I tried to elicit clues that would help me figure out what he was thinking and feeling about me, without leading him on in a way that would mess up what I had — or might have — with Rob. It didn’t work; by the end of the meal I had no more idea than before what Vic felt about me, and had only succeeding in confusing myself about my own feelings.

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Twisted Throwback

part 19 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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When I walked into Calculus Thursday morning, Morgan jumped up from her seat and ran over to me. “I got your message last night, and I replied — did you see it?”

“No, I went to bed a little while after I sent you that.”

“Go ahead — send her my address before class starts!”

I sat down and got out my tablet, and was able to log onto the forum and send ‘Medea’ another private message before Ms. Reynolds started her lecture.

I ate lunch that afternoon with Vic and Lionel. It was a tense, awkward conversation — at least on my part, with me knowing Vic had some kind of feelings toward me but not exactly what they were. I tried to elicit clues that would help me figure out what he was thinking and feeling about me, without leading him on in a way that would mess up what I had — or might have — with Rob. It didn’t work; by the end of the meal I had no more idea than before what Vic felt about me, and had only succeeding in confusing myself about my own feelings.

Just when I was getting up to go return my tray and silverware, Morgan came running up to me with her tablet in her hand, and I think she would have hugged me if my hands hadn’t been full.

“She wrote back! Jason, I mean Medea —”

“Is that her real name now, or just her forum handle?”

“It’s her name. Pretty clever, huh?”

I couldn’t remember many details about Jason and the Argonauts, but I knew Medea was a girl he was involved with. “Yeah, it’s a cool name. What all did she say?”

“She told me about her Twist, and how Uncle Ed accused Aunt Rose of having an affair, and she said she hadn’t, she was sorry she’d never told him she was Twisted... It wasn’t an obvious Twist, nobody who didn’t know her real well before the Twist even noticed, and her family hushed it up; they pretended she took after her dad who wasn’t Twisted.”

“Huh. I’ve heard of people doing that... I can see why you might want to, if you live in an area where there’s a lot of prejudice against Twisted, but you’d think she would tell her partner before they got married, or at least before they decided to have kids.”

“Yeah. Uncle Ed wasn’t sure if he she’d lied him about not being Twisted, or about not having an affair with some Twisted guy, but either way he was so mad at her for lying to him that he left them. And Aunt Rose sold the house and gave Uncle Ed half the money, and they moved to Knoxville where her family are from... She remarried a few years later, that’s why I couldn’t find her when I searched for her name. Medea’s a senior at UT Knoxville, and she says she might come visit me during the Christmas break.”

“Cool! I hope your parents are okay with that.”

She shrugged. “I might have to sneak out to see her. Tell them I’m going over to Sarah’s house or something. Thanks so much!”

By now I’d put my tray on the conveyor belt, and now she did hug me, and I congratulated her again before we went off to our next classes.

After school, I talked to Uncle Jack and Mildred for a few minutes, and did homework until suppertime.

“This is the last day of your suspension from school,” Dad said to Mildred after he’d said the blessing and we were starting to eat. “And the last day you are grounded. Your mother and I have discussed the matter further, and we think we can home-school you for the remainder of the semester, at least.”

“I might drop you off at Grandpa and Grandma’s house on the way to work tomorrow,” Mom said, “to give Uncle Jack a break, since he’s been staying with you for the last three days.”

“If you like,” Uncle Jack said. “I don’t mind staying with Mildred another day; I’ll only be in town another week or so. I’ll probably head toward Chicago next Sunday, right after I drive Tim to the airport. But maybe Mildred and I will go over to Mom and Dad’s house.”

They talked about plans for home-schooling Mildred, who would tutor her in which subjects, and so forth; I mostly just listened, but I volunteered to help her with History and Algebra.

Then Dad told me: “Emily, I have good news for you as well. Your Twist stipend has finally cleared — it comes to nearly fourteen hundred dollars.”

“Maybe we can go shopping again this weekend,” Mom said. “But wasn’t there something you wanted to order online...?”

“Yes!” I said.

Before I did any homework or worked on my term paper, I went to the site of one of the companies Dr. Underwood had recommended, and put in a special order for a pair of prosthetic breasts. I had Mildred take a photo of my bare chest, and I sent that in along with my measurements so they could match the skin color.

