You go to the bathroom and look at yourself, you flash a smile and then look more closely, something is different.
Your temples, they are starting to gray, and in general your hair might be a shade or so darker, its hard to tell. As you gaze at yourself more, you start to think that you actually look pretty young and dare you say, fetching. Not to mentions you seem much slimmer than you have been in years... you have been trying to diet, maybe this last one is actually paying off?
Wait... no, that's not right at all... you focus on the things that seem out of place, besides losing the gray your hair is a lighter shade... you lost at least 20 lbs, wait you are supposed to be young... but how young? Younger than this, right? 30? 25?
You begin shaving to clean up your goatee and the absurd thought still pesters you until a moment of clarity breaks through, "I'm 15..." you mumble in disbelief... "I'm fucking 15..."
The reality of it washes over you, certain of its truth but still hard to accept... you've had sex countless times, you have years of work experience, a wife, a mortgage, a kid, can I really be 15? "Yes" your mouth blurts out with conviction.
You are over 50% turned into your father but thankfully the mental aspect of the change seems to be lagging behind. Unfortunately, it also seems to be catching up fast...
You finish shaving and leave the master bedroom, you consciously enter the room that some part of your mind thinks of as it's own, and another part of you thinks it should be a guest bedroom or office. There are clothes on the floor you don't recognize as your own, and a game console connected to a t.v. you don't remember playing, On the unmade bed you hesitate to believe you awoke from, lie a pair of green lined socks which some part of you insists are... pfft, magical...
You go through the trouble to remove your current pair of socks and put on this pair of green lined socks. This whole idea feels childish but you feel a deep rooted need to prove it to yourself... for some reason.
You lumber into your son Timmy's room feeling a warmth starting in your feet and moving into your ankles. You need to loose some weight and you know it. By the time you find a pair of soccer cleats from this summer the heat has moved to your knees. You grimace as you stand back up moving over to his twin bed. The springs creak and groan as your 225 lb body eases onto the bed that has never born much more than 100 lbs at once. You bend over dropping the shoes before you feeling the warmth in your quads and moving to your waist. With a sigh you stick your big toe into each of his children's size 4.5 shoes as that's all they will accommodate of your men's size 12w foot.
After another minute or two, the warm sensation has reached your waist and it's beginning to concern you, maybe you're having a reaction, or... what are the symptoms of a heart attack, nerve damage?
The warm feeling spreads to your chest and quickly radiates out your arms. You look at your hands and see nothing wrong with them as they tingle. Your attention is pulled away as your second and third toes slip into into the shoes as your breath catches in your throat from awe, the warmth washes over your face. You have shrunk!
You were right, you do have magic socks! Slowly the invasive mental presence of being your father fades and you slip your feet the rest of the way into the shoes. The heat persists and after a few moments sorting your thoughts and taking stock of everything that's happened, you realize that you are boiling.
Did Timmy have a fever last time he wore his soccer gear? Wait, the heat started before the shoes were on. "This is new..." you said worriedly in a familiar 10 year old voice.
You had wanted to stay as Tim for over an hour because you were unsure of the specifics of negating The Daddening. Was it really just the last non-you transformation the socks facilitated for you, or could it be the number of different times you forced your body to become dad, or duration you were him, or that you kept the socks on while him in the shoes? This could be your last night to figure it out, and your "senior moments" have been becoming uncomfortably common. This really needs to work!
Concerned by the new reaction you want to revert back and remove the socks immediately but you also fear not reversing your current progression.
Erring on the side of caution, you slip your feet out of Tim's cleats and into your own shoes which were still sized for the 15 year old you, if slightly damaged from a few hours of accommodating a 20 year old version of you.
The warm tingling feeling only intensified as you sat there waiting for the changes to begin. The tingling became a dull stabbing but still no obvious changes. You clopped your way awkwardly to the bathroom trying not to slip out of the shoes and holding your shorts up, thinking to get a better view in the mirror. As you continued to wait you began to notice your hair beginning to darken, and height begin to increase. As always it was fascinating to watch but you were increasingly distracted by the sharpening pains you were feeling. As the shoes began to feel snug you decided to risk it and interrupt the transformation but doubled over in sudden pain as it felt as though a knife had pierced your stomach.
You lifted your shirt, certain you'd find blood, but your slowly expanding stomach looked fine, you even stepped back and viewed it from the mirror finding nothing out of the ordinary. Without warning a similar feeling struck your left leg causing you to reflexively stop using it for support and so you fell, a second later the pain struck in your lower right back making you flail on the floor. Panicked you desperately tried to kick off the now much too small shoes to remove the socks but they were stuck, Then your left upper pec felt the same pain, and immediately after your neck.
Each shot of pain caused you to cry out, grabbing at the area and twist, which within 5 seconds of falling became uncontrolled convulsions as the time between attacks halved each time and pain was coming from everywhere. Then you blacked out.