NothingSpecial: gender-bending transformation stories, comics, and occasional poetry =^_^=
Thump. The late-morning sun stabbed little pinpricks of light through the weave of the blanket. I blinked, squinted, and forced my eyes shut. Was it my head that was pounding? My skull still felt funny.
Thump. It was no use; I was in that worst of morning states, the one where you'd really like to go back to sleep, but you're already awake, damn it, and no matter how you huddle under the covers and try to force yourself, you're just killing time until you finally give in and get out of bed…
Thump. I yawned, stretched, and poked my head out from under the covers. The blanket felt funny sliding across my ears, but I was too caught up in remembering what I was doing on Nicole's couch to give it a second thought.
Thump. Rasputin, perched on the armrest, passive-aggressively thwapped his tail against my head. So that's what it was; I batted at him, annoyed. He made a show of not flinching, then very deliberately rose, slunk to the floor, and stalked off elsewhere. I shot him a Look as he left, channeling my annoyance at having to get up into ire at cats and their stupid performative coolness; then I got to my hands and knees, slipped, lost my balance, and tumbled gracelessly off the couch and onto the floor.
I wobbled to my feet and shucked off the blanket. I felt…not exactly dizzy, but off somehow; my sense of balance was still wonky, and my limbs felt discoordinated. It reminded me of adolescence, when all your proportions are changing by the week, or by the day…
I glanced around the room, hoping nobody'd noticed. No such luck; Snickers was watching me warily from atop the bookcase. I frowned and made a point of turning away, feeling that weird lack-of-response in my ears again; then I noticed the Kit-Cat Klock on the wall, which read 10:37. Shit, I thought, I'm late for work…! But no, Nicole'd called me out, hadn't she; why was that, again…?
Actually, I heard her over in the other room, talking to…I wasn't sure. Students? Coworkers?° Well, I didn't want to interrupt, and she might have her webcam on;°° plus, remembering what we'd (apparently) been doing the last few days made me incredibly self-conscious. I slipped quietly out the door and returned to my own apartment.
° (One of the stranger things about everyone going work-from-home was how much likelier you were to play spectator to someone else's daily routine.)
°° (Another: how much warier you had to be about showing up on someone's Zoom call. It wasn't hard to guess what her students'd make of a disheveled, pajama-clad man in the background of their teacher's apartment.)
The place still smelled strangely unfamiliar. There was a part of this scent that I recognized as me, but my brain for some reason construed it as belonging to someone else, which made me uneasy. I could put up with it for now, but it made me want to, I didn't know, go rub my head on stuff – which was a weird thought, but then a lot of things were weird lately. Anyway, first things first, I had to use the bathroom.
…One of the strange cultural effects of the virus was the number of things that filtered from weird little niche subcultures into the mainstream simply because they were suddenly apropos. To wit: in gender-bender fiction (or so I gathered,) the omigod-my-dick-shrank!? moment was a long-established trope, but in the last few months it'd been flogged to hell and back by Internet memesheep, and was already so tired and shopworn that it'd just shown up in a Saturday Night Live sketch.
Which is absurd: anyone who's ever had one (including most of the people making the jokes) can tell you that the size fluctuates constantly depending on time, mood, weather, etc. Absolutely nobody, upon finding their member a little smaller than usual when they go to take a leak, is going to think holy shit I'm turning into a woman! when the likelier takeaway is huh, must be colder out than I thought.
You know what is a sudden and very unexpected eye-opener, though? Dropping your drawers and feeling the waistband tug at your tail.
I was instantly aware that something was Not Right here. Like everyone on the planet 'til recently, I'd lived my entire life with my spine ending between the buttcheeks, and the sensation of the elastic crimping part of it – a new, free-hanging part, a part that had not been there yesterday – against my gluteus maximus rang all kinds of alarm bells. I yanked my sweats off, pulled down my underwear, and nearly sprained my neck trying to get a good look at my own backside before realizing I could just look in the mirror.
And there it was: a little stub of backbone around 2–3" long, covered in skin that was only just starting to sprout a coat of peach-fuzz. Without the fur, it looked more like something you'd see in a tabloid article on the Sacred Monkey-Boy of the Himalayas than anything – but I knew damn well what it meant, and when I glanced back up I saw that my ears were just a bit pointier and fuzzier than I remembered, to boot.
My mouth fell open, revealing canines that were slightly longer and sharper than usual. I remembered my tender nipples, and lifted my shirt to find that not only were they a little puffy, but yes, the flesh underneath was just beginning to swell suggestively. For a long moment I simply stared, mind racing, running down the checklist of things that'd puzzled me lately and assembling them into a picture that made a terrible amount of sense of it all…
It all added up, whether I liked it or not: the euphoria, sudden social neediness, twitchiness and distractability, odd behavior and cravings, heightened senses, the mysterious thrumming in my chest, even Nicole's cryptic remarks…damn it, she'd known, hadn't she!? As addle-brained and deep in thrall to it as I'd been, I probably reeked of it to her senses. And now I understood why the place smelled funny to me; I was never going to smell like that again, was I? Never going to be that again… I began to tremble – from stress? Anger?
…no, wait. It was because I still had to pee.
My cheeks burned, and so did my ears, under the fuzz; it felt insulting to have a moment of personal crisis unraveled by primitive biological need, but I couldn't prevent the usual sense of catharsis° from mellowing me out at least a little bit.
° (Damn it.)
Not for long, though. The shock of realization prickled at the back of my neck, and there was a sinking feeling in my gut. This can't be happening, I thought, then felt like an idiot for thinking it. Of course it could; it'd already happened to…what were we at now, tens of thousands? Oh, who even knew; it wasn't like I'd kept up on the news the last few days. It'd happened to my neighbors; I'd watched it, right before my eyes. And now, inevitably, Fate had gotten around to me…
But why, damn it!? I'd done everything I was supposed to, hadn't I? I'd spent weeks holed up in my apartment, avoiding human contact even more zealously than usual, wearing uncomfortable protective gear when I was out in public, getting panicky any time someone got too close to me, and for what?
