I got out my razor and shaving cream, and then paused, remembering the depilatory cream that Mildred used on her armpits and legs. She sure wouldn’t be needing it anymore.

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Twisted Throwback

part 3 of 25

by Trismegistus Shandy

This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in his Twisted universe. It's set about a generation later than "Twisted", "Twisted Pink", etc. A somewhat different version was serialized on the morpheuscabinet2 mailing list in January-April 2014.

Thanks to Morpheus, Maggie Finson, D.A.W., Johanna, and JM for beta-reading earlier drafts. Thanks to Grover, Paps Paw, and others who commented on the earlier serial.

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The next morning I woke up early, but I let Mildred have the first shower, both because she needed to get ready sooner than I did, and because I was dreading having to look at my naked body for ten solid minutes. The brief glimpses of myself I’d had when I was changing clothes the day before, and when I had to open my fly to pee, had been the most uncomfortable moments I’d had since my Twist, and I wanted to put off my shower as long as I could.

I did the last of my homework from the last couple of days' assignments, and then picked up the novel I’d been reading. I had a hard time concentrating on it, and I wondered if it was an effect of my Twist — maybe I’d only be able to enjoy reading nonfiction now? Or it could be I hadn’t read a word of it in a couple of days, what with visiting with Uncle Jack all Monday evening, and then being distracted by my Twist and relatives coming over Tuesday, and I’d just forgotten who some of the characters were and what they were doing. When I heard noises from the kitchen, I put the book down and went downstairs.

Uncle Jack was up and fixing coffee. “Want some?” he asked.

“I don’t like coffee,” I said.

He smiled. “Are you sure?”

“No,” I admitted. “Pour me just a sip or two and I’ll find out.”

No, I still didn’t like coffee. That was one more bit of my old self I could hang onto. I poured myself a bowl of cereal and sat down to eat; Uncle Jack sat at the other end of the kitchen table and sipped his coffee meditatively.

“Do you remember what you dreamed this morning?” he asked suddenly.

“...No,” I said after thinking about it for a moment. “I did dream something, but it all slipped away the moment I got up. You know how it is.”

“Yeah. I just wondered... sometimes a newly Twisted person has really vivid dreams for a while, and they can help you figure out your Twist. Not always, and you want to avoid jumping to conclusions based on ordinary random dreams. But... I dreamed about being in far-off places a lot, the first couple of weeks after I Twisted. Places I’d seen in movies, or on the news. In one dream I was walking down a street in Paris, looking up at the Eiffel Tower, for instance. It turned out that actual Paris was nothing like that dream; they weren’t clairvoyant or precognitive or anything. But my dreaming mind knew I wanted to travel before my waking mind knew.”

“Do you still dream like that?” I asked.

“Well, sure. I mean, I’m always traveling, so it makes sense I’d usually be traveling in my dreams too. But I sometimes get dreams of being a boy, back home, just living here in Trittsville. And... since I saw Mindy and Tim last, I’ve dreamed a couple of times about them. In this dream I’m living there in Austin with them, and I get up and we eat breakfast together, and then Mindy goes to work and I take Tim to school on the way to work... it’s all really mundane, but completely impossible.”

We were silent for a while, and Mom and Mildred came downstairs about then. Mildred ate breakfast in a hurry and ran out to catch the school bus.

“Your father will take you to your appointment with Uncle Greg,” Mom said, as she ate her morning oatmeal. “He’ll be down in a few minutes.”

“No hurry,” I said. We had over two hours.

“But it’s important to be there early,” she said. “Uncle Greg’s squeezing you in at the last minute, and he has a lot of other patients to see.”

I nodded. With Uncle Greg’s healing trick, and the way his mental Twist made him so caring and compassionate, he was the most popular doctor in Trittsville, and a lot of people from Rome, Cartersville, even Atlanta and Chattanooga came to see him.

Mom went upstairs to shower and get dressed for work, and then left. Dad came downstairs half an hour later, already fully dressed in a business suit and tie. He always wears formal clothes when other people are around, even when he’s mowing the lawn or cleaning the leaves out of the gutters. His trick keeps his suit from getting sweaty or dirty.

“Are you still not ready, son?” he asked, and again I had that feeling that he’d said something wrong — even though he’d asked a question, and hadn’t asserted anything. And he wasn’t wrong: I wasn’t at all ready, hadn’t showered or changed out of my pajamas.

