James took a big sip from his canteen, staring at the crack in the canyon wall, with the charcoal arrow pointing in. He really couldn't believe he was doing this, and for Alan's sake of all people.
Alan had disappeared three months ago. That much wasn't out of the ordinary for Alan. He was just one of those guys. Dropped off the face of the earth, turned up months later with some crazy story about how he'd decided to spend the whole spring in the Australian outback or something. This time was different though. For once he'd said where he was going, and from the sound of it, he really did drop off the face of the earth.
James wiped some sweat off his forehead and took inventory again. Flashlight, pitons, compass, canteen, flares... Alan said the path through the cave was perfectly safe, but Alan also came in here and never came out.
If he wasn't totally high when he wrote that blog post about this place (and that was a big if), and that was a big if, Alan found this random little cave in the middle of goddamn nowhere after a bunch of "research" on leylines, numbers stations, something about magnetic ressonance... who knows. Anyway, he found this cave, wrote a big long post about it, and ended it with some bizarre screen about magical transformations and how he had to go back, and... that was it.
James really wasn't sure what he was going to find in here, but if he had to place a bet, it'd be Alan's body, either slummed on the floor after huffing some weird cave fumes, or under some kind of cave-in. Instead, after a claustrophobic bit of spelunking, he found some more of Alan's charcoal scribblings. A big long line across the floor and walls of a narrow gap, with "RIGHT HERE!" scratched in front. James shouted Alan's name. Bit of an echo but no reply. He really hated these tighter spaces but he clearly had to go further in.
Right as he started sidling along, James stopped dead in his tracks, staring at his right arm. It was a pale greenish blue, and the tan work glove he was wearing was suddenly black and fingerless. In shock, he backed out, and everything was normal again. Was he hallucinating?
After stopping for a bit, trying to taste the air, drink some water, otherwise verify there wasn't some sort of gas screwing with him, he started experimenting. Every time he reached past the line, his arm changed again. Holding out the canteen, it became an aluminum water bottle. The flashlight went from a black handle and LED array to a pink handle and single bulb.
This was exactly the sort of thing Alan had written about but how the hell could this be real? It couldn't be, really. So James was just going to try to ignore it, hurry along, find Alan, and get the hell out of this cave before whatever was in the air put him out.
The passage was way too damn narrow. Probably would have torn James' shirt if it hadn't turned into some kind of reinforced denim vest. The weirdness at least was distracting enough not to focus too much on fear of getting stuck or crushed or lost in the dark. Things opened back up eventually, and started sloping up. There was another mark in Alan's handwriting, "THIS WAY BACK" but it was in chalk now, not coal. Par for the course. Everything was really getting to James now, so he just rushed on as fast as the twisting passages allowed. Eventually, there was daylight again... sort of.
The color of everything was off. The sky looked a bit green, the sun... James blinked and looked away from. Not something to stare right at after all that time in the dark. James took another big drink of water and started dusting off, taking in a few other changes for the first time.
His hair was longer, and grey now? Well no, more of a very pale blue. He'd... lost a lot of weight? Slender arms. A flat stomach... which he could see, his shirt having turned into this vest and too-short tank top combo. Pants to shorts too, hairless legs. Nicer boots than he'd started with. Everything fit way tighter than he was used to too. And riding up in places... that it really shouldn't. It was hard to ignore the thought that crossing that line in the cave had turned him into a girl, He didn't want to pull down his shorts and confirm that though, and tried to focus on how much more likely it was that he was high on gas fumes and hallucinating all this.
On the upside, the air was a lot less dry, the heat wasn't nearly as bad. There was a sound of rushing water from somewhere around here. Maybe not safe to drink, but good for splashing in his face to snap out of this maybe, and the most likely way for Alan to have headed. Time to press on?