Lost to my emotions, my mind was too focused on biting back at my sister than on guiding this body against it's will. So on instinct, in my anger, I heaved my chest forward and slapped both my hands to my hips. My sister's offense to the words I had spoken dissipated quickly, instead leaving her to once more spout... "Yeah, I don't believe it. You're definitely still Mom. This sucks, I wanted to be able to actually buy a decent outfit for once." I felt stunned. My own sister couldn't tell me apart from my mother.
"I'm telling you I'm--" My words were cut off by Lucas. "Come on Dad, what was this, some lame stunt? Seems pretty fucked up to me."
"It's not a stunt--"I was interrupted again by a hand on my shoulder. It was my dad's. "You're right Mariah. In the end, we felt a little too bad for David, so we opted against the procedure." The lie sent my whole heart launching into my throat. "Aw, that's so lame. This is all because of your whining I bet, Dave." She addressed it towards me, but looked upon my mother. "Tsh, that sucks. Now I gotta pay my college fees myself? Way to blow it, little David." Lucas added. "I was lookin' forward to callin' ya Mom more too, hah!"
I was about to lose my mind, but my sister and brother were already discarding themselves from disinterest. "What are you--" I started to stop them, but my father held my shoulder tighter and pushed me into another room. Then another, then behind a closed door. "What are you doing!? What was the point in lying!?" I yelled at him. "I think it's for the best. The idea of not telling them never even crossed my mind because we had to discuss this as a group. It's perfect though. You have to be their mother now, and now they will believe you are 100%." I hated that it made any sense whatsoever.
"Not to mention, they won't know we got all that extra money, so we can keep it to ourselves." Mom added, peaking her through the door and letting herself in. "Now I can really be David, and you can be mom. It's perfect. It'll really be like nothing changed."
"It's not bad enough I have her body, now I can't even tell people I at least USED to be Dave? What about my friends!?" I exclaimed, once more finding myself inches from another breakdown. "That's... a conversation for another time. It might be complicated if you tell your friends only, but... I think for right now, it's best if you don't tell your brothers or sister." He reasoned. I hated it. "Besides, you were nervous about them making fun of you, weren't you? I could see you shaking on the ride home, and the closer we got the worse it got. This is a relief isn't it? Now you can just be their mom and be done with it."
"Think of it this way, Mom. If they think you're me, like really think you're me, they'll have to listen to you. You're their mom now, which means you can make Mariah do all sorts of chores." My mother put forth, what might have been, the first and only thing that actually sounded like some mild plus. I WOULD be able to order Mariah and Lucas around like our Mom did. "I'll think about it, for now, just... leave me alone!" I stormed off. Instinctively, I went towards my own room, but decided to head to my mother's, even if I hated the idea of it.
Once I was inside, I headed straight towards the nearby mirror. Mom's face was there to greet me, in all it's quirky nature. "My own sister didn't believe I was Dave..." My reflection gave me a pitiable smile, while shaking it's head. Shaking a bit from the defeat, I sighed and slid my hands up to my face, feeling my odd new cheeks just for a moment before passing my hands down my hair. I stopped at my neck. "I'm doing it again..." Realizing that, I thought back to my moment with Mariah, and with my jaw rigid with distaste for it... realized I had yelled at her just like my mother always did.
I spent the next 20~30 minutes in-front of that mirror. Watching myself walk, move, engage with the environment around the mirror's field of view. At the end of it, I was shocked when I said... "I can't blame my sister." Perhaps it was my perspective, from inside my mother's eyes, but I guess I just not aware until then just HOW much I had been moving like her, how much I was presenting as her in every tiny minuscule way. They were things that were so subtle I wouldn't have been able to describe them if I was asked, but watching my reflection, all I could think was... ('Yeah, mom does that when she bends over -- and, oh yeah, I remember she does sort of scratch the shoulder straps of her dress every so often, and...') The list just kept going and going. I even went so far as to record messages of myself and listen to them back. Even if what I made her say wasn't something she would ever have said, hearing it back... it just felt like I was listening to a recording of my mother in every way. How the words were spoken, how and when she paused, it was... heartbreaking.
"I really can't blame her, if she came home like this, I wouldn't have believed her either..." I said as I sat on the edge of the bed, a look of utter defeat upon my face. It just seemed so weird, I knew how to be a boy, I know I did. I remembered adjusting my pants for my balls, but as I reached down to mirror that action, I found myself lost. I remembered doing it, I remembered having balls, but at the same time... my body didn't. In truth, I didn't really remember the actual feeling of them, just the memory of the feeling. So as my new hands danced about this empty space, I found myself unsure what to do with them to mirror my boyhood actions. After-all, this body had no memory of how to do any of that. Instead it knew how to navigate around these inhuman-sized breasts, adjust for the constant weight changes, or how and when to hold back it's hair when bending it's neck. Even if all of those things were new to me. It was so mentally confusing, this situation. The end result was the same however, I looked, sounded and very much presented myself as my mother.
"Six months like this, can I really last? Can I fix these instincts, or am I just going to end up as Mom in my head too? What if I can't become someone else in six months? I feel like I'll lose my mind. I've only been mom for... maybe an hour and a half, maybe two hours. Yet I already feel like I'm about to lose it." I felt numb when I had spoken the words, but out of nowhere, I found myself crying without any control over it. Perhaps Larry was right, maybe I was experiencing mood swings.
The question inevitably became, how did I want to spend these six months, and possibly the rest of my life...