I Have to Go

“Damn, that is twisted.” Jake said as he watched Loretta’s transformation unfold on screen.

He was a little horrified, though not without a degree of admiration for the thoroughness of her vengeance. Leah, though, was clearly admiring the action in more than just degrees.

“God this is a good round,” She said.

They’d put up the remaining pizza, having eaten their fill, and were now sharing a bowl of popcorn. It rested on their legs.

They were cuddling now. No reason to call it anything else. Nothing inherently sexual about it, of course, but there wasn’t anything apropriate about it either. If Jake were as serious about his promise to Emily as he claimed, he’d break off from her. But for all of that, and for the situation Leah had pulled them all into, he was enjoying her company. It was easier to just go with it; to relax and enjoy the moment.

The show, too, come to that, which he found far more entertaining and arousing than he wanted.

He looked down, and Leah seemed to sense it. Her dark eyes turned up to his brown ones.

“You’re thinking again,” She said. “Bad habit, that.”

“Leah…” He said, beginning to pull away.

She giggled softly and drew him back in, slipping his arm around her waist to rest on her ass. The popcorn bowl clattered to the floor, forgotten.The two made eye contact again, as if she were daring him to stop the advance.

He couldn’t do it. Didn’t want to, for that matter.

“We’re not doing anything,” She said. “Just two friends relaxing in front of the telly.”

“Leah…” He said, more emphatically this time.

“Leah nothing!” She protested, “I’m taking a break from being host, you’re taking a break from being…all the things you are. That’s what we agreed to.”

“I know…”

“Then shut up and enjoy it,” She purred. “It’s a little break from everything.”

He let out a grunt and closed his eyes. He would try it, he decided. He emptied his mind of his responsibilities, of Emily, of all the other girls, and focused on the exotic beauty curled up beneath his arm. What were they even doing, really? Watching TV? He knew it was more than that, but tried on the idea of it being nothing more. He liked the fit.

And the TV was turning at any rate, switching to a pristine diner as the camera settled on Julie. It was Julie as he’d always remembered her, young and tight bodied in a pair of jeans that conformed to her long, fit legs. She wore a hoody over shapely, perky tits and a toned midriff that a slightly undersized university tee left teasingly bare.

Leah was right. Enjoying the show was nice.

*****

Julie picked at her pancakes in a haze of doubt and confusion. She had a plan. She had what she needed to carry it out. The only thing she felt she might lack was the will to go through with it.

She had transported herself to her favorite diner, before calling ahead to Wayne’s factory and Stacy’s school. It would cost the former vacation time he barely had, and the latter classroom time she badly needed. But she needed to be sure they were in the same place in the next four hours, and a sudden family emergency was the best way to do that.

With any luck, none of it would matter soon anyway.

She ate a stack of pancakes as she waited, relishing that her youthened body probably didn’t have to worry about it going to her stomach or ass. One reason for that became apparent though; despite having ordered this exact same combo twice a week for the last ten years, she could barely eat a quarter of it. The new her, or more accurately she supposed, the old one, simply wasn’t built to eat like this.

“You done with that, hon?” The waitress asked her.

Julie turned to her. A plump woman her own age, Halley was actually a friend of Julie’s, at least prior to the transformation. Yet now, despite her biweekly visits, she didn’t seem to recognize her. Nobody here did. Her youth would have made her anonymous in any case, but she knew she’d also been scrubbed from reality for the duration of the game as well. She wasn’t sure how that was supposed to work for a woman who’d produced a child, but she supposed she’d find out.

“Just some coffee, please,” Julie said, patting her trim tummy. “I’m all filled up.”

Halley took the plate from her.

“You want me to get the check then?” She asked.

Julie shook her head.

“My family’s meeting me here,” She said. “I hate to take up a table without buying anything, but…”

Halley snorted a laugh.

“Empty tables I got,” She said. “You make yourself right at home.”

Julie smiled. It was a testament to the friendliness of the world that existed this far into the heartland. She couldn’t have found it back home, and she suddenly felt attacked by another pang of doubt.

