April Fool's
everyone! This story is not about deceiving someone, but fooling one's self. Please remember, as with all my stories, should you be looking for 'Realism', just move on. That goes double for this one. But as always, I aim for 'Ridiculously Plausible'.
This is my first 'Fantasy/Sci-Fi', and my first contest entry. Wish me luck!
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My roommate was being such a fucking
guy
again. Sometimes he drove me up the wall, and for the stupidest shit. This time, he went to the grocery store. As he left, I specifically asked him to get a new bag of Starbuck's French Roast. We were nearly out because he and his buddies used up half the bag making enough coffee to satisfy a Waffle House to take on their overnight road trip a few days back. He returned from the store with his stuff, along with two awesome looking New York strips he was excited about grilling for us for dinner that night, even though it was not his turn to cook. But he forgot to get my goddamned coffee!
"It was one fucking thing, Danny!" I snapped.
The bastard rolled his eyes and waved me off, "It's no big deal, Kate," he said defensively. "I forgot to get some potatoes to bake with the steaks anyway, so I'll get the coffee when I go back to the store for those." Then he got dismissive. "Besides, there are still several days' worth of beans left in the tin anyway. It is not like it's an emergency."
"Jesus, you piss me off sometimes," I growled.
"And for what?" Danny whined. "How about you get upset over shit that matters. Two months ago I shorted out your brand new hair dryer. I was mortified, and you just laughed it off, even though it meant that your hair looked all limp and shit for your date that night. Now you are declaring Global Thermonuclear War over coffee that you don't need and will get in a few hours anyway."
"The hair dryer was..." I stopped, fuming. "That was you being a klutz. Everybody gets clumsy some times. Accidents happen. This today is not about the coffee, it's about you just not fucking paying attention!" I took a deep breath, finally feeling like I had had my say, and calming down a bit. "Wait a minute," I said uncertainly, "you really think my hair was that bad that night?"
Oh, so
now
he had the good grace to look sheepish. "Eh..." he said, meaning 'Hell, yes.'
"Alex didn't seem to think it was that bad." I was getting defensive about bad hair from a month ago. Jeez.
Danny shook his head. "Did you put out?" he asked slyly.
"Put out?
Put Out
?" I fumed.
"I apologize for my crass language," Danny said, and bowed sarcastically. "I beg your pardon. Did the two of you find yourself in conjugal embrace during your evening together?"
"What does that matter?"
"I'll take that as a yes. We guys," Danny said with exaggerated patience in his voice that make me want to kick him, "are not given to saying or showing any criticism of a woman we hope to get jiggy with. We save that sort thing for sisters, exes, and... roommates." He grinned with good-natured evil.
I glared at him. "Look at me," I gritted out. "When you go back for the coffee, please also pick me up a new box of wine. The Cabernet, I think. I will give you the cash before you leave."
"I will really try to remember," Danny said, whether sincere or just trying to placate me, I didn't care.
He turned and went to sit at his computer. "Um, why aren't you heading back to the store now?" I asked, risking re-opening the war.
He grinned over his shoulder at me. "It's March 31st. I need to pay some bills, including Venmo-ing you the rent, and I really don't want to forget that!"
Whenever I complain about Danny, my friends all think I'm crazy. "He's, like, the best roommate ever," they all say, and I guess that sure seems true... if you don't have to put up with the idiocy. He is neat (for a guy), he can cook and doesn't mind doing it, and he pays his rent on time... always. He doesn't walk around the house in his underwear... or worse. He even, since another of our little 'discussions', no longer leaves his shoes all over the living room. Usually. For a guy, I have to admit, he's not a bad roommate.
I did not go looking for a male roommate, mind you. Had I my druthers, I'd have had another girl. That way,
I
could have walked around the house in
my
underwear. But Danny had been the applicant with cash for the first month's rent, the best credit rating, a good-humored reference from his last landlady back in Minnesota, and no creepy-looking lazy eye, with which his closest female competitor was afflicted.
And yes, my girlfriends all do like to harp on the fact that he is easy on the eyes. But so what? It is not like he is some kind of greek god. He's just... fine. I can almost always get a date whenever I want one. What I had needed was a roommate with next month's rent already in the bank, not one 'with benefits'.
After he paid his bills, Danny wasted a bunch of time playing some damned game on his computer (at least he wasn't watching porn) before he headed out to the Safeway for the second time that day. He returned with the potatoes, the coffee, and a box of wine.
He got me fucking Merlot. I hate Merlot.
Do all guys have the memory of a goddamned goldfish?
The steak was, as usual, damned good. Even the Merlot I had to drink could not ruin the meal, though that shit tried.
Thursday nights we usually eat dinner in front of the TV, and catch up on the network shows we both like. But there were no new episodes of anything that week, so we played Netflix roulette and ended up watching a stupid Jamie Lee Curtis movie. When it was done, we each headed to bed, rather than watch anything else together. I was still acting irritated about the coffee, and then the wine. Possibly bitchy. He was still feeling defensive and irritated at my concerns.
