NothingSpecial: gender-bending transformation stories, comics, and occasional poetry =^_^=
Never in my life had I felt as confused and terrified as I did in that moment. Time slowed to a crawl as I tried to wrap my head around what was happening. I could feel myself falling; but I could also feel myself standing upright, like I had been. I could see the world spinning around me as I fell, but I couldn't reconcile its motions with the memory of any other time I'd taken a spill. When you trip and fall, your body becomes the lever on which your head arcs in some particular direction; but I seemed to be tumbling freely through space…
I could feel sudden, instinctual panic set in; that was normal enough, under the circumstances, but I could…well, feel it twice. It was like there were two parts of me, both equally alarmed, but for different reasons. Stranger still, I had the distinct impression of physical separation between them. The basic principle that nobody can be in two places at once was being violated before my very…brain?
With a sudden jolt of raw fight-or-flight response, I felt myself lurch forward and drop into a crouch, even as I continued to fall. I had no idea what was happening, no idea what I was doing; I was just doing it, by raw instinct. I reached out my arms, felt blindly (or perhaps not so blindly…?) in front of me…and then – O blessed relief! – clasped my hands under my jaw, hugged myself tightly to my chest, and landed none too gently on my knees.
For a minute, I just knelt there, trembling from terror, confusion, and the adrenaline still surging through my veins. I didn't think about the fact that I'd somehow snatched my head from well beyond the range of my neck; or that I was holding it in my arms, nestled against my own ribcage; or that I could feel parts of my chest that were entirely new to me resting atop my pate, from both sides…
While I was busy not thinking about that, Lacey came over and took me gently by the shoulders, gripping them in a gentle, reassuring manner. "Omigod, are you alright!?" she gasped. "I've never seen anything like that before…!"
"Wha…what happened…!?" I said, confusion turning to surprise as I said it; my voice was all wrong. What had happened? Nothing about the last minute or so had made the slightest amount of sense, but my brain was trying to sort out all the ways in which it didn't make sense and assemble them into a coherent picture, and I had an ominous feeling that I wasn't going to like what it came up with.
"You, er…" She paused for a minute, sighed, and took a deep breath, sidling 'round to face me. "…well, I can't think of an easy way to break this to you, but, uh…it looks like Halloween got its hooks in you regardless."
It took me a moment to parse the implications of that – and then another moment to come to grips with what she was implying. Was she saying I'd changed, somehow? That couldn't be right…it couldn't be possible! Everyone knew that the "Halloween phenomenon" took place on Halloween, hence the name. We weren't at a costume party, I hadn't been wearing a costume, I didn't even have plans to wear one, and hell, it was still a week out from the actual date…!
And yet…my brain calculated, with terrible clarity, no matter how much I wanted it to stop, that it would explain a hell of a lot about what I'd just experienced if that was what'd happened. Points of raw fact stabbed at my mind like so many darts:
In spite of myself, I felt my mental processes churning through to the realization – I couldn't even pretend and call it a suspicion – that I was no longer what I had been. I stared up at her, feeling my jawline nestled against my forearm, my upper arms pressing in on either side of my head. "Y–you can't be serious," I said, my new voice hardly more than a whisper. "I–I mean, that…that doesn't happen…!"
Lacey shrugged and shook her head. "I'm as surprised as you are, Connor," she said, sitting cross-legged on the floor opposite me. "Or, well, maybe not, but still – it's not like we really know how it works or what causes it. And anyway, you can see for yourself."
She was serious; she really meant it. I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach. I probably could see for myself, but did I really want to? I knew it was ridiculous, but part of me hoped that maybe, if I didn't acknowledge this, didn't accept it, it'd all just go away. It wasn't fair, was it? There were rules to this, everyone knew that, and I'd been abiding by them! If I didn't put myself in a position to be vulnerable to whatever forces ruled the phenomenon, they couldn't do anything to me; that was only logical. This shouldn't be allowed, damn it…!
But allowed or no, I couldn't strongarm the stupidly rational part of my brain into agreeing that what was impermissible was therefore impossible. Whether I accepted it or not, I couldn't reconcile present experience with normal reality. And if present reality wasn't normal, then what was it…? Slowly, hesitantly, I tried to crane my neck around for a look at myself.
Nothing happened.
My left brain felt obliged to point out that this only made sense. If what I'd just been through was impossible to square with the "head on neck" rule, my neck was unlikely to be of much use here. But then, how was I supposed to see…?
