Caruncle woke up with a headache. All his body felt sore and sticky, he had been sweating for a long time. He opened his eyes and looked around the room.
“An unfamiliar ceiling.” He thought.
I looked around the room too, everything was white, like… the ceiling was white, the walls were white, the floor, the curtains, the bed sheets, everything, everything was white, which kinda creeped me out. I saw he had an IV drop that went inside into his left arm, which surprised me. An IV drop? An IV drop? Thank God or whoever else it wasn't a nasogastric tube. Still, quite a weird sight.
Despite having spent for so long without sunlight, Caruncle’s new eyes managed to adjust to the light coming from windows in a short time, the whole sky was white too, or well, gray, the day was cloudy, but I didn’t see that many black clouds threatening to rain, what I didn’t know was if it was afternoon or morning at all. He extended his hands in front of his face. Fingers, he had all his fingers yet again, he tried to move them and they reacted rather normally as before. I don’t want to talk about the time he spent without them, I won’t talk about it, I won’t, I won’t, and I won’t, I won't! I will just say he felt rather… Okay, I don’t know how to describe how he felt. Just know that if you ever lost your fingers, but, one day, you kinda just... got them back again because of incredible circumstances, that’s something you can’t really explain, there aren’t any words for that kind of sensation. He kept opening and closing his hand over and over again, for a long while.
And I mean, a long while.
I had to wait for him to get out of the trance, but once he stopped, it was finally time to pay attention to the rest of his body. He touched his face little by little, he knew his nose well, and this one had a different, smaller and less pronounced bulbous tip. He touched his eyes, his forehead, his cheeks and his chin. The form of the chin and the cheeks was harder to remember, but he didn’t feel any sort of hair on it? So that was something, at least.
He touched his head, his hair was rather short, it seemed it was covering his whole head despite what I saw first the other night, it wasnt in patches, it wasn't cut weirdly, it was still short but it was growing normally. He took a strand of hair and put it in front of his face. It probably didn’t go past his shoulder, but it was of a clear, blonde color. The hair felt a bit greasy and it was disheveled, but he liked the color. He then touched his lips, the lips… well, the lips were lips, I don’t think he ever paid any attention to his lips, these didn’t feel any different, or perhaps less dry? He wasn’t sure either way.
What was left to see was the rest of his body.
He didn’t sit down, he didn’t look down or pass his hand all over the other parts of himself, he just lowered his hand and hid it again below the bed sheets. He continued looking at the ceiling while leaving his mind completely blank.
What is it, Caruncle? What are you afraid of? Why don’t you check your own body, man? Isn’t this what you wanted? Go ahead, nobody will say anything, tits, boobs, vagina, vagina, pussy, boobs, tits, that’s what you want to feel, right? You have the body you want now, it’s yours, so feel it, what's the problem?
Sigh, he wasn’t doing it.
I wonder if anyone will ever wonder when will I stop calling Caruncle a guy, the answer is… never, never, why would I stop calling him a guy? I knew what he was from the very beginning, and my perception of him wasn’t gonna change any time soon.
He let his mind wander on its own, it didn’t feel real, nothing had felt real ever since long ago, he thought that one of those days he perhaps would wake up back again on that library, or back in his family’s home in Vadorreal, but he never did, it was all in fact, real. I myself wondered what would even be of his life next and there were a thousand and one questions going through my head right now! Where he was going to go, what he was going to do, what even had been of his family, everything, everything was passing through my head at incredible speeds and I couldn’t keep up with it… but nothing to me felt real either, perhaps this spooky spectrum of sorts was already losing her grasp in the earthly plane. I needed to ground myself, I needed to understand the present moment and understand what was really happening, because everything that just had happened hadn’t made any sense, I just didn’t understand… anything. What was even going on?
We finally heard the door open, Custodio and Mortimer entered the room. Mortimer was holding a silver platter with a glass of water. I noticed Custodio was still wearing the trench coat that we had seen when we met him. Did he ever take of that dusty thing?
“I see that you are finally awake.” Custodio said, “Mortimer.” He looked at the butler and the butler handed Caruncle the glass of water, which forced him to finally sit down. Slowly by putting his hand to support himself on the bed, he sat down and laid his back on the header of the bed. He noticed the subtle weight shift of his chest but tried to ignore it, and drank the glass of water. Coward.
“How long has it been now, Mortimer?”
“I believe it has been 3 months, sir.”
Stolen novel; please report.
“3 months, the same as the last one, correct?”
“Correct, sir, waking times have been 3 months at least after surgery."
“Hmm, I see.” Custodio sounded frustrated. “Now, how do you feel?” He asked him.
Caruncle put the glass of water back in the platter and opened his mouth to speak, but no words came, he moved his tongue and he felt he choked on saliva, he tried again, but nothing happened, he was getting nervous and looked at Caruncle and Mortimer, he then saw the both of them were holding their laughter.
“Pfft Hahaha!” The two finally cackled, which pissed me off. “I’m sorry, I just can’t resist doing that, it's too funny.” Custodio told him. Caruncle looked at the men in confusion, he was getting nervous. “Elena has never been able to speak, it’s something I always tried to investigate with her, the first brain transplants were to see if that would fix the issue, but the problem seems to be located around the nerves of the throat, sorry, but it's out of my area of expertise.”
