Well, he had gotten what he wanted! But the potential permanency of his transformation was setting in.
He put the cellphone down on the desk, and closed his eyes. Yanush… goddamnit. Nothing felt worse than this, and now the Chronivac was useless to him.
He looked around the room… what he saw was a much different space. His bed was wider and higher than before. It was ... almost too wide; it almost blocked the doorway. Big pillows, and a mess of blankets.
Big enough for a centaur, he thought.
The final kicker was a couple of older photos he had printed and framed on the bookshelf next to his bed, of himself and his extended family. They dated way back… all the way to high school. And there he was, a centaur, posing happily with a normal family.
A body part rumbled.
What was he going to do now?
He felt the urge to get up.
When he had sat himself down, he was so cautious about where to move and bend his legs. This time, he pushed up rather quickly. His back legs were the stabilizing power, and they did all the work. They were like rockets: ready to take off with the right signal. The hairs of his tail flicked and brushed against his skin, and he felt reinvigorated for a moment.
Just as his legs were rockets; so was his mind. Except this mind-rocket was careening and twisting off course with each passing moment. That software had done something more than just “change” him. From one side, his life was changing… from the other side, the real side, the sheer feeling of being part-animal. Questions were coming to him.
Question one: He waltzed over to his closet doors and yanked them open. Sure enough, all he saw were shirts and jackets. He didn’t own any pants or trousers.
Why would he?
Question two: no shoes on the closet floor. Just a bunch of random materials; weird things like bottles, pails, cans of things and…
Holy crap, there was a legit saddle in his closet.
Ben instinctively lifted his front leg up, but he couldn’t see the underneath of his hoof very well. What would he do? He wouldn’t be able to get to Cityville without being seen. He really didn’t know for sure, but he probably wouldn’t fit in a car, either.
...
His doorbell rang.
Shit!
There wasn’t even time to react; a couple knocks on the door were followed by the sound of his front door opening, and a man’s voice echoed in his front hall:
“Ben!... back from the market early! Holy cow do I got a story for you...”
It was one of his workmates and best friends, Reed.
“Are you in your room?”
The door was wide open. He was too frozen and terrified to do anything about it…
A few seconds later, Reed appeared in the doorway.
“Yo! …”
He couldn’t believe it.
“Going shirtless today, I see?”
No reaction. At all.
“... Ben, are… you’re not having one of those episodes again…”
He had to speak.
“W… n-no…”
Reed smiled. “Okay, good.” He turned around and walked back out into the hall. “Food first, groom later. 7 kilograms, as per usual. But! There was a twist…”
There was some shuffling, and the sound of keys landing on the counter.
Food? Groom?
“Did you go on your run?”
Trepidatiously Ben stepped into the hallway and walked into his dining room. The clopping of his hooves against the wooden floors was extremely loud. He turned to see Reed fussing around in his kitchen, digging through his cupboards and silverware drawers. Something was already cooking in the microwave. It smelled good, and his … woah, his horse stomach… rumbled in appreciation. That’s what that rumbling was.
But Reed hadn’t reacted one bit to Ben being a centaur.
“Ya know… you should really look into getting a bigger place, dude. I’m sure your landlord would help you with that.”
Ben’s brief look around his dining room and kitchen… it looked much the same, but it did feel smaller.
However, he couldn’t bare to focus on it too much. This wasn’t … this shouldn’t be… his reality.
Ben cleared his throat. “Reed, what are…”
“It’s a “jumbo size” quiche, Ben! Can you believe it? Which leads me into my story…you see, I was chatting it up with Maria from the deli bar, you know? And I tell her bits and pieces about what we do, and -”
“No, no, no… what… what’s going on?”
Reed blinked twice. “...Making lunch?”
“Yeah, I see that. But... “
Then Ben stopped himself mid-sentence.
It dawned on him. If this was some weird new reality he was in, it may be best not to question it... Just go about things as if nothing were out of the ordinary. Because what if the decisions he made right now started affecting things after he got changed back? Not just that, but since Reed was here and seemingly uncaring about his being a centaur, perhaps he could use him to drive to Cityville and fix this Chronivac problem.
“But what?” Reed asked, breaking his thought process.
Ben shook his head. “...N-never mind. I’ll go put a shirt on.”
Reed smirked. “I don’t care, dude. But suit yourself.”
He trotted back to his room and did what he could to not just stand in front of the mirror and stare. He opened a dresser drawer and grabbed the polo t-shirt on top of the pile and threw it on. On a normal person, the shirt would’ve hung over the top of the jeans. But for him, it hung over nothing but the beginning of the fur of his horse body. The back of the shirt lay wrinkled over the mane of his horse back. Weird thoughts in his mind wondered if it was silly to even wear the shirt.
Returning to the dining area, Ben saw Reed taking the quiche out of the microwave. Maybe if he worded his questions carefully, he could learn what he needed to do to maintain the norm and get the help he needed.
“So, uh… Reed, I was going to say, you’re just here to make us lunch?”
Reed walked over with the quiche and plopped the entire dish down at, presumably, Ben’s place at the table. ‘Presumably’ because it was the only space where his body would fit.
“Eat!”
“The entire thing?” It was, like, twice the size of a normal plate of food.
Reed laughed. “Go ahead and try not to, I dare you! And no. Gonna groom and wash after.”
What the fuck was this about grooming? Was his workmate treating him like a horse? Again, he had to word his questions carefully. He folded himself down at the table, and Reed grabbed a drink from his grocery bag.
“A-are you … just doing the normal stuff to me?”
“Yeah, just the daily wash-down and brushing, unless you think there’s something else we should look at. Hooves feeling fine?”
This was weird.
“Yeah… uh, I think so.”
“And you’ve probably got a couple days before Danny or the Wickmans’ll call for a semen extraction -”
Ben nearly spit out his food.
“-so … Yo, are you sure you’re feeling alright? Did I fuck up the quiche?”
He was covering his head with his hands, and it took all of his willpower to ignore what he just heard and shake his head.
“Okay. Then just shut up and eat, and let me tell ‘ya about that Maria…”
This was apparently, routine for Ben in this reality. This was like taking care of a horse. Reed was not just a workmate, but literally his life assistant. It hadn’t really occurred to him how a centaur would live in the modern world, and it was quite intriguing. He was curious about what other people thought of him, and how other parts of his life worked. However, it hadn’t been a goal to be a centaur for more than an hour, and… this just wasn’t right!
He needed to get out of this. But what was the best decision to make? Should he ask Reed to drive him to Cityville right now, or wait it out and approach the situation more cautiously? Maybe the Chronivac would fix itself, and he wouldn’t even need to do anything.
“Hey, Reed…”