Greetings all; in my stories my characters exist in my head, but there might be real life inspirations for some of them. Who knows?
I'm back again with another story. This time my character inadvertently finds a wormhole and travels back in time to the 1860s.
~
I was riding my bicycle along the walking and riding path that winds through a nature preserve in the suburbs of Atlanta when I saw a sign that read, "New extension now open." The sign also listed the amenities to be found along the way. One of which was the existence of a naturally occurring electromagnetic field about a mile from the sign. The inscription explained that the large amount of granite in the area acted as a lightning rod and that it retained the power from the lightning strikes. The electricity will make the hairs on your arm stand up when you pass through it, the sign boasted.
Naturally I took it. The new trail was undulating with some pretty steep drops whereas the trail I'd been riding was relatively flat. The first drop-off I went down had my bike traveling over thirty miles per hour by the time I reached bottom. That was fun but going uphill afterwards wasn't.
I'd ridden another half mile or so when I reached a longer steeper drop-off. In fact it was so far down there I stopped to consider first whether or not I wanted to go as fast as I'd likely be going by the time I reached bottom, and then I asked myself if I wanted to put forth the effort needed to reach the top of the hill.
Finally I decided to give it a go; if I lost my nerve I could always tap my breaks to slow down, and if the climb up the other side sapped my strength I could always cut the ride short and head home.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath then let off my break and headed down. About three quarters of the way to the bottom I was going more than forty miles per hour when I felt a sensation like the feeling you get when you're close to thousands of volts of electricity.
The closer I got to the bottom the more intense the electrical field felt, and like the sign said there was enough amperage to make the hairs on my arms stand up. I don't know how fast I was going because I didn't dare take my eyes off the path to look at the speedometer, but I was definitely hauling ass. All of a sudden there was a flash of white light that blinded me for a moment. When my vision cleared up a moment later I couldn't believe my eyes. Judging by the looks of the room I was standing in, and the men in it I had to be in an Army barracks at some time in the 1800s.
"How in the hell did I get here?" I asked myself, as if I would know. Then I realized that there was something different about me. I touched my chest and damn if I didn't have tiddies. They weren't all that big but they were definitely tiddies. Then I wondered... before I grabbed for my package. Sure enough, it wasn't there. I stood there for a second trying to make sense of it while I looked at the old Army uniform I had on.
I didn't make the connection right away, but then I looked closely at the buttons on my jacket and they looked familiar. I reached for the pendant hanging from the chain that was around my neck and compared it to the buttons. To my surprise they matched. I'd recently bought the pendant at the Army-Navy store. The old vet behind the counter claimed that it had come off the uniform of a female Buffalo Soldier.
Said she turned herself into her Captain after being in her first skirmish with some Indians. Then she came back to Atlanta after the Army kicked her out. I thought he was just trying to make the sale. Then I remembered that I was riding through that electromagnetic field right before I found myself here. "There ain't no way," I said. "Wormholes or objects like that old button I bought having the power to take you back in time is Sci-Fi stuff."
As implausible as it was apparently that's what had happened. Now the question was how do I undo it. As I thought about the stories and the movies about time travel the people in them always had a plan to get themselves back to the future, but all I had was a button. I didn't have any idea where I was, much less where to find the local magnetic field with a wormhole.
I was about to head out the door to look around when somebody said, "Where you goin Blue?"
I don't know why, but I knew who he was, he was my cousin named Grady Diamond Jr. "I ain't sleeping in here with all these men," I said, and I had no idea why I said it.
"Why not?" asked the other person I was talking to who was my cousin named Grady Diamond the 3rd, of all things.
I answered him saying, "Because I'm a woman and everybody in here is a man. And I don't know none of them."
"What'd you expect when you joined the Army?" Grady Jr asked me. "You knew that all soldiers were men.
"Yeah, but I expected that we'd have our own tent, like the Union soldiers gave us after they raided old man Boone's farm and took us with them," I explained to him.
"The war? Union Soldiers? Am I talking about the Civil War?" I asked myself, then Grady Diamond the 3rd said, "It was like that cause it was wartime and the soldiers were marching and setting up camps in different places, but soldiers live in barracks in peace time."
Grady Jr chimed in and said, "You slept in the same slave quarters with men-folk when we was on the masa Boone's plantation, so what's the difference?"
"You ain't got to call him masa no more," I said reflexively, correcting him sharply. "And yes I slept in the same room with a bunch of men, but I knew them and they knew me. I don't know these men."
"You're scared of seeing their ding-a-ling ain't ya?" said Grady the 3rd teasingly.