“No, Dad; I’ll go on up and shower now.”

“Please do.”

We still had plenty of time, and I guess I’d been procrastinating my shower till the last minute. I picked some clothes out of my closet — I hesitated over it too long; somehow none of them really appealed to me, even my favorite T-shirts. I finally forced myself to pick something at random, and went into the bathroom. I turned on the shower and adjusted the temperature just how I wanted it before I took off my pajamas, and when I did, I tried not to look at myself any more than absolutely necessary. I got in the shower and once I’d soaked myself and shampooed my hair, I closed my eyes and didn’t open them again until I needed a visual check to make sure I was thoroughly rinsed. Yep. I turned off the water and closed my eyes again, groped for a towel, and dried off before I opened them again to step out and find my clean clothes. I kept my back to the mirror until I was dressed and I needed to see to brush my hair and shave.

Even with all that delay and inefficiency, I was still ready to leave in plenty of time. Uncle Jack said: “I’m going down to Milledgeville to see Wendy; don’t hold supper for me. I’ll probably eat in Atlanta on the way home.” He drove out at the same time Dad and I did.

We got to Uncle Greg’s clinic a few minutes after nine, and sat in the waiting room for almost an hour. Since I’d caught up on my basic homework, I decided to do research for the term paper; I found and read a bunch of newspaper and blog articles about Erin Ann Pendergrass’s gubernatorial and presidential campaigns.

Finally the nurse called us back; she led us to an exam room, drew a blood sample, and then left Dad there and took me down the hall to the scanner room. I had to take off my shoes and outer clothes, everything with buttons or zippers, to step in front of the scanner; I was pretty uncomfortable with that, though it wasn’t as bad as if I were naked. Then I got dressed again and went back to the exam room, and waited with Dad for a while longer, reading more articles for my term paper.

Finally Uncle Greg came in. He doesn’t look his real age; he and his siblings age a little slower than most people, which is not uncommon for people with physical optimization Twists.

“Your mother told me you’d gone through your Twist,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“Uncomfortable,” I said. “I don’t like how I look, and I don’t like people seeing me like this — even though most of them have already seen me like this. I know I didn’t change physically, but it feels like I did.”

“Hmm... you’re right, you didn’t change physically. Look here...” He did something with his tablet, and the holographic displays on the wall lit up with two scans of me. “The one on the left is from your last checkup in July. The one on the right is today. Overall, there’s no change that can’t be accounted for by a few months' growth, except in your brain —”

“My brain?” I asked, alarmed.

“No sign of illness — the changes are probably related to this uncomfortable feeling you describe, and perhaps to your trick — have you discovered a trick yet?”

“No.”

“I can’t be sure you have one, without more specialized equipment, but I think it’s probable.”

“Nice... I hope.” There was a slight chance my trick could be both dangerous and hard to control, but the news that I probably had a trick of some kind still cheered me up.

“And this...” He pointed to my left big toe on the scan. “Does it hurt?”

“Oh... a little, I guess. I stubbed my toe Saturday afternoon; what with feeling so uncomfortable all over after my Twist, I haven’t really noticed it that much.”

“Well, that proves it, then. Even a subtle physical Twist, that just changed things inside you without altering your appearance — your Aunt Rhoda’s more efficient heart and lungs, for instance — would have fixed the bruising from the stubbed toe along with everything else. Here, take off your shoe and sock and I’ll take care of that, at least.”

“Thanks,” I said. Normally he didn’t use his healing trick on injuries as minor as that, but I was family.

After he’d healed the remaining bruise on my toe, he sat down and said, “I’m going to ask your father a couple of questions, and then I’ll ask him to leave and you and I can talk privately.”

“Okay,” I said. “That’s good.”

“Oswald, have you noticed any changes in Cyrus’s behavior or reactions since his Twist?”

Again I felt like he’d said something wrong, even though, again, it was just a question, not a statement. Dad stroked his chin thoughtfully and said:

“Nothing, I think, that he has not already mentioned. He shaved his goatee yesterday evening — I think he said that the only thing he was as yet certain of, concerning his dissatisfaction with his appearance, was that he no longer liked having facial hair.”

“No changes in his speech patterns?”

“None that I have noticed.”

