I’m not sure how long I slept for, but judging by the numbness of my arm and the cold puddle of drool around my face, it had been a few hours. As much as I hated to admit it, the drool was probably a good thing. Knowing that something so normal could happen, even in the most bizarre of situations, helped to ground me and was likely the only thing that kept me from freaking out all over again.

Everything that had happened since I woke up was still too much to handle, but sleeping on it had definitely helped. It gave my brain time to start sorting through all of the new information and rebuilding whatever was left of… me. The mental paperwork labeled “Panic and Cry” now had a big [DENIED] stamp on it, and had promptly been thrown in the trash. The form labeled “Bitch and Moan” however, had received an [APPROVED] in record time.

So that’s what I started doing.

“You stupid fucking witch! Why would you go and do something like this? If you’re gonna do something as big as messing with a soul, you do it right! You don’t just give up and die half way through! What were you thinking?”

Facing the remains, I gave her a piece of my mind. Or what was left of it. I didn’t really care that I was yelling at a pile of bones. I needed to vent and it felt good.

“Who cares if my soul was going to be destroyed or whatever? It’s not like I would have known! Some people would even expect that to happen!”

“Note to self: Send God a strongly worded prayer of complaint. Souls are not loose change, and they shouldn’t get lost in the couch cushions of reality.”

I glared at the pile of bones again and sighed. It was a good day for sighing, and at that point, any further yelling just felt silly.

The wording of the crazy witch’s letter had made it sound like we were alone, so without fear of being buried, seen in the nude, or captured as a renegade clone, I decided it was time to leave the room and explore. The mysterious notebook of mysterious secrets could wait.

My choice of directions was limited by the number of doors, so I exited through my only option and found myself in the middle of a hallway. I’m not sure what I was expecting. Of course hallways were a thing. Why wouldn’t there be a hallway here? Even crazy witches needed hallways, right?

It looked much the same as the room I had been in up to that point, with off-white walls, an off-white tile floor and ceiling, and the same square lights providing illumination from above. This room though, had dust. From the doorway I stood in to the door at the right end was clean and spotless. The other direction looked like nobody had set foot on it for years, and even the walls had a tinge of brown to them.

At this point, I had three more doors to choose from. One at each end of the hallway, and another pair of double doors directly across from me. Deciding that anything important wouldn’t be in the direction of dust, I opened the ones before me.

There was more dust. A lot more dust. Also a storage room, but it mostly looked to be storing dust. The room itself was the same size as the one I had woken up in, and was filled with shelves. There were definitely things in here, but it was impossible to tell what they actually were underneath all the dirt. A set of footprints wound here and there, and wherever they stopped I could see small not so dusty areas where various things had been removed. Coming to the conclusion that this place was better left for later, I closed the doors without taking a step inside.

For my next attempt, I decided to save the obvious for last, and went towards the door guarded by the sea of dust. It stuck at first, but after a few solid tugs opened up to a large circular room with a spiral staircase going about its edges.

This one was less empty than the room I had woken up in, but had about as much dust as the oversized closet I had tried before. Apparently the witch hadn’t thought this place was worth her time, despite having actual contents. A large desk sat beneath the stairs, and large paintings and papers covered the walls, but they too were filthy, and looked old enough that the slightest touch would break them.

Upstairs, the only thing to be found was a moderately sized telescope and a dome shaped ceiling. This part of the building was an observatory, and the papers on the wall downstairs had likely been star charts.

I was tempted to find whatever mechanism would open the roof and see if the thing still worked, but other matters called to me, and I was already beginning to sneeze from all the dust I had kicked up. Considering the general lack of attention it had been payed, I doubted that it would function.

Partially regretting my earlier decision, and trying not to choke on all the dust now floating around, I returned to the hallway and the last door I had available to me.

Bracing myself for more dust, I opened it and found a house kept tidy. Again, I’m not sure what I expected. Naturally, the witch had to live somewhere. I just wasn’t expecting it to look so… normal. Or to find it so soon. Despite knowing it was incorrect, the clone idea hadn’t fully left my head, and part of me was still preparing to be lost in a big underground research facility.

Compared to that, a house was a vast improvement. Gone were the sterile tiles, replaced by hard wood and soft rugs. Hello dining table! Hello oven! Hello comfy sofa! Hello lamp! Windows, where have you been all of my life? Almost instinctively, I kicked my feet against my legs so that I wouldn’t be tracking dirt around on the clean floors.