I tried again; still nothing. I didn't feel as instinctively alarmed at having a critical part of my body not reporting in as I felt like I should've, but I was still at a loss as to what was going on or how I was supposed to cope with it. What'd happened to me!? The more I thought about it, the more I felt like, no matter what I'd find, I just really needed to get a look at myself…
And somehow, for some reason, that made the difference; mere will sufficed where conscious attempts at control had failed. Which wasn't to say that what happened next was what I expected. Carefully, cautiously, acting on alien instincts, I fumbled around 'til I got a purchase on my jawline, lifted my head, and turned it 'round for a look – and when I say that, I mean that I lifted and turned my head in my hands like it was a separate part of me.
Next to that realization, the sight that greeted me was almost not even that surprising. I was looking down and back at my own body from above and afore; my arms framed the lower corners of my field of vision, stretching out from beneath my jaw and converging at my shoulders. I could feel my hair tickling at the backs of my hands.
Of course, I can describe that clearly in retrospect, but it took me a long moment to even process what I was looking at, let alone grasp the reality of the situation; it's not a view that most people ever experience. Gradually, it dawned on me that, if my body was down there, and I wasn't, then "I" was…was…
I was a disembodied head.
I shuddered and squirmed at the realization, and I could see it happening to myself; the roll of the shoulders, the shifting of the hips and torso, the little tremors shaking my arms even as my hands adjusted to keep me (relatively) steady. The idea was so completely outside the realm of what I'd even considered possible that I felt like this must be a dream; but it felt too real…
I turned to Lacey – which is to say, I adjusted my hands to pivot my head toward her. The motions came surprisingly naturally, and I hardly had to think about what I was doing; which was good, because I didn't want to think about it, and I had a nagging suspicion that if I did, I'd get all distracted by the how and start tripping up on the actual doing.
"…Please tell me I'm hallucinating this," I said, my voice a-quaver. It was still all weird, notably higher-pitched than before; was it because it didn't have my chest cavity to resonate in? Or…no, that couldn't be right, I could feel it in my chest, the same as usual; and if that wasn't connected, I couldn't see how my lungs would've been, and I was breathing…
She shook her head, staring in amazement. "Nope, I'm seeing it too. Are, uh…are you doing the head stuff on purpose…?"
I grimaced, dipping my head down as I scrunched up my shoulders. "I'm trying not to think about it. I think it's just instinct…?"
She whistled. "Wild."
"That's…not the term I'd use," I said, turning back to, well, myself, and squirming anew at the sight. This was so bizarre, downright eerie; not that I'd never dealt with non-humans before (meeting the new-and-"improved" Gary at the company picnic last summer had been Certainly An Experience,) but the idea that suddenly I was one of them… I didn't like that; I didn't want it. I was fine the way I was, wasn't I…?
Then I frowned. My body seemed…off…somehow, even discounting the part where my head was no longer attached to it – and, for that matter, the pale blue-green wisp of flame that curled and licked softly and silently at the air in the space where my neck should've been, shedding little "sparks" of light that drifted upward before fading into nothing. I didn't think my shoulders were quite as narrow as that; and while it may have been a trick of this extremely unfamiliar perspective, my whole body seemed smaller than I remembered. "There'd better be a way to fix this…" I murmured, a knot forming in my stomach.
Apparently I didn't murmur it softly enough to escape Lacey's notice. "I mean, I'd think you could just wait for Halloween to be over," she said. "That's how it usually works."
I glanced back at her out of the corner of my eye; I could feel my cheeks burning slightly against the soft embrace of my hands. "I–I…!" I stammered; how could she be so casual about this!? "That's…I mean, I can't…for the love of God, Lacey, I'm a disembodied head…!"
She put a finger to her lip. "I mean, I'd say it's more that you're detached; your body's right there. Which, man is that strange to see…uh, no offense."
I cocked my head and turned to stare at her. "How are you not as freaked-out by this as I am…!?" I yelped, baffled; I was surprised at how high my voice went, but too fixated on the general insanity to worry about it. "If this were anything approaching normal circumstances, I'd be dead…!"
"But it's not 'normal circumstances,'" she said. "It's Halloween. I've seen the phenomenon do weirder stuff, believe me." She sighed, and put a hand on my shoulder. "It's probably your first time going through this, isn't it? I guess it is a lot to take in, but trust me – you're gonna be fine. Even if it's early, well? You make it through a week of this, and then in all probability you're back to normal the morning after."
I started to retort, then caught myself and bit my lip. God, she made it sound so simple, as if you could go through something like this and then just walk away…how did people like her do it? How did you have your whole existence turned on its – I cringed – upside-down, and just go back to normal…? For God's sake, she'd been a cat! Not even, like, a person with cat-ears, but an actual animal…
Feeling awkward and self-conscious for a pile of different reasons now, I drew my arms back to my sides and pulled myself up against my chest, hugging me tightly and trying as best I could to shrink below my Schwarzchild radius, so I could become a black hole and forget about the rest of the Universe forever. It didn't work – firstly, because my skeleton stubbornly got in the way, and secondly, because a very specific part of the Universe suddenly presented me with a reminder of its existence.
