Chapter 2: The roommate?
The invitation felt like a dare in his pocket. He stared at his reflection in the apartment’s dark window. The suit, the one that had felt like a shroud this morning, now fit perfectly. No, not perfectly—better. It draped in a way it never had, hugging his torso and falling cleanly past his hips. The fabric of the pants felt smooth, almost silken against his legs. It should have been comforting. It wasn’t. It was like the clothes had changed when he wasn't looking.
He dialed Mark. The ringtone buzzed in the quiet. They hadn’t spoken in months, not since Mark’s promotion had sucked him into a vortex of out-of-town work.
“Davey!” Mark’s voice boomed through the speaker, warm and immediate. It loosened something tight in David’s chest. “To what do I owe the immense honor?”
David managed a weak chuckle. “Desperation. I’ve got a pass to some snooty gallery thing tonight. Sculptor client. Free booze. You in?”
“Art and free liquor? Is that even a question? I just got back last night, I’m dying for normal human interaction. Text me the deets.”
Two hours later, standing outside the converted warehouse gallery, David felt like an imposter. The air was cool, the sky a deepening violet. Mark arrived, grinning, clapping him on the back. The impact sent a jolt through David’s shoulder blade, a sharp, bony pain.
“You’ve lost weight,” Mark observed, his eyes scanning him with friendly curiosity. “New diet? You look… sleek.”
“Just busy,” David deflected, ushering him inside.
The gallery was a cavern of white walls and polished concrete, thrumming with a low, hypnotic cello track. People floated in little clusters, holding flutes of champagne. The art was all sharp angles and tension wires, metal shapes straining against each other. David felt a bizarre, sympathetic ache in his own joints.
He spotted his client, Elara, across the room. She waved, her gaze lingering on him a beat too long. He nodded back, not moving.
“You know her?” Mark asked, snagging two drinks from a passing tray.
“Barely. Did a lobby for her last year.”
“She’s staring. Probably admiring your tailor. This suit is doing things, man. What is this, Italian?”
Before David could answer, a new presence settled at their periphery.Isabella.
She was in a simple black dress, her hair a loose, dark cascade. She held no drink. She wasn’t looking at the art. She was looking directly at David, a small, private smile on her lips. Her gaze was a physical touch, a cool finger tracing his spine. She was here. The coincidence was an ice pick to his gut.
Mark followed his gaze. “Whoa. Friend of yours? She is… intense.”
“No,” David said, the word clipped. “She’s not.”
He turned his back, willing her away, focusing on the dangerous-looking metal vortex in front of him. Mark drifted, chatting with a curator. The cello music swelled, the notes feeling like they were vibrating inside David’s ribcage. When he couldn’t stand it anymore, he turned back.
She was gone. Nowhere in the crowd.
“You alright?” Mark was back at his elbow. “You’re white as this wall.”
“Headache and loud music.”
“Let’s get some air.”
The fog had rolled in while they were inside, a thick, woolly blanket that muffled the city’s sounds and haloed the streetlights. David’s apartment was a fifteen-minute walk. Mark’s place was across the river.
“No way I’m driving in this soup,” Mark said, peering into the grey nothingness. “I’ll call a cab.”
“Don’t be an idiot. Just crash on my couch. It’s late.”
The offer came automatically, a reflex of old friendship.Mark grinned. “You sure? I don’t snore.”
“You do, but I have a spare room now. Since I… got the new place.” David frowned. He’d always had a spare room. Hadn’t he?
The walk home was surreal, the familiar streets rendered alien and silent by the fog. David’s body felt wrong moving through it. His stride was shorter; he had to hurry to keep pace with Mark’s easy lope. The cold, damp air seeped through his suit, finding the new, vulnerable places in his frame.
Inside his apartment, the normalcy was jarring. His things. His space. Mark whistled, looking around. “Still the king of organized chaos, I see. I’ll grab some water and hit the hay. Big thing tomorrow.”
“What thing?” David asked, pulling off his tie. It felt strangling.
“My presentation,” Mark said, heading to the kitchen. He opened a cupboard without hesitation and took down a glass. “The one you helped me proof last week? The Henderson account?”
David froze. He had no memory of this. None. The familiar pang of missing data shot through him, the same feeling he’d had about the gallery invitation. Gaps. Holes in his own timeline. “Right.Yeah. Of course.”