(Neither Grandpa nor Dad, apparently, consciously noticed how they’d started talking differently until their parents or siblings pointed it out. I think it was Uncle Darren who figured out Grandpa was talking in blank verse — at first they’d just noticed that he was more verbose than before.)

“Well. If you’ll leave us alone for a bit, Cyrus and I will have a chat and perhaps learn something about his Twist.”

Again that feeling.

After Dad left, Uncle Greg asked me: “So, tell me more about the circumstances of your Twist. I gather you were at school when it happened — were you in class?”

“No, at lunch. I was eating and studying.”

“Not talking with your friends?”

“I was sitting with my friend Lionel, but he was busy with a game, so I decided to do some reading for Modern History.”

“Reading ahead in the textbook, or another book you were assigned for class?”

“No, research for my term paper. I was reading old news articles about different historical figures I was thinking about writing about.”

“Hmm. You were already a diligent student, so if your Twist made you more avid about schoolwork it might be hard to tell... have you noticed any evidence of that?”

“Maybe... I have been doing a lot of homework and term paper research in the last couple of days, but part of that is because I got behind over the weekend, and part of it is maybe just to distract me from this uncomfortable feeling. But after I caught up with my homework I read a few pages of a novel this morning, and I had a hard time concentrating on it, so maybe.”

“That’s unfortunate, in a way, but I’m sure you’ll get a lot of benefit from it as well. Try to pay attention in the next few days to your reading choices — if you find yourself procrastinating on homework for other classes to do extra reading for History, that might help us narrow it down. Or if, during the Christmas holidays, you find yourself still reading nonfiction in preference to fiction, that would tell us something else.”

“Okay, that makes sense.”

“Now, let’s see if we can figure out more about this uncomfortable feeling. You decided to shave your goatee — when was that?”

“Yesterday afternoon — not long after I got home from school. The first time I went to the bathroom, and saw myself in the mirror.”

“How did looking in the mirror make you feel?”

“Awful,” and I gave a shudder. “It’s... it just wasn’t right. I could hardly believe it was my face. The goatee was the worst part, but I still don’t like looking at myself in the mirror. And when I showered this morning, I couldn’t stand to look at myself; I kept my eyes closed as much as I could until I dried off and was ready to get dressed.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Many Twisted go through something similar, but it’s usually because their bodies have changed and they haven’t become accustomed to their new appearance yet. Have you any idea how you would like to look?”

“No, that’s the worst thing! I know I don’t want hair on my face, and I know I don’t want piercings or tattoos. But other than that... I just don’t know. And — oh, I thought of something else. Several times when people were talking, I’ve felt like they’re saying something wrong and I should correct them, but I can’t figure out why. When I think about what they said, I can’t find anything specific to disagree with. I felt it several times when Dad said something, and once or twice with you, and several times last night during supper.”

“Have you acted on that urge — to speak up and correct them, I mean?”

“No. Mom and Dad raised me to be polite, and I guess the Twist didn’t change that. And even if I didn’t care about being rude, I just don’t know how I would correct them when I can’t figure out what they said wrong. A couple of times it’s happened when somebody was asking a question. How can a question be wrong?”

“Have you quit beating your wife?”

“What? — Oh. I see...”

“Perhaps you’ve become more sensitive to false or unwarranted presuppositions people make when they talk? I can’t be sure. But if you’ll try to write down what people have said when you experience that feeling, and compare those utterances, you might learn something.”

“I’ll try to do that.” I pulled out my tablet and started a new file, saying: “I remember a couple of them, at least I can’t remember the exact words but I know I felt it a couple of times when you were asking Dad about me. When you asked if he’d noticed any change in my behavior, I think.” I made a note about that and put the tablet away.

“Now — about your discomfort with your appearance. I know you don’t like to look at yourself in the mirror, but try to make yourself do it, when you get home. Stare at yourself for as long as you can stand it, and try to imagine yourself looking different in various ways. Perhaps you can pin down this feeling some more.”

“I’ll do that... and Uncle Jack suggested I try looking at a bunch of pictures of various people and see if I see someone I’d like to look like.”

“Have you done that yet?”

“A little. Not much.”

“Well, it’s a good suggestion. Try it. I normally don’t approve of plastic surgery, except in cases of dire need — when someone’s been disfigured by a fire, for instance. But if your Twist compulsion is making you miserable, and plastic surgery would satisfy that compulsion, it would be medically justified.”

