Every week like clockwork, Warrensville's large clock tower rang out at midnight on Wednesday. All 5201 people knew what was about to happen, and they were all prepared to face whatever the week would bring. The changes were rarely the same in any given year, with each week featuring a new normal for the townsfolk.
Warrensville (affectionately called "Wednesdayville" by the members of the town) was first settled in Maine in 1834 when a group of people left a nearby community out of fear of witches. What no one realized was that the fears were real, and a small coven only a few dozen miles from what soon became Warrensville plotted revenge. The spell took time to develop and in the span of ten years a small town had formed, enough land and people to sustain itself forever. And then one day the witches returned, sneaking into the one evening and going to the clock tower at the center of town. Enchanting the gears, the trio of witches imbibed the tower and the town with a curse of unspeakable chaos.
Passing out of the town, the witches finalized the spell, making it so that the town would sleep Tuesday as themselves abut wake Wednesday morning to a new reality week after week. At the stroke of midnight, the clock would chime and with it a wave would sweep through the people of Warrensville. First, it would trap anyone inside of the town, making it so that anyone in town overnight was a part of the covenant. Next, the curse would send anyone still awake into a deep sleep, so that by 12:01 the town was a coffin. But the main part of the curse was what happened in between sleeping and waking (at 8:01 for every man, woman and child on Wednesday morning).
Overnight a change would happen that affected every member of the town, changing them all in similar ways. It was unpredictable and undefinable. Occasionally the men and women would switch gender, going about life in new genitalia. Once everyone in Warrensville grew a tail, with the ability to use it as one would a hand. In a number of cases, everyone woke on Wednesday thinking themselves normal before the transformation slowly revealed itself overtime, as when everyone became a ring-tailed lemur by the end of the week. Another time every person in town became twenty-nine years old, from the youngest baby to the oldest invalid. A memorable instance involved a person's skin turning bright pink any time they were aroused.
The changes sometimes were nearly imperceptible that no one outside of town would notice, such as when everyone woke one Wednesday without any toes. Other times it was impossible to go outside of the town, like when each person randomly grew anywhere between ten and thirty different flowers across their body.
People could leave Warrensville temporarily, yet no matter what they would wake somewhere within city limits, changed forever. Occasionally people accidentally found themselves cursed, such as when a young couple skidded off of the road at 11:45 on Tuesday and woke the next morning and found their faces looking equestrian. That family moved in on Oak Street two weeks later.
Going about one's day in Wednesdayville is ordinary enough, especially when you are used to it's conditions. Almost everyone in town has done this before, and changes were never life-threatening. But it wasn't surprising to know that life wasn't easy, and there were countless stories of people struggling to deal with transformations.