashionable and had an impeccably styled mohawk. He was the only person I ever met in real life that could pull it off without looking like some sort of tremendous asshole. I, on the other hand, had an unruly mop of shaggy curly hair that I never was able to get controlled. Most of the time I just let it do what it wanted, I felt like shit most of the time anyway so why waste my time trying to make the hair look somewhat presentable when instead I could focus on my beard.

I was quite proud of my facial hair, or at least proud of people's reaction to it. It wasn’t patchy, and instead grew in thick and proud like a viking. Like a “I just burned down your village and terrified your women” kind of Viking.The beard kept me warm in the winter time and was unbearable in the summer but I like to think it let me pull off a whole “mountain man chic” thing.

And you know, the more positive responses I got from growing the beard the less I had to shave. All I had to do was keep it trimmed to a reasonable point so that I didn't look like the second coming of Rasputin. The more external validation I got, the more I grew to enjoy the beard. Its funny what a little outside praise can do. Soon enough that was my look and I kind of coasted off that easy recognition as "beard guy!"

The dream team couldn’t last forever though, Nathan eventually up and graduated and all of the sudden I’m sitting in a pretty spectacular apartment, but because I’m a relatively broke college student there’s no way I could cover the whole thing by myself. So I had to go to Craigslist, put out an ad, and hope. 

Parker responded almost immediately and said that he would cover three-fourths of the rent as long as I let him have the larger of the two rooms.I know, I know. Too good to be true. Truth be told I sort of waited until the last minute to put up the ad so we met in a little coffee shop near my place, he showed me that he was financially stable, and he moved right on in.

It didn’t take too long for me to realize that Parker was. . .well more than a little eccentric. You couldn’t really tell by looking at him. He was on the tall side, about 6ish feet looking like a lanky scarecrow. He had a strictly groomed head of black hair that bordered on the severe. Like, military cut, but for some sort of funky sci-fi future militia. And his fashion choices were a little suspect. He insisted on wearing a drab green hoodie all the time, even in the middle of summer. I mean, we’re living in the South. There is nothing coming his way but sweat and misery. But anyway, he was standing there in that stained hoodie waving the book around like it was the most important thing in the world.

And like, I get it. We all get those days, or weeks, or maybe even months where we don't really have the energy to do things. We ask those big questions to ourselves. "Why do I shudder when I look in the mirror?" "Why do I feel like I'm pretending to be someone I'm not?" And then next thing you know laundry doesn't get done for a little while and you're looking for whatever clothes are the cleanest. I'm just saying it happens and I don't judge but don't let a single piece of clothing become a uniform. I lived with him for about 5 months and I never actually saw him wear anything else.

Oh wait. He’s talking. Maybe I should pay attention to his talking. Maybe. I guess. 

“Like I was saying Andrew, I have searched for quite some time for-”

“Yeah, yeah. You found a book. Great. Do you now finally have the complete works of Lovecraft or something?” Sometimes you just have to interrupt Parker to get himself out of these loops. I know it’s rude to interrupt but if I hadn’t he would have just been babbling about the thrift store that he found it at. It would be all ‘Oh Andrew I perused the VHS aisle and they had not but one copy of The Princess Bride.’ Completely insufferable.

“Don’t joke with me Andrew. You know that the macabre plays havoc with my sleep schedule. I was about to give up browsing at the local Father and Sons when tucked next to an absurd volume known as ‘chicken soup for the cowboy’s soul’ I found it. The tome that I have been waiting for!” He caressed the book as he was speaking, which didn’t really sell to me that this book was important. “I knew something like this existed, and after some deciphering at that coffee establishment that you introduced me to I have reached forth into the heavens and plucked the very vigor of life itself. It is as if I am Prometheus, and this book is the very fire that will change the lives of mankind forever.”

Now of course, at this point in the rant I had lost all patience. “Okay great Park, you found a book. I have a library card if you needed to borrow it. There are plenty of world’s to explore at your local library. Who knows, maybe you’ll find out what planet you come from.”

Typically he ignored my oh so clever remarks, but today Parker just shook his head like he was dealing with some sort of petulant child. “Ahhhh Andrew how you like your little jests. Not even the sting of your cynicism can darken this glorious day. As you may recall from our conversation last week, I have been having a problem when seeking out a potential partner. I have even turned to such insipid sites like the Okaycupid and the Match dot com and yet no luck.” This was very very hard for me to believe. “But now, a solution to this devious problem! The wiles of women will no longer best my humble soul!”

This was too much for me to handle, and I was already in a shit mood so of course my instinct was to be a bit of a jerk. “What are you going to do Parker? You know knocking out a girl and kidnapping her is a little illegal right?”

“Why do that, when I have something better.” Parker flipped open the book and began turning the pages. “Ahhh let us see. I know I put that bookmark around here somewhere. Was it in the. . no it isn’t this far I would have definitely seen that picture.”

“Do I really need to be here for this?” Sighing and rolling my eyes, I opened up the Twitch app on my PS4 and started checking if any streamer I liked was live.

