Mysterious Changes - Part 4

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We were standing just outside the school. A few of the guys and even some of the girls had looked at her strangely, although Ms Patterson, the Freshman English teacher had cheerfully greeted her with a "Good morning, Lisa" on her way into the building.  I put my arm around her tiny waist and said, "Good luck, sis."  "Thanks. I'll need it."  I thought about Lisa all through the first period. I wondered how she was getting along. But I had something else to wonder about by the second period. Marty was supposed to be in that class with me, but his seat was empty. It was Mr. Rustin's math class, and he hated it whenever anyone cut class.

Viewing the empty seat, he challenged the class, "Does anyone know where Ms. James is this morning?"  There was a soft gasp from some of the class members and a little whispering. Most looked confused, but I knew at once what was going on. Marty James didn't exist anymore, but a quick look at Ron told me that I was the only one in the room that had any inkling of what had actually happened to him.  Judy started to say, "Mr. Rustin, do you mean Mart"

"She's sick today!" I blurted out. Judy looked at me as if I had just lost my mind.

Well, it was too late to stop now so I continued, "I talked to her last night. It's the flu."  By now everyone in the class even Ron was looking at me as if I was a candidate for my very own rubber room.  "Well, her mother needs to call and let the office know," Mr. Rustin said sternly. "If you talk to her again, Mr. Hall, tell her that."

"I will, sir."  After class, several of my fellow students grouped around me.  "Just what were you babbling about in there?" Judy wanted to know.  "I know," Kevin chimed in. "I talked to my sister after the first period. She's in class with Steve's brother, only Lucas is a girl."

"What?" everyone seemed to say at once.  "You mean that girl last night that was a no-hitter?" Ron asked.

I nodded. "It was a no-shitter." Between Ron and I, we filled in our friends in the few minutes between classes. Most of them, of course, didn't want to believe us, but Mr. Rustin's reference to Ms. James gave them little choice.  "So what are you going to do now?" Judy asked as the group broke up heading for their next classes.  "I'm going to check on my sister after the next class and go over to Marty's house."  "Then I'm coming with you," Judy told me.

I was in no position to argue with her. Besides, I really didn't want to face the new Marty all by myself.  It turned out Lisa wanted to go, too. Her morning had gone about as well as it could have under the circumstances. As it turned out, all of her fellow students believed her, but only because Dave Payne verified her story and more importantly every one of her teachers remembered her as Lisa Ann Hall. They were strangely accepting of her story.

Maybe it was because they had been raised on Harry Potter books and the prospect of magic didn't seem so alien to them.  "So what do you think about being a girl?" Judy asked Lisa when we were in the car and on our way to Marty's house.  Lisa was sitting next to me, and from the corner of my eye, I could see her considering the question. "It's strange," she said at last. "I feel so small and weak.

I'd rather be a guy again, but if I have to be, like this, I guess I can stand it."  It took a lot for her to say that, I realized. Again, I felt very proud of her. She was taking it like a, I almost said taking it like a man. Obviously, that was the wrong way to look at it. But she was taking it in stride.

Good for her, I thought. I wondered if she realized that in her own way, she was exhibiting strengths Lucas never had.  All the shades were drawn at Marty's house. His parents weren't home; I was sure of that. They both commuted to suburban Omaha about forty miles away. But I was pretty sure Marty was inside or the person who used to be Marty.

I knocked on the door. I could hear a television playing, but suddenly it went silent. I knocked again, but there was still no response.  "Come on, Marty!" I yelled. "I know you're in there and I know what happened to you. Open up." Admittedly, I wasn't positive about what had happened to Marty, but I was starting to see a pattern.  At last, a feminine voice from inside called, "Marty's not here. Go away."  "Sorry, pal. We're not leaving. Now let us in and maybe we can help."  I sensed Marty's reluctance. There was silence from inside the house, and I could imagine Marty or the girl who used to be Marty standing by the door uncertain as to whether or not to open the door.

I felt a sense of relief as the lock clicked and the door slowly opened. Marty remained behind the door where we couldn't see him or if my suspicions were right, her. "Nobody can help," that forlorn feminine voice sobbed.  All three of us stepped into the house, quiet and sober as if entering a hospital room to see a critically ill patient. I suppose in a way, that was pretty much what we were doing.

The room was dark, but there was sufficient light to see what had happened. The girl who had been Marty was wearing a robe that she clutched closely to herself. If I looked carefully at her face, I could almost see Marty there. But the newly-feminized face and the light brown hair were the only remnants of the Marty I knew. And even the hair had more body and was now shoulder length. As for the rest of her body, like the Marty I knew, she was a little overweight.

She wasn't exactly fat, but where Marty's extra pounds could be mistaken for muscles at a distance, her newly widened hips and large breasts made her look like one of those women in an old European painting.  But there was nothing wrong with her that the loss of a few pounds wouldn't fix, I thought. Then I chastised myself for the thought.

This was Marty, after all, no matter what my eyes told me.  Judy was dumbstruck. She had seen what had happened to Lisa of course, but Lisa was handling things pretty well. Marty looked like a wreck.  "How did it happen, Marty?" I asked her.