It wasn't fair, I fumed, washing my hands. I had, I knew that much…as much as anybody could've. Okay, I could've tried to jury-rig something with the toilet, but that'd only postpone matters; I could've gotten contactless delivery on my groceries, but wouldn't they charge you for that? I could've stopped checking the mail, hermetically sealed the front door, huddled in the bathroom with the lights off, waiting for the Angel of Fluff to pass over the house…
I felt a sudden flare of nerves, a wave of twitchy panic washing over me. Almost reflexively, I found myself casting about. Maybe I could look on the Internet; maybe there was some new breakthrough. Maybe somebody'd found some unorthodox but possibly effective home remedy. Maybe there was something, anything I could do to stop this…
…but, well, I knew better than that. I'd spent more than enough time trying to keep myself abreast° of the situation; if there was something like that out there, I would've heard about it, and I hadn't. But I had heard plenty of anecdotes about this or that idiot inflicting some awful new variety of snake-oil on himself for fear of losing his—
° (Oh, perfect, another one for the not-even-a-cat-pun-but… file.)
I shook my head. I couldn't deal with this, not first thing in the morning, not as twitchy and addled and overwhelmed as I felt right now. I needed time to process, a chance to clear my head; I could come back at it when I was stable and rational again, when I could handle it like an adult. Right now, what I wanted most was to just not think.
I slipped my boxers back on, stalked to my desk, and sat in my chair, carefully situating myself and hunching forward to minimize the chance of brushing that thing against the seat; I certainly didn't need any reminders of it. MUDding? I thought; but no, I really wasn't in the mood for pretending to be someone else. I donned my headphones, tried and failed to make them sit right, doffed them again, and spent the following hours engrossed in mindless violence.
It was well into the evening when hunger finally forced me out of the blood-trance. Normally, I could go for most of a day on coffee and the occasional light snack, if I remained sedentary and didn't let myself get too worked up;° but I was still fairly ravenous, and stray thoughts about why only made it harder to keep my mental machinery from revving up and burning even more energy. No getting around it, I needed food.
° (A skill I'd acquired in college, where the mandatory meal plan meant paying several grand per year for the privilege of eating stuff that cleared the "prison" tier, but didn't quite make it up to "McDonald's." I'd subsisted almost entirely on chalky, stale peanut-butter cookies, one of the few minimally edible things on offer.)
It was a surprise to find that I had it, though. I remembered my bare fridge, but evidently Nicole'd restocked it. Right, she'd mentioned needing groceries last night, hadn't she; I still wasn't sure how to feel about the fact that she knew and hadn't told me, but at least I had something to eat. I made a fairly obscene quantity of bacon and eggs and poured myself a tall glass of milk – whole milk, which had always seemed over-rich to me before.
That kept me distracted for a while, and got me nostalgic; it'd been years since I worked a late-shift job and had dinner around the time normal people went to bed. It made scheduling any kind of get-together hell – not that I needed to often – but I did kinda miss the part where I could sleep in as late as I wanted, every day of the week. Come think, I was starting to feel a bit drowsy again…
Then, out of nowhere, my phone rang. I nearly jumped; was the ringer louder than usual, or was it just that everything sounded louder and clearer these last few days? And who'd be calling me at…aw shit. It was my week for the on-call rotation at work, and evidently the next tech in line had forgotten to switch the after-hours dial plan over when Nicole'd called me in sick.
I was absolutely not in the mood to take calls right now…but the only people who'd be working this late were the folks at Jusczak Associates, our big accounting client, who were always swamped during tax season. With a heavy groan – verging on a conspicuously non-human growl – I flipped open my work laptop and picked up the phone. I hated having this stupid job intrude on my personal time, but…c'mon, self, it's not their fault; calm down – CALM DOWN! – and put on that nice, professional demeanor…
"Fulcrrrum Solutions, how can nya help – gack! – um, myew?" I experienced a full-body cringe at hearing myself speak; I usually put on a mildly upbeat, higher-tone voice for this kind of thing,° but my larynx had gone all screwy and just trying to settle in on a pitch was throwing me off in ways I hadn't experienced since junior high. On top of that, I noticed the same kind of bizarro vocal tics Nicole exhibited creeping into my speech. Oh God, I thought, not now, not where people can hear…!
° (Not chipper. People hate chipper, when they're calling in with a problem. But, y'know, pleasant.)
"A–are you there? I–is this tech support?" It was Ronald, one of the senior accountants and a very special case all-'round. I never was clear on whether he was "on the spectrum" or just eccentric, but his office looked like the study of a Hollywood "insane mathematician" type – stacks of paper everywhere, Post-Its festooned across every convenient surface, even the Newton's cradle on the desk – and he was certifiably a total neurotic. "I can't get back i–into the office!"
"Mya—" I caught myself, tried to force it not to happen. "Ah, okay – so is it nyat taking your keycard?" There wasn't much I could do about that – we only managed their computers, the security system belonged to the office complex, and their staff was already…wait, why was he in the office, anyway? Hadn't they gone work-from-home, like most of our clients?
"N–no, it's still in there!" I had to suppress the urge to tell him to calm down; "quavering and on the verge of a breakdown" was his normal speaking voice. "I usually have Mei Ling get delivery for me on Tuesdays, but e–everyone stopped coming into work for some reason, and I had to do it myself, a–and I left my badge…"
"And there's nyo—" I stopped short – of course there was nobody else there. I flipped through our client file in OneNote,° glanced across the entries – yep, we'd set them up to not have to be in the office back at the start of lockdown, like practically everyone else. Had he been coming into work this whole time? It'd been six weeks; he must've gone home at some point, right…?
° (Why in God's name did we use OneNote for this? Why, "best practices," naturally.)
"I, I think the delivery girl was sick or something," he mused. "She had a mask on, a–and she kept trying to stay clear of me. It was kinda rude, honestly."
It was beginning to dawn on me, but I could hardly believe it; still, if anyone was going to end up in this situation, it'd definitely be him. "Uh, Mr. Harrrperrr," I said, trying to figure out how to approach this, "have you…been watching the nyews lately…?"
He somehow managed to laugh ruefully while also sounding like he was about to cry. "A–at this time of year? I barely have time to go home and sleep. My kids keep the fridge stocked, but I a–a–always get delivery on Tuesdays…"
He really had no idea, did he? I muted myself and heaved a sigh, trying to think of how best to break this to Rip van Winkle here, or if I even should. The guy seemed like he was about three cups of coffee shy of a coronary on a good day; God alone knew what explaining that society was in the grip of an atypically cute and fuzzy global pandemic that he'd avoided by sheer coincidence° would do to him.
° (Ironically, he was probably safer spending eight twelve sixteen…? hours a day in the office by himself, for extremely peculiar definitions of "safe.")