The only real bright side that I felt, going to bed that night, was that I could sleep in the next morning. I'm an actress, one who gets just enough work to not be an actress/waitress, and my next three auditions were all not until Monday. Even better, Danny, who did tech support from home, was also off and would sleep in too, and that meant I could not only stay in bed late, I'd actually get to sleep late. The little house the bank and I own is way out in the valley, in a quiet neighborhood. That is good, because the builder, back in the 80's, had used the cheapest construction materials and methods possible. Things like internal sound insulation were not a consideration. If one of us gets up, that means both of us get up, or at least wake up.
I was tired and grumpy, so I didn't even sit in bed and read my phone. I just turned out the lights and crashed. I slept hard, but with weird dreams.
I woke up, but instantly remembered my commitment to sleeping in, so I kept my eyes closed and snuggled down for a bonus nap. But I could not drift back off to sleep. Everything seemed... off. The bed was lumpy. Well, my cheap mattress is always lumpy, but the lumps felt unfamiliar. And as I shifted around to avoid the worst lumps, the sheets felt off as well. Scratchy. Damnit, I had just washed them! I shifted again and felt light on my eyes. That was wrong, unless I had somehow slept until three in the afternoon, when the sun finally hits my bed through the window. Through my slitted eyes, I could see the curtains were a little open.
What the fuck? The curtains were the wrong color. They were... I shot bolt upright in the bed. I was in Danny's room! How the hell did I get there? I almost panicked. Had Danny...? No. We were talking about Danny, not some creep. Besides, there had been no way that I was going to drink enough of the crappy Merlot to get myself drunk, and I knew I had made it to my own bed last night. Had I sleepwalked? Was I a sleepwalker? Sleepwalking into your male roommate's bedroom could be a problem.
Wait, where was Danny, anyway? I was alone in the bed. Bleary as I was, I remembered that he only had a full-sized bed. I'd have known if I wasn't alone in that. The sun was hitting me in the face through the curtains, and I held up my hand to shield my eyes. Nothing felt right. I didn't feel right. My hand shielding my eyes didn't look right... I shook my head and focused on my hand.
The back of my hand was covered in soft, dark hair! My knuckles were big. Where the hell was my pink nail polish? A horrible idea entered the back of my head, but my conscious mind shielded me from it for the moment. I turned, sat up on the edge of the bed, and stood. Absolutely every single thing about that series of motions felt wrong. I resolutely did not look down. Instead I walked over to Danny's bedroom door and the full-length mirror installed on it.
Trembling, I moved to look at myself in it. The terrifying idea in the back of my mind had made itself known, and I was afraid of what I would see. I looked in the mirror.
Yep. I was in Danny's body.
That explained everything... sort of. My balance was off because I was six inches taller than I was supposed to be. I was too strong. My greater weight was also distributed differently.
I looked in the mirror at my current condition. My hair was cut short in his conservative haircut. It felt weird not having my hair draping along my shoulders. It felt sort of cold. My shoulders were broad and lightly muscled, as was the rest of me. The delicate spread of hair across my chest was modest and all in the right places, but I felt completely ridiculous with chest hair! Not to mention the fact that I now had small, lightly defined pecs, instead of my usual... more pronounced topographical features.
Sigh. And I was now discovering the fact that my roommate slept in the nude. And he had morning wood.
I supposed I should be glad to have lived with Danny for so long without discovering this particular habit. On the other hand, Jesus. Just look at this thing.
I found myself doing just that, looking at his thing. My thing.
I couldn't help myself. Even though I half felt like I was somehow molesting Danny, I had to touch that gently waving scepter. I reached down and ran my fingers up its length. I nearly moaned out loud. Wow. I did it again. Yep. Wow. It was like I suddenly had a giant eight(maybe nine?)-inch clitoris sticking out from between my legs, a rod-shaped bundle of ultra-concentrated nerve endings, every single one of which had a red phone direct to my brain.
This cock was going to be In. The. Way. How did guys manage with these things? I mean, I knew it would shrink some eventually. In fact, it was shrinking a little already, now that I had stopped playing with it. But how much would it shrink? However much it shrank, it wold still be there.
I shook my head. I was not going to spend my day thinking about Danny's...
my
dick. I am not a guy, after all.
The enormity of the situation suddenly struck me, and I started trembling. I did not scream. I'm a really good screamer, mind you. Professionally good. To the limited extend inside the Industry, I'm known for my scream. It's the one thing my career has in common with Jamie Lee Curtis's. (I hadn't even done any topless scenes yet, like she did early on. One of my three auditions on Monday was for a role that might require showing my girls, though. I wasn't sure about that.) My point is, I have very good control over my screams, and I used that to hold back now.
