Chapter 12 - Twelve Strings of Lights
I wasn't going to go looking for it though, if it was anything more than a crazy mix of anxiety about what happened to all our bodies, a weirdly-positioned Bogart cut-out standee, and the rantings of some paranormal freak on Twitter. A little kid dressed as a ghost, with a grass pattern to his sheet as his pirate friend kept trying to stab him with a plastic sword, was enough of a distraction from all that.
Lacy had the Halloween lights out and set in a neat pile on the porch. She had a different outfit on, one I remembered wearing a few times, than the damp stuff from before. It looked as good on me as I would expect it to. She also had slipped on a rugged pair of gloves and had a set for me in grandma's size, which was as close to fitting as we were going to get for something like this. The cleaning gloves in the upstairs bathroom would've been excessive.
Some of the nails that used to hold the lights in place were worn by the last year or bent. Using a hammer and some fresh nails, Lacy made the needed adjustments. It was hard to mistake her smile in the language of my features. I still did plenty to assist, but she was in charge. Granted, she didn't have an innate understanding of my body, so she had to be gentle with the hammer and when stepping up high on the ladder. A few, curious on-lookers stopped in front of the house but didn't get too close.
"How is everyone doing?"
Her question sounded like the kind of things I might ask when checking in on Lacy. Propping up the weight of a bundle of lights, I answered, "Some stuff was said about life, love, and what it means to be little kids with a twist, but they're both the grandparents we know. And I found the hair stuff and grandpa looks cute."
Feeding Lacy more of the lights, she wanted to know if I took some pictures. I hadn't. In fact, I wasn't even certain where I had left her purse and phone. Probably still in her room.
I'd get them later. Lacy had my phone and wallet, and I ceded authority of them to her. The lights were mostly movie poster or theater style with a bright, pale-yellow tone for what was supposed to go around the door. Orange and green twinkle lights went around the main windows like a disassembled pumpkin. The regular outdoor lights just cast around a general area at night before getting lost in the nooks and crannies.
Lacy returned to her question, pressing that I hadn't mentioned how I was doing. What could I possibly say that I hadn't said as she gobbled up cookies I couldn't eat? I was her in the most intimate ways. I had her underwear on and it was meant for body parts I...possessed. Shallow reflections of self were what was saving me from the vivid storm of sensations that threatened to drown me earlier. Still, I would have to pee eventually.
"The best I can manage for right now. Also, you should go first. Take them up the street while there's still some twilight and I'll take them down towards the center of town with a little more light from the main roads and more people. Sound good?"
She remarked, "You'll be alone in a little bit then. And out later."
"There's no perfect way to give candy away and have a night out. You just be safe with them."
Calmly, she turned my face on me and bowed it with a radiant smile. Before I could ask about that, she explained, "I often gush about you online to random strangers but whenever they ask what it is that makes you so special, words fail me. I just wish I could save this exact moment, so everyone could know. They probably still wouldn't get it though."
I was a little lost myself. It wasn't as though I'd done anything particularly heroic lately but stare at a spooky shadow and assist in hanging lights. Though I was taking the harsher path with being alone as the sun set, Lacy would be alone late and facing stuff I couldn't protect her from.
As well, in her own body, there wasn't as much I could do. Not that my mediocre form inspired fear outside of a white suit. Lacy had deadly nipple pokes and an adventurous enthusiasm along with a determination to do things. As me, I knew she was even stronger and better.
I just wanted it to be the lesson of one night she could take back to herself and use to improve. Maybe our grandparents could also take some measure of youth back with them for the joys of a painless decade or two to follow. And me...I could always be a better cousin, be around her more, be less afraid of my father and see my mother more for all she'd done to encourage me to be close to my grandparents and cousin.
And I could feed the real Riona a banana while she held her daughter's baby clothes so she could...no. That assumed she or my father could actually learn something about empathy. That was a lost cause. And it didn't matter. They could know the exact pain they caused us and still make the willful choice to let us suffer the worst of them.
With all the lights up and the colored ones especially, I felt swamped by the glow when Lacy switched them on. The area felt so inviting and even standing out here didn't feel all that intimidating with how easily the night enveloped Lacy's body. I wasn't out there alone yet, but one step at a time.