"Mya, listen," I said, unmuting myself. "Nyanforrrtunyately—" – I gritted my teeth and persevered – "—I really can't do anything about the door. But we did set things up so that you should be able to do everything on nyewr work laptop. D'you have that at home?"
He thought for a minute. "Ah, y–yeah, I think so. But, a–ah, work from home? How'm I supposed to, to stay focused!?"
I was filled with a weird combination of exasperation and pity. He really was going to give himself a heart attack, wasn't he? Sure, he apparently didn't know about the external considerations that'd driven everyone else to leave the office, but the fact that in a moment of stress he was fixating on his ability to maintain maximum function as a worker…why were humans like this!?
…
People. Why were people like this.
"L–look," I stammered, "I kniaow it's nyat ideal—!" I cringed as my voice cracked for a moment before settling again, and gave silent thanks that he had no earthly idea why it was happening. The more flustered I got, the harder it was to keep from slipping… "But, uh, Laurrren gave the go-ahead for all of you. They'll understand if it takes you a bit to adjust."
There was another pause. "A–are you sure?" he asked, his voice quavering slightly more than usual.
"Yes," I sighed, wishing he'd get off the line already. That pleasant drowsiness was nagging at the back of my mind, encouraging me to go back to sleep, and it was getting harder to fight the urge – but I couldn't just take a nap in the middle of a call. "I'll put in nya ticket for us to contact security tomorrrow; meantime, myew can go home and work – or, uh, get some rrrest?" I tried not to editorialize to our clients, but I really felt like it needed saying.
"And, uh…" I thought for a moment. "Maybe check in with your kids, okay? I dunniaow if you've hearrrd, but there's a bit of a bug goin' nyaround."
"Oh!" he said brightly.° "So that's what was u–up with your voice. Sounded kinda funny. God, I hope it's not strep…?"
° (For values of "brightly" that still entail°° being on the verge of a nervous breakdown.)
°° (Damn it.)
"Nyathing like that," I said, trying – with little success – to keep my tone steady. "But, mya, they'll be able to fill you in nyan the details."
He said goodbye and hung up, and I set my phone down, buried my face in my hands, and felt my entire head achieve incandescence. Bad enough that my voice kept drifting in and out of gawky-teenager mode, but having all these stupid vocal tics manifest while I was on the phone with a client was just mortifying. Was it always going to be like this? Nicole'd said she practically couldn't speak at first…
Cringing at the thought, I logged into the dialer and switched it over to Curtis. Hell, for that matter, what would I be in for just going back to work? Bryce would be sure to make some dumb remark, I just knew it. I wasn't as certain about the other techs; we might have our various personality issues, but I didn't know if they were specifically awkward around—
—Anyway, I thought, with a vigorous shake of the head, maybe I could get a handle on it. Nicole seemed to do less of it than she had that first day, and she didn't even mind it; if I could keep an even keel and mind my wording, I might be able to keep this to a minimum, maybe even prevent it altogether.
But…well, there was no use trying to deny it anymore, was there? I hadn't even made it a day without getting hammered by inescapable reminders: this was really happening, happening to me. Like it or not, I was changing.
There was a knot in my stomach as I processed that; it felt like the world was dropping out from under me. I stalked to the fridge, poured myself another glass of whole milk, and downed it like a cartoon alcoholic. God, I needed that – and no wonder. Plenty of fats and sugars to fuel the changes, rich in calcium for all those extra vertebræ I'd be developing…
How far would it go, I wondered? Would I be like Nicole, a sapient, bipedal animal? Or merely end up with the ears and tail, and without certain parts of myself with which I had a long and familiar acquaintance? Something in between? Or…something worse, more extreme? I'd yet to hear of anything beyond what she'd experienced, but that didn't mean it wasn't possible…
There really was no getting out of this, was there? I felt my whole body tense up, my shoulders tightening…it was too late to avoid, it was already happening and there was not a single thing I could do about it…
While I was grappling with my inner turmoil, I realized I had to go to the bathroom again. No surprise, I was nearly twelve hours and more than a quart of milk into the day, but I resented it anyway. I couldn't stop self-assessing, trying to work out how far things had progressed. In my current state of mind every little detail was an omen of things to come, and my brain insisted on trying to forecast the end result despite my best efforts to make it stop…
But it was only when I'd finished up and let my abdominal muscles relax that I felt it: a twinge in some part of me, somewhere near the pelvic floor. A part of me that I hadn't had before, or at least not in this form. In the grand scheme of things, it would've hardly been noticeable, but between the media obsessively educating the public to within an inch of its life on this and my own compulsive need to stay informed about what I was trying to avoid, I'd read enough to recognize this as the first stage in the formation of the uterus.
My uterus.
I sank to the bathroom floor, trembling, feeling the stub of my tail brush against the cold linoleum. Base animal relief from doing my business clashed with numb realization and left me feeling as emotionally-addled as I could ever remember being. There was no more room for denial, no convenient distraction with which to brush off the realization. Holy shit, I thought, I'm turning into a woman.
I couldn't un-think it; couldn't think of anything besides it. I could barely even feel this one tiny part of me, this nascent scrap of muscle and membrane, but I knew absolutely what it meant. After spending all day trying not to think about it, I was forced to confront the truth: I am going to be a catgirl.
I grasped the sink counter with hands that were maybe just a bit slenderer than they'd been this morning, and hauled myself to my possibly-daintier feet, shifting hips that felt a little funny and wondering if the legs had begun to change. The face looking back at me from the mirror didn't look all that different, not yet, but the ears of this other-self-image were noticeably longer and pointier, with a thin coat of hair, and when the light caught the eyes just right, there was a faint glow in the depths of the pupil.
I'm going to be a catgirl. The thought recurred in my mind, over and over. There was no getting out of it, I was already changing. Funny, I thought I'd be angrier about it. I had been angry, earlier; now, I felt stung at having officially lost to this, worried about what'd happen to me, and fairly indignant at having gone through all that stress and inconvenience for nothing, but more than anything I was just kinda stunned. Was that also something the virus did to you…?
It was too much to think about right now. The drowsiness was filling my head again, urging me to sleep. I was hesitant, knowing it'd only bring further changes, but there was no avoiding that; it was going to happen anyway, whether I slept comfortably or drove myself to exhaustion in a futile attempt to fight it. In a daze, I brushed my teeth, staggered to bed, and collapsed, surrendering to unconsciousness.
