The Tall and Short Problems of a Cute Gamer Girl

[6]

For the Alt Branch [6A]

However, despite how clever Jeremy always felt that his wife was, this was a situation where Rachel had precious few answers or even fewer clues to piece together. All she could really offer was, “Let’s just go have supper over there and see how things are. Cheesecake, after all.”

Rachel was preaching to the choir when it came to the appeal of cheesecake. And despite lunch filling up her remodeled tank, along with a small snack, the walk and everything had activated her hunger again. It was like a ghostly trace of the big man who put down big food, but it certainly wasn’t going to ever begrudge home cooking.

After making sure that Herschel had his own supper and something for later in his auto feeder, they got in the car again. Giselle didn’t quite have a climbing ascent method figured out yet, but she made it into the seat.

The drive was only two miles south and a turn past some lakes and mobile homes. Her childhood home. It looked pretty much exactly the same from the outside. One of the neighbors appeared to be setting up a brand new vegetable garden, but that didn’t require a magical toilet seat to happen. She just might not have paid attention last visit, or it could’ve happened recently.

Climbing up the wooden steps, soon Giselle started to slow and take a breath. Her parents didn’t deserve this nonsense. They didn’t deserve to get wrapped up in whatever supernatural shenanigans were going on with the seat. Why couldn’t it just leave them alone? They worked hard and they were the nicest people anyone could’ve ever met. She lived her life as a man following the example they provided. If it hurt them…

Rachel placed a hand on her shoulder and encouraged her the rest of the way through the door. The front room had been remodeled several months ago with a new place for the television, new light fixtures, several fresh pieces of furniture, and new flooring. None of that had been altered. Even the little art pieces Rachel made for them still had their places over by the windows.

Her dad, Gerald, was watching television when they walked in. He had on a nice, collared green shirt like a golfer and loose tan shorts to his knees. One of his usual outfits. On his lap sat Bixley, the cat that Jeremy got during high school. He was well fed by the family and settled into easy, plump comfort and relaxation even though he could do a couple of tricks, like play dead. Well, when he felt like it or the temptation of a treat was enough.

Gerald turned quickly with a warm smile and a quick wave before announcing, “The girls are here! How are y’all doing?” His hair was about the same shade as Jeremy’s but that wasn’t saying a whole lot as the hours and the stress had started to leech away his color through the years. Gerald’s hair was balding at the front but still thick.

Her mom, Lily, rushed over with a small towel as she dried her hands and gave a meticulous update on when dinner would be ready. Her bright blonde hair had its familiar tapered pixie cut with a poof around the middle and light curls at the front. Neither of them had been altered. She was a small lady but utterly loomed against how tall Giselle was now. A hug shared by her mom and Rachel was on the same level, whereas the hug she gave her mom felt like a child trying to reach. Even more so when hugging her dad.

Along with the tiny shape of her body, the fact that she had inescapable flesh advancing from her chest which she had to dodge around for a hug, recalled the unfortunate scope of how much everything had changed.

It wasn’t long before Lily seized her daughter’s hair and asked her if she needed a slight trim with the humid weather. Fervently, Giselle wanted to scream that she could hack the whole thing off. Instead, she just hinted at some sort of change in style because the weather was indeed getting to her and added the excuse that the care was annoying.

Lily lamented lightly, reminding her daughter that she had waxed happily that her hair was so long, but she agreed that she could set aside some time by the weekend to reshape it if she really wanted that. Looking to Chel, she didn’t have anything to say and was already playing with Bixley. Gently, Giselle acquiesced and pivoted, “It just feels so stifling lately. Can you at least show me a way to put it up, so it isn’t quite so heavy on my shoulders? If you know any special ways we haven’t discussed, I mean.” Giselle caught herself there, realizing that if she was a 33-year-old woman with this much hair, then there was no way that she and her mother wouldn’t have discussed what to do about that previously.

