Chapter 1: Morning After Mayhem
The first thing John Abernathy felt was the constriction, a vice around his ribs that made each breath a shallow, desperate thing. Then came the cool, slick sensation against his skin—something like satin, but denser, tighter. He opened his eyes to the familiar, grubby ceiling of his dorm room, but the view was wrong. His peripheral vision was crowded by a wave of hair that was not his own, a cascade of dark, fragrant curls. He tried to sit up, and his center of gravity shifted with a strange, unsettling lurch.
A sound escaped him, a high-pitched gasp that was decidedly not his voice.
A-ha. Sleeping Beauty’s awake.
The voice wasn’t in the room. It was in his head, sharp and clear and flavored with a sardonic glee that felt like lemon juice on a cut. He flailed, his hands—her hands, smaller and softer with manicured nails—smacking against the textbook he’d fallen asleep on. The garish neon cover of Intro to Algorithmic Design grinned up at him.
“What—” he began, but the word came out wrong, a feminine rasp. He clamped a hand over his mouth. The sensation of full, unfamiliar lips against his palm sent a fresh jolt of panic through his system.
Relax, kid. You’re hyperventilating. Which, given the current packaging, is a feat.
John’s gaze snapped toward the source of the internal commentary. Dangling from the hook of his bedpost was the necklace. It was hideous, a choker of tangled silver chains studded with gaudy, heart-shaped charms that had seemed ironic when he’d bought it from a gloomy stall at the midnight flea market three days ago. Now, it hummed faintly, emitting a soft, pulsating pink light that clashed violently with the sickly green of his energy drink bottles. One of the charms, a lopsided silver skull, seemed to be watching him.
“You?” John’s new voice was shaky. “The…the voice?”
Give the man a prize. Yes, it’s me. Amy. Your new spiritual tenant. And, incidentally, your orientation guide to this colossal clusterfuck.
“What…what is…” He looked down at himself. The sight was a physical blow. A corset, black and intricately laced, encased his torso, pushing forms upward that had no business being there. His lanky frame was gone, replaced by a silhouette of dangerous curves. He was wearing what felt like stockings, and the hem of a ridiculously short black skirt was ruched up around his thighs.
A cold, bottomless dread began to pool in his stomach. “No.”
Oh, yes. Congratulations, John. You are now the proud owner of a conditional morphic curse. Poetic, really. You bought a container for a trapped spirit—me—and in doing so, you absorbed the backlash of the binding spell. A real two-for-one special.
“A curse?” He scrambled off the bed, his movements clumsy in the unfamiliar body. He stumbled, his new, higher heels catching on a discarded pizza box. He caught himself on the edge of his desk, the wood digging into his soft palm. The fluorescent light overhead buzzed like an angry wasp’s nest. “Get it off. Get it off me!”
You think I’d be chatting inside your noggin if I could? The curse is tied to the artifact—that gorgeous piece around my non-corporeal neck—and by extension, to you. I’m along for the ride. And before you ask, no, I don’t know how to break it. I’ve been a pair of earrings for seventy years.
John stared at his reflection in the dark monitor of his computer. A stranger stared back—a woman with his own wide, horrified eyes, but set in a face that was all sharp cheekbones and full, unpainted lips. He looked like a goth princess who’d seen a ghost. His own ghost.
“Why?” he whispered.
Why’s it always about penises with you people? Amy’s sigh echoed in his mind, a wave of static and ancient exasperation. The curse is arousal-based. Simple, if deeply stupid. You get an erection, you trigger the transformation. You become… well, this. “SexiWoman” was the caster’s chosen nomenclature, I believe. Tacky, but accurate.
John’s mind short-circuited. He felt the heat rising in his cheeks, a confusing flush that had nothing to do with attraction and everything to do with abject terror. As if on cue, a thought, unbidden and purely mechanical, flickered through his panic: I have breasts.
A faint tingling sensation prickled across his skin. The corset seemed to tighten.
Whoa! Hey! Amy’s voice cut through, a psychic slap. Head out of the gutter, Abernathy! That’s how it starts. A stray thought, a biological echo, and bam—you’re resetting the timer. The transformation lasts for one hour. Minimum. You can’t just wish it away.
John forced his eyes shut, trying to picture spreadsheets, his grandmother’s face, the binary code for a basic calculator program—anything dry and sexless. The tingling subsided. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
“An hour?” he croaked.
At least. Sometimes longer if you’re… stimulated… during the cycle. Think of it like a magical snooze button you can’t hit.
“This can’t be happening.” He sank into his desk chair, the leather groaning under a weight distribution it wasn’t designed for. He buried the strange, beautiful face in his delicate hands. The smell of his own shampoo—now hers—was overwhelming.
Look on the bright side, Amy offered, her tone devoid of any brightness whatsoever. You’ve got great hair. And the shoes are to die for, though I’d recommend not actually doing that.
A harsh, ragged sound tore from John’s throat. It took him a second to recognize it as laughter, edging into hysteria. He was trapped. In a woman’s body. Because of a stupid necklace and his own pathetic biology.
A sudden, aggressive knock shattered the silence of the room. “John! You in there?” It was Marcus from down the hall, his voice muffled by the door. “Dude, we’re heading to the dining hall. You want us to grab you anything?”
John’s blood turned to ice. He stared at the door, his heart hammering against the rigid wall of the corset. He couldn’t speak. If he spoke, she would speak.
Don’t, Amy commanded, her voice low and urgent in his mind. Not a sound.
“John? You alive?” Another knock, louder.
John held his breath. The door handle jiggled. Locked. Thank god for small mercies.
“Weird. Maybe he’s at the lab.” Marcus’s footsteps receded.
The silence that followed was deafening, thick with the thrum of the humming necklace and the roar of John’s own panic. He was a prisoner in his own room. In his own skin. Or someone else’s skin.
Okay, Amy said, her voice shifting into something resembling practicality. First rule: calm down. Panic is a gateway drug to inappropriate thoughts, and we just established where that leads. Second rule: we need to get you through this hour without anyone seeing you. Third rule… we’ll figure out the third rule later.
John looked at the clock on his desk. 4:37 PM. The dorm would be getting busy soon. He had fifty-three minutes left.
“What do I do?” His whisper was barely audible.
You sit tight. You don’t move. You think about cold showers and tax forms. And, she added, a hint of her dry humor returning, you try not to look in the mirror. It only makes it worse.
But John couldn’t help it. His eyes drifted back to the dark screen, to the outline of the stranger within. A profound, weary misery settled over him. This was his life now. This chaotic, humiliating, unpredictable switch. The fear of an awkward boner had just been upgraded to a category-five nightmare.
He heard the distant slam of a door, a burst of laughter from the quad below. The world continued, utterly oblivious. In here, the only sounds were the buzz of the light, the hum of the cursed artifact, and the frantic, double-time beat of a heart that wasn’t entirely his own anymore. The hour stretched before him, an eternity in a body that felt like a borrowed, too-tight suit. And somewhere, deep in the back of his mind, a terrible, practical question began to form: what happens when he has to pee?