“Man... I hope I don’t need it. But the way I’ve been feeling I’m afraid I might.”

“Have you noticed any other unusual feelings or desires?”

I thought about it. “This morning when I was getting ready to shower, I had a hard time picking out something to wear. Usually I don’t give it much thought — I decide if it’s a T-shirt day or a button-up shirt day and then I grab one of whichever kind at random. But I looked at my closet for about five minutes and couldn’t decide, and... I don’t really like what I picked out, it just seemed less bad than some other things.”

“It sounds like your Twist is making you want to dress in a particular way — like your father, or your Aunt Rhoda.” (Aunt Rhoda always wears white.) “I’m afraid you’ll have to buy some new clothes — just look around at the different options in the store, and see what you like. Hopefully you’ll be able to buy something off the rack, rather than needing custom-made clothes like a few Twisted I’ve heard about.”

“What do you mean? I know there are super-tall Twisted that need custom clothes...”

“Or pants with a hole for a tail, or extra sleeves for extra arms. But I’m talking about compulsions; one person I’ve heard of has to wear shirts with exactly seven buttons, for instance, and another has to wear sixteenth-century formal dress — hose and ruffs and so forth.”

“Oh... I hope it’s not like that.”

“When you’re looking at pictures of people’s faces, try looking for pictures of people in a variety of costumes as well. When you figure out what kind of clothes you need, we can help you file for a Twist stipend to help pay for the new wardrobe.”

We talked for a few more minutes about things like that, and then he called Dad back in.

“I think Cyrus will do well,” he said. “I’ve recommended some exercises to help him figure out his Twist, and probably the Twist specialist will have more suggestions.”

Dad was holding his phone and looking tense. “Thank you, Uncle Greg. We need — I —” I’d never seen him like that. “We must go to the middle school at once. The office just called me to say that Mildred has gone through her Twist.”

“Go,” Uncle Greg urged. “I can fit her in this afternoon, I think — I’ll have my secretary call you.”

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I’d never seen Dad drive that fast before. I asked him what the office had said about Mildred’s Twist, and he wouldn’t say anything — it was almost like he didn’t hear me. We pulled into the middle school parking lot and he got out and ran toward the office, without locking the car; I locked the doors and hurried after him.

“I am Mildred Harper’s father,” Dad was saying to the secretary when I caught up with him. “Where is she?”

“In the clinic. Go on back... Just you,” she said, stopping me.

“She’s my sister,” I said.

“Wait here.”

So I waited. And waited. “What’s going on?” I asked the secretary.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I called both your parents. Your mother is on the way too.”

And she got there a few minutes later, carrying a large bag; she greeted me distractedly but didn’t stop to hug me or anything before the secretary showed her into the room where they had Mildred.

I found out later that she still hadn’t regained consciousness at that point. Since Dad and I were closer to the school, and the secretary had told Mom that Mildred’s new form was taller, she’d gone by the house first to pick up some clothes that probably wouldn’t fit her, but would temporarily replace the stuff that was destroyed by her Twist. She got some of her own clothes, and mine, and Dad’s, just to cover all the bases. Mom and Dad sat next to Mildred’s bed and waited for her to wake up, ready to talk her through the initial panic she’d probably feel at her Twist — unless she got mental changes that made her comfortable with her new body right away, like a few lucky people.

I sat there for forty-five minutes, reading old articles about Erin Ann Pendergrass, or trying to; I found myself reading the opening paragraph of an article about her plan for improving communication between various health agencies over and over again, unable to concentrate for worrying about Mildred. Then she walked out, leaning on Mom and Dad’s arms, wearing one of my T-shirts that was a bit too large for her, and one of Mom’s skirts that was the right length for her but looser in the waist than it was on Mom. I stood up and started toward them, but when Mildred saw me, she said “Don’t look at me!” and started sobbing.

I looked away, though it was hard; I thought about how uncomfortable I was with people seeing me and realized, after just a glimpse of her, that she was going to have it even worse. She was hairless, and her face and arms and legs were covered with iridescent scales, purple and pink and red in a complex repeating pattern. She had no nose or lips, and very small ears, and she was completely flat-chested. She was almost as tall as me, having grown about four inches.

I didn’t realize, there in the office under the fluorescent lights, how iridescent her scales were — not until we got outside and the sunlight played across the back of her scalp. Mom and Mildred got into Mom’s car, and Dad and I into his, and we went home.