…Oh.
Right.
I'd noticed this already, but the meaning of it had sort of escaped me while I was busy coming to grips with being decapitated. Now that I'd more or less wrapped my…brain…around that, my mind was free to contemplate the sudden squishiness and expansiveness of my chest; and I had the mental bandwidth to notice what I wasn't feeling between my legs, now that I'd had a chance to process the even less familiar sensations of picking up my own head and holding it at arm's length, et cetera…
I didn't want to confirm it; I wasn't prepared for it. But I had to know. I reached my hands up, held myself out, and turned myself around for another look at my body. I'd gone with a plain white dress shirt today; if I'd been wearing plaid, it might've jumped out at me earlier. But at this height, from this distance, there was no mistaking it: I had breasts. I was eye-level with them, and they loomed in my field of vision like some demented monolith (duolith?) And if that was true…
I couldn't spare a hand to check, and I didn't want to anyway; plus, I wasn't going to go fishing around in my pants in front of a coworker. But I felt my knees clamp together involuntarily as I cringed at the realization, and there was no mistaking that, either. "God, not that…" I groaned, realizing why my voice sounded as different as it did.
Lacey eyed me curiously. "Wait, you're only just noticing…?"
I sighed, turning back to her and fanning out my hands so as to bury my face in them as much as possible while still supporting myself. "I had slightly bigger differences to process at first, thanks."
She chuckled softly and nodded, conceding the point. "If it makes you feel better, it's not that unusual. My roommate back in college ended up as some flavor of dude three years outta four, and the other time she was a mannequin."
I cringed, trying not to think about what kind of patterns the damned thing did or didn't keep to. "I…I know it happens," I said uneasily, "it's just…I mean, I'm not a woman, Lacey."
She shrugged. "Okay – but you're not a dullahan either, most days. Like I said, it's Halloween."
"'Dullahan…?'" I cocked an eyebrow and canted my head, curious despite my distress.
She tapped at her temple. "Irish folklore; I think it's the usual term for this. There's others – wutou gui in China, f'rexample. They're on the rare side as far as the phenomenon goes, but you give it enough millennia and even the uncommon stuff gets names and stories attached to it."
Dullahan, I thought with a groan. The thing I am now is called a "dullahan." Somehow putting a name to it made it both more comprehensible and that much weirder. If this was a whole thing, did that mean that I was now part of a group? A demographic? Were there social expectations for "dullahans," ones I'd probably trip all over and screw up on? Or would I fit in? Did I want to…?
I shook my head with a quick tremor of my wrists. No, no, I was overthinking it; she'd said they were rare, after all. I'd won the damn lottery – grand prize, getting your head lopped off. I wasn't usually the "lucky" sort; maybe I'd just accumulated some kind of debt with whatever force handed out bizarre body-warping experiences to all the good little children on October 31st? I felt my lip quiver and my body begin to tremble; if I'd played along all these years, would I only have had to deal with—
"Hey, Connor?" Lacey said, audibly worried. She came around behind me, taking me by the shoulders and gently rubbing at them. "Listen, you're gonna be okay. Even if you're not totally comfortable with this…it'll pass, just remember that. And meantime, well, it's not a bad thing to be something different for a while. You never know 'til you try, am I right?"
I turned myself to stare back at her; looking straight back over my own shoulder was plenty odd (as was seeing the "flame" in the corner of my eye,) but the bar for strangeness had moved considerably in the last fifteen minutes. "H–how…how can you be so positive about this…?" I said, feeling like I had a golf ball lodged in my throat (wherever it was.)
She smiled gently back at me, but I could tell she found the view a little weird as well. "Hey, I've been stuff I wasn't thrilled with myself," she said. "Sometimes it's just a weird, confusing night that you're glad to have over with the next day. But…well, you never know! I found something I really jived with, that one year, and if I could I'd like to do it again. Maybe it'll happen, maybe not; maybe I'll get to explore some other side of me instead. It's just how this goes."
She stood up, and nudged my shoulders like she expected me to follow suit. I clutched my head cautiously to my chest and got to my feet, wincing as my legs reminded me of how long I'd been kneeling there. It was strange, holding myself somewhere between stomach- and shoulder-level; I hadn't seen the world from this height since I was a kid…
"Anyway," she said, putting a hand on my shoulder, "I think at this point it's pretty clear that you need the rest of the day off. Go home, get some rest, take a bit to cool your…uh, jets, and we can see how you're feeling tomorrow."