He slept fitfully again, dreams filled with the groaning of metal and the scent of jasmine. He woke to the smell of coffee and bacon. Sunlight streamed into a kitchen that looked… different. Cleaner. A bowl of fresh fruit sat on the counter where his stack of unread trade journals usually was.
Mark was at the stove, flipping eggs. He was wearing David’s old college sweatpants and a t-shirt. “Hope you don’t mind. Raided the drawer. You’re up late, sleepyhead.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost nine. You said your first meeting was at ten-thirty.”
David never had meetings that late on a Wednesday. He had a site visit at eight. He scrambled for his phone. No alerts. No missed calls. The calendar on his screen showed a clear morning.
“You’re a lifesaver, letting me stay,” Mark said, sliding eggs onto two plates. “The pipes burst in my building yesterday.Total flood. Management is saying it’ll be three days for repairs. You’re sure it’s cool if I camp out here?”
David stared at the perfect, sunny-side-up eggs. The steam rose, comforting and mundane. Mark’s face was open, grateful. The story about the flood felt as real as the granite countertop. And David had no memory of agreeing to three days, but the words, “Yeah, of course, no problem,” came out of his mouth. The part of him that was still David, the architect who hated deviation, screamed in a tiny, sealed box inside his skull.
The day passed in a blur of wrongness. At work, his assistant, Marco, didn’t mention his late arrival. The site visit he was sure he had simply didn’t exist. A colleague asked if he’d finished the Henderson proposal edits for Mark. He bluffed his way through, a cold sweat prickling under his shirt collar, which was now slightly too big.
He came home that evening expecting a temporary houseguest. He found a domestic scene. Music—Mark’s music, some indie folk David would never choose—played softly. The living room was tidied. Two grocery bags sat on the kitchen counter.
Mark was chopping vegetables. “Hey! I took a half-day. Figured the least I could do was cook. You still love lemon herb chicken, right?”
The question was so intimate, so certain. David did like lemon herb chicken. But Mark shouldn’t know that. Not with that level of casual certainty.
“Yeah,” David heard himself say. “Sounds great.”
They ate. Mark talked about his presentation, a client’s difficult demands, his flooded apartment. The conversation flowed too easily, filled with shared context David couldn’t place. Inside, David was splitting in two. One self was nodding, smiling, passing the salt. The other was a trapped animal, pounding against the walls of this new, warm reality.
After dinner, Mark washed the dishes without being asked. David dried, the terrycloth towel feeling alien in his hands. His hands were softer. The knuckles were almost smooth.
“Where do these go again?” Mark asked, holding up a salad bowl.
“Top cupboard, left of the sink,” David said, and then thought, Since when do I put bowls there?
He went to bed early, pleading exhaustion. Lying in the dark, he catalogued the changes. The room was wrong. The bed was softer. The frame was different—a lower, platform style. He sat up, fumbling for his phone, using its glow to examine the room. The sleek, modern dresser wasn’t his. The rug was thicker, plush. On the nightstand was a framed photograph.
He picked it up. His blood turned to ice.
It was a picture of him and Mark, but not a picture he’d ever seen. They were on a beach, arms around each other’s shoulders, squinting into the sun. They looked younger, happier. He was wearing a sunhat. A sunhat. He touched the glass over his own smiling face. The person in the photo was him, but it wasn’t. The shoulders were narrower. The smile was… easier.
He put the photo down, his hands shaking violently. He stumbled out of bed and into the hallway, needing a glass of water, needing to see something, anything, that was his. He pushed open the door to the spare room—Mark’s room. It had a bunch of his stuff in there. Like hes been here for weeks.
Earlier throughout the day his internal structure had changed. This time much more noticeable. His hips were wider. But not due to fat, but a wider hip bone. His legs seemed shorter, but appeared longer and sharply. Thighs were thicker, which made his pants seem tight all day, but by the end of day his slacks felt perfect. Like they were still tailored.
Like they were still tailored.
David stood in the doorway of the spare room, the photograph’s invisible weight still crushing his chest. Mark’s suitcase lay open on the bed, clothes neatly folded. A stack of paperbacks sat on the nightstand, all titles David didn’t recognize. On the dresser was a framed picture of the two of them at a baseball game, mid-laugh. David wore a cap backwards. He hated wearing hats backwards.
He shut the door, a soft click that sounded like a trap engaging. His own room offered no solace. Everything in it was a quiet, polished lie. He crawled back into the unfamiliar bed, its plush mattress swallowing him, and stared at the ceiling until grey light seeped around the blinds.