It didn't take long after that till the dryer-hot costumes were ready to be worn. Lacy finished her food and more as I finally managed to clean my plate and feel a little better. Grandpa had to be dragged away from her little controller after the hopes of one more match to even things with grandma were denied. Pairing up again in the same way as before, I had to gingerly disrobe grandpa with every care given for her mound of carefully-collected hair.
She looked rather ornate for an inspector with those locks under her cap. The ensemble was completed with a little flashlight for walking around and a prop magnifying glass. As she recited all the lines grandpa liked to wield with as many sparkles in her eyes, I finally found the certainty to embrace her in a way Lacy likely never would.
This put Lacy's breasts in an awkward position until I opted to duck down. Grandpa calmly turned and wrapped his arms around me as he would do for Lacy whenever she needed it, without a care or an unnecessary concern.
For about the nth time, I went through the mental motions of how I might phrase a confession to the fact I was not the genuine Lacy but a copy holding her place while she adored whatever she found so special about being me. As with most times before, it didn't get past the first few words of the notion before I set it aside to continue filling this role.
I further wondered if they had secretly figured out who we were from the nuances of our voices and demeanors. Probably not. Grandpa was an entertainer, a clever man, and an amateur detective but knew we got enough questions and stress from our supposedly-closest family to save such notions for fun. And grandma, while a sharp teacher whose students didn't get much past her, also was able to turn it off when it came to home and worry more about whether we were well and had full bellies.
Even as I ate, she leaned away from competition with her husband to make sure we didn't want anything added to what we were eating. For me, getting through all the chicken had been a pleasure to start, but I had overshot the expectations of the depth of Lacy's stomach and she hadn't yet found the bottom of the one she was growing into. But it seemed she got tired of eating eventually.
Downstairs, grandma made for a glamorous cowboy, like a singer from decades past when people still cared about cowboys. Their candy bags were no fancier than some trash bags. Lacy, as I expected, wore my karate outfit and made sure she had the brightest light around to illuminate the route. My phone had an optional flashlight but had been dimming, along with the rest of the technology within.
"We'll be less than an hour, then we trade, and I'll hold down the fort here for you."
One by one, they left out the screen door and I waved. When they were finally off, I did something that my grandparents only did when they went to bed, I shut the door behind the screen and latched it securely. I didn't lock it, because this felt excessive enough.
At the front, I caught up to them with another wave as I ruffled Lacy's poofy orange skirt. A group of kids with a pair of adults walking behind them greeted me without the need to come all the way up to the door to ring the bell.
Ducking inside, I stretched over the fridge to grab the bowl. Each kid got a nice handful as I waved them away from the "purely decorative" bananas. The one with a prison outfit and raccoon-dark shadowed eyes took a long time to dig through the bowl before he realized no special secrets awaited him at the bottom. I considered taking some photos, but things happened so fast with the next group following immediately after.
It wasn't until after a few rounds of this that I actually managed to get a breather. For all the visitors, they had only put a small dent in the bowl. Adjusting the bananas, I squinted at what they lay atop and scrutinized the candy. The foil-like packaging glinted as the lights twinkled. It almost looked like it had a tint that hadn't been there before, even as I stood under the more-neutral lights that wrapped around the front door.
Picking out a random piece of store candy to inspect against the light did nothing to help resolve things one way or the other. It looked like all the rest. The bananas, however, were clear aberrations of nature. Still, I held myself back from eating any of it. We didn't need more complications.
After using as much light as was available to me, I resolved that none of the candy looked any different than it had when I first bought it. Taking advantage of the lull with the front door latched, I set the candy bowl on the main table, flicked on an extra, rarely-used light, and switched the television feed back to cable.
A show from a few years ago about a weird Indiana family had already started and it was themed around Halloween. Sprawling across the couch, I recalled my little dream of settling under one of Lacy's tiny blankets with her smaller body and carefully trudged up the steps to grab one from the hallway closet.