After I finished the first draft of my Modern History term paper, I checked my messages; I saw a private forum message from Rachel396. She was the Richard Lyell I’d seen in the waiting room at the Twist clinic, as I’d suspected; she lived in Lithonia, just east of Atlanta. I told her I didn’t have a car, but I’d be in Stone Mountain with my parents and sister on Saturday, and did she want to try to meet then?

I also looked into some slightly older archives of the gender-Twist forum, and found Rachel’s introductory post from a couple of weeks ago:

From: Rachel396
Date: Wednesday 4 November 21—
Subject: Periods suck

I just Twisted into a girl yesterday, and my aunt told me about this forum. (Hi, Aunt Moira, if you’re reading this.) She was like me, and so was my grandma — apparently it runs in our family. I knew about the risk, and I took precautions — never played a girl character in an RPG, never wore anything even slightly feminine, etc. But if there’s a bullet with your name on it... I was reading a book with a girl character — not even the main character! — and she was having her period, and I remember thinking how much that would suck, and — zap, my own period is starting as soon as I wake up from my Twist, and I’ve got bloodstains on the sofa where I passed out. And I’ve toasted one of my Dad’s antique hardcopy books.

And then adding insult to injury, I find out I’ve got a compulsion to wear girl’s clothes. I tried to put on some of my old things to cover up before my parents got home — I was by myself while they were out on a date, and my new body is a little smaller so the old stuff should sort of fit except maybe in the chest, right? But I just can’t bring myself to put them on. I sweat over it for ten minutes, just starting to pull on a pair of jockey shorts with napkins stuffed in them to stop the bleeding, and then getting the shakes and having to pull them off. Apparently my subconscious would rather be naked than wear boy’s clothes. So I raid my mother’s closet, and I’m wearing her stuff when she gets home. Mom called my aunt and she came over, and she’s been pretty helpful and understanding, but I’m not sure she really gets it. She’s been a woman for two-thirds of her life, and the shock of the change is so long ago I doubt she really remembers it. Anybody here who’s been through it more recently?

I felt a weird mix of empathy and envy at that. I knew what she was going through — suddenly feeling that your body is strange and wrong — but I wanted what she had, too: the female body, and even the period, since that would imply I could have babies. Put our Twists together and you’d have one good one; in isolation, both were pretty bad — if still maybe not quite as bad as Mildred’s.

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Friday after Physics, Vic gave me the biography of Thucydides West he’d just finished reading. “It’s pretty good,” he said. “I liked the way she goes into his high school and college friendships and how they influenced him to stand up for the rights of Twisted later.”

“He had several Twisted friends in high school, didn’t he?”

“No, he was born five years before the Antarctic Flu epidemic. Some of his friends' younger siblings were Twisted, but nobody in his family got the Flu.”

I told him I’d probably start reading it soon, now that I’d finished my Modern History term paper. I ought to give most of my attention to my Literature term paper, but my Twist had made me less interested in fiction, not just more interested in school; I figured I’d probably procrastinate on the reading for that (which I’d started before my Twist) to read this biography. Maybe I could tell Ms. Muir I’d changed my mind, and wanted to do my Literature term paper on some essayist rather than on Theodore Sturgeon’s short stories?

I ate lunch with Sarah, Olive and Morgan. Morgan told me about their plans for the weekend.

“Me and Sarah are going shopping in Chattanooga Sunday,” she said. “Olive might join us — she’s not sure if her parents will let her come — and you’re welcome to come too.”

“I’d like to. Is it okay if Renee comes, or Mildred?”

Morgan paused. “It’ll be a little crowded in my car with six girls, but sure, especially if you or Renee can borrow a van from one of your parents... Anyway, that’s not the best part. Medea’s going to drive down from Knoxville and meet us somewhere — probably at the mall food court, we’ll figure out details later. You want to meet her, don’t you?”

“Yes! But what time are you leaving? I’m not sure if my parents will let me or Mildred skip church for something like this.”

“If Olive’s parents let her go, it won’t be till after church. We can wait for y’all and leave around noon — your church is over by then, right?”

“Yeah. I’ll ask and see if it suits.”

I ate and listened to them talk about stuff they were hoping to find in the stores Sunday, and thought. I asked Morgan: “Do you think your parents really hold a grudge against Medea because her mom lied about being Twisted?”

She shrugged uncomfortably. “It’s not just her they don’t like. It’s Twisted. I’d be in trouble if they knew I was hanging out with you.”