The next morning, his body was a chorus of new complaints. A deep, grinding ache pulsed low in his abdomen, a constant cramp that had replaced the bone-deep cold. Walking to the kitchen, he felt unsteady, his center of balance subtly shifted. His reflection in the dark microwave door was a smudged ghost of someone slimmer, rounder.
Mark was already pouring coffee. “You move like you’re eighty. You okay?”
“Cramps,” David muttered, the word out before he could filter it. It was the wrong word. Men didn’t get cramps. He braced for a joke that didn’t come.
“Again? Babe, you should make that appointment.” Mark said it with such weary, familiar concern that David’s protest died in his throat. Babe. The endearment hung in the air, toxic and warm. David took the mug, his fingers brushing Mark’s. The touch felt like a memory he’d forgotten.
He fled to the shower, turning the water hot enough to scald. He avoided looking at his body directly, focusing on the tile, on the steam. The water beat on his back, which felt strangely sensitive. His skin was smooth, everywhere. The cramping tightened, a vise grip low in his gut, and he leaned his forehead against the cool tile, breathing through it.
David seen it in the reflection of buildings as he walked to work but chose to ignore it. The glimpses in glass office fronts were fleeting, deceptive. A narrower silhouette, a different swing of the arms. His hair looked longer, curling damp against his collar. He chalked it up to the fog still clinging to the city, to his tired eyes.
That cramping though was the beginning of his male organs turning into female organs, and shifting around his abdomen to make room for something new. The pain was a constant, intimate restructuring. He popped aspirin, drank water, clenched his jaw through meetings where his voice, now undeniably higher and softer, made clients tilt their heads. He signed a document, his signature a shaky, unfamiliar scrawl.
It was the second day of Mark staying at his apartment, so when he got home he asked when the flooding would be taken care of at Mark’s apartment. He hung his tailored coat—which now fit his narrower shoulders and wider hips perfectly—on the hook, the question a desperate attempt to anchor them in the shared reality he remembered.
Mark looked confused, because their apartment wasn't flooded. He was setting the table, two places, with the good plates David never used. “What do you mean? What flooding?”
To which David looked confused too. A cold trickle of dread started in his skull. "What do you mean, ‘what flooding?’ You said your apartment was flooded and asked to stay a few days." His voice was tight, too high.
Mark put down a plate, his brow furrowed with genuine concern. "Dude. You feeling alright?" He walked over, placing a hand on David’s forehead. The gesture was so domestic, so practiced. "I've been living here for the last 4 years, man. What the hell are you talking about?"
The floor dropped away. The walls of the hallway, with its new art prints, seemed to pulse. David’s mouth was dry. “Four years?”
“Yeah. Since we bought the place. Together.” Mark’s hand slid from David’s forehead to cup his cheek, his thumb stroking the now-smooth skin. “Seriously, Davey. You’re starting to scare me. Maybe it’s stress. Maybe it’s… the other thing.”
David pulled back, his heart hammering against his ribs—ribs that felt smaller, closer together. “What other thing?”
Mark’s eyes dropped for a fraction of a second to David’s abdomen, then back to his face. His expression was a mix of pity and loving fear.
"You know, the time of month!" He said casually.
David just stared and walked away. "Time of the month?" He shook his head. "What the fuck is going on?" He muttered to himself as he entered the bathroom, where he seen the first actual noticeable changes. His hips and ass were bigger, wider, and heart shaped. Not huge by any means, but definitely not male. And the puffy nipples on his chest seemed not normal.
He walked out, in just his sweats and ask Mark if his chest, and buttocks looked wierd. "Heeeey. Mark. Does my chest and butt look weird?"
Mark stopped, the dishtowel draped over his shoulder. His gaze was frank, appraising, devoid of any shock. "Weird? No. Why would they?" He tilted his head, a slight smile touching his lips. "Looks normal to me. Like you’ve always had that shape."
The words landed not as reassurance, but as a seismic correction to reality itself. David’s own perception, the visceral wrongness he felt in his own skin, crashed against the utter normalcy in Mark’s eyes. If Mark saw no change, then the change must be complete, and David’s memory of his own body was the fiction. The solid ground of his identity liquefied beneath him.
"This isn't right," David whispered, not to Mark, but to the air of the hallway that now felt like a stranger’s home.