"I ain't scared of seeing nobody's dick, you idiot. I've seen plenty of em and they don't impress me none."
"It sure looked like you was admiring Mandingos' that time I seen you peeping at him," said a laughing Grady the 3rd.
"That's cause he was stroking it and he had such a big un," I admitted, then I giggled girlishly. I also saw Mandingos' dick flash through my head once the 3rd reminded me about him. The eff'n guy was hung like a pony.
"I knew you was lying when you said you don't care nothing about em," said a laughing Grady Jr.
"Okay, okay, you got me, I do like em. I just can't let none of these men find out that I don't have one is all."
"Nobody can tell what you have as long as you keep your undergarments on," said Grady Jr. "Lucky for you you're flat-chested.
"Damn you," I said as I lunged at him, but Grady the 3rd held me off of him while laughing. Evidently this was something they teased me about.
~
Thankfully Grady Jr was right about my baggy long-johns hiding my b-cup tiddies and no one paid attention to how round my ass was when I got undressed that night. Taking my clothes off turned out not to be a big deal, but I wasn't crazy about using the privy with her body.
~
Once I had time to lay on my straw mattress and think, I tried remembering if I'd ever heard of this Blue Diamond person, and how the hell was I able to talk about things that only she would have known about? Then it dawned on me that I wasn't scared or concerned about being stuck here. Why was that?
~
When I heard the bugler blow his horn the next morning I fell into formation with the rest of the soldiers. There were five black Sergeants along with a white First Lieutenant who were meeting their new Company for the first time. When one of the Sergeants made eye to eye contact with me he did a double-take and I could tell that he liked what he saw.
When I looked at him I felt my nature the same as I had when I saw Mandingos' thing. I kept watching him as he moved down the line, and I got caught when he glimpsed back at me. "Oh shit," I thought. "He's looking at me the way a man looks at a woman who's caught his attention." I broke our eye to eye contact for the second time as quickly as I could, but I did linger on him for a moment.
As if the looks he and I had exchanged hadn't unnerved me enough, the Lieutenant said, "Privates Grady Diamond Jr, Grady Diamond the 3rd, and Blue Diamond, you're gon report directly to Sergeant Adams," and my knees almost buckled.
I swear I saw the Sergeant's eyes bug out for a second when he heard that I was assigned to him.
"Sergeant," said the Lieutenant as he nodded towards him, which was the signal for him to gather his squad.
"All my men fallout and follow me to the stables," he said after a quick nod back at the Lieutenant.
As we walked behind him I instinctively spoke to my cousins. "Grady," I said to either or both of them, "I think the Sergeant knows that I ain't a man."
"Why do you say that?" asked Grady Jr.
"Cause of how he looked at me," I said. "It was the way a man looks at a woman when she causes his sap to rise."
"He might be Queer and prefer men," suggested Grady the 3rd with a shrug of his shoulders.
"The Sergeant can't be Queer for liking a woman you jackass," I said and glared at him.
Both Grady's foreheads wrinkled when they raised their brows while looking at each other, then Grady Jr teased me saying, "Sounds like love at first sight to me," which made him and Grady the 3rd snicker.
I didn't admit it to them, but they were right. Judging by the eye to eye contact me and the Sergeant had made at each other, not to mention the sensation I had in my nether regions there was chemistry between us. How would I handle that?
~~
Our squad was sitting at a table in the mess hall when The Sergeant walked in a few minutes later. His jaws tighten when he saw me, but he joined us at the table anyway and made a point to say a few words on a personal level. I felt a tingle when he showed his compassionate side saying, "God willing we're gon spend the next three years together and I wanted to get off on the right foot with everybody."
As we were finishing breakfast the bugler called Fatigue. Everybody in the Company hustled to get into formation as the Sergeants stood in front of us. One by one they asked for a volunteer from their squad to take on the duties of a Lance Corporal until someone earned a promotion.
When it was my Sergeant's turn no one in our squad offered themselves for the job. Once again we held eye to eye contact with each other. This time we were so obvious about it I'm sure the other soldiers noticed, then he chose me.
After almost jumping out of my skin when he said my name I responded, "Yes surr," as manly as I could. I didn't think I was all that convincing though.
"Your records say you can read and write?" he said in a tone that I liked.
"Yes surr," I replied,
"Well then, you're gon follow me around and learn to do all the things a Corporal would do," he explained, sounding like a Drill Sergeant.
"Yes surr," I called out,
The Sergeant looked directly at me for a second, then licked his lips and swallowed hard. I couldn't take my eyes off of him and I felt pressure in my lower belly. Then images of Mandingo pumping his peter popped into my head and I wondered if the Sergeant was built like him.
