See Yourself Be Yourself

[13] Flashes

She wasn't sure what she wanted to wear to bed.

Lillis had grabbed an interesting variety of options from the pocket reality, but none of them screamed pajamas, nightgowns, or anything like that. Not that Brent ever opted for anything as formal as pajamas since he was a kid. His dad basically wore a pajama outfit all the time around the house when he wasn't going anywhere because he said they were comfortable, and they basically looked like what he would wear anyway. He was an old man, and he basically stopped giving a crap a decade ago. It was both frustrating and inspiring.

The towels were comfy and soft, and her skin didn't feel so delicate that just using the towels casually would scour off her flesh. Drying and cleaning were awkward tasks. Everything she tried felt too forceful. As if she were committing a crime just by drying herself.

She wasn't a delicate, girly girl. She wasn't quite sure what she was, but it wasn't that. Her makeshift attempts to complete her shower were so amateurish. Dina knew exactly what to do, and her former girlfriends were even more practiced in the basic arts of existing. Though they spent just as many hours on mundane, repetitive necessities, she could see every egregious mistake, fumble, and screw-up.

One thing her brain tried to tell her was that these imperfections existed for everyone. Despite Dina's constant attitude, she couldn't resist the urge to vent about certain mistakes she had made. In fact, she was approaching the event horizon of self-consciousness. She knew her head was fucked up. She acknowledged that her childhood was built on a tide of abandonment fears because her father was constantly angry, absent, or accusatory. Her diagnosis included borderline personality disorder.

She would talk about it to the point of tears. There were times when they could actually talk to each other. She made Brent the most beautiful quilt soon after they started dating. Dina put more effort into that thing than practically any other moment they spent together. She vividly recorded and recounted every single minute detail of their first date with intense, adoring love. Brent still had no idea where it all went wrong.

Moving in was a difficult time because fights started over the smallest things, and many of the fights were very quiet and reserved, with Dina holding back her emotions but also sounding condescending. Cleaning the house wasn't necessarily her job, considering the hours and effort she put into her research for her class and then also how much money she would make to contribute to both of them in her eventual career. Then comments on the gender roles of cleaning, and it's a good balance to have the man responsible for all of that. Compensating ownership of the roles. She could certainly throw out interesting, long words.

There was good and there was bad when it came to Dina, and then there was all this. People of Dina's type were risk-takers and adventure-seekers. They got bored with the routine. They needed a hit of something new. And they often wound up adventurously dead. Dina listed all sorts of famous people who also had BPD, singling out Jim Carrey. He was a successful entertainer; he had kids; he had a life. She could set herself up for a happy ending too.

These were the little moments Misty wanted to remember with Dina. Unfortunately, they were overpowered and overwhelmed by all the shit. It was the constant turbulence that maybe if he just played it cool, if he just tried a little harder to steady the sea, if he just took it easy, then Dina wouldn't have a bad day.

He could totally ignore days when he was mostly sure that she was explicitly lying about something, trying to gaslight him into believing something different had happened than he remembered. After all, no one's memory was perfect, and he could reasonably rely on her. She told such good stories about certain things that it was hard for him to put much weight on his version of events.

But all that was over. They were just destined to meet in court or under awkward circumstances when she had to move the rest of her belongings out of the apartment. She still felt unconditional love for the damn girl. That was the problem with unconditional love; it sticks around even when you know rationally and logically that someone hates you or is fucked in the head. Dina didn't earn it or deserve it, and she couldn't destroy it. She just made it harder for her to feel comfortable with anyone else.

It was so easy for Misty to close her eyes while wrapped in several towels and feel like she could just nod off with her knees locked and standing. Probably not standing for long. A casual top and some drawstring pants would do in lieu of proper bedclothes. She wasn't sure about underwear.

She'd taken off the underwear she'd put on earlier, but her mind hadn't spent much time thinking about it. Squeezing together all the initiative she could summon, she grabbed the nearest pair of panties that didn't make her recoil and pulled them on as simply as any other garment that was supposed to go around her waist.

Fighting against the sense of wrongness in their configuration and material, she let out a restrained scream that sounded more like a small ground critter going to war. The vent helped. Distraction and release. The rest of the ensemble was painfully simple.

Gazing into the mirror, it was bewildering to see that the illusion of this strange blonde persisted for a second round. She was also quite the undignified girl. She stuck her tongue out to moisten her lips and actually chewed on some of the dry skin. Disgusting. What an uncouth lady! Was she going to fart next? Misty felt a few gurgles.

She smelled good. That was inescapable. Brent stretched the Misty form. She wanted to take the towels with her for protection, but she let them go.

Lillis had the master bed looking great and smelling even better, with some spray still lingering in the air as a watermelon aroma and faint haze. Lillis was already down to her underwear and puffed out her breath when she got confirmation that Misty was done. Moments later, she was in the shower, and Misty had the whole bed to herself.