Dragging it down, I halted and surveyed as much of the house as I could see from a few steps up. Something immediately felt off. It wasn't anything I could see, but a feeling that traced along my back like someone's finger on the verge of grazing me. A shiver brought up all of Lacy's silvery hairs to porcupine-like alarm.
random strangers but whenever they ask what it is that makes you so special, words -> strangers, but .....special words
amateur detective but knew we got enough -> detective
pleasure to start but I had overshot -> start,
My phone had an optional flashlight but had been dimming, along -> flashlight,
We didn't need more complication. -> complications
anything I could see but a feeling -> see,
Why did John not hide the bananas somewhere aside from the candy bowl?
Yeah, John is definitely struggling with dysphoria. Maybe an ideal solution would be John going back to normal and Lacy pretending to be his twin? At least then John wouldn't have do suffer the dysphoria for the rest of his life and Lacy would still be out of her own body like she wants to be. It just wouldn't be right for John to condemn himself to a lifetime of dysphoria, no matter how happy Lacy is right now.
Kinda long rant about a different body swap story that was much more horrifying than this one
At least this story isn't as horrifying as some other body swap ones I've seen where one of the pair is clearly the dominant one and abuses it to no end. One example that I remember was some manga that had a high school age brother (tomgirl) and sister (tomboy) swap bodies and the sister was a huge hypocrite, extremely abusive and immediately took advantage of the situation and her new body (both sexually and socially) while demanding her brother do nothing with her old body and essentially stay quiet and locked up in their house when they weren't at school. She even went around sleeping with other people in her brother's body while he stayed locked up in their home. I think over the story she eventually ground down his sanity and resistance until he gave in to whatever she demanded and ended up being stuck in her body and stuck at home while his sister stole his body and ran around sleeping with people.
If I remember right the original swap was an "accident" with some machine their grandparents had and the machine broke in the process. What actually happened was the grandmother is a witch and intentionally made it happen because she wanted a more masculine grandson and a more feminine granddaughter. Over the book there were repeated attempts to fix the machine that the sister sabotaged, before it was briefly fixed and worked and they swapped back to their original bodies. The sister demanded to be put back in her brother's body, trapped him where he couldn't escape, triggered the swap again, and then completely destroyed the machine so it had no chance of being fixed. I'm pretty sure the book ended with the sister having successfully stolen her brother's body again and keeping her original body trapped and controlled in their house. The grandparents seemed to support this. Apparently the grandmother could have fixed things with her magic, but she refused to since she got what she wanted -'masculine' grandson, 'feminine' granddaughter since she wants great grandkids. I'm pretty sure I remember the grandmother screwing with the brother's mind a fair amount so he wouldn't keep trying to fight against it or get his original body back. Part of it might have been eventually setting him up with some male friend who had a crush on his sister (and no, the brother was not attracted to men at all before) so the grandmother could get great grandkids from both the women her new "grandson" slept with and from her new "granddaughter" being impregnated. And this was a "comedy" book.
I shudder just remembering that horrifying scenario, especially since it was treated as "comedy" and the brother got completely brainwashed and trapped in a body that wasn't his and that he didn't want. They also kept having the brother get into "funny" perverted situations with that male friend that clearly made the brother uncomfortable and the sister physically and mentally abused the brother for "allowing it to happen to her body", but not too harshly anywhere visible on the physical side since she didn't want to injure "her" body too much even though she'd abandoned it by that point and refused to take it back
Some people are in dire need of psychological help... and when they author stuff like you just described, it is VERY evident.
@Doomedtundra some of it may have been exaggerated from the horror of the memories of reading the story, but most of it is dead on, especially the abuse that was "comedy" and the brother *not* wanting to be a girl, but eventually giving up and giving in because everyone around him wanted him to be one.
More unintentional long rants!
Yeah, even without getting into the fetishy stories where plot, logic, and consequences are ignored in favor of getting to perversion, I really dislike stuff like that. The "tsunderes" that are just straight up abusive psychopathic as*****, the ecchi "comedy" tropes where the male character or, less frequently, lesbian gets violently attacked for things that aren't their fault like accidentally bumping into a girl (likely one of those abusive "tsunderes"!) and landing with a hand on her chest or even things that are her fault like her walking in on him while he's changing, the frequent hypocrisy and double standards regarding treatment of female and male characters-Male pervert? Deserves extreme humiliation, pain, or death. Often attacked by their "friends" towards their crotch with intent to harm or maim and it's "comedy". "Jokes" about crushing their balls, castrating them, or having them r**** by someone else are common. Female pervert? Usually gets her way and often is even rewarded for it. Male villain? Unless a pretty bishonen usually ends with being tortured, humiliated, or dead even if they had a sad backstory (tragic death if they're lucky). Female villain? Usually relegated to being fought and subdued alive by the MC's female team mate/friend and often seen as less guilty than their male peers even if they're doing the same thing or excused because of their tragic backstory-she's been running around with her brothers sacrificing orphans to the devil? Her daddy was mean to her so the MCs leave her alive and toss her in prison while they immediately execute the brothers. Deaths are less common and usually swift if they happen.