Caruncle looked at him with a stunned face. I probably did the same too. What?
“She’s going through the shock phase, sir.”
“Yes, prepare a tranquilizer if she goes overboard, we don’t want to repeat past incidents.”
He extended his hands and shaked his head with a puzzling expression as if asking for answers.
“Miss Elena,” Mortimer answered, “that body you have is mute, you are mute."
That was the stupidest thing ever. Mute? Mute? For fucks sake!
“I told you to say your last words the other night, I was being serious.” Custodio told him with a smirk while he lit a cigar.
Time seemed to dilate at that moment. Mute, mute, mute, it was like a bad joke. I breathed in and out slowly and tried to calmed down. I tried to look at Custodio, but couldn't. The bastard, the bastard had turned the transplant into a fucking joke, and Caruncle was his punchline. Mute, fucking mute. Caruncle, I can't talk to people, you can't talk to people either, it seems that you and I aren't so different after all! Ha. I looked at Caruncle, but he was still in shock.
If I could just take that man's throat with my own damn hands!
Back with Caruncle, he noticed that Mortimer was handing him a hand mirror.
“Miss Elena, are you back with us?” Mortimer told him.
Caruncle took the hand mirror and tried to sit further from the header of the bed so he could use the light coming out of the windows, we then both slowly looked into its surface.
I saw myself in the mirror.
“I think she looks quite pleased, sir.”
“I don’t know, this one looks... absent minded.”
“Yes, but notice how she hasn’t made a tantrum, I think she’s just trying to adjust. Did you finally follow my advice this time?”
“I wanted to try your proposal some time ago, Mortimer, but finding slaves with these kinds of desires is not that easy.”
“Oh so you did find someone! It was my theory that this would increase the acceptance of the procedure a lot more.”
“Mortimer, not in here.”
“Right, sir, my apologies.”
The face was beautiful, just beautiful, the girl looked very pale, sure, but her features were… elegant, she had big, almond-shaped eyes of a blue color. Her cheeks were gently rounded, giving her face a soft appearance. The contours of her cheeks flowed seamlessly into her delicate jawline. Her chin was slightly pointed and overall she was… I don’t know how to say this, I think I just had fallen in love, I had fallen in love with her.
Caruncle had turned into a beautiful girl!
I was happy, really happy, but I realized the girl looked sad, and not just that, but also slightly scared. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing, the poor thing! I wanted to help her, I wanted to help her so badly, calm her down, hug her, tell her everything would be okay, but I couldn’t, and that made me sad too.
“Okay, I think that’s enough.” We both were taken away from our thoughts by Custodio’s voice who ordered Mortimer to take the mirror away from Caruncle. “So, I take it you are in a good disposition with the result of our agreement.” He looked at her. From her own part, she just looked at him with the eyes of a puppy, a puppy that had just gotten food and drink from a human in the street as if they had just been saved from starvation and finally felt the warmth of love for the first time in their lives.
“Well, in that case I hope you haven’t forgotten about the rest of the agreement, Elena.”
Caruncle looked down and then again at Custodio, he had accepted to go through the surgery, but he didn’t know he was even going to survive, looking back at the other night almost made him laugh.
“You will be taken care of and you will start studying under Mortimer’s wing because I want my own daughter to be properly behaved and well studied, that’s what you will dedicate yourself for the time being.”
Caruncle tried to mouth the words “yes sir”, but he didn’t have success with that either, so he just nodded slowly.
“But see, there is a part of that agreement I didn’t tell you back then, I used to tell the people who came here right away before the procedure since I wanted to be sincere, but nobody really wanted to accept, so I was forced myself to not mention that part of the agreement until after the surgery was done, nevertheless, even if you don’t want to do it, you will still shall go with it since you have already accepted to my conditions when I accepted you into my family.”
Caruncle tilted his head, he realized his heart was still racing and that it was hard for him to breathe. Custodio said something I didn't quite catch, I didn’t hear it, and neither did Caruncle, no, we couldn't focus in anything else yet, it was too much, too much. He pushed the thought into the back of his mind and I did the same too.
“By now you can focus on rest during today and maybe tomorrow, but once you are fully recovered, your education will begin. That will be all.” He turned around and walked towards the door. “Mortimer, make sure Elena's needs are all taken care of, bring the small whiteboard maker to the room.”
“Right away, sir.”
The both of them left the room and Caruncle lied down back again on the bed. What did he say just before that? Well, that didn’t matter yet, it didn't matter yet, it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter. He focused on the little stomach butterflies that were flying in his stomach at being called Miss Elena, Miss Elena, that sounded like music to his ears, like birds chirping when the sun is slowly raising, like a beautiful blue sky or the caressing of the wind. In the meantime I thought about the girl’s beautiful face that Caruncle was wearing, we did actually hear little birds sing outside and we felt the breeze from the garden outside caress us delicately, nothing else mattered, nothing else mattered, only the present moment, only the present moment was important. We then both fell asleep.