“Oh.” That put things in perspective.

After Mandarin, Rob walked with me to Literature. “I’m looking forward to tonight, Emily. Do you want me to pick you up at five-ten, same as last time?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’m looking forward to it too.”

“Have you decided which documentary you want to see?”

“Um, maybe the one about the founding of Spiral? Or — do you have anything about Thucydides West?”

“I think he’s interviewed in that one, actually. I’m not sure if there’s been a documentary about him specifically.”

“That will be good. Thanks.”

On the bus home, I started reading the biography Vic had loaned me. From the introduction I learned that the author was Twisted, and her father had been one of the Twisted kids that Thucydides West saved from a lynch mob when he was a police officer, before he went into politics. When I got home, Mildred and Uncle Jack weren’t there; they got home from Grandma and Grandpa’s house not long before Mom and Dad came home from work, a few minutes before Rob came to pick me up. I had to get ready for my date without Mom or Mildred’s help; I’d had enough practice at putting on makeup by then, and I knew my trick would gloss over any imperfections.

Once I was all dolled up, I started to pick up the biography again — and then reluctantly put it aside, and looked back at my notes for my Literature term paper, and skimmed through some of the articles about Theodore Sturgeon that I’d found. It seemed like “Bianca’s Hands” was among the best of his stories I hadn’t read yet, so I started reading it. I hadn’t finished it by the time Uncle Jack and Mildred got home, and then I was too distracted to read more until much later.

Rob came to pick me up a few minutes after Mom and Dad got home, and we left after just a couple of minutes of conversation. Mildred had gone up to her room as soon as she got home from Grandma and Grandpa’s house, and didn’t come down until after Rob and I were gone.

Rob had made a reservation at Hanging Gardens, and we were seated right away at a small table by the west window. After we’d placed our orders, he started telling me about the documentary we were going to see, A Town of Their Own, and the director, and the other movies he’d directed... I listened and asked some questions, and after a little while he asked what had been going on with me. I told him about finishing my Modern History term paper, and the problems I was having getting started on the other one; about going to the endocrinologist, and the delays in getting one of the medicines I needed, and about going to see Dr. Underwood again tomorrow.

“I hope you can get it sorted out,” he said. “I’ll ask my dad if he knows anything about the drug you’re having trouble getting.” His father was a medical lawyer.

“Thanks.”

After dinner, we drove back to my house. Uncle Jack’s car wasn’t in the driveway. Dad was alone in the living room, reading, when we came in.

“Good evening, Emily, Rob. How was your dinner?”

“Good. Where’s Mom and Mildred?”

“Your mother is working with your sister on her grammar lesson. I shall go upstairs in a few moments, and leave you to watch your film. Is there anything I can do for you, Rob?”

“No, thanks, Mr. Harper.”

Rob got his tablet talking to our console, and started digging through a list of the movies on it for the one we wanted to watch. Dad puttered around in the kitchen for a few minutes before going upstairs.

Once Rob got the movie started, I turned down the lights and joined him on the sofa. We held hands — at least, at first. I’m not sure about later, because it turned out my surmise was correct: I could take an interest in a documentary, unlike a fictional movie, and I did take as single-minded an interest in this one as in any of my teachers' lectures at school or the nonfiction books and articles I’d been reading.

I forgot I was sitting next to Rob, a situation that had been far more interesting than the plot of the movie last Friday, and just focused on the history of Spiral — how this one tiny town was hit harder by the Antarctic Flu than most others its size, and almost a third of the children born in the next few years were Twisted; how more and more families with Twisted children moved in, and then Twisted adults on their own, and how they renamed the town Spiral and proclaimed it a safe place for Twisted. There were interviews with people whose ancestors had lived there before the Flu, and some of the earliest Twisted who moved in, and with Twisted-rights activists and prominent Twisted.

Thucydides West said, “I want the whole country to be a safe place for Twisted. But one town is a good start.”

Jocasta Flynn thought it was a bad idea. “We don’t need a Twisted separatist movement; we need to be out there in front of normals, living and working next to them, so they can see who we are and that we’re not a threat.”

Blake Tyson, the mayor of Spiral at the time the documentary was made, thought differently. “It’s admirable for Twisted adults to make up their mind where they want to live and take the risks. But there needs to be a safe place for Twisted kids to grow up.”

