12 - WHILE WE WAIT

Jubal set an alarm on his phone for two thirty. He’d have to wake his mother up, but that was hardly unusual. She was a deep sleeper, and got tired quickly when she had to deal with people, which was often. He was used to making sure she got up on time and reminding her to do things. He was also used to letting her sleep as much as possible, to minimize the number of headaches she suffered. The less headaches she had, the less she yelled at him.

Doing things – that reminded him, he had a list to make. Mom’s note said that Dr. Kennings wanted a list of things that had happened to him , changes to his body and mind, preferably in the order that they had occurred. He also needed to look up directions to the address, but he had an app for that, and it talked, so that was alright. He wasn’t going to be able to tell her where to turn anymore, after all.

Jubal decided to start by writing things down in the order they happened, to help him remember everything, so he started with waking up hungry and went on from there, writing about the pain, and eating more than he should have been able to fit in his stomach without making himself sick, and collapsing in the hall.

After thinking about it for a while, he decided to include the parts he hadn’t told his mother about. They didn’t seem like the sort of thing that he should be hiding from his doctor, so he held nothing back, even how much he liked the texture of cotton cloth. He also drew a picture of how he experienced his insides, something to show his prioperception of his organs, that could be checked agains x-rays and CAT scans or whatever tests doctors did on new hybrids.

Then he turned his paragraphs of prose into a bulleted list and stapled the diagram to the back.

Once that was done, Jubal checked the time. It wasn’t even noon yet. He had hours to kill before he had to wake his mother. So he went to his room, took his clothes off, and practiced his transformation. It was a lot easier the second time.

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Looking in the mirror, he was struck once again by how unpleasant he looked like this. It was as though someone had tried to make a centaur, but instead of the body of a horse, they had used a puddle of living vomit, all grey and lumpy, spread out in a pulsating puddle on the floor.

Experimentally, he flexed what used to be his toes, and was nauseated when a set of wriggling tendrils rose up and waved around aimlessly. He had no idea how to move those on purpose, and they looked like something out of a horror movie.

He could feel the new change clearly, now. It was finished, and he had a new pair of empty sacs inside himself that he could feel just as clearly as his veins and heart and bones. One of them was connected to the storage organ, where the moldy food and shredded pajamas were sitting. Experimentally, he pushed some of the rotten stuff through, and his body started doing… something to it.

Jubal wasn’t sure what it was that was going on in there, only that it felt nice and he wanted more of it, whatever it was. He pushed the fabric through and the feeling intensified. It was a little like having a full stomach and a little like kneading something soft and squishy and a little like nothing he’d ever felt before, and it was really, really pleasant.

Returning to his human shape, Jubal noticed that the feeling stayed, but was more muted, and whatever was happening seemed to have slowed down, as though it were off to the side from reality and maybe half asleep.

He could barely feel the other new organ, maybe because it was empty and he had no idea what it was for. He would figure it out eventually.

As he turned to pick his pants back up, Jubal caught sight of himself in the mirror and froze. The gray color from his transformation extended up to his chest and down to his toes, and his crotch now had more in common with a Ken doll than an anatomical model. His face grew hot, and he turned red in the mirror, all the way down his chest.

He made a few notes on his list of changes, blushing all the while, then put his pants on, sat down at his computer, and played mindless video games until the alarm to wake his mother went off at two thirty. He decided that he needed the distraction, and calming down before waking his mother was always a must. If he was agitated, then she would be agitated, and her nap wouldn’t have done much; she’d yell anyway, sooner or later.

He could always think about how much he’d changed later. Much later.