When we got home, Mildred shut herself up in her room and hid under the blankets; she didn’t want any of us to look at her, and I didn’t blame her. I sort of knew what she was feeling, though I suspected she had it worse than me. Dad and I stayed out, and let Mom take care of her.

As Dad and I started fixing lunch, I asked him: “What was she doing when she Twisted?”

“I do not know, son,” he said. “She was so distraught when she woke up that we were unable to learn much... She said something about a snake, but it was not clear how the snake was involved. She was in P.E., out on the soccer field, when the Twist occurred; perhaps she saw a snake, or perhaps it bit her — but if so, the snakebite was healed by the Twist.”

I had that feeling again like I wanted to correct Dad. I got out my tablet and wrote down what he’d said as exactly as I could remember, and then had a better idea; I set it to start recording our conversation. He asked me what I was doing, and I told him, reluctantly, about the feelings I’d sometimes been having when people talked and what Uncle Greg had said to do. He frowned thoughtfully and said:

“If you detect in what I say any verifiable error, son, I will not only allow but encourage you to tell me — but not, I entreat, in front of strangers, and preferably when we are alone. Yet if your Twist compels you to speak up, I will understand.”

“It’s not a compulsion, I think — it’s been easy to resist the impulse to say something, especially when I can’t figure out why I feel like somebody’s wrong about something.”

Mom came down from Mildred’s bedroom about then, and looked at the soup we were fixing for lunch.

“I’m afraid Mildred’s tastes might have changed, maybe even her dietary requirements... but I’ll take her some of that and see if she can eat it. I need to take her to see Uncle Greg this evening, but I’m afraid I’ll have a hard time convincing her to go out in public. She’s so upset about her appearance, and I don’t blame her.”

I decided that wasn’t the time to remind her that I was feeling the same way. After we ate lunch, and Mom took a bowl of soup on a tray up to Mildred’s room, I went upstairs too.

I wanted to work on my term paper, but I remembered what Uncle Greg had said and I made myself go into the bathroom and look hard at myself in the mirror. It wasn’t easy, but it got a little easier after a minute or so.

“What should be different?” I asked myself. I started at the top. My hair was a little too short, I thought — well, I’d just have to wait for it to grow, and that problem would fix itself. Or maybe I could try a wig and see if it made me feel a lot better; that might be worth it. The dark brown was okay, I decided.

My blue eyes were okay too, though something seemed vaguely wrong about my eyebrows. My nose was kind of annoying, but I couldn’t express exactly what shape I wanted it to have; I didn’t have the vocabulary for nose shapes. I’d run into terms like “aquiline” in books, but I didn’t know exactly what they meant, guessing from context that they meant some kind of nose and not feeling any need to look them up for more details. The lips seemed a little too thin, but not as annoying as my nose.

I had a very faint trace of stubble from the last few hours, hardly enough for anyone else to notice even on my chin, and only visible on my cheeks if I leaned close to the mirror. But it was really annoying. I got out my razor and shaving cream, and then paused, remembering the depilatory cream that Mildred used on her armpits and legs. She sure wouldn’t be needing it anymore. I read the instructions on the package carefully, then applied it all over my cheeks, upper lip, chin and neck; that was taken care of for a few weeks now.

I looked away from the mirror when I was done, and even closed my eyes, leaning against the wall and recovering my composure after the nerve-wracking ordeal I’d just put myself through. Then I decided I might as well go a little further, if I could bring myself to do it. I took off my shirt and pants and stood there in my underwear, trying to figure out what was wrong with the rest of me.

After a few minutes' consideration, I used the rest of the depilatory cream to remove the hair from my arms, armpits and part of my chest. I’d wanted to do my legs too, but I’d need to buy a new tube of depilatory cream first.

There was still something else wrong with what I was seeing, but I couldn’t pin it down. I rewarded myself by getting dressed with my eyes half closed, then going back to my bedroom and reading for my term paper until suppertime.

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If you've enjoyed this and the other free stories I've posted here, you may also enjoy these novels and short fiction collection -- available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format.

Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes	Smashwords	Amazon
When Wasps Make Honey	Smashwords	Amazon
A Notional Treason	Smashwords	Amazon
The Weight of Silence and Other Stories	Smashwords	Amazon