There was a lot of footage of street scenes, high school football games, the county fair, and so forth; in one scene I caught a brief glimpse of Dad’s cousin Paul and his wife Lynn. And there were other scenes of Twisted neighborhoods in big cities, including a few seconds showing murals and storefronts I recognized from Little Five Points, and interviews with people who lived there. I’m not doing a great job of summarizing it; go watch it yourself, it’s good.

When it was over, I blinked and became aware again that Rob was holding my hand. I smiled at him.

“Thanks,” I said. “I enjoyed that a lot. What other documentaries did you say this guy directed?”

He told me, and said several of them were on his tablet. He copied them to our console’s memory before he left.

“I’m glad you liked it,” he said. “But there’s one disadvantage to watching a documentary during a date.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It doesn’t have a big romantic scene to give me an excuse to do this,” he said, and kissed me.

Later, I asked Dad: “I thought you were going to check on us during the movie?”

“I did so twice, as did your mother. It seemed you were absorbed in the movie, and we did not disturb you.”

“...Thanks. Where’s Uncle Jack?” He hadn’t returned while we were watching the movie, or so I thought; but if I hadn’t noticed Mom and Dad sticking their heads in...

“We discussed our plans for tomorrow during supper, and he decided that he will not accompany us to Atlanta tomorrow. He has gone to stay in a motel in Milledgeville tonight, and visit your Aunt Wendy again tomorrow.”

I checked my messages after changing into my nightgown. Rachel had replied again, and offered to meet us at a restaurant in Stone Mountain after my appointment with Dr. Underwood. I wrote back and said I’d try to talk my parents into it.

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Saturday morning during breakfast I told Mom and Dad about Rachel and asked if it would suit to stay a little later and visit with her after my appointment with Dr. Underwood.

“I hardly think we can refuse, after arranging our schedule to meet with Mildred’s friend Bobby. This Rachel’s Twist was similar to yours, I gather?”

“Kind of the opposite... her body changed but her mind didn’t change to match. At least, not like it does for most people like us.”

I also told them about Morgan’s plan to go to Chattanooga Sunday to meet Medea and go shopping, and they said I could go with her; they seemed relieved not to have to add a few hours of clothes-shopping to our already long list of errands.

We were on the road right after breakfast, and we got to the restaurant Bobby’s mom had suggested by eleven. It was a burger place, one step up from fast food. We looked around and didn’t see Bobby; Mom called his mother.

“We’re here a little early, we made good time... That’s good... I understand, sure.” She hung up and said: “They’ll be here in a few minutes.”

Mildred was attracting stares, but they didn’t seem to bother her quite as much as usual. She stared back defiantly at one particularly rude guy, and he looked away. A waitress seated us — Mom told her that two more people would be joining us, and she put us at a long table. Mildred sat facing the door, and I sat cat-a-corner across from her, next to Mom.

About twenty minutes later Mildred jumped up and waved. She was distinctive enough that Bobby and his mom could have spotted her across the restaurant without that, but she was too excited. Bobby got to our table several seconds ahead of his mom, and walked — he nearly ran — around the table and stood closer to Mildred than he probably should.

“Hi,” he said. “It’s great to see you! Watch this!” And the salt and pepper shakers, and five or six sweetener packets from the tray, leapt into the air and started weaving around in an intricate dance.

“Careful, Bobby,” his mom said, approaching us. Mom got up to greet her; Dad and I turned around, and Mom said:

“This is my husband, Oswald. You’ve met my daughter Emily, but she looked a little different when you saw her last...”

“You look really nice today,” Bobby’s mom said to me. “Hi, I’m Marie Antonelli.”

“I’ve gotten better with my trick too, but I can’t do anything quite that cool,” Mildred was saying. “Look over there.” Bobby looked at the older couple sitting at a nearby table and gasped.

“Awesome!” And then, “They don’t seem to notice a thing...” The pepper shaker wobbled and spilled a little on our table. A few moments later the shakers and sweetener packets all settled down more or less where they belonged.

“You’re the only one seeing them... Here, I’ll let Emily see them too, but the parents would probably freak, so I’ll leave them out.”

Suddenly I saw a great mass of snakes writhing on the other table; some were draped around the diners' necks and arms, some eating the food off their plates. They continued chatting and eating, oblivious.