Another trope/character archetype I loathe are yanderes. I truly do not understand the attraction of a mentally unhinged psycho stalking and trying to control you, no matter how pretty/handsome they may be. It's a very rare yandere that's even tolerable, and it's usually the ones that are more tame examples and they have already reined in most of their insanity.
@FallingLeaf agreed, some of that can, if done well, be tolerable, but never more than that. I personally blame the people- Japanese or otherwise- who idolize and embrace the more "questionable" aspects of Japanese culture. Things like women being expected to be quiet and not speak out against harrassment, the fact that "lolis" are even a thing, and hell, hentai in general.
@Doomedtundra people seem to be a bit more willing to turn a blind eye to questionable things in smut if it helps get to the “action” faster, but it can’t go too far or people are repulsed and quickly leave. Except for those extreme fetishists who like that kind of thing, but those are an entirely different disturbing issue.
It’s somewhat funny/fitting that the most tolerable examples of such things usually come from stories that are intentional horror rather than accidental. A teacher sleeping with their underage student or an older sibling that physically, mentally, and possibly sexually beats and abuses their younger sibling is treated as a monster and the situation as being really messed up, rather than “everything is fine and this is normal.” Or even worse- “that’s hot and awesome, I wish that were me”. The stalker psycho is treated as a stalker psycho should be, and their victim isn’t laughed at, mocked, or told they should enjoy the stalker’s attention. Horrifying physical and mental trauma and forced transformations are treated as a serious concern rather than a source of amusement or envy (what do you mean you don’t like having been turned into a boy/girl/thing without your consent? You should enjoy getting to experience something like that!) All of these things could still have the victim be mocked or shunned, but that would (usually) be treated as something that isn’t right and is part of the horror/drama
@FallingLeaf really what it comes down to is that these things are already bad, but attempting to normalize them makes it exponentially worse.
Quick thing btw, some of your editing suggestions I'm not sure about because a comma precedes usually an independent clause and those don't read by themselves as complete thoughts. Now, I tend to play loose with commas as style and skip them on dialogue because dialogue is weird and I like to have it reflect the pace of what a person says. Thank you for the tips and catching stuff I've missed in many cases. but I think I'll leave some of them alone unless there's something I'm missing so far as grammar rules. But thank you again for looking for those possible errors.
I would say more so John is troubled by being so intimately aware of the details of his closest female relative. It's squicky, or some term like that but in like a invasive or harmful way. He doesn't want to think of his closest relative in fleshy terms. Yeah, stuff like that plays loose with consequences. I like to get into a natural-realistic mindset like "Oh my God, this is my cousin's body! Everything feels so wrong!" and the character can get over it without paying too much attention and adapts over time but the implications are "this is not MY body" and here especially it's just on loan and he feels averse to a lot of that stuff. He cares about her and she idolizes him.
@FallingLeaf I agree, I had fun riffing on some of those tropes through Mecchen House. Katsumi, for all I've done with her, is at least an anti-hero if not an outright unappealing antagonist. She's fascinating to write but I wouldn't want to try to befriend her. I totally riffed on bumping into flesh a lot of times and I have seen so many animes that it's easy to see where something feels tired. I prefer to be fair to male characters. The only characters I roast routinely are mothers.
@MajorKerina the suggestions in the spoiler are just suggestions, so feel free to use or ignore them. The story has been very interesting to read and so worth making the effort for me.
The “it feels so gross to even possibly think of my cousin like that” is what I’ve been getting from John, along with “this isn’t my body and this doesn’t feel right”.
I haven’t actually read your Mecchen story, I might have to give it a read to see the tropes being mocked