“Oh you most definitely should, so you can be amazed at my already incredible mastery of the mystic arts. Ah here it is.” And that, friends, is when things went full on strange. Parker began to speak something, but instead of his normal insufferable voice all I heard was a buzzing static. 

Imagine driving late at night on a road trip and the radio station that you are listening to is slowly fading away. You get bits and pieces of songs but it is all buffeted by a slow building static that slowly engulfs all ideas and concepts. It felt. . . wrong. It felt like I was hearing things that humans weren’t entirely engineered to comprehend. And he said Lovecraft gives him nightmares.

Suddenly my whole body locked up in my standing position. Signals from my brain were reaching my arm and yet nothing was happening. I tried desperately to flip off Parker and yet despite how hard I tried my fingers just wouldn’t obey my quickly panicking brain. 

While locked in place, my whole body felt like I had just gone down a drop on a roller coaster without wearing the seat belt. Whatever was going on with the world just ceased to exist. For a moment I was looking at Parker and my apartment’s living room. Then all of the sudden I had jerked sideways into a void. Well, that’s not particularly true. It didn’t feel like I moved at all. So it’s more like the void jerked sideways to me. Like it was a normal thing that just existed, waiting for just the right moment to swallow me whole. 

The static noise persisted as the void pulsed and changed colors to match the dissonant frequency. As a noise rock fan, I can appreciate good use of feedback, but this was like nothing I had ever experienced before. For at least an hour, the static harmonies washed over me and my senses were assaulted by what looked like a Windows 95 screensaver from hell.

Then all of the sudden, I felt a slight buzzing on my fingertips. Something that felt like little bubbles spreading delicately over each fingerprint and then slowly up the digits. As the feeling passed, further up my arm I noticed that it had an uncanny slimming effect.

I should have panicked. But really at that point what could I have done? I spent the first five minutes in the void flipping the heck out in my head. I had a mouth, but I couldn’t scream. So the bubbles were just a new addition. While I resigned myself to my fate, a second set of phantom bubbles started out on my toes and began to move upwards as well. By this time the bubbles on my arms had seemingly intensified on my chest and face. What could I do but enjoy the feeling?

And I won’t lie, it’s not like it was unpleasant or anything. Instead it felt like I was slowly filling up with a fizzy champagne. Each moment the bubbles fizzed and teased my body, and the longer it went on the more I was actually starting to enjoy it. At the start it felt more like an itch as it spread, but by the time the buzzy bubbles finished I found myself upset that it was over. If I was going to be stuck in a hell void, I might as well enjoy it, right?

Eventually after what felt like forever, the sensation stopped. It had covered my entire body and noise slowly seeped back into my life. The static had stopped harmonizing and now began finding the station again. Of course it wasn’t that much better, it seemed to be Parker droning in some other language. The void unraveled around me like it was in reverse and I jolted back into this plane of existence relatively the same way that I exited it. But nothing really felt right. 

Parker was always taller than me, but now he and his dumb dingy sweatshirt seemed even larger than before. My balance felt a bit off and I stumbled to stand once control was finally returned to me. Like a limb that you’ve let stay asleep for too long, everything felt numb. Like the slightest pressure was going to send me tumbling down to the floor. Something was wrong. Finally I regained myself and actually squeezed some words out.

“Oh my God. What the hell.” Oh something was very wrong alright. My voice going up several octaves wasn’t necessarily the first thing that I noticed was different, but it was the first thing that really freaked me out. 

I mean, everyone has an idea of what they sound like in their head. They think like it a little bit and even then they connect that to their identity. Am I getting too philosophical about this, well that’s because this really freaked me the fuck out. “Tesssting. Testing. She sells sea shells on the Jesus Christ I can’t even. My voice.” Like I said, freaking the fuck out. 

And the whole time Parker is standing there, book in one hand looking like the smuggest possible person on planet Earth. I had to bite the bullet. I had to ask him what the hell happened. “Alright Parker, spit. What the hell happened?” See, I can be quite poetic when I want to be.

Poetic or not, I winced a little bit. I wasn’t trying to make my voice sound intimidating, just mad. Judging by my new voice however, I didn’t even sound mad. In fact, I sounded like someone incredibly cute and bad at acting pretending to be mad. Like a child pretending to be a parent grumpily copying the words that they had just said.

Parker’s smug nasally whining brought me very quickly out of my reverie, “Well as I was saying earlier, I was having a hard time finding a significant other who would willingly spend time with me and I happened upon this fantastic little spell, well I guess curse in the book.”

While he was talking he had pulled out his phone and held it up to me. I was still feeling pretty out of it and grabbed the phone. All that was on the screen was a picture of our apartment. Nothing too out of the ordinary, except standing exactly where I stood in the picture was an adorable looking woman. Like me she had big blue eyes, and her expression was a mix of confusion and horror. My first thought was obviously ‘of course she’s looking terrified, she’s in an apartment alone with Parker.’ Then like an idiot I looked at her clothes. She was wearing the exact same Mountain Goats shirt that I was wearing. And then of course, I had the bright idea to look down. The same Mountain Goats t-shirt was a little bit curvier than it was when I put it on this morning.