Bobby watched the snakes in fascination for a few more moments, and then came around and sat down next to me, across from Mildred. Mrs. Antonelli sat down next to Mom, and a few moments later the waitress came to take our orders. Mildred wasn’t hungry, but Bobby ordered a large cheeseburger with fries, onion rings, and cole slaw.

]

“Hi,” he said to me after the waitress had left. “Emily, right? Mildred told me about you.”

“Only good stuff,” Mildred put in.

“It’s good to see you again,” I said. “We Twisted should stick together.”

“Are there any other Twisted at your school?” Mildred asked. “At my school there’s just me and two of my cousins, and they might or might not be Twisted — their mom’s not.”

“There’s another guy with one Twisted parent, but I’m the only one who’s Twisted yet. Dad’s talking about us moving to Little Five Points, and there’d be more Twisted in my school there.”

“Little Five Points looks like a cool neighborhood,” I said. “I might like to live there while I’m in college — it’s in commuting distance of Georgia State and Emory.”

“I haven’t even thought about where I’m going to college yet,” Bobby said.

“How are the kids at school treating you?” Mildred wanted to know. “They were talking mean about me and playing pranks on me until Mom and Dad took me out and started home-schooling me. We’re probably going to move to Spiral before the next school year.”

“Cool,” Bobby said. “My aunt lives in Spiral but I’ve never been there — she always comes to Georgia for Thanksgiving and sometimes in the summer.”

“Is she like us?” Mildred asked.

“Kind of, not as obvious. She can cover her wings with a loose coat, but she likes living in Spiral because she doesn’t have to.”

“Wow! Can she fly?”

“No, they’re just little bitty wings, not much bigger than her hands.”

“Little Five Points would be okay too, I guess,” I said. I noticed Bobby hadn’t answered Mildred’s question about how the kids at school were treating him.

To my left, Mom and Mrs. Antonelli were talking, and Dad was chiming in occasionally. Mrs. Antonelli was saying: “— more outgoing after his Twist. I was afraid he’d be even more shy and withdrawn than before — my sister was pretty popular until her Twist, and then she was so embarrassed by it that she became really shy for a couple of years.” That was probably Bobby’s aunt with the wings.

Mildred and Bobby chatted until the waitress brought his meal, and when he started eating, he didn’t let a little thing like a mouthful of cheeseburger stop him from keeping up his end of the conversation. I ate my chicken sandwich and mostly just listened to them, and sometimes to Mom and Mrs. Antonelli. After a while Mildred got Bobby to talk about school, and after a couple more evasions he admitted he was having problems similar to hers, if not as bad.

“There are maybe more kids making fun of me now than when I was shy and wearing glasses, but it doesn’t bother me as much. My real friends have stuck with me, even though a couple of guys I wasn’t all that close to don’t want to be seen with me anymore.”

Mildred sighed, and told him about Natalie’s ophidiophobia, and Irene’s on-again, off-again friendship.

“She was always closer to Natalie than to me, and since she can’t be with both of us at once she’s spending more time with Natalie. She’s stood up for me to bullies once or twice but usually she’s not around.”

“That sucks,” Bobby said, and took another bite of onion ring. “But you’re home-schooling now, right? How’s that working out?”

“It’s nice not to have to put up with people whispering about me and pointing at me all day. A little boring being at home so much. My Uncle Jack’s helping me with geography and Spanish, and he’s a lot of fun, but he won’t be staying with us much longer...”

After a while Dad said: “This has been a pleasant meeting, Marie, and I hope to see you and your son again. But we must leave within a few minutes if we are to meet with Emily’s doctor in a timely fashion.”

We’d all about finished eating by then. We got up, and Mildred came around the table until she was next to Bobby.

“I’d like to meet up again,” she said, with a glance aside at Mom and Dad.

“So would I,” Bobby said, and he didn’t take his eyes off Mildred.

They didn’t say anything more until Dad and Mrs. Antonelli had paid and we stepped outside. Bobby saw how Mildred looked in direct sunlight, and he drew a deep sudden breath.

“What is it?” Mildred asked.

“The sunlight — your scales —” His mouth was hanging open. I smiled. A moment later, Mildred did too.

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Four of the fourteen stories in The Weight of Silence and Other Stories have never appeared elsewhere. There are also afterwords to all the stories with behind the scenes material. It's available from Smashwords and Amazon.