If she’d had more than three shots, she’d have used one on Halley, making her a young beauty with her life ahead of her like she’d become. But she didn’t. She had one for each member of her troubled little family. Her mind suddenly went to an old Bob Dylan song called the Ballad of Hollis Brown. The association made her shudder.

She didn’t get to dwell on it for long, though. Julie’s attention was drawn up by a truck pulling into the lot; an old beat ass Chevy that she recognized immediately. Wayne and Stacy stepped out of its cab. It occurred to her, suddenly, that they might not recognize her either.

“There they are now,” She said to a clearly confused Halley. “I’ll be right back.”

Julie stepped into the diner’s parking lot, adjusting the ball cap on her head.

“Wayne. Stacy.” She called. “Over here.”

Wayne’s eyes fixed on her. They were confused at first, then they went wide in amazement.

“Julie? Holy God in heaven…” He said, looking pale.

Her daughter looked between them, confused.

“Wait? That’s Mom?” She asked. “The fuck?”

“Watch your language!” Julie said reflexively, and in doing so removed all doubt.

Stacy’s mouth dropped open as she gaped at her. She was a pretty girl, but one who took far more from her father than her mother. She was tall like Wayne, for one, and had dark hair and a tan. The eyes were hers, though; a bright baby blue that stood out all the more for her darker complexion. Her black hair was painted with a rainbow sheath of pink, green and blonde that Stacy thought looked cool, but Julie knew was ridiculous. Her hair was teased out into a deliberate fray. Her lips were painted black, and pierced in three places. She had a nose stud too. Today she wore a black lacy skirt over deliberately torn leggings, studded work boots, and a black t-shirt that declared her loyalty to Julie’s least favorite band; some outfit called Slipknot that, to Julie’s ears, did nothing but growl.

“Yeah. It’s me,” Julie said with a wave.

“Oh my god…” Stacy said, her voice cracking.

She lunged forward then, wrapping Julie in a two armed embrace and pulling her tight. She rested her head on her shoulder and began to sniffle into it, her dark mascara running. Julie returned the hug dumbly, mouth agape. If Stacy had rolled out of the truck bed on a unicycle playing an accordion, it would have surprised her less than this outburst.

“Are…you okay, Stac?” She asked.

It was really all she could think to say.

Stacy only squeezed her tighter. When she finally pulled away, she was openly crying.

“They said you died in a car wreck when I was a little kid or something,” She said, “I was so scared.”

“Apparently we got some kind of settlement for it. 200 Grand,” Wayne confirmed, his voice thick as well. “I was afraid you were actually dead.”

“I’m so sorry,” Stacy sniffed. “About the grades and the lies. I love you, and I’m really really sorry.”

It came out in a breathy rush that left Julie flabbergasted.

“I thought you hated me…” She whispered.

Stacy pulled back, shaking her red eyed, puffy head vigorously.

“You’re my Mom,” She said. “I don’t hate you.”

Julie’s world went blurry. Then it was her turn to embrace her daughter. For all the animosity between them, for all the sense of hurt and betrayal, and for all her own leftover resentment Julie had toward Stacy for derailing her life (and yes, she could see now that that was at least part of it), at that moment, at long last, they were simply a mother and daughter. If such a bond could ever be simple.

It made what she was considering all the more unthinkable. And all the more necessary.

*****

Later, they sat over coffee and diner food. As quietly as she could, Julie had laid out what her transformation had looked like, the world she’d been taken to and the man she’d been tasked with wooing. That last made Wayne look uncomfortable, but she didn’t shy away from it. It wouldn’t matter for long anyway.

“Just because you babysat some kid who got a crush on you,” Wayne marveled. “That’s fucking sick.”

“It’s all sick, but I’m stuck with it now,” She said with a shrug that much more nonchalant than she felt. “I’m working it out.”

Stacy was even more visceral.

“Fuck that!” She spat, “I just got my Mom back. How are you supposed to be with us if you’re in a fucking harem or whatever? What if they do even more to you?”