"Babe, come on. You’re just tired. Stressed from the Henderson account prep." Mark took a step forward, his expression softening with a concern that felt like a cage. "Let’s just have dinner, okay? I made that pasta you like."
David turned away. He ignored the invitation, the smell of garlic and tomatoes, the entire curated domestic scene. He walked past the spare room—his room?—and into the bedroom, closing the door with a soft, definitive click. He leaned against it, listening to the quiet hum of the apartment, to Mark’s resigned sigh in the kitchen.
He told himself he had important clients in the morning. He recited their names, their project specs, a mantra of normalcy. He changed into soft pajama pants that were tighter across the hips, a t-shirt that draped loosely over his chest but clung at the waist. He avoided the full-length mirror on the closet door, that treacherous surface, and slid into the unfamiliar bed.
Sleep was a turbulent ocean. He dreamed of shrinking, of fabrics slipping from his grasp, of trying to hold sand that streamed through fingers that grew slender and pale as the night wore on.
He woke to a dull, aching throb in his hands and feet. He fumbled for the lamp, his grasp clumsy. When the light bloomed, he stared.
His hands were smaller. The bones of his knuckles, once prominent, were now delicate ridges under smoother skin. His fingers tapered to narrower tips, the nails oval and neat. He flexed them; the tendons moved like fine wires. His feet, peeking from the blankets, were arched higher, the toes slimmer. He shoved them back under the covers, a hot nausea rising in his throat.
The morning routine was a series of small, horrifying adjustments. His leather brogues, once snug, now felt cavernous. His heels slid with each step, the empty space a tangible echo of his lost substance. Socks pooled loosely around his ankles. He dressed in a fog, selecting a suit from the closet—a sleek, navy two-piece that felt softer, with a narrower cut. He told himself it was always this cut.
Walking to the office was an exercise in recalibration. The city’s noise seemed sharper, the pavement harder. Every step in his oversized shoes was a clumsy, hollow clack. He felt unwieldy, a ghost not quite filling its own clothes.
By mid-morning, a strange thing happened. The shoes began to feel better. Not correct, but better. The empty space at the front seemed to lessen. His stride changed, becoming shorter, more precise. During a bathroom break, he looked down. A subtle, hidden wedge had materialized inside the shoe, a slight heel he knew hadn’t been there before. The leather upper now hugged the narrower shape of his foot perfectly.
He stood very still in the fluorescent light, listening to the hum of the extractor fan. The shoes had changed. They had adapted.
The rest of his body followed in a silent, relentless parade. Sitting through an afternoon budget meeting, he felt a sudden, insistent pressure at the base of his spine, a gentle swelling. He shifted in the plush chair. The wool of his trousers, which had felt loose at breakfast, now stretched taut across new curves. His hips widened, the bone itself seeming to bloom outward, altering his seated posture, forcing his legs together at a different angle.
His waist cinched in, not from weight loss but from a new architecture. His belt, on its last notch in the morning, now needed tightening two more clicks. The fabric of his dress shirt, once billowing, now whispered against the subtle, unfamiliar swell of his chest. It wasn’t pronounced, but it was undeniably there—a soft fullness that changed the drape of his tie, the hang of his jacket.
Worst of all was his hair. In the reflection of his darkened monitor, he saw it falling past his jawline, a wave of dark brown that held a new, soft curl at the ends. It was longer than he’d ever worn it, styled in a way he didn’t know how to execute. He reached up, and his smaller hand vanished into its thickness.
He excused himself from the meeting, mumbling about a migraine. In the elevator, he caught his full reflection in the polished bronze doors. The person staring back was a young, sharp professional, with a slender neck, a defined waist, and a cascade of hair brushing their collar. The suit was impeccable. The expression was one of dawning, abject terror.
The figure in the bronze raised a delicate hand to its mouth. David felt the gesture in his own muscles, a feminine flicker of shock he’d never learned.
The elevator dinged for the lobby. The doors slid open.
"No, no, no ,no. What the fuck is happening" he reached for his face, it was still his make face, but draped by long flowing hair to his shoulders.
His ass was huge and hips were wide. He still had his penis, he could feel it in his pants, but the weirdest part about his attire, was the was a distinct panty line in his slacks. He wore boxers today, and on top of that his ches was poking out. At least an A-cup now.
He told his boss he had to go home. Not feeling well. And he then walked home.
On his walk home he caught a glimpse of his reflection, his chest was feeling tight, like a clot was wrapping around his breasts. "A bra!? What the fuck?!"