Girls-only dorm? How?…
The only thing I could think of involved the barriers between realities breaking down and a version where this was always a girls dorm bleeding through. Was that what happened to me? Was I just the forerunner to the entire building breaking? What did that mean to my former roommates?
The chaos of girlish screams and half covered flesh was hard to parse into anything that made sense. I glimpsed a girl with curly hair a blend of brown and streaked blonde, decked out in a dozen colorful bracelets, wearing denim overalls, and peeking beneath a white top in surprise at her boobs. When she vanished out of sight, she was replaced by a tanned girl with glasses at the tip of her nose wearing a rather flirty looking sharp red dress filled with cartoony yellow and orange flowers.
This girl grimaced wildly while trying to figure out if she wanted the hem of her dress hiked up higher or as low as it would go while balancing how much cleavage was showing. One in a black dress with red and blue roses throughout had already lost her battle with cleavage and a wide neckline. The girls wearing more conservative tops with stretchy pants looked like they started to get dressed but hadn’t finished.
All the girls I could see looked at least somewhat peculiar. Not that I was anyone to judge them. The most bewildering thing was that I appeared to be the only normal girl in this mess. I had to get away before they presumed Bea could help.
The side sliding door took me around to the back of the building. I could still hear high pitched screams but as like distant cries from a football game gone awry. I ventured away from the dorm and towards the parking lot. It already had some spillover. I saw several random women in states of half dress rushing towards trucks and SUVs. One in particular was a redhead with her locks ornately made up in a princess style wearing blue yoga pants and a sports bra with one side in danger of popping loose.
To say all this was simply ‘surreal’ stretched any definition of the word past all meaning. It felt like I was watching what should’ve been a movie or an art performance. The closest thing to normal involved one girl hauling ass around a road curve with a backpack slung across her shoulder and a neon green bikini with black accents doing its best to hang on.
At a certain point, it seemed like the screaming and panic was exhausted or everyone needed to catch their breath and a weird calm settled. Since I was out here, I didn’t feel like going back yet. So, I figured I might as well wander and see how the rest of campus was fairing. It wasn’t lost on me that I was once again taking a random walk to clear my head.
Walking didn’t get any easier out here. In fact, I felt more exposed and like I was in the most obvious, absurd costume. I was wearing a flipping skirt! Why did no one point and laugh about this? How could it be normal?
My first, heart-racing fear was that if I wasn’t careful, then everyone would see my balls. Followed by the realization that was impossible and, instead, people were going to see I didn’t have any balls. My brain couldn’t decide which notion was more terrifying.
The gray top, despite feeling a little too cute for public, didn’t stir as many feelings. But the subtle, distended shape at Bea’s chest still failed common sense. Instead of understanding that I had boobs, my brain still guessed that something was stuffed underneath or it was just weirdly tenting in a way that needed to be smoothed down. My brain had seen everything. It was just being stubborn and irrational. But muscle memory and decades of expectation seemed hard to change in mere hours.
However, that I didn’t need to consciously tell myself how to walk like this meant some part was already adapting to things it was never meant to understand. Denial and compartmentalization felt hopeless at this point. As much as I hoped for Beatrice as a separate entity from myself, cutting her off was impossible. Walking with her sleek, polished thighs dangling out of a cute skirt had been my choice.
I was this shy, cute, adventurous, thoughtful, playful, and popular goth girl. Unfortunately, those were all backstory characteristics. Playing that role felt like the worst form of forgery. Whatever photos I took for her fans were just pale imitations. Whatever excuses I might confabulate for her roommates felt even worse. A notion soon started to twist and turn in my thoughts, like thin strands of thread twisting together into the hopes of something bigger. I’d figure it out later though, just walking took enough brain power.
Marshall had Anatomy classes and once mentioned that the angle of the femur and a wider, flatter female pelvis changed the way women walked versus men. He also had an embarrassing story from when he visited his aunt’s elementary school class and tried to convey what he learned by showing the difference between girls and boys so far as these shapes and angles by having a boy and a girl volunteer to try and touch their toes when against the wall.
What he overlooked, however, was that all of the kids were inherently clumsy and also weren’t far enough into puberty to make a difference. It at least got the kids laughing and trying to stretch to see if they could do it. I had no idea if my balance was altered enough for that, but I could tell that something was different. My hips definitely had more of a swing forward followed by a dip rowing with the receding leg.
It reminded me of when I took a multi/day roadtrip with my eldest sister in her brand-new sport utility car. That one had rigidly shaped seats. Two days in, it felt like it was digging into my leg and back muscles and I was getting a workout. This also felt like it was going to exhaust my thighs and back swiftly but more because I was fighting between the way I usually walked and the way this body wanted to walk. If it weren’t happening to me, then it might be rather fascinating.