"It's Marsha now," she said, nearly crying. "That's what it says on my driver's license. And it says the same thing on my school ID. And it's what my parents call me."  It was too much for her. She slumped onto the living room couch and bawled. Judy rushed to her side and put an arm around her. To my surprise, Lisa rushed to her other side and did the same thing.  We let her cry. There seemed to be nothing else we could do.

Aware that I was by magical means the only guy in the room, I sat down and tried to be as inconspicuous as possible. My stomach was growling loudly, though. I hadn't eaten anything since my early breakfast. Of course, the same was probably true for Lisa and Judy, but they didn't seem to mind as much. I guess I just had that much more body to maintain.  When the crying subsided, I leaned forward and asked, "How did this happen to you?"  She shook her head. "You wouldn't believe me."  It was Lisa who convinced her. "Look, Marsha, do you remember Steve's brother, Lucas?"  "S, sure."  "Well take a look at me.

I'm Lucas or at least I used to be."  Marty's mouth flew open. "You, too? How, how many others?"  "As far as I know just the two of us," Lisa answered. I thought about mentioning Doc Winter but kept still. It wasn't the time or place misery really doesn't like company all that much.  "At least you got a nice-looking body," Marty pointed out. "Look at me I'm Miss Piggy."  Lisa patted her hand. "Nonsense. You could really be very nice looking. All you need is a little exercise."

So I wasn't the only one who thought that. Marsha like Marty wasn't bad looking. All she needed was to tone up her body a little bit and she'd be a good-looking girl. How many times had I told Marty he needed to exercise more? It seemed as if he had become his female counterpart in every way imaginable including his refusal to exercise. The results had been roughly the same. He had gone from being flabby Marty to pudgy Marsha.

When I thought about it, Lucas had also been turned into a very likely female equivalent. She was slim and attractive the product of our parents' genetic heritage and Lucas's regimen of exercise that Lisa seemed to have inherited.  It was a small sample, but I suspected if anyone else got changed, we'd find no white guys becoming black girls or homely guys becoming Miss America contestants. They say nature abhors a vacuum.

I was beginning to suspect nature also abhorred radical changes, and maybe even magic had to conform to that. Of course, a sex change might be viewed as being pretty radical, but at its basic level, it was really just a switch at the chromosome level. So once our mysterious Indian woman flipped a guy's chromosomes, nature or time or God or whatever took over to make that switch seem normal.  But if that was the case, why did some of us remember the way things originally were?

It seemed as if age was a factor. Our parents and our teachers accepted the changes by not recognizing them. Doc Winter, for example, acted as if she had always been a woman. Our parents remembered only Lisa just as Marty's parents remembered Marsha. Our teachers had no idea things had changed. But my classmates remembered Marty and Lucas, and Marsha and Lisa knew they had been changed. Why?  "Come on, Marsha," Lisa urged. "Tell us what happened."  In a halting voice barely able to hold back more tears, Marsha told us her story, Marty had been in a great mood when he left us.

He had cash in his pocket and a date with an exotically attractive girl. He couldn't believe his luck. She had actually come on to him!  He had been hanging around outside the carnival's business office waiting to be assigned a job when she had come out of nowhere. There were better-looking guys standing around, but she walked right up to him. She told him she really liked the AC/DC T-shirt he was wearing, although strangely, she had no idea what it referred to. She introduced herself as the fortuneteller with the carnival.

They had struck up a conversation, and the next thing Marty knew, the girl was asking him out on a date.  She seemed disappointed that he couldn't go with her right then, but he told her he had committed to work for a while. She brightened though when he suggested they meet later. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary if you could accept that somebody like Marty would be able to pick up with a hot chick from the carnival just like that.

Either she hadn't given him her name or he had forgotten it. That had seemed a little odd to Marty, but he just figured he finds out what it was when they got together. She had seemed genuinely happy to see him, and the two of them had stolen away from the carnival.  "I know a nice, quiet place where we can be alone," she had told him in a sultry voice.

It was starting to sound better and better. Marty would have been happy meeting her over Cokes at the Dairy Queen, but being alone with her seemed even better.  They had ended up out on Red Willow Creek, just upstream from the monument. The girl seemed in a hurry, but to Marty, it appeared that what she was hurrying to do was going to be fine with him. He was lying there as she loosened his clothing. She had a wide smile on her face as she straddled him, Marsha lowered her head. "I...I can't talk about it."  I peered at her. "Look, Marsha, if you ever want to be Marty again, you'd better tell us everything.

We want to find that woman and make her change you and Lisa back. Something you're holding back might be just the clue we need."  Marsha considered that for a moment. "All right," she said hesitantly, "but please don't repeat this to anyone. Please!"  We all promised we would keep quiet.  "She... she had my pants down and my T-shirt off. But she was still dressed. I thought maybe she was going to give me a... you know."  "A blow job." To my surprise, it was Judy who had prompted that.  Marsha nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, that's it. But I guess that was too much to hope for.