I woke with a start. The light streaming in from the window was all wrong; it must've been nearly 10:00 by the look of it. It was Wednesday, wasn't it? Shit, I must've slept through my—
Oh right, I didn't have work today, either; I was out sick on account of turning into a cat. Silly me, when would I get that through my fuzzy little head…?
I laid there in bed as the memories flooded back: my tripped-out weekend, the cold and scary Monday where I realized something was wrong but didn't know what, the shock of discovery yesterday morning, my futile attempt to remain in denial derailing in front of a client, the stunned realization late last night…I buried my face in the pillow, squirmed uneasily, then squirmed even more uneasily when I felt my still-tender nipples rub against the mattress through my undershirt. Gah, were they always going to be like this? Even if they weren't, I'd probably end up sleeping on my side…
It was very strange to think like this – I knew, in the broad strokes, what was going to happen to me, but most of it hadn't happened yet. Again I was reminded of puberty, in the sense that all you know going in is what you've been told by people who aren't you, people who can give you an endless and unsettlingly specific litany of squishy biological factoids and a bunch of frustratingly vague generalizations about behavioral and emotional phenomena, and still leave you entirely clueless as to what the experience is like – and then you have to go through it yourself, and discover that probably nothing could've prepared you for it anyway…
I was turning into a catgirl, I knew that much, and I had a mental checklist of things that'd be part of the process; but I had absolutely no idea what it'd feel like. What was the subjective experience of ceasing to be one thing, and becoming something else? Okay, I could think back on some of the oddities I'd noticed in the last few days,° but was that all there was to it, just a package of physiological alterations and a new blend of chemicals in the brain-meats? Where did one state end and the other begin? Would I know when I was…not the old me…anymore?
° (God, I knew what it felt like to have your skull rearrange itself.)
It was strange and disquieting to think about. In the light of day, I was less shell-shocked, less of a total emotional jumble…but that in itself was pretty weird. After all the precautions, all the stress, all the embarrassment upon finally realizing, I felt like I should be…I didn't know, distraught; instead, I was more just uncomfortable. Was it my brain's way of coping with being powerless to do anything about it? Or was it just that I'd already run the gamut yesterday, and sleep had calmed the storm? I had no idea.
It was kind of anticlimactic; I'd sort of imagined that, if it got me, it'd be more dramatic. Not that I wanted to panic, break down, plead to Heaven for the preservation of my humanity/manhood to no avail, etc., but wouldn't that be the more normal reaction? Hell, poor Alex was pretty freaked out – but somehow it felt worse remembering his reaction than it did to think about going through it myself; my ears even felt like they should be drooping. Some part of me kept insisting I should've done something, despite there being nothing I could do…
Anyway, there was probably no avoiding this next part. I got up, and even that was novel; I could feel the blanket tugging gently at my tail as it slid down my back, and I definitely felt my chest un-squish more than usual. I stumbled into the bathroom – emphasis on stumbled; there was some major skeletal weirdness going on, and my limbs were all out of whack – took a deep breath, and turned to the mirror to take stock.
The changes were more noticeable than yesterday, but I'd arrived in some strange no-man's-land between what I was used to seeing in the mirror and how I supposed I'd probably end up. Between the skeletal weirdness and the reapportionment of adipose tissue, my facial structure was softening, but the result thus far was more "vaguely androgynous" than anything. I found it off-putting, but I wasn't sure if that was actual æsthetic displeasure, or just discomfort at the sudden unfamiliarity of my own face.
More arrestingly weird was the fact that my ears had begun to migrate up the side of my head. There's really no normal configuration for ears between the standard human and cat positions, so the process of going from one to the other is bizarre on a pretty instinctual level. They were longer and distinctly non-human in structure, but hadn't broadened out yet, so it looked more like someone had tried to draw anime-style elf-ears on me,° put them in the wrong spot, and made them fuzzy for some reason.
° (The thought had me uneasily recalling Duck Amuck.)
On which note, the fuzz was definitely thickening. It was still too sparse to tell the color; something on the gray/black spectrum, I couldn't make out a pattern yet. The inside of the ears had long wisps of white coming in as well.° I glanced at my tail in the mirror; yes, it was coming in there, too, and the thing itself was nearly 8" long. I didn't seem to have any motor control yet, but I could feel it brush against the back of my thigh from both points of contact, which was deeply strange.
° (Not that it'd ever been a problem for me, but it was weird to think that visible ear-hair was no longer going to be socially awkward.)
Twisting my body far enough to see that also made it clear that my hips were broadening; not by a lot, but enough that I could tell the difference in my own stance. My legs…well, I wasn't sure what was going on with them. I could swear the ratio of upper to lower leg was decreasing – between that and the hips, it was no wonder I had trouble walking – but they didn't feel any shorter overall. And yet! the floor was somewhat closer than I remembered.
Well, statistically it was almost a certainty…but I sighed, wondering how freakin' tiny I was gonna end up. It'd never been a major point of pride for me, but with my genetics I'd been lucky to make it to 6', or just shy of it; slightly taller than my dad, even, and a whole head over my poor mother. I can kiss that goodbye, I thought, bouncing antsily on the balls of my feet.
I stared into the mirror for a long minute, bit my lip nervously, then hissed in surprise, remembering that I was getting full-fledged fangs as part of the package. I…probably didn't need to change out of my pajama shirt, did I…? It wasn't like I was gonna have company over or anything, and underneath… Anyway, that was enough of this for now; I wasn't planning to sit here gazing at my reflection all day to see what happened next.
God, I thought, taking a moment to comb the gnarlier tangles out of my hair, that probably was a thing, wasn't it? Not that I went within ballistic-missile distance of "influencer"/streamer/YouTuber culture if I could help it, but it must've blossomed into an entire mini-genre by now. Hi, I'm progressively metamorphosizing into an unholy hybrid lifeform never before seen on this earth, but before we get started I'd like to talk to you guys about SurfShark…
I felt myself power-cringe just thinking it. Of course all the modern Narcissi would see this as just one more source from which to draw eyeballs, clicks, and likesharesubscribes, but who'd wanna watch that!? What kind of sick freak got their kicks from observing the progress of a disease as it gradually remolded someone's entire body…?
…
I shuddered and clapped my hands to my temples, willing myself not to think too hard about it; if the Internet had taught me anything, it was that there's always someone like that out there, for any given definition of "like that."
