"Well how the hell do we fix this?!" Max asked him, struggling to keep her voice down. 8 in the morning wasn't the best time to be yelling in an apartment building, even one as soundproof as theirs. John flipped through the old book, shaking his head.
"I don't know Max, the spell wasn't exactly clear on where the Undo button was." he replied, trying to ignore Max's pacing back and forth.
"If you can't fix this, I will kill you John. Seriously, they'll never find your body!" Max barely managed to not scream at him. Of all the reckless things the two of them had done together, this was the worst. And even though Max was angry, she was just as much to blame as he was.
John sighed, and slammed the spellbook shut. "I'm sorry Max, but I don't think there's a way to cancel the spell. You'll have to wait the 3 days for it to wear off." Max fell on the bed, holding a pillow over her face and screamed into it. The two of them stayed there for a few minutes, waiting for something to happen.
Max tried to figure out where it had all went wrong. Was it buying the spellbook from the antique shop? No, the one other spell they had managed to decipher had let them turn a brick into solid gold, so buying the book wasn't the mistake.
Getting drunk with John the night before? Or maybe her mistake had been leaving the book with John as she stumbled off to bed, after throwing up in the bathroom.
No, her biggest mistake had probably been bringing up the topic of their friend angel, who had recently had a sex change. If she hadn't brought up that topic, John wouldn't have had the idea of testing the other spell he had deciphered.
Max wished she could go back in time and undo that one choice. If she could, John wouldn't have used the spell on his formerly male roommate. Max wouldn't have gone to bed a guy and woken up a girl. And Max certainly wouldn't be forced to spend a whole weekend as one with only her roommate for company. As she stared at the ceiling, she couldn't help but feel someone was up there, laughing at her.
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It had all started with the apartment. Max and John had been best friends for most of high school. They were both big computer nerds, both played basketball, and they lived on the same street. So when they graduated, it was natural for them to want to move out on their own, and the two bedroom apartment was perfect for them to rent together.
They got along well enough to room together, and while the apartment was kinda small they made it their own pretty quickly. They spent a three and a half years there, working and wasting time together on games and the internet. And it all changed when they found the antique shop.
Max had always liked old stuff, so he dragged John into it one day. Clear in the back of the cluttered shop, in a pile of old dusty books, was one bound in black leather and written in some sort of old script. Each page had a unique circular design, with weird symbols around the edge. Max bought it for ten dollars to use as a decoration, maybe as part of a wizard costume for Halloween.
But John, bored one day, took it and tried to translate the writing. After a few hours of online research, he found it was written in an old German dialect. He spent another hour and called Max in to show off the page he had managed to translate.
"Alchemy?" Max asked, raising his eyebrows. John shrugged, and went to get the stuff the book called for while Max jokingly called insults from the doorway. The book - which John had accepted as a spellbook, or at least what the author believed to be a spellbook- didn't call for much, just a sample of what was being transformed, and what it was going to be transformed into. That, and a piece of chalk to draw the design, were all that was needed to do alchemy.
Max followed John to the roof of their building, and watched with semi interest as John drew the circle, with the little symbols around it, and placed a brick on one half of the circle, and a small gold ingot, which he had made with his miniature personal forge back home, on the other side.
Max was tempted to record the whole thing on his phone, to laugh at later, but he decided to tone down on the teasing. To be honest, he wanted it to work. Both of them had an interest in the supernatural, and if this book was, by some miracle, real, it would change everything. So he kept quiet as John tapped the edge of the circle and recited the foreign word as the book directed.
They both expected nothing to happen, but the chalk circle glowed bright yellow for a brief moment. The flash blinded the both of them, and after a few seconds of waiting for they eyesight to return, they stared at the circle.
The chalk had vanished, leaving the small ingot of pure gold, and a brick now made of the same shiny yellow metal. They were silent for a full minute, staring at the brick, then at each other, then at the brick again.
Once they recovered, they took the brick directly to John's parents house to use his forge to check the brick. They realized that the brick was now actual gold, and a lot of it. They celebrated, laughing and yelling and hugging each other, unable to believe the spell had worked.
They melted the brick into smaller ingots, and after some haggling at a pawn shop, they had a good chuck of money in their pockets. They immediately bought some beer and ordered pizza, throwing their own mini party in their apartment. They got wrecked, and were up most of the night bullshitting about what they could do with this spell, what else they could do with the book.
