A Brand New Goth Girl

[4]

Girls-only dorm? How?…

The only thing I could think of involved the barriers between realities breaking down and a version where this was always a girls dorm bleeding through. Was that what happened to me? Was I just the forerunner to the entire building changing? What did that mean to my former roommates?

The chaos of girlish screams and half-covered flesh was hard to parse into anything that made sense. I glimpsed a girl with curly hair in a blend of brown and streaked blonde, decked out in a dozen colorful bracelets, wearing denim overalls, and peeking beneath their white top in surprise at her sizable boobs. When she vanished out of sight, she was replaced by a tanned girl with large glasses balanced on the tip of her nose wearing a flirty-looking bright red dress filled with yellow and orange flowers.

This girl grimaced wildly while trying to figure out if she wanted the hem of her dress hiked up higher or as low as it could go while managing how much of her cleavage was showing. Another rushing by in a black dress dotted with red and blue roses had already lost her battle with cleavage. Girls wearing more conservative tops with stretchy pants looked like they started to get dressed but had been interrupted by an emergency.

All the girls I could see looked at least somewhat peculiar. Not that I was anyone to judge them. The most bewildering thing was that I appeared to be the only ‘normal’ girl in this messy havoc. I had to get away before anyone presumed I was a knowledgeable presence.

The side sliding door took me around to the back of the building. I could still hear high-pitched screams but as distant cries that could be explained away as a rowdy football game. I ventured away from the dorm and towards the parking lot. It already had some spillover. I saw random women in states of half-dress rushing towards trucks and SUVs. One in particular was a redhead with her locks ornately made up in a princess style wearing blue yoga pants and a sports bra with one side in danger of popping loose.

To say all this was simply ‘surreal’ stretched any definition of the word past all meaning. It felt like I was watching what should’ve been a movie or an art performance. The closest thing to normal involved one girl hauling ass around a road curve with a backpack slung across her shoulder and a neon green bikini with black accents doing its best to hang on.

At a certain point, it seemed like the screaming and panic were exhausted or everyone needed to catch their breath and a weird calm settled over the proceedings. Since I was out here, I didn’t feel like going back yet. So, I figured I might as well wander and see how the rest of campus was fairing. It wasn’t lost on me that I was once again taking a random walk to clear my head.

Walking didn’t get any easier out here. In fact, I felt even more exposed and like I was in the most obvious, absurd costume. I was wearing a flipping skirt! I’d been in a skirt previously, but the baggy t-shirt cloaked that fact. Why did no one point and laugh about this? How could it be normal?

My first, heart-racing fear was that, if I wasn’t careful, then everyone would see my balls. It was followed by the realization that was impossible and, instead, people were going to see that I didn’t have any balls. My puréed brain couldn’t decide which notion was more terrifying.

The gray top, despite feeling a little too cute for public, didn’t stir as many feelings. But the subtle, distended shape at Bea’s chest still failed common sense. Instead of innately understanding that I had boobs, my brain still guessed that something was stuffed underneath or the material was just weirdly tenting in a way that needed to be smoothed out. My brain had seen everything. It was just being stubborn and irrational. But muscle memory and decades of expectation were hard to change in mere hours.

However, that I didn’t need to consciously tell myself how to walk like this meant some part was already adapting to things it was never supposed to understand. Denial and compartmentalization felt pointless. As much as I hoped for Beatrice as a separate entity from myself, cutting her off was impossible. Walking with her sleek, hairless thighs dangling out of a cute skirt had been my choice.

I was this shy, cute, adventurous, thoughtful, playful, and popular goth girl. Unfortunately, those were all backstory characteristics. Playing the role felt like the worst form of forgery. Whatever photos I took for her fans were pale imitations. Whatever excuses I might confabulate for her roommates felt even worse. A notion soon started to twist and turn in my thoughts, like thin strands of thread spun together. I’d figure it out later though, just walking took enough brain power.

Marshall had Anatomy classes and once mentioned that the angle of the femur and a wider, flatter female pelvis innately changed the way women walked versus men. He also had an embarrassing story from when he visited his aunt’s elementary school class. Marshall attempted tried to translate what he learned for the kids. I witnessed pieces of his presentation outlining the differences between girls and boys in a kid-friendly manner. He had really nice visual aids and culminated in having a boy and a girl volunteers try and touch their toes while against a wall.

What he overlooked, however, was that all of the kids were inherently clumsy, eager to do dumb things, and weren’t far enough into puberty to make a difference in the results. It at least got the kids laughing and trying to stretch to see if they could do it. I had no idea if my balance was altered enough for that, but I could tell that something was different. My hips had a pronounced swing forward followed by a rowing dip with the receding leg.