(It occurred to me that Nicole had mentioned documenting her transformation with a series of selfies, but…well, that was different; she wanted this, so it made sense for her to memorialize it. I still didn't understand that, but at least it wasn't something she was doing for attention.)
Well, that wouldn't be me, at any rate. I was a grown m…adult, damn it, not some performing animal chasing the attentions of a bunch of Internet randos; I had no need to offer up my most intimate awkward moments for a bunch of overgrown monkeys to hoot and holler over. Whatever I might struggle with in this process, I could at least face it with quiet grace and dign—
I sprang into the air and whirled 'round to face in the direction of the noise as the doorbell suddenly rang. Had it always been that loud? No, my hearing must be getting sharper; and I kept feeling like my ears should pivot towards it, but they couldn't, yet.
After weeks of battling with the delivery apes, I was conditioned to sprint towards the entryway pretty much on reflex – but about five yards in I realized I was pantsless, and on top of that, my boxers were shimmying down my thighs as my tail held the waistband down. I hiked them up and sprinted back to the bedroom for my sweatpants, but then I couldn't get those over my tail, either…
There was the doorbell again, and I felt a shiver run up my spine; it wasn't just louder, I could swear there were higher harmonics I'd never picked up 'til now. The apes would never have rung a second time, and I didn't recall having any packages due today; had Nicole come to check on me, then? Holding my pants up, I lurched to the door, threw it open, and came face-to-face with…a delegation of masked strangers.
It'd been so long since I was face-to-face with anyone besides my feline neighbor that for a minute we just stood there in mutual awkward silence; then something clicked in my brain and I put all the standard 21st-century American human social cues together. A pair of adults, dressed in suit-and-tie, neatly-coifed and standing expectantly at your doorstep, at least one of them clutching a leather-bound… Right, it was the JWs. Geez, how long had it been since they'd come 'round?
The cornucopia of fragrances that filled the neighborhood was still a bit overwhelming, but I didn't need scent to tell that they were even less at ease than I was: the younger of the two was plainly freaked out, and his elder handler kept shifting nervously from one foot to the other instead of maintaining the usual stance. This was puzzling; usually I couldn't get them to go away without practically shutting the door in their faces. Why were they suddenly so timid…?
Then the lightbulb went on. I'd been picturing the scene from their perspective with my normal self, a shabby but essentially ordinary man only a few years older than the young buck here – but what they were seeing was the partly-animalized androgyne from the mirror. Thinking of myself as something that just a few months ago would've belonged in a Hollywood effects shop was freaky enough, but it also occurred to me that this was about how Frank looked last Sunday, and he'd been addled enough to feel "friendly…"
The realization was not a comfortable one, and I could sense their discomfort so acutely now (the smell of the young man's fear, the audible rustle of the old goat's suit jacket as he bobbed like the world's subtlest boxer,) which only made it worse; even my urge to troll them with a question about whether bizarro cat-things could be numbered among the 144,000 couldn't overcome it.
Still worse was the nagging uncertainty over whether they were right to be concerned. I'd been too addled to grasp it at first, and I'd had other things on my mind the last couple days after coming to my senses; this was the first time I'd stopped to think about the fact that I had been carrying the virus for, hell, the last two or three weeks. (God, had I spread it to anyone!? I thought I'd been taking precautions…)
But that was over now, surely; I didn't feel all euphoric and huggy, so it stood to reason that I was no longer contagious. But I hadn't felt like anything was wrong then, had I…had I? My memory was too fuzzy° to be certain, and the question ate at me. That must've been the virus at work…what if I was still carrying it, and didn't know it? But Nicole didn't think it could prevent you from realizing…
° (Damn it…)
At any rate, I didn't want any misunderstandings on whether I planned to lunge for and glomp them 'til it took hold of their bodies like it had mine. If I could just tell them in a nice, civil, normal way that everything is fine but this really isn't a good time… Ignoring the feeling like my ears should be twitching, I stepped forward, tried to smile in such a way as to not draw attention to my teeth, and waved in greeting. "Mrowwl," I said.
The kid flinched and recoiled; I cringed in sudden realization; the old fellow clutched his book tightly. "Mya!" I yelped, trying to assuage their fears and get my emotions under control, and failing spectacularly on both counts. It didn't help that I was hearing my voice for the first time since that awkward phone call; it'd definitely shifted further overnight. "Mrowr, FFFT!!!"
The situation had never really been under control, but it was rapidly getting out of it. I could see the older man's muscles tense, smell the kid's fear spiking into full-on panic; and the more agitated we all got, the less coherent I felt. I raised my hands in a show of non-aggression, but they must've seen it as this half-formed mutant flailing its claws at them. The kid's eyes bugged out and he took off like a shot, practically tripping over himself as he fled; the elder skipped after him a moment later, not even stopping to slip a leaflet from the Watchtower Society under my windshield wiper.
And thus ended the shortest interaction I'd ever had with them. I tottered inside, shut the door, slumped against it, and slid down to the floor, then winced and leaned forward to un-kink my little stub of a tail out from under me. Just shoot me now, I thought, afraid to speak it aloud and hear what ridiculous jumble of animal noises would result. Was it going to be like this all the time!? It was one thing to hear it from Nicole; she aspired to be a cat, practically. But to have it come out of my mouth, in front of other people…
God, the way they'd looked at me. I was plenty used to not quite fitting in, getting the occasional funny look from someone over my personal appearance, the car I drove, etc. – but I'd never in all my life been looked at as a thing to be feared, 'til now. Was this what it was, to be a monster? Had I looked at the catgirl in the hardware store that way? I sure as hell hoped not.
I winced as something cramped up in the floor of my pelvis; God only knew what. With a sigh, I got up and stumbled back to the bedroom once more, shifting my hips around uneasily. I couldn't understand it; sure, I made a basic effort for work, but it didn't normally matter to me how I looked to people. Why did I care now what a bunch of humans I didn't even like thought of me? Why was I even more uncomfortable being seen like this than I was seeing myself this way…?
I focused pointedly on my back side as I doffed my boxers, turned them 'round, and hiked them back up, threading my tail through the fly.° A quick rummage through my closet yielded a pair of soft pajama shorts I'd had no need for since moving to a warmer state, and I did the same with these. There, that was at least technically covered up; I wouldn't have to worry about anyone seeing…things…
° (God, was it weird to feel my hands grasping an appendage I'd never had before.)