Overall the layout was mostly a simple large room. A big living room connected to a decently sized kitchen, and in between was a small dining area with a door that looked like it would lead to a bathroom. There were two sets of stairs. One went up, where I would probably find a bedroom or two, and the other in the kitchen went down to what was likely a basement or cellar.

It was a humble design, but put together it was large enough that nothing felt like it was cramped or fighting for space. Everything had been built with a minimalistic approach. Form had probably been taken into consideration, but functionality was clearly the deciding factor.

Looking around, it seemed like a few things were missing, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it yet. Somehow, even with furniture, it had the same unlived in feeling as the rooms before it. It was more like a house that someone had just finished moving out of, rather than a place someone called home. So far it appeared to have all of the necessities though, and even the bare minimum was better than nothing.

“How does such a normal looking house have such a crazy set of rooms attached to it anyway? What? Did that witch build me in her garage or something? Oh no. Please tell me I wasn’t built in a garage. Please tell me I wasn’t made in some crazy fucking witch’s creepy fucking garage! Even being a clone would have been better than that.”

I practically threw myself down on the sofa, happy just to lie on something that wasn’t stone. This was it! This was what I needed to stabilize myself. This was my happy place. This was my little puddle of drool, telling me that not everything in my new life had to be insane. And surely, if that witch was willing to die just to bring me here, she wouldn’t mind if I stuck around until I got my head on straight.

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“Right. There’s no need to rush. I have plenty of time to figure all of this out. I’ll just stay here while I get myself organized, and everything will be better soon.”

Urging my body up I decided I would try something risky. I would look out the windows. So far there had been no one to see me prancing around in the nude, and I was confident that I was alone in the building, but anyone walking by would be able to glance over and know more about what I looked like than I did.

I crawled across the floor and raised myself up just enough to peek over the windowsill. I was relieved to see that outside was a simple, unmaintained garden, and a stone’s throw beyond that was a misty forest. From somewhere overhead, the afternoon sun shone down, making the shadows small.

“Yup. Wild garden, spooky woods, fog in the middle of the day. Typical witch’s house. Probably.”

I still didn’t have any distinct memories, but more and more knowledge seemed to be coming back to me. I was honestly surprised that I didn’t have another headache what with how hard my brain cells must have been working in the background. Sleeping on it had worked pretty well, and I was tempted to lie back down on the sofa for another nap, but my body was still fully energized from the last one and my mind was wide awake. And before I did anything else, it was time to find some damn clothes.

I made my way up the stairs and was pleased to find three bedrooms.

The first had probably been witch’s room. Like most parts of the house that weren’t covered in dust, it was neat and tidy but, as seemed to be the standard in this place, was rather sparse of personal touches.

The bed was properly made with simple grey sheets, and looked more like something that was ready to be slept in rather than something that had been slept in. The bookshelf was practically empty, and only one of the shelves had even a small row of books taking up the barest portion of its space. Next to the bookshelf was a desk and chair, with only a stray pen to show that it even was, in fact, a desk. Not wanting to dig through a dead woman’s dresser, the only other piece of furniture in the room, I passed on to the next.

I was beginning to suspect that the witch didn’t spend much time in this building, if she even lived here at all. If not for the main room downstairs, I would have even hesitated to call this place a house. This was confirmed when I looked into the next bedroom and found it as full of dust as the most of the other rooms had been. No one had been in here for quite some time, and the witch had most likely only cleaned the rooms she expected to be using while she was here.

The next was clearly meant to be mine. Like the others it had furniture, but wasn’t in any state that could be called homey. The difference with this room though, was that there were several paper packages sitting on the bed, one of which had a note.

I hope you like them. If you don’t or if they need adjusting, we can get more soon. Try them on and then come down to show me. I’ll have some tea ready for us.

What had that crazy witch been thinking? I had been asking myself that ever since I read her letter, but this was the first time I actually wanted to know. Obviously she hadn’t planned on dying, but what would today have been like if she had lived? Would I still be calling her a crazy witch, or would we be sitting down to tea while chatting about… whatever it was crazy witches talk about over tea. Had she really expected to just wake me up and then carry on like some doting old grandmother? Would I have been happy? Would I have been able to accept that?

I pulled the string holding the first package closed, and the paper popped open from the pressure of its contents. It was a dress. It was clothes. A pair of white blouses and two dark blue dresses, each with a leather bodice. Even without my memories, I knew that I had neither loved nor hated the sight of clothes as much as I did at that moment.