Just getting under the covers should have been the simplest thing, but disturbing the neat and orderly presentation felt like an uncomfortable overstep. She could already predict that Lillis would scold her and roll her eyes at her for being so meek. Lying on the bed felt like a better idea, but it lacked warmth. She closed her eyes for just a few seconds.

What had to be moments later, Lillis was back in a casual t-shirt and shorts, drying her hair.

"You have the cutest snore. I heard it earlier in the bunk. You should get under the covers. Keep warm. I have to open the boutique in the morning, so I might not be here when you wake up. Text me if anything crazy happens. Feel free to hang out. I'll leave a copy of the apartment key on the dresser if you need to go somewhere while I'm gone. You can also come to work with me if you get up that early—7 AM. Prep to open around eight and open at nine. It would be good because we actually have medical staff available tomorrow. It's an occasional service, depending on availability. You can get an exam and she's very discreet and friendly. Dr. Susan Morris. Up to you. Whatever you want. I just need to sleep. Have a good night."

Lillis turned off all the lights in the bedroom, but there was still a dim spill from a side lamp at the other end and the device charging Lillis' phone on her side of the bed on a dresser. The hallway was also faintly lit. All in all, just enough to walk to the bathroom without worrying about stumbling. And that was it. No further drama or anything else that needed to be said. They just went to bed.

Misty slipped under the covers a minute after Lillis, not wanting to go first. It was quite comfy and felt so fresh and refreshing.

The warm but crisp coolness soothed her in so many places she needed it to. Though she didn't walk nearly as much as she had in her previous job, her legs and thighs felt a phantom fatigue that hadn't been as pronounced even when she was sitting up. It was as if she had dropped her spirit anchors and was being pulled down to ever more restful depths.

One annoying little bonus was a tickle at the back of her throat, which would've been fine to clear previously in the bathroom, but she didn't want to disturb present company. All the other little health nuisances she typically ignored got their little trident stabs in. Yeah, she was definitely up for a check-up with this boutique doctor.

She really should sleep. Great advice to hear, and even better advice to follow.

So, why wasn't she doing that? Oh, that active and nervous brain. Sometimes fear and anxiety can drop at the weirdest moments, so long after the event that should've triggered it. Caused by a release of tension that allows for its presence. When your thoughts triage your identity and reality. And she really had to fart.

She made her way back to the bathroom to take care of as many random needs as possible. She caught a glimpse of the glowing, watchful eyes of the kitty cat that seemed to desire her doom. She waved at it, trying not to show annoyance or any other triggering emotion, just as she would with Dina on any given day. Not that it mattered either way. The disdain still remained.

And the cat followed her back. Before it could force her off the bed, Lillis seized it by the scruff of the neck and dragged it sternly into the side room, as she had threatened earlier.

She rubbed at her eyes when she returned and said nothing more. Back under the covers, Misty felt like there were still things she should have said. Sentiments of gratitude. Explanations. Something else.

"Thank you."

Lillis nodded and made her way back to bed. "She's just being a little butt tonight. Better she's mad at me than give you trouble. Though I do feel wired now. I might... Yeah, I'll put my earbuds in and listen to something to help with that. Let me know if it's audible."

Lillis popped one of the buds in her ear and started playing something from her phone. The static of rainfall outside overwhelmed what tiny notes of music filtered through. Misty passed this along, and Lillis sighed as she looked for a comfortable position.

She wanted to keep quiet, but Misty still had some questions. "Is it like what we listened to earlier?"

Lillis didn't respond at first, just took a few calming breaths and sniffed before she realized there was a question in the air. She grunted. "Oh. This? This is the exception. I don't like recent stuff. I don't like it when people say things. But this is Japanese music, J-pop. It gets a pass from me because I don't understand Japanese."

Of course, Misty's curiosity had to pursue specifics. Lillis moved over her phone to show. It was from something with the words "Toki to Towa".

Of course, Misty's curiosity had to pursue specifics. Lillis moved her phone to show her. It was from something with the words "Toki to Towa."

"It's from this twenty-year-old ... magical girl anime called Pretty Yumeko Hime Galaxy or something like that. It's one of a series of shows that go on practically forever. I forget the exact translation. It's oddly relaxing. One guilty pleasure. One big dork right here. I don't understand a darn thing they're saying, so it's more like listening to the sea. Very restful."

Misty was eager for more details, but she could tell that her companion's energy level was plunging off a cliff. They closed out their conversation with a casual self-reminder from Lillis that she would send over more details or an MP3. It wasn't long before Lillis was snoring full blast.

This prompted Misty to restrain all the nervous little sounds around her that she worried might wake the sleeper, though she was sure the musical track and everything else washed out what little noises she might make. It was practically silent, though she could hear the faintest traces of nothing and everything.

The bed was soft—maybe too soft compared to the harder one that Dina preferred, and she was used to by this point. Dina often slept in the nude.