It was good timing; I'd hardly had a chance to settle in at my desk before there was a knock at the door. Frankly, I didn't feel the need to bother answering; I'd had my fill of awkward encounters for the day week month. But whoever it was wasn't standing on propriety; a minute later, I heard the door open and a woman's voice call: "Mya, hello?"
I felt my hackles rise a bit less metaphorically than I was used to. My rational mind couldn't really construe this invasion of my territory as a threat (a malicious party would hardly go announcing themselves,) but my subconscious saw it as an invasion all the same. In any case, I was not in the mood to deal with other people right now…and I felt a fresh wave of self-consciousness washing over me at the thought of being seen like this, technically-decent or no.
Then a breeze wafted in from the entryway, and I discerned that same cat-yet-not scent I'd picked up from Nicole. The equation suddenly flipped; my animal brain was soothed by that, while my human mind got all flustered over the question of why it'd be instinctively reassuring to me. Anyway, there was probably no avoiding this; with a growl, I got up yet again and stalked to the door to find…two catgirls I didn't recognize.
I had a vague sense of familiarity, but I couldn't exactly place them, by scent or sight. I wondered what they even wanted with me; Nicole was the only person of feline persuasion I knew, wasn't she? Unlike her, they weren't full-fledged° anthropomorphic cats; it was weird that that felt odd to me, but then she was the template for almost all my direct experience with the creatures so far, besides the direct experience of turning into one…
° ("Full-furred?")
One was a tall, shapely woman with dusky skin, lush (if somewhat short) raven-black tresses, and chocolate tortoiseshell fur. She had the basic ears-and-tail configuration, and I figured her to be in her late thirties. In a word, she was stunning, if a bit self-conscious about it; her tail lashed and her ears twitched when she saw me, and she glanced uneasily down at the hem of a skirt that wasn't quite long enough to conceal the fact that her legs were spectacular.
The other was just a kid. Unlike the woman, she had fur from the elbows down, and as far up her legs as I could see before they disappeared into a denim jumper that was clearly a hand-me-down. Her feet were full-fledged paws like Nicole's, and her leg proportions had changed to suit her new digitigrade stance. I couldn't tell whether her hands were more paw-like than usual, because they were jammed resolutely into her pockets.
She was paler-skinned than…her mother, I assumed…? but with a hint of olive; her hair was also black, but fine and silky, and her fur matched it exactly, except for white splotches on the tips of her ears and tail, and white "socks" on her feet and (probably) hands. At a guess, I thought, she was around the same age as—
No, wait. The face was a bit softer and rounder, but at that age the differences were subtle enough that I should've realized; hell, I'd even seen these exact changes underway. This was Alex, the catgirl version, which meant that the woman must be…Frank!? It was the only logical conclusion, but the cognitive dissonance from trying to connect this beauty with the craggy, mustachioed beat cop I knew was mind-bending. How was that even possible?
"Mya, sorry for the intrrrusion," she said. She'd ended up as a low alto,° but her voice was warm and velvety rather than husky like women in that range tend to be. "Nyacole texted to say she wanted to check in nyan nyew but got stuck in a meeting, and then we saw that commotion in the lot…everrrything okay here?"
° (Rant time: a baffling number of people on the Internet have taken to describing the shift in speaking pitch when someone changes from a man into a cat-woman in terms of "octaves," plural. For the record, one octave is the difference between Mr. Ed and the Chipmunks. The word they're searching for is register. This has been a public-service announcement.)
For a brief eternity, I stuck to awkward silence – apparently my theme for the day. I knew my voice was all weird right now, and the dumb vocal tics made me feel like even more of a spectacle; and standing before this belle that used to be my neighbor was making me intensely self-conscious. Okay, on closer inspection you could tell she was nearly forty – subtle wrinkles here and there, just a hint of crow's feet – and (understandably) not quite comfortable in her own skin; but she was still beautiful. And here was me, looking like a circus freak…
He ended up like that!? I still couldn't wrap my head around it. I'd wondered before what kind of connection there was between how you looked before the virus and what it made out of you, but again my main point of reference was Nicole; sure, she retained her essential Nicole-ness in mannerisms, body language, and speaking voice (mostly,) but there was nothing left of her face or frame that I could recognize, I didn't think.
This put the question in a more relatable context: was it merely chance, the "ouput" of an unthinking process for which my neighbor constituted the "input?" Or was it authoritatively "F. Gutiérrez (cat-woman edition,)" according to…whom? Did the Almighty already have a backup design on file for just such an occasion? A cabinetful, one for every man, woman, and child on the planet? Or for efficiency's sake, maybe just those of us who were fated to end up as—
"Kit? Hello?" She took a step towards me, and my brain flared briefly with a novel cocktail of surprise, territorial instinct, embarrassment, and existential angst. God, she even smelled like a woman; my enhanced senses made that clear even as I realized what a weird thing it'd be to say by normal standards. But then, nothing was really normal anymore…
"'m myalright," I sighed, and groaned inwardly. I hoped like Hell that I'd be able to control these stupid tics going forward, but I was too damn flustered right now to have any real chance. "It was just rrreally awkward, that's all."
Well, add one more to the list of things stuck in weird in-between states, I thought. The awkward adolescent squawking from yesterday was gone, but while the acoustic properties of my larynx were already changing, my brain was slow in adjusting my natural pitch to compensate. I didn't sound exactly like a woman doing a comic impression of a deep bass voice – not that I was ever a bass to begin with – but once I'd made the comparison there was no getting it out of my head. Ugh…
It was bizarre having to go through this again; puberty was long enough ago that I'd forgotten how embarrassing it is when your own voice doesn't fit right. Not that I'd ever been a model of timbre and cadence, but it was my voice, dammit, and now it was going to be all different, and I didn't even know exactly how. Swear to God, if I end up sounding like Mr. B Natural…
"That's good, at least," she said, stepping further inside; even her movements were fluid and feline. "Figured you'd handle this alrrright, but it seemed like a good idea to check in nyafter that. Hope we didn't catch you at a bad time."
I bristled a little, wondering what she meant by that, but couldn't stifle a snort. "I dunniaow what a good time would even look like here," I said dryly. I didn't have company over often, but I was pretty sure this was well outside the parameters for "normal" hospitality. Oh, do come in – sorry, it's a bit of a mess in here, I've gotten so busy mutating into a novel species lately…
Frank nodded knowingly. "I get you. Rrreally gets you off-kilter, having everrrything be so…different." She rolled her shoulders as if trying to get used to their altered shape and the substantially different weight distribution of her upper body, and shifted her hips, glancing uneasily down at her new gams. She probably felt awkward, but from my perspective she still made it look supple and sinuous… "Alex couldn't even walk upright the firrrst day or so."