You might be thinking to yourself, duh idiot that girl is you. And I mean sure if I had walked or moved much since my return from chillwave hell I probably would have noticed a little extra bounce to my step. 

After trying desperately to postpone a panic attack I looked back at the picture. The doppelganger girl had a short brown pageboy haircut with the same unruly curly hair that I had. But not everything was the same. The more angular face had been rounded a tad and her nose was much smaller than mine had ever been. She had what looked like a small bust, but there was no mistaking the flair of her womanly hips. Once again I tried to sound in control, but my mind was way past controlling my fear. “Wh-what the hell. D-did. You. Do. To. Me?”

“Well obviously I used the best five dollar purchase of my life to cast a wonderful magic, proving to the skeptics out there that it does indeed exist. Now I probably should have recorded that so I could have put it on the internet bu-”

I was getting madder at every word. “No. I don’t want the bullshit. What did you do to me?”

Parker sighed. “Andrew, it seems still like you have no appreciation for endeavors made in expanding human consciousness. Fine. I cast a spell on you that would transform you physically into a member of the fairer sex. And I have to say, I feel like I did quite an adequate job.”

This was getting a little too much for me to take. “You did this. To me? All so you could have a date!? Parker! In your case that’s what sex workers are for (bless their souls).”

“Don’t you listen at all? Not just have a date.” Parker scoffed, rolling his eyes like I was the dumbest child in remedial english. “Momentarily using this book I will craft my perfect companion. Personality, interests, looks. Right now I must say you are fine, 5.5 out of 10. If one likes the sort of lesbian next door look, but I like a girl that is a little more. . . well you know endowed.”

The entire time Parker was saying this he was flipping through the book. Oh God. Is this how my life ends. I mean my life will technically go on but it would get overwritten by. . . well whatever Parker’s dream fling would be. A life with Parker. And I would love every minute of it. This is it. This is hell. I was nearly stuck in the ruminations when I heard Parker say those words I dreaded, “Ah here it is.”

What saved me was pure instinct. My mind froze. All I could hear was the sound of my own heartbeat. I was completely frozen in shock and then all of the sudden a survival mode hidden deep within my core kicked in. Literally.

I don’t know if I realized what I was doing while I was actually doing it, but within a flash my new thinner leg slammed directly into Parker’s crotch. When my brain finally connected what my body was doing to the reality of the situation, it was like the aftermath played out like a slow motion car crash. There was a great smashing noise as my lower shin smashed into his junk with expert precision. 

Parker gasped out a noise, kind of like the combination between a grunt and a meep for help- hell he was probably more shocked then I was. In the future I hope somebody invents some kind of machine that helps you play back and preserve your memories. I would keep replaying that moment where his expression turned from complete triumph to literal crushing despair.

In his shock he dropped the spell book and once again my survival instinct whipped into overdrive. I am pretty sure I snatched the book up before it even hit the ground, raised it up in the air, and brought it down on Parker’s head with a triumphant THUD. 

With Parker lying splayed out on the ground I gave a little “yes” of victory and thrust the book over my head. The heaviness of the book and the motion of my new anatomy very very quickly brought me back to my senses. 

My whacko roommate just turned me into a girl with the full intent of brainwashing me into being his girlfriend. HIS girlfriend. An offense worse than death if you ask me. I shuddered, thinking about the future that he had planned for me. This was no time for wallowing in pity for alternate reality Andy, this was a time for continued action. After checking the idiot’s breathing to make sure he was still alive, I started formulating a plan. I had to act fast, but most importantly I needed help.

A phone call was completely out of the question with my voice being, well a girl’s voice. And I preferred texting anyway. After a quick search I found my phone and froze. Who does one actually call when your life has just been turned upside down? I looked through my friends and started eliminating them one by one. 

Nathan lived about an hour away now since he had a “job” and “responsibility” whatever that meant. Thurston was closer, but never really took any situation seriously. There was no way in hell that I was contacting my brother. Laney would probably want to debate the implication that magic existed in this world. Despite the amount of shit that I was probably going to get, there was really only one person to turn to that wasn’t related to me. Knowing this, I sent out the following text - “Hey Elle, I know it’s around rush hour but some weird stuff has gone on with Spooky Mulder and I need your help. Do you mind coming over here?”

Almost immediately she sent back “Im on my way. need me to bring a shovel for the body?”

I sent back a resounding no and sunk into the couch. I looked down and even hidden behind my now oversized t-shirt I could feel the new weight on my chest. My chest. I took a deep breath. The new additions rose like a wave. I slowly exhaled and they sunk back down. And all at once, it hit me.

This cute girl with the heaving bosom, this was me. As soon as I thought that I thought, wow I've internalized some pretty weird stuff about women huh. What am I? A cheap romance novel from the 1940s? I looked down at the spell book that did this to me and let out a tired “fuuuuuck.” It didn’t help. Even my exasperation sounded pretty cute to my ears. This was going to be nothing but trouble.