It reminded me of when I took a multi-day road trip with my eldest sister in her brand-new sport utility vehicle. That one had rigidly sculpted seats. Two days in, it felt like it was digging into my leg and back muscles, and I was getting a workout. This structure also felt like it was exhausting my thigh and back muscles swiftly but more because I was fighting between the way I usually walked and the way this body wanted to walk. If it wasn’t all currently happening to me, then it might be clinically captivating to study.

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Still, I walked. The nearest dorms were just past the softball fields. They only played games on those fields over the weekend, so they were empty. Compared to the larger dorms, the quartet of buildings over here were three stories tall but had half as many rooms. This section of campus still had plenty of roaming male students.

I roomed here in my first year. Except for a communal one on each floor, there were no kitchens. The elevator was so close to where I lived that it was impossible to not hear it rattling all the time, especially in the middle of the night. The only upside was when we told each other late-night scary stories, it provided eerie creaking through the walls.

The space looked pretty much the same. I cast a glare around before continuing past the elevator and over into the main common area. Shit…

My former neighbor, Brian, was filling a large pot with water for pasta. Bad timing or exactly the sort of timing and luck I always had. He turned, noticed me, and continued to notice me.

“Hey there, what’s up?”

That sounded suspiciously friendly. I wasn’t used to that from him unless he was talking to a pretty girl. I was just the dismal dweeb who lived nearby and would pop over to talk Marvel at all the wrong times according to his judgment. Making Bea’s pretty face smile politely, I responded, “Hello. Not much. Just some craziness. Taking a walk.”

To my ears, all that sounded way too much like I was trying to secretly flirt with him. The greeting was too chipper and the tone too conversational. Too naïve. But it felt wrong to be somber and reserved, despite the whole goth thing. He kept his curiosity up. “Craziness?”

I did my best to downplay it. He probably heard the screams as well as the screeching, fleeing vehicles. The walls of these dorms were especially thin to the point I routinely heard the local train over a mile away. I characterized it as some sort of celebration, while maintaining there didn’t seem to be anything dangerous going on. He started cooking but dwelled on me.

“I have a hard time knowing though,” just slipped out of me as an unnecessary addition. I could tell from his smirk, the comment “that’s what she said”, was orbiting in his thoughts. He was just above actually speaking it.

It was strange to feel and parse all these little things from Beatrice‘s perspective. They hung on the fact that I was a girl, no matter if my look was understated or obvious. I didn’t feel especially offended, but that was more because whatever self-esteem I should’ve had still hovered near zero. I was annoyed for Beatrice‘s sake.

Brian wasn’t really doing anything that felt over the line, but he was treating me differently in uncomfortable ways. Perhaps it was a small mercy that my boobs didn’t have greater evidence.

Before I could think of just the right thing to say that other people would cleverly think of before me, a strange electricity filled the air. It was almost as though there was someone else in the room who I couldn’t see.

All it took was a blink and Brian was someone else, a woman standing there in shock as her changes settled in. She had on a pair of pink, tight short shorts that covered very little of her lower half. She was full-figured with a soft but lean face and fair blonde hair tied up into a loose ponytail. The big deal, however, was her snug purple top showing a hand’s length of diving, vast cleavage. Her breasts had to be the size of a personal watermelon each and vigorously shook with each move she made.

I almost felt bad for her as she stared in shock at her new features. It didn’t take long for me to realize that she wasn’t the only one affected nearby and this was probably another dorm changed.

She didn’t stick around, as she bolted for her room, fumbled with her keys, and dashed inside. I made sure to turn down the heat on her pot so there wouldn’t be a mess or worse.

I was surely soon to be flooded with a swarm of terrified, jiggling new girls, but I took a quiet moment before that to ask the empty room, “Is there someone there?” It was a long shot and an idle notion. If spirits had infested campus and were playing an ever-increasing trick on us, then it was debatable whether I wanted to get their attention. After all, they left me with a modest shape while others had more to deal with.

I clarified my question, “I felt someone earlier and I just wanted to thank you. I don’t know why me. Or how it works… but thank you.”

There were so many better ways I could’ve phrased that, but it was done and, if busty consequences befell me, then so be it. I walked out of the dorm, which was now Sampson Hall. It wasn’t the only one that seemed to be altered as the other three dorms in the area appeared altered and with scrambling women rushing about.

Without warning, I realized a slip of paper was in my hands. It appeared identical to any random scrap of notebook paper. With clean penmanship, a brief letter had been composed, “You’re welcome. You were my first and my favorite. I hope you’re happy with how you turned out. This will be a women’s college pretty soon. Are there any modifications you would like? I’ve noticed you seem envious of others. Can I help? If you have requests, please write them on the back of this and leave it on any open table in your dorm in thirty minutes from [current time written].”

There was someone or something out there. And they were going to change everyone. I was the first? I was the favorite? That seemed like the most inscrutable notion of all. Modifications? So many possibilities immediately and fervently dashed through my thoughts like charged particles.