She almost caught a flicker of confusion on her mother‘s face, but she reflected quietly for a moment and then went over a few options such as styles and ways that she might prefer. Giselle had no idea what voodoo magic her mother subsequently did with her hair but, once she was finished, it was up, off her shoulders, and contained. It was a nice step towards normalcy. She just worried how she was going to maintain it, but Lily provided a YouTube "How To..." link for later.

Supper was fantastic. Giselle desperately willed her stomach to accept as many bowls of soup as felt hospitable but couldn’t get past a second serving. The pineapple sauce over the supermarket cheesecake was amazing.

After eating, Giselle roamed around and found some alarming differences scattered throughout the house. The spare bedroom which had been hers from childhood to college was laid out roughly the same with a large queen bed pushed up against the window, an old computer and printer, some family albums, and more old paperwork than anyone knew what to do with. The problem was the albums included several of their wedding photos and they didn’t look anything like what they had back at home.

Although, Giselle hadn’t even considered going through the old material and photos on their phones to see if anything had changed. Now, she was afraid to look. Checking what was in front of her though, she gathered that she and Chel were married along the coast of New York in 2011 in a small ceremony with a slightly larger reception closer to home.

Seeing herself as a radiant bride in a green wedding dress next to Rachel’s familiar bridal gown left her with a mess of confusing emotions. On the one hand, she was glad that Chel had a happy history with her. At the same time, the magic and the chaos wrought by it had done so much to them and those they loved. She loved her wife unconditionally and always, no matter if she happened to be a wife herself. Heck, she would even love her if their positions were reversed… Although she really didn’t wanna dwell on that, because she feared that the blasted seat might hear and take it as a suggestion to turn Rachel into a tall, tired man and her into Rachel.

When she showed her wife the photos, she actually got ticked off. They stepped outside briefly so that Rachel could appropriately yell without confusing anyone but the neighbor dogs.

”How dare it! That absolute piece of junk! This is nowhere close to what was advertised at the very least. It’s supposed to be useful and sort of teach a lesson, but it’s swinging around at me. If only we knew a lawyer who was also a wizard. A real one. Not a metaphorical one as an IT professional like you know who. If it keeps going like this, then how will we ever know the thing screwed up? I bet that’s where they get you. Rewrite reality so that their faulty products never did anything wrong.”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Giselle felt some measure of Rachel’s righteous anger, but she’d been mollified by an abundant, good meal and exhausted by the unrelenting pile of things they each had to deal with. She just wanted to have things get back to the way they were and work on the projects that left her feeling useful. Everything had been a mess of just spinning her wheels and dealing with brand new stuff that she didn’t wanna deal with. She had too much old crap to get through.

But they also desperately wanted to spend time with Lily and Gerald because they were what truly mattered, despite the nonsense that had been pulled on them. In fact, before they went back inside, Rachel proposed an idea. She suggested that they do their best to hint at Jeremy and press the memory of Jeremy from as many angles as possible.

Once back inside, Lily made sure nothing was wrong and they had just gone out to talk about some broken plumbing fixture in their house. Gerald eagerly volunteered to help remove it. He noted he could even find a saw if it was a serious problem. Giselle was the first to shut that down as unnecessary without elaborating. She didn’t want her dad anywhere near that magical object.

The plan to remind them of Jeremy started out with invoking special moments from videos they made with something he said. Unfortunately, they couldn’t latch onto any specific moment as being significantly different than what they each remembered. Giselle in those videos had basically the same personality as Jeremy, which meant it probably wasn’t that weird after all that she didn’t know what to do with her hair, considering his apathy.

Giselle didn’t know what to think about the fact that becoming a little lady haven’t really changed the scope of her life and personality all that much. Was she just destined to a certain trajectory or was it the magic being lazy? One thing she considered was that it was curious that the videos and the images they could find seemed to be altered as they discovered them for evidence. Meanwhile, it felt like if they looked at them in isolation then it would still be like with Finley and Dale and Ethan.

