It was probably about two minutes until John bothered to do anything in the shower other than stand under the hot water and rotate slowly. It was very easy after such a long trip to let inertia take its course and stand there, feeling the warmth enter his body. It was almost energizing, in a way, to John. Taking a nice shower was a good way to temporarily forget about all of his worries and relax, like what vacation was for.
Those two minutes started to feel like eternity, however, after the initial bliss wore off and John realized something along the lines of “Yeah, I’m just standing under this water doing nothing” He reached for the small bottle of hotel shampoo and squeezed a generous amount into his hands, knowing that there would be a new bottle for him tomorrow. He lathered it up and started rubbing it through his hair, digging into his scalp a bit to get a good cleaning. As he rubbed his scalp, he started feeling a tingle all over his head. It felt very relaxing to John.
He stepped back a pace, going back under the water pouring from the showerhead. The shampoo in his hair started to cascade down his body as it mixed with the water. Where the white froth of the shampoo lingered on John’s skin, hair started to grow. John hadn’t been overly hairy before, just some hair on his arms and legs, and some short, silky, white hairs on his chest, but the new hairs poking out of his skin were black as pitch. A particularly thick region of hair grew on his face as his goatee expanded to a thick, short beard, connecting with the hair on his head and circling his mouth.
The tingling sensation remained in John’s head as he rinsed the shampoo off of himself. He grabbed the bar of soap next and began to lather that up in his hands. He started cleaning himself with the soap, feeling a nice tinge where the suds met skin and hair. Where the soap met the hairs, the hairs themselves grew coarser and developed a curl to them. The sensation was realized all over his body, as John grew a hairy chest, arms, stomach, shoulders, back, and legs. Other than the palms of his hands, the soles of his feet, and his hands, there was no part of his body which couldn’t be described as hirsute.
John continued washing himself with some enthusiasm, his hands rubbing his body to make sure that every inch of him got washed. He was entirely clueless that any part of him had changed, despite watching the hairs grow right out of his skin. To John, he had always been this hairy, and the pleasure he was experiencing was the same as when he first stepped in the shower, mere relaxation from a tough trip. New memories were being implanted in his brain of being a hairy child growing up and having to learn to shave early, before deciding to give it up altogether and embrace his hirsute nature.
As John stood under the water once more, now fully clean, another curiosity happened. The water, which had been doing nothing before, seemed to be having an effect on John’s skin. The pale color of John’s skin was being displaced by an almost caramel color, certainly something that would be described more aptly as “brown” than “white”. At first, John’s skin appeared to have a speckled pattern as drops fell on him and replaced his pale skin color, but after a short time the flow of the water had changed him entirely. He stood under the water for another minute past then, enjoying the warmth once more, before rationalizing that he can’t stand in the shower forever.
John turned the water off and opened the shower curtain, stepping out onto the bath mat and drying off with the towel. He looked at the mirror, which was only a little foggy from the hot shower he took. He looked at himself, seeing his hairy physique and caramel complexion, not realizing anything was out of the ordinary. He looked at that smudge again, realizing he never really tried to remove it in the shower, but quickly saw that it was Arabic script in black ink.
A brief moment of panic enveloped John, as he approached the mirror to get a better look. With every step though, his demeanor changed from worry to curiosity, and then to contentedness as his brain made new connections and memories of getting a brief Quran verse tattooed on his arm. John, while not extremely religiously conservative, certainly did believe in Allah and had gotten the tattoo to express his own take on his faith. He scratched his hairy shoulder and smiled in the mirror. Refreshed from the shower, it was time to finally do something for his vacation.