She had done so much for me. She had saved me. She had prepared for me. She was ready to be there for me.

But she hadn’t been ready to not be there for me. Instead I was here alone, in a strange place, in a fake body, scrutinizing every thought that passed through my mind just for the hope that I’d get back a memory and some sense of self.

If everything had gone as she had planned, I probably would have loved her for it. But they hadn’t. Now she was a pile of bones and I was wearing her skin. Even if I had known her name, I could only think of her as “that crazy witch” and I hated her for what she had done.

My vision blurred, and I realized that I was crying.

“No! I won’t cry. Not for her.” My voice was hoarse, and the words caught in my throat as I tried to wipe the tears from my eyes.

I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to run out the front door and never think of that place again.

I pulled on the string of the next package.

Undergarments. I wanted to burn them. Maybe I could set the house on fire.

The next were a pair of boots. I wanted to throw them through the window and listen to the glass shatter.

After that was a small basket of toiletries and other daily items. I wanted to shove them down the toilet and clog the drain.

Last was a pen and notebook like the one I had found when I woke up. I wanted help.

I wanted someone to hold me and tell me that things would be alright. I wanted someone to talk to, so that I wouldn’t be alone with my fears. I wanted someone to tell me that this was temporary, that I was being irrational, and that my life wasn’t going to be one crisis after another.

It shouldn’t have been like this. I shouldn’t have had to tiptoe through a dead woman’s house because I was afraid of what I might find. I shouldn’t have needed to worry about what might happen in the next five minutes, let alone five seconds.

I looked out the window at the garden and the foggy forest beyond. The tears finally stopped falling, and I felt a little better. Sometimes crying it out can be just as good as sleeping on it. Today had been hard, but I knew there was still more to find.

Further lowering my expectations of an already awful day, I pulled a handkerchief from the pile of stuff that now covered my bed, blew my nose, and started getting dressed. I didn’t particularly want to wear them, but I didn’t have many options, and wasn’t about to go digging through the witch’s own wardrobe.

The underwear was odd. Each pair was the same, and showed that I hadn’t been expected to need anything more for the next few days. They looked like poofy short shorts with a simple drawstrings to keep them tight and, once on, left me with a strangely airy feeling between my legs.

The bras were more complicated. The clasps, straps, and strings were all a mess, and on my third attempt, I was half ready to call it quits.

“Why the hell do bras need to be so difficult,” I muttered myself. “This thing really shouldn’t be so hard just to put on.”

Holding the offending garment in front of me, I carefully maneuvered everything into place so I could see how it was supposed to fit together. After finishing my examination, I gave the clasps a quick squeeze and flick, and it all came apart at once.

“And why are these things so much easier to get off than to… put… on…?”

My speech slowed down and my sentence ground to a halt. Mental dots appeared in my mind and my overworked brain cells sluggishly raced to connect them. Why would I know how to take a bra off, but not put one on?

My eyes went wide as a bit of knowledge that wasn’t quite a memory popped into my brain and refused to leave.

I looked down at my breasts as if seeing them for the first time. Not large, but nicely shaped. My breasts. I put a thumb in my underwear and pulled them forward to check down below.

"Yup. Never seen that before. At least not from this angle."

“Was I a man?!”

I didn’t need to ask. I already knew the answer.

“That crazy fucking witch! Did she know? But how? Even she couldn’t have… No. No! Fuck it. I give up! I don’t care anymore! I! DO! NOT! CARE! I have put up with too much bullshit today, and I refuse to add this to the list of crap that’s messing with my head! I woke up as a skeleton, I got attacked by a crazy witch’s liquefied remains, and I found out that my soul almost got thrown into an interdimensional trash compactor! I refuse to care about a dick that I don’t even remember having! Gender identity and sexuality be damned. They can go get fucked elsewhere, because I am now officially all out of fucks to give, and I have more important shit to worry about!”

My second tantrum done, I collapsed onto the bed and looked at the bra that I still held in a death grip.

“You win this round. But I’ll be back, and I. Will. Wear you.”

I stood up, removed my underwear, and stormed out the door.

“Screw this. I’m going to find a bath.”

Determined once again, I set out, taking comfort in the knowledge that I had probably made it through the worst of today’s surprises in one piece, but dreading the fact that there was probably more to come.