She snuggled up next to me. She wrapped her hand around my tool, so I thought I was in for a hand job. I mean, it wasn't as good as a blow job, but what the hell?  "She had... a touch that almost sent me over the edge. I had never felt like that before. My body started tingling. At first, it felt good. It sort of started between my legs, and I just thought well, you know what I thought. But when it spread through my whole body, I sort of got panicky. And then she started laughing. I tried to grab her and make her stop laughing, but she got up and moved away, still laughing.  "I looked down to see what she was laughing about. I had changed.

I was lying there on the ground with a pink T-shirt and a bra sitting next to me. I had tits! I had these big, fat tits, and I was wearing shorts, but they were down around my knees. My dick felt funny, so I reached down and... it wasn't there! I was kind of...well, wet and sticky, and I felt like I was"  "Aroused," Judy filled in.  Marsha's face became bright red. "Yeah."  "Did she say anything to you?" I asked, changing the subject for Marsha's benefit.  "Yeah, but I didn't understand any of it. She sort of chanted in something like Indian talk.

Just before she left me, she told me to tell my father to let her go. I couldn't understand what she meant.  "I tried to get up and follow her, but it was like I was drunk or something. I couldn't even move much. And then I finally stood up and saw everything she did to me. I was a girl! I was a"  With that, she broke down into massive sobs again. There was nothing we could do but let her cry. At least she had Judy and Lisa to hold onto.

When Marty or rather Marsha finally stopped crying, Judy patted her hand and said, "Come on, we need to get you ready for school."  The color drained from Marsha's face. "I can't go to school like... like this."  "I don't see that you have much choice," Judy told her. "Your parents and your teachers aren't going to excuse you from school without a good reason."  "And having my sex changed isn't a good reason?"

"Look, Marsha," Lisa told her. "It happened to me, too. Don't worry. Everybody at school will be cool about it. They were with me."  "And tonight," I added, "the guys and I will hunt that fortuneteller or whatever she is down and make her change you guys back."  Judy turned to me and frowned. "Do you think that's wise, Steve? She can change you guys as easily as she could change Marsha and Lisa."

I had thought about that, but I had also thought about what I considered to be reasonable precautions. "We'll work in pairs, and we'll have a girl with us so we don't have to touch her. It seems she needs to touch someone to change them."  "You can't be sure of that," Judy cautioned. "What if she changes the girls into guys?"  I really hadn't thought about that, but I just shrugged. "At this point, we can't be too sure of anything, can we?

But if we don't do something to find her, it's going to be Lisa and Marsha forever."  "I suppose you're right," she admitted, turning her attention to Marsha.  Judy did a terrific job on Marsha. When she and Lisa led Marsha back into the living room, I would have challenged anyone to suspect that Marsha hadn't been a girl all her life. She was undeniably a little on the hefty side, but a soft white blouse and tailored khaki slacks gave her a well-groomed look. Her hair had left long, cascading over her shoulders to frame her face and give it character. She wore wedge sandals which made her a little taller, causing her to just look big and not particularly heavy.

For makeup, they had gone with a subtle look to reduce any particular feature and give her a more sophisticated look.  Okay, so everything Judy did to her didn't change the fact that she was overweight, but I still had to admit she looked pretty good. I had dated worse lots worse. "Marsha you look... great!"  She looked at me shyly. "Do you really think so?"  "I'll walk you to class myself," I told her.  She gave me a smile that made her look as if she had been a girl all her life.

I couldn't help but feel a little uncomfortable, but I tried to hide it.  As we drove back to school, Judy drilled Marsha with girl stuff how to walk, how to talk that sort of thing. I even caught Lisa listening to her as well. Then I noticed there was a subtle change in Lisa's makeup. Apparently, Marsha hadn't been the only one Judy had worked on.  "You seem to be really getting into this girl thing," I told her quietly. It was meant lightly, but she looked at me seriously.  "I might as well," she said. "I may be one for the next eighty years or so."

"We'll find her and make her change you back," I replied confidently, and I really did believe that we would. Leeds wasn't a big city. The Indian woman couldn't hide out forever. We'd find her and figure out some way to make her change Marsha and Lisa back into guys.  She patted my arm. "You're a good big brother."  I smiled at that. I just wish she hadn't said it so sadly.  When we got back to school, I was relieved to see Ron had bagged up some lunch for us. We all gratefully dug in.

It was only school cafeteria food, but it tasted great on an empty stomach. Then I escorted Marsha to her first-afternoon class. It was a class we shared as did Ron and Judy so we were able to cushion the impact for Marsha.  Naturally, everyone was curious. Lucas's transformation into Lisa was now well known throughout the school, so Marty's transformation into Marsha was accepted quickly.

Oh, there were curious stares and a couple of questions, but Marsha managed to tell her story before the teacher came in for class.  By the time school ended, we had put together a team of intrepid classmates who were willing to help us hunt down the Indian woman. Ron, Judy, and I would form one team, while Kevin, Andy, and Marsha would form another. Dave and Lisa had enlisted another of their classmates to help as well.

While the nine of us had made it our only goal to find the Indian woman, most of our other friends had agreed to keep their eyes open and tell us if they saw her.