They were the questions that had been burning in her own mind, and the ones she thought she had an answer for. She looked across the table at her poor, beleaguered husband and her surprisingly compassionate daughter, and found nothing but love and concern looking back at her.

“You won’t need to worry about that,” She said, her voice catching.

Beneath the table, her hand was wrapped around the pistol. She felt time slow as she visualized what she wanted. She fired three times.

*****

The woman who stepped out of the diner was no longer Wayne’s wife, nor was she Stacy’s Mom. She paused, taking a look back at the family of three that sat eating in quiet contentment at the table she’d just vacated.

The daughter was much as she’d been a moment earlier. She still sported a gothic look, though now it was more refined, her clothes more expensive. Her hair was lustrous, still baring that stupid rainbow streak, but dyed professionally. Julie had to admit that it looked much more fetching on her. The t-shirt and torn pants were replaced by the tartan skirt and blouse of a private school that, like the clothes, her parents could now afford for her.

Julie had let Stacy keep her punkish sensibilities, and even her free spirit and fun seeking nature. But where that desire had once owned her, it was now secondary to a practical side she’d installed in her former daughter. Stacy was smarter than she had been a few moments earlier; a straight A student who always put the important things first. Doubtless she’d be bound for some prestigious school, though Julie had left the specifics of her now bright future to the reality warping power of the gun rather than shoehorn it herself.

It was hardly a sexy change, and likely wouldn’t win her favor with the audience. But it was the right thing to do for Stacy, and that’s all Julie cared about.

Much more radically altered was the man sitting next to her. The overweight factory worker who’d dropped out of engineering school to work in a Rolls Royce assembly line was now a Rolls Royce engineer. He was a little older now. The math of Stacy’s birth and his graduation had to be balanced somewhere. But he looked better and younger in spite of that; a trim, fit man with a professor’s beard that had replaced his scruff and mustache. Stress lines beneath his eyes had been replaced by laugh lines to their sides.

The third occupant sat across from them. It was Julie, or at least a version of her; an older, beautiful one who’d had her daughter and married her husband on her own terms. A teacher, like she’d always wanted to be. The Julie standing outside was connected to her; could in fact inhabit her and live her experiences at any time. But this was not the situation of her roommate Farra, with Julie controlling two bodies at once. It was a brand new, entirely separate woman forged from all the love she had for her family.

She had entertained the idea of keeping herself in the picture; of becoming Stacy’s older sister or something. But it felt like a lie. More pragmatically, it failed to solve the fundamental problem. How could she be in a harem and have a family? Worse yet, could she meet their eyes if she wound up as some sort of slutty parody of herself like Amelia? No…better to make a clean break.

If she won, she could rectify all this. Make the two halves of herself into a whole again. But if she lost, well…at least the ones she cared about would be taken care of. They wouldn’t have to suffer losing her, even if she had to bear the pain of walking away. But winning would hardly be possible anyway, so long as they were defining her instead of her defining herself.

Julie took one last, tearful look back at the family she was leaving behind and blew them a kiss.

As she trudged down to her local Aldi, for what she thought would be the last time, her heart roiled. Leaving was hard; even harder because her daughter had been so kind. Seeing her family as the ideal version of itself on the way out, and knowing that she could have been a part of it made it, made it harder still.

But if she could admit that she resented Stacy, in her heart of hearts, she could admit that an equally shameful part of her was excited. It was buried at the moment beneath more immediate feelings, but between her youth and her clean break, she had the sort of new lease on life that many people spent their actual lives fantasizing about.

Later, she would reflect that her actions got her the best of both worlds. But for the moment, the guilt was too fresh to conceptualize it that way.

For now, she was resolved to handle this problem like the teenager she now looked like: getting drunk and listening to music. She plucked her favorite bottle of cheap Mexican wine from the rack, and an even cheaper corkscrew. And before anyone could question her about the authenticity of her 37 year old’s ID, she vanished back to the hotel.