Still, I walked. The nearest dorms were just past the softball fields. They only played games over the weekend, so they were empty. Compared to the larger dorms, the trio of buildings over here were three stories tall but had half as many rooms. This part of campus still had plenty of male students.
I roomed here in my first year. Except for a communal one on each floor, there were no kitchens. The elevator was so close to where I lived that it was impossible to not hear it rattling all the time, especially in the middle of the night. The only upside was when we told each other scary stories and it provided eerie creaking through the walls.
The place looked pretty much the same. I cast a look around before continuing past the elevator and over into the main common area. Shit…
My former neighbor, Brian, was filling a large pot with water for pasta. Bad timing or exactly the sort of timing and luck I had. He turned, noticed me, and then continued to notice me.
“Hey there, what’s up?”
That sounded suspiciously friendly. I wasn’t used to that from him unless he was talking to a pretty girl. I was just the dismal dweeb who lived nearby and would pop over to talk Marvel at all the wrong times. Making Bea’s pretty face smile politely, I responded, “Hello. Not much. Just some craziness. Taking a walk.”
To my ears, all that sounded way too much like I was secretly flirting with him. The greeting was too chipper and the tone too conversational. Too naïve. But it felt wrong to be somber and reserved, despite the whole goth thing. He kept his curiosity up. “Craziness?”
I did my best to downplay it. He probably heard the screams as well as multiple vehicles fleeing, since the walls of these dorms were lacking. I characterized them as some sort of celebration, while maintaining there didn’t seem to be anything dangerous going on. He started cooking but dwelled on me.
“I have a hard time knowing though”, just slipped out of me as an unnecessary addition. I could tell from his smirk, the comment “that’s what she said”, was happening in his brain. He was just above actually saying it.
It was strange to feel and parse all these little things from Beatrice‘s perspective. They definitely hung on the fact that I was a girl, no matter if my look was understated or obvious. I didn’t feel offended that much, but that was more because whatever self-esteem I should’ve had still hovered near zero. I was annoyed for Beatrice‘s sake.
Brian wasn’t really doing anything that felt over a line, but he was treating me differently in uncomfortable ways. Perhaps it was a small mercy that my boobs didn’t have greater evidence.
Before I could think of just the right thing to say that other people would cleverly think of before me, a strange electricity filled the air with a sense of a light. It was almost as though there was someone else in the room who I couldn’t see projecting it.
All it took was a blink and Brian was someone else, a woman standing there in shock as her changes settled in. She had on a pair of pink, snug short shorts that covered very little of her full thighs. She was full figured with a soft but lean face and fair blonde hair tied up into a loose ponytail. The big deal however was her pitch dark snug purple top showing a hand’s length of diving cleavage. They had to be the size of a personal watermelons each and vigorously shook with each move she made.
I almost felt bad for her as she stared in shock at her new features. It didn’t take long to realize that she wasn’t the only one affected nearby and this was probably another dorm changed.
She didn’t stick around, as she bolted for her room, scrambled for her keys, and dashed inside. I made sure to turn down the heat on her pot so there wouldn’t be a mess.
I was surely soon to be flooded with a swarm of terrified, jiggling new girls, but I took a quiet moment before that to ask the empty room, “Is there someone there?” It was a long shot and an idle notion. If spirits had infested campus and were playing an ever-increasing trick on us, then it was debatable whether I wanted to get their attention. After all, they left me with a modest shape while others had more to deal with.
I clarified my question. “I felt someone earlier and I just wanted to thank you. I don’t know why me. Or how it works… but thank you.”
There were so many better ways I could’ve phrased that, but it was done and, if busty consequences befell me, then so be it. I walked out of the dorm, which was now Sampson Hall. It wasn’t the only one that seemed to be altered as the other two in the area appeared different and with scrambling women rushing about.
It took me a minute to realize a slip of paper was in my hands. The slip appeared like any scrap of notebook paper I might see, but it had the words, “You’re welcome. You were my first and my favorite. I hope you’re happy with how you turned out. This will be a women’s college pretty soon. Are there any modifications you would like? I’ve noticed you seem envious of others. Can I help? If you have any requests, please write them on the back of this and leave it on any open table in your dorm in thirty minutes from [current time written].”
There was someone or something out there. And they were going to change everyone around. I was the first? I was the favorite? That seemed like the most inscrutable notion. Modifications? So many possibilities dashed through my thoughts like spinning particles.