Wait, tomorrow…? I felt my stomach churn. In all this insanity, I'd entirely forgotten about work! God, there was so much I needed to get—
"Yeah, I can already feel you going back into burnout mode." I felt her hand clamp down a bit more firmly, and she shot me a Look. "I'm not kidding, Connor; I'll get admin to lock your account if I have to. You. Need. Rest. The rest of us can pick up the slack for today; it's not the end of the world."
I wasn't convinced, but I could tell from her tone that there was no arguing with her on this one. Alright, if I took a half-day to mollify her, I could come back in tomorrow and catch up on…I frowned. "Wait, how'm I supposed to drive like this…?"
Lacey frowned, considering it as I had. I couldn't see without holding my head up, but I needed my hands free; I could set myself on the dash, maybe, but there was no guarantee I wouldn't tumble around every time I took a curve, plus I couldn't see the mirrors from there… "Huh, good question," she said. "We'll have to get you a bus pass for the week; I guess I can drive you home in the meantime."
I wanted to protest that she had too much on her own plate, but frankly I couldn't think of how else I could manage it. I probably had change for bus fare, but I couldn't leave the Cutlass in the ramp for an entire week; my parking tag expired on the 31st, and I wouldn't be back to normal 'til the next day. In spite of myself, I tilted my hands forward to dip my head in a nod.
"Alright," she said, motioning to the door. "C'mon, let's get you home."
I glanced out into the cubicle farm and squirmed, feeling even more self-conscious than I already was. "Wait – I, I can't go out there like this…!"
"Well, you're not living in the corner office for a week, buddy." She shrugged. "Besides, it's lunchtime; practically everyone who doesn't chain themselves to their desk the way you do is off grabbing a bite someplace."
I followed her out, desperately hoping she was right; but I quickly got distracted by more practical difficulties. I'd yet to get a good look at how my altered body was put together, but my slacks were noticeably looser at the waist now, and kept shimmying down to my hips, where the fit was snugger. After having to stop and adjust them a couple times, I sighed, carefully transferred my head to the crook of one arm, and shoved my hand down my pocket so I could keep them hiked up as we went. Lacey didn't quite manage to stifle a chuckle at that.
Despite this, we at least made it out to the parking ramp without encountering anyone I knew; I did get stares from a couple employees in other departments, and I hoped to God I looked different enough that they couldn't put two and two together…
"You're on, what, 7th Street?" Lacey said, sliding into the front seat of my battered sedan and taking a moment to adjust it.
"1021 East, yah." I cocked my elbow back to effect a nod as I used my other arm to buckle up, then transferred myself to my lap. I shifted around, trying to get the shoulder belt to sit comfortably on my chest, and wondered if it was any less effective when you didn't have a neck. "Um, thanks for doing this."
She gave me a look that somehow mixed pity with a wry smile as she fired up the engine. "Geez," she said, "what'd I tell you? You're a valuable team member; and anyway, it's not like I'm donating a kidney here."
It was more than anyone would've done at plenty of the places I'd worked, I thought to myself; but I said nothing, and we drove back in silence. Finally, blessedly, we arrived back at my duplex.
Lacey helped walk me up the steps and followed me in, waiting 'til I collapsed on the couch to say anything. "You gonna be okay by yourself, for now?" she asked. "I'll check back in after work; I should be able to get you a bus pass by then."
"'Okay' is a funny way to put it," I sighed, "but…I'll manage, I guess."
"Good," she said, nodding. "For serious, get some rest, alright? Have a lie-down, take a nice long soak in the tub, whatever. You're way overdue, I can tell that much."
"…I'll…think of something, yeah," I said, feeling weird and awkward at the notion of taking a bath like this.
She grinned, then frowned. "And, uh…for the record, if H.R. asks, I'm saying this in a strictly professional assistive type context, but…d'you, uh, know how to use the bathroom and all…?"
"I–I…!" I sputtered, feeling myself turn crimson in my hands. "I mean, I've—" I stopped and took a moment to collect myself, before I said something I'd regret. "Geez, Lacey, I'm not that clueless."
"Sorry," she said sheepishly, flushing a bit herself. "I just…well, I've known guys who seem to think that women are made outta pixie dust and rainbows, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask."
"Yes," I groaned, wondering if I could get any more mortified, "I know how it works…"
"Good deal." She gave me a warm smile and another gentle pat on the shoulder. "Hang in there, okay? I'll see you later."
And with that, she went, leaving me to myself in a sense that I'd never been left to myself before.