"Daaad…!" Alex protested, shrinking behind her…father…? in embarrassment; I could still see her tail lashing from one side of Frank to the other. Her voice had gone up in pitch, but only a little – or at least, I thought it had; I hadn't really heard him talk much, before.
"Sorry, kiddo," Frank chuckled, glancing back at her; something about the tone of voice she took with her child struck me funny, but I couldn't put my finger on it. She turned and gave Alex's hair an affectionate ruffle, which turned into scritches so naturally that I wasn't even sure she'd meant to. Alex's ears were laid back in annoyance, but I could see her nudging up into the touch; I tried not to notice the itching in my own scalp.
She turned back to me, and her ears drooped slightly. "And, uh…apologies if I frrreaked you out the other day." She shook her head, tail lashing. "Nyacole said you were there, but I was so out of it that it's all a blur…"
I cringed, remembering Alex's distress, my own inability to bring myself to do anything, and the feeling of something else watching me through my neighbor's eyes – and then remembering that I'd gone through that phase myself just a couple days ago. Was there a connection? I felt a brief flare of emotion, wondering if he was responsible for my condition…but no, that didn't make sense. It hadn't been long enough for me to have progressed this far, and too long since I'd last seen them before…
"It's, uh, nyat your fault," I sighed, trying to reassure us both. She was visibly relieved, and I wondered if she was as uneasy as I was at the thought of this thing manipulating her in order to spread itself…or as embarrassed about getting all weird and huggy and spaced-out. We could learn to control all this behavioral weirdness, couldn't we…? God, we'd better be able to.
For a little while, we just stood there, the two of them glancing 'round my apartment with distinctly feline curiosity, which just got me trying to remember if I'd ever had any of my neighbors over before. …No, not that I could recall, aside from Nicole coming to check on me the other day; there'd been no need, really.
But for some reason I couldn't help wondering what they'd expected. What kind of person did my neighbors think I was? Hell, what kind of people did I think they were…? I glanced at Alex, who regarded me warily, and realized I didn't even know what grade he was in; but why should it matter to me? It wasn't like I needed anything from these people. Okay, sure, Nicole had stepped in to help me through this, had prevented me from spreading it to anyone, and even Frank had come to check on me, but…!
My internal conflict was interrupted when Alex caught sight of my practice amp and the guitar leaned up against it. "Are you, like, in a band or something?" she asked, ears perking up just a bit and tail flicking with interest. I could see her mouthful of little kitty teeth as she spoke.
I cringed a little; nothing makes you more keenly aware of being a newbie at something than someone else assuming you're proficient. "Uh, nyah," I said, feeling awkward and hoping they wouldn't ask me to demonstrate. "I just…got bored and needed a nyew hobby, that's all."
She eyed me curiously, and I couldn't help doing the same. I wasn't sure why I found it interesting to watch her; it might've been partly for the novelty of seeing her reactions and emotions, the first time I'd gotten to observe a more human type of catgirl face up-close. Maybe my brain was logging all this as it insistently speculated on how I'd end up – more like this, or more like Nicole? But for some reason I found myself remembering my sister at this age, though there was no real resemblance.
"…Oh," she said, after a moment, shifting her hands in her pockets. I couldn't tell exactly what to read into it, but her ears lost a bit of their perk. I glanced away, trying not to feel chagrined at the thought that my neighbor's kid whom I'd never really interacted with before might find me something of a letdown.
"Lotta that going arrround, lately," Frank chuckled, not really making me feel any less awkward. "I guess we all need to stay occupied, myakniaow? My partner took up whittling, for crrrying out loud." She glanced around the room, looking for something else to politely inquire after, and settled on the little bookshelf in back of the couch. "Nyew, uh, rrread much?"
"…A bit," I said uneasily, trying to recall if I had anything there that'd make the mo—father of a young child uncomfortable. Probably not, I thought. It'd be different if it were my sister's bookshelf, though I had…slightly different reasons to feel awkward about her Ranma ½ collections than mere comic nudity, lately. I bristled; how long were we gonna have to keep this conversation going? Why were my neighbors suddenly insistent on taking an interest in me…!?
Irritation was beginning to creep up my spine and into the back of my neck; I tried to tell myself it was just territorial instinct flaring up again. I could tell Frank noticed; she gave me a funny look for a moment, one that reminded me of the neighborhood strays when they were sizing each other up. She probably smelled it on me, didn't she? Could she tell what it meant…?
Then her ears flicked 'round and she turned to glance back at Alex, who was discreetly licking the back of her hand with her little sandpaper tongue. "Oh, mya, honey," she said, "let's nyat do that, okay?"
Alex cringed upon realizing she'd been caught, in a manner that was both pure kid and pure cat, and her ears ticked back a bit. "Okay, Dad," she sighed, wiping her fur off on her jumper and trying to straighten out whatever muss in her hair was bugging her using her claws instead. I puzzled over that exchange for a moment, before realizing that we'd ended up in a world where parents might have to worry about their kids hocking up a hairball on the neighbors' rug.
Well, it wasn't like my carpets were exactly pristine, but I should probably appreciate it; and yet I felt my irritation rise further. I've always felt awkward around parent-child interactions; as a kid I never knew where my sympathies were supposed to lie, and as an adult I'd never figured out whether it'd be ruder to stand around watching someone else wrangle their kid, or try to offer support and come off as a buttinski. I knew, rationally, that they weren't doing this to spite me, but why did they have to do it on my turf!?
Then, while I was trying to get a handle on my unease and annoyance, a new flavor of discomfort presented itself. I winced and hissed as a gentle tugging in my pelvic region suddenly turned into a pinching sensation that I really didn't want to think about, but definitely couldn't ignore. Frank gave me a sympathetic look as I shifted my legs around uneasily. "Oh, I rrremember that feeling," she said. "We'll, uh, get out of your hairrr, then – nya, do let us know if you need anything…?"
I nodded curtly, and they left, my neighbor ushering her son-turned-daughter out the door. Alex gave a last curious glance back as I gingerly stepped my way back to the bathroom, scalp prickling and cheeks burning at the latest fresh new humiliation this thing was putting me through. I heard the door close, and with a sigh, I pulled my shorts and underwear back off to take stock.