And that was when Max had made the mistake. Bringing up Angel, wanting to rub their newfound wealth in the guy/girl's face. He had gone to bed shortly after, and John didn't stay up much later. But as he walked into his room, he noticed the paper he had used to translate the spellbook. He noticed the other spell he had worked out, the one he had forgotten to mention.
The spell was titled "Body Transformation", but the only part he had worked out was turning a man into a woman, and vice versa. John never thought about the repercussions, he just thought he could pull a prank on his roommate.
He followed the books directions, sketching a circle on some scrap paper. He went into Max's room, where he was already unconscious, and used a pair of scissors to snip off some hair. He dropped the hair in the middle of the circle, and folded the paper up into a small square, enveloping the hair. He dropped it on Max's chest, and expected another flash of light.
But nothing happened. Slightly disappointed, John left the room and went straight to his own bed to pass out. His entire prank had taken ten minutes to prepare. And while John slept, the spell took effect. Max woke up early for some reason, his mind perfectly clear, no hangover.
Sitting up, he felt weird. His clothes were all kinda loose on him, and his chest felt heavier. Standing up, he had to hold his shorts up while he walked to the bathroom to look in the mirror. Instead of his own face, he was left staring at the face of a pretty young woman, who had his brown hair, pulled into a ponytail with the end dyed dark green.
It took Max about ten seconds to realize that wasn't a stranger, but himself. Another ten seconds to let the shorts drop and reach for where his dick should have been, but wasn't. About 5 seconds to grab his chest, which was now around a B Cup. Half a minute overall to realize what had happened. And he - now she - started freaking out.
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While Max freaked out, John woke up and tried to remember what had happened last night, and why there was a girl yelling at him. If there was a cure for a hangover, remembering what he did last night, and connecting it to the girl wearing Max's shirt, was it. He shot up and realized what had happened.
Once Max had calmed down, he explained to her what he had done, which sent her off on another freak out, this time directed towards him. He dodged thrown books and plastic cups while he laughed, running to his room to look at the book and his papers. She stood behind him, pacing back and forth muttering to herself.
John was smiling, amused by his own joke, but once he realized the implications of his spell, he was actually kinda afraid of how Max would react. He explained that the spell was designed to last three days, and would fade after the time ran out. He put his actions the night before at about 2:30 in the morning, so they knew how long it would take approximately. While they sat there in silence, one angry and one actually kind of ashamed, John took in his new roommate.
Max had lost a good head and a half of height, so she no longer matched John's 6 feet. She still had some muscle, but she was more slender then she had been before. Her face had become more feminine, and her chest wasn't large enough to stand out in the baggy shirt she had on, but not so small as to be invisible in it.
Overall, John thought she was kind of attractive - and realizing this, he mentally gagged and shook his head. How the hell could he think his roommate was attractive? Female or male, this was Max, the same kid he had spent years with. They were close, but neither of them had ever thought of being anything more than best friends.
Max jumped off the bed, startling John, and stormed out of the room. He sat in silence, and heard the sound of the xbox turning on in the living room. He heard her flicking through the menu, then the sound of Bleach playing on the TV. Max's response to anything uncomfortable that she didn't want to talk about was to watch anime.
Normally John would join him. He liked Bleach, and it was Saturday morning, so there was nothing to do today. But he didn't know how Max would react to him, so he waited in his room, working on deciphering some of the spell book, and watching youtube on his computer.
About noon, he slowly ventured into the living room, where Max sat on the couch, cross legged and swimming in her shirt. John stayed silent, going into the bathroom, and shut the door. He noticed a pile on the floor, and picked up Max's sleeping shorts.
As he held them, something fell out of them. John picked up a pair of boxers, and it took a second to realize they were Max's. She had lost enough size for her clothes to fall right off her without a hand to keep them up.
John stood there, feeling bad about his joke, when something clicked in his head. If Max's boxers were here, then she wasn't wearing anything under that shirt. The thought floated in his mind for a few seconds, and he realized what he was thinking about his roommate and slapped himself.
John finished in the bathroom and went to the couch, dropping down next to Max. He handed her the pile of clothes, and she took them, meeting his gaze. They stared at each other, and John realized that while here face was different, she still looked like Max.