Misty closed her eyes for a long stretch. And opened them again. That felt weird. It seemed more like a flash of lightning in the room than just a blink. Maybe she was on the verge of falling asleep, and her mind was playing strange tricks on her. It wasn't actually her mind anymore. It was Misty's mind, with all its altered biology.

Quite a jump, but then she remembered times in the apartment bathroom when something would pass between Brent and the sun; it was almost like a lamp going out. She had moments of that. Moments of unreality that made her question everything. Nervous uncertainty about what she could trust. The worst was driving a few weeks ago, and Brent had been so sure that he could see the pixel lines of the world through the windshield.

He didn't really believe the world was a simulation. That was ridiculous. But so many things felt so wrong. And this skin was pushing all those buttons in the wrong way. It was just anxiety mounting. The reality of dealing with who and what she was now felt impossible. It had to be ignored. Couldn't be ignored. It wasn't real. She would wake up from this.

She let her eyes close and rest with that snapshot flash. When she opened them after a long spell, the flash of light was conspicuously bright. Strange, but it had to be normal. Just one of those normal things she was paying too much attention to and trying to make into something weirder than it actually was. That was it. Not to worry.

There was a method to the madness. If she blinked often and really fast, the weird stuff didn't happen. It was normal. And it pushed back the oddity. Clearly, this meant her eyes were really dry. She would need to buy some decent dryness drops for these new eyes. This medical checkup sounded even better now. She had her own doctors, but who knew what kind of coverage they would offer this new person she was.

This tangle of misbegotten thoughts shifted and throbbed with the beat of her heart. Her eyes closed for a long time. When they opened, she was startled to see an arc of light flashing in a band along the wall. It was so bright. It had to be the high beams of a car going by. That happened sometimes at her apartment.

That lingered as a comforting thought for several seconds, until it dawned on her that this wasn't her apartment. The windows didn't face the parking lot, but the courtyard they'd rushed through to get to the door. There was no way a beam of light could have danced across the wall. How could she explain what she had just witnessed?

Random freak event involving someone with a flashlight, maybe a security guard making his rounds. Although it could have been anyone with a random flashlight. The dimensions outside didn't make any sense, and the biggest problem was the thickness of the curtains and their positioning. She couldn't think of any rational way that something could have beamed through from the outside.

Lightning? The storm was still raging. None of the reports indicated or suggested thunderstorms, but it could always happen. It felt like a comforting theory, but no sounds of thunder or glimmers of other strikes made their way to her senses. And the lingering beam was more like a constant than a burst.

Hallucination? Yeah, that was a possibility. These new eyes to go with this new body felt off. It wasn't anything distinctive she could point to. Brent didn't have any major color blindnesses, but certain hues felt tinted differently. The screens around the boutique had certain softer and sharper tones. That was subtle; this was unmistakable. Maybe, as a girl, she just had visual flashes without any clear explanation of their origin. It was troubling.

It would have been bad enough if the flash had happened just once, and she'd been driven to doubt that she'd seen it at all, and that it wasn't just aspects of a dream bleeding over into what felt like reality. But after that, she nervously tried to close her eyes several times and was hit by the same cycle of glow. It was a golden glow in spots with a soft, faintly reflective blue.

A luminous and ethereal blue, like a cold glow. It moved in the darkness as if it were alive. Radiant. Like beings of radiant light. And in contrast, the shadows shifted and traced around the corners of that brightness, as if they were dark, predatory beings trying to devour the light.

This interplay of light and shadow twisted in her eyes and mind until fatigue blurred the details. It was as if her vision had a sharp, overcharged radiance that burned out with each blink. Discharging the light from her cones and rods and all the places the light tried to get. Not a scientific assessment, but a little quiet story she told herself to finally get to sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Welcome to the Seventh Book in the Cerberus Saga. Yup. We’re doing this. I never thought I would delve into such a big part of the backstory and this may be a good idea but I like writing about all sorts of characters. I have the ending of the story in mind already. But is it the ending you might expect from what you know now? We’ll see…Provisionally, I am focusing on one chapter a week and we’ll see how things go from there. They might be longer or shorter and more numerous. Always feel free to offer suggestions. Reader response is going to be very important going forward. I’m open to anything. Although the squirrel thing is probably the closest I’ll ever get to furry. I’m gonna have some fun and funny characters this time too. Dunno how long this will go. It might be much shorter due to the different pacing. I hope you enjoy it. I plan to get the earlier books together and released in an official form. Look forward to that hopefully. As always, vast details, especially types of characters, character names, and more are wide open for this narrative. Feel free to add any idea which doesn't show up in the eventual options. Also, if you see any random typos or uncapitalized starts of sentences, please pass them along. I am currently using Quillbot and DeepL to assist with speedy editing, but that’s not 100%. Thank you for reading!]

Poll after this. Since I've change the schedule, polls are more important than ever. Feel free to offer as much feedback as you can to help the story.