It was the first time I'd gotten a look at my privates since last night, and the first time I'd been paying close attention since yesterday morning. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the renovations were well underway; my dick had shrunk substantially, and the associated bits were lining up for an orderly – if cramped – retreat into the body cavity.
If you've never had your family jewels drawn back up inside you, rejoice – it's not comfortable. Okay, it probably helps that the passage is already widening by the time that happens, but only so much. While I'd known in the abstract that this must be part of the process, I'd never stopped to think about exactly what it'd feel like; I was certainly finding out now.
I sank down onto the toilet seat – and pivoted so my stubby little tail-in-progress could hang free – while I tried to process how to feel about that. Some guys seem to have a deep personal relationship with their junk, talking about it like it's their best friend, even giving it a freakin' nickname. I've never understood that, myself; in the grand scheme of things, it was just…part of my body, I guessed.
So it was a little surprising that seeing it like this really did give me a turn. I guess it's that you don't normally see a fully-developed adult body part dwindling like that unless something's drastically wrong; and in a certain sense something was. But it wasn't like anything was going to fall off and die here; as strange as it was to consider, as impossible as it'd seemed 'til recently, this was a process of mutation, from a normal and healthy set of organs to…another normal and healthy set of organs.
I knew that much, intellectually. I'd been subjected to enough media coverage on the topic to last a lifetime, by now;° I was fully aware that damn near all the bits in question were male and female variants of the same thing, or near enough, and the virus was merely converting from one to the other. From a clinical perspective, you could almost say that I wasn't even losing anything…
° (Nothing energizes TV news like the knowledge that they can talk about the sex parts on-air during primetime and excuse it as being in the public interest.)
But it's hard to be clinical when it's your own body on the line – and from another perspective, it meant I was about to be dropped into a radically different social context when I'd barely gotten the hang of functioning in this one, whatever I might feel about the physical changes. I knew I was becoming a woman, but this was like getting to the top of the big climb on a rollercoaster – that oh-shit-this-is-really-happening moment before you're over the crest and plunging into God-knows-what at breakneck speed. This was It: straight on into Lands Unknown, no getting off prior to arrival and no going back after…
I squirmed uneasily – and felt the fabric of my pajama shirt drag across my nipples. Right, I'd forgotten about that, hadn't I, what with everyone in the world deciding to drop in this morning. My trepidation from earlier remained, but there was really no point in dragging this out; I shucked it off, and there they were. While I'd never been in the kind of shape that could be described with words like "chiseled" or "rugged," I'd never had man-boobs. But there was no mistaking it now: I was developing real, actual breasts.
They weren't much yet, not quite enough to hang off the chest, but all the same, I was staggered. For being a biologically secondary sex characteristic, they're such a major social signifier that the reality of it hit home afresh. Whether I liked it or not, I was going to be something else, going to have to live as something else, going to be filed under a whole other category.° People would see me differently, treat me differently, expect different things of me….
° (I was too muddled right now to even get properly annoyed by that one.)
Could I even do this!? I didn't know a damn thing about being a woman, not really; could I handle it, or would I screw it up, somehow? Would I make a fool of myself in trying to fit with people's expectations? If I didn't try, would I come off as weird or freaky? Or would people find me comical and amusing, like tomboy characters in anime?° Which would be worse…?
° (Shit, I'd even have the little fang…)
Hell, what would I even look like, when all was said and done? I thought back to Frank; I couldn't even begin to picture myself looking like that, but then I couldn't have pictured him that way, either. I knew I was getting shorter; was I going to be some delicate little waif instead? Would that be better? What did I want to—
—!?!?!?
What did I want to look like!? God, I couldn't even process that question. I glanced to the mirror, but it was still the face from earlier looking back at me – the in-between face, the one that wasn't really one thing or the other. (Was it the face of a monster, or was that just someone else's reaction lingering in my brain?) Did I want this? Or if I didn't, would it…
I winced, deeply uncomfortable at the turn my thoughts were taking. Would it, I might reason, be better to just…get it over with? Say, if you just went straight back to bed, slept through it, let the damnable thing have its way with you…but no. I clenched my teeth and shook my head vigorously, forcing that idea out of my mind – and set the room spinning, because my inner ears were still migrating and my brain hadn't adjusted yet.
It didn't work like that, anyway; you woke up because, among other things, you needed food to fuel the changes. In fact, I could already feel my stomach reminding me that this nonsense with people coming to call had substantially delayed breakfast. Hopefully that'd be the end of it; I was in absolutely no mood to deal with people for at least the rest of the day, especially not when I still had to cope with the traffic jam between my legs. I dressed myself for the third time that morning, just in case the Universe decided to follow up with a visitation from, say, an entire marching band and majorette corps, and went to the kitchen, walking as bow-legged as I could manage stably.
I ended up making a pretty full-course breakfast before I was finally sated, and spent the afternoon looking for ways to kill time that didn't involve sitting. Mostly, that meant sprawling out on my back in front of my amp, legs akimbo, and noodling around with the guitar. It still felt awkward to admit that I didn't really have any purpose for it, and I was a long way from being any good at it…but it was absorbing, at least, and it helped keep my mind off what was happening downstairs, aside from the occasional uterine twinge and the periodic need to cock one leg or the other just so. Thankfully, I didn't have any more visitors.
By early evening, I was getting drowsy again. I hit the bathroom to get ready for bed, and it occurred to me that it was probably the last time I'd ever piss standing up. What a weird metric that was, I thought. When you got right down to it, it was a mild convenience and nothing more; certainly not a major quality-of-life indicator. Why did people make such a big deal over it? I recalled my conversation with Parker, back at the start of lockdown; honestly, even the pickle-jar thing probably had more practical impact. Would I be that deprived without the option…?
But then what would be a non-weird metric here? I'd wondered this morning if I'd know when I wasn't what I was anymore, but in truth I was already different. My brain had been going all screwy for the better part of a week now, and my senses altered for just as long. My skeleton was being remodeled even before I'd started growing a freakin' tail. Hell, I'd started in on developing a womb last night; did that make me already a woman, or was there some minimum set of required sex characteristics? Did you have to, what, be certified by a board of experts…?
Ah, screw it, I thought, with a heavy sigh. It'd been entirely too much of a day for me to try and sort that question out, especially when I was already fading. I'd just have to go to bed and find out what I was in the morning.