The magic, or whatever it was, seemed to have to take a lot of effort to change the big things. And it couldn’t really alter everything on a large scale. Giselle wondered. If it wasn’t able to keep Chel and her as a couple, then would it have to move Rachel back to her home in the Midwest, before they started living together?

It was only a theory, but the fact that it wasn’t moving them felt like it meant something. She proposed this notion to Rachel at a quiet moment and her eyes quickly flashed with recognition and what Giselle hoped was a clever idea. She was always so much smarter than her.

Working through it carefully, Rachel explained her thought process, “This object is the instigator. It’s what causes everything, of course. It’s sorta like time travel, you know. If you go back and kill Hitler before he exists or becomes important, then there should be no reason that you went back in time to kill him in the first place because he doesn’t exist and there’s no reason to travel back. But if you don’t travel back then Hitler does exist and it’s a paradox. If this entity or thing were to make it so that it never arrives to change something, then its own existence and place are canceled out. So, it can’t undo its own presence. Or else paradox.”

Giselle was fairly certain that she understood that line of thought. Maybe not totally, but she got the gist. Somewhere in there. But she was left with a big question, “So, what does this mean?” When it came to that, however, Rachel had no idea how they could use this to their advantage.

Since Lily and Gerald were huge science-fiction and horror fans, they perked up with this randomly-proposed line of thought and wanted to offer their own opinions so far as parallel universes and alternate realities. This was when Giselle started to feel like she was drowning and encouraged everyone to open up one of the card games they hadn’t played in a while. Gerald and Lily tied and won easily, and Giselle came in last.

They took some leftovers home with them and received the most intense hugs as they left to drive back. Before she let her go, Giselle’s mom encouraged her, “You are a beautiful woman. A beautiful person. No matter what, we will always love you. I know I’ve said it so many times before, but I’m sorry you have to face hateful people just to show your love. We support you in all things. Never be afraid to share whatever‘s worrying you or feel you have to change for us. You’re my daughter, but you’re our child without condition. If you feel more like this Jeremy, then please tell me so I may know how to love you the way your heart truly is.”

Giselle felt pained that the assumption the blasted seat had given her mom about everything was that Giselle felt like a man and wanted to be treated like one. Granted, that wasn’t far from the truth, but she didn’t want to put her mom through that. Fervently, she assured Lily that everything was all right. She acknowledged there was a lot to talk about, but she clarified that most of it was in flux, and she didn’t know anything for sure yet. Of course, her mom wondered if that meant they had plans to move or an opportunity or a question, but Giselle also shot this down and told her, in no uncertain terms, that when she understood it, and could say more than that, then she would make sure everyone knew.

Although frowning and a little wary, her mom trusted her and let her go, after which her dad gave her a big bear hug and they sent them on their way.

Rachel froze the leftovers and the evening unfurled the way it usually did for the two of them. The problem was Giselle felt beaten down and unsure in her work because she knew whenever she went to go look at a video there was a high chance that it was going to turn into something else for the people who watched it, and not just in a metaphorical, post-modern sense.

She still had to work though. It was part of her lifeblood, so she went through the rest of the stream video, made sure it was scheduled for release, and considered just releasing individual highlights until her penalty ended.

That ate up most of the evening. The rest was spent checking photographs to see what was changing. If she looked at something herself, then it appeared about the same as she remembered. But the stuff they had tried to show Lily and Gerald had not only changed but refused to change back to the way they remembered. It was painfully frustrating and utterly confusing. When they both looked at something on a phone, it didn’t change either, but Giselle started to get a vague headache, like the magic of the seat was drilling into her temple. It was all rather exhausting, and bed was something that she was eagerly looking forward to.

The shower that night was perfunctory, basic hygiene. She didn’t dwell on any of the internal aspects between her legs or external aspects on her chest and slipped into bed with one of the new pajamas fresh out of the dryer. Twenty-four hours dealt with out of ninety-six. It already felt like a lifetime.

Without complaints or preambles, they both soon fell asleep.