Golden Gloom - RICH - Part Two

The Change

  4

Jane

“What worked?” snapped Ricky sullenly.

“The magic spell. The Golden Gloom.”

“Huh? What you talking about? Magic doesn’t work. Any fucker can tell you that.”

“Then why did the paper catch fire genius? It worked. I’m telling you.”

Ricky looked confused. And angry. Like he might even get violent again. I quickly took his hand in mine and squeezed it. “Just imagine for a minute what it would be like to live in this house.”

“Huh?”

“That’s how the magic works. You imagine what you want to happen and it happens.”

“Like…”

“Like… Aladdin. And the genie. You know. You make a wish.”

“For anything?”

“No. To live here. That’s why we had to come inside. We aren’t going to rob the place. This is all going to be ours. It won’t be that fat fucker and his frumpy wife with their names on the deed; it’ll be us.”

“Bollocks.”

“No. Look it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to believe it. Let’s just both imagine what it would be like to live in this house. How great it would be to own all this stuff. To sleep in a gigantic bed with silk sheets.”

Ricky hesitated and then smiled a little as he murmured, “To never have to work again?”

“Yeah.” I thought for a minute. “To be respected and looked up to.”

“To be able to buy whatever I want.”

The room suddenly became darker.

“What was that?” asked Ricky.

“Nothing. Just focus. What else? Why would you want to own this place?”

Ricky looked up at the painting on the wall of the couple who lived there. “To be able to spend all day long gabbing with me mates.”

I nodded, watching the room get darker and darker; seeing the darkness ripple up my own body and down my arms. “To be so rich I can tell people what to do and they do it.”

“To just lounge about all day, lying in late and then swimming in the pool whenever I feel like it.”

I raised my arms in front of me, marveling at the strange rippling energy that was passing over them then gave a little gasp as I saw my arms shift, growing thicker as though I was suddenly wearing long sleeves instead of my skimpy top.

I felt so warm and dizzy; drunk almost; reveling in a really delightful fantasy that I really owned this house; that I’d bought and paid for it; that I hadn’t had to steal the money – that it was rightfully mine.

Then the black ripples passed down my arms, leaving the long sleeves of a suit, and into my hands and fingers. The hands thickened, fingers growing shorter and thicker and my eyes gaped open, staring, unsure for a moment what it meant. Then suddenly my perspective of the room shifted like I’d just climbed up onto a box.

Like I was taller.

My torso thickened. I grabbed at it with my big manish hands, feeling the front of a business suit stretched over a broad fat belly; feeling a pocket watch tucked into a pocket at the front of the waistcoat I was now wearing!

I looked up at the portrait of the couple who owned the house and realized with horror that I’d made a mistake when I researched the Golden Gloom. It wasn’t changing things to make the house be owned by me; it was changing me quite literally into the owner of the house!

I put my hands to the side of my face in horror and felt the double chin and the light prickle of a cleanly shaven face.

“My God.” I was turning into the husband!

And if it was doing this to me then what was it doing to Ricky?

  5

Ricky

I listed things for Jane that I might wish for but it didn’t distract from the increasing bastard scratch of my need for a fix – like it ever really went away now. I wasn’t a complete moron. I knew I’d screwed my life up beyond saving.

I knew what she was spilling was bullshit but for half a second I really let myself imagine that Jane was telling the truth – really think what it would be like to get away from my life as a junkie and a fuck-up… to be the kind of person who lived in this kind of wanking over-the-top luxury. I imagined how great it would be to live peacefully in this manor house, feeling looked after for a change; to watch daytime TV and relax in long baths; to have the life of luxury I felt I deserved.

And that was when the rippling started for me as the light from outside went dim and wide tiger stripes ran up and down my body: moving; concealing.

Changing.

I noticed a sense of fullness round my stomach and when I looked down my T-shirt was pushed out, my normally boney-thin stomach looking rounded. The rippling was in my fingers and my arms and I realised in a flare of panic that I’d finally done it somehow. I’d fucked my brain up but good for the last time and now it was splitting apart. This was the last thing I was going to see before I had an aneurism or something even worse.

But there was no pain. If anything the junkie scratching was receding, letting my veins become loose; no longer taut and stretched.

Then there was another flood of shadow pouring over my body and limbs and I stopped trying to figure out what was happening. I just gawped at what I was seeing.

My short sleeves were flapping like a wind was blowing through them, my wiry arms held out in front of me. Then the sleeves receded right up to expose my shoulders and my arms expanded in one sudden surge, like balloons filled with a big gush of air. My hands were getting slimmer, the fingers lengthening and I turned, whispering the words, “What the fuck,” as I saw my new almond-shaped nails painted a deep red.

I looked across at Jane in a panic but Jane wasn’t standing there. I let out a cry of fear when I saw who was. It was the man from the picture; from the airport – the man who owned this place. Except he was staring back at me in horror and the same magical rippling was passing all over his body too as his beer gut expanded, pushing his suit jacket and waistcoat out; as his double chin grew rounder.

Then I looked down again at myself to see what had been my T-shirt – but was now some kind of dark red sleeveless sweater – press outward on my chest to form tits. Fucking tits pressing out of my chest! And then if I hadn’t known it beforehand I knew it now as I pawed at them with my new woman’s hands then looked first at the man across from me and then up at that picture on the wall with my mouth hanging open. I gaped at the couple who were posed there in the painting, at the portly businessman and his overweight middle-aged wife in her red polo-necked sleeveless sweater; her dark bobbed hair and the thick round glasses.

Then as I focused on the specs there was a rippled blurring of my vision and a weight appeared on my face. I reached up and felt for it and my dainty fingers found the round frames and thick lenses then dropped to smooth cheeks and silky almost shoulder-length hair.

“Jesus Christ,” I gasped and it wasn’t my voice; it was a woman’s voice; and I turned back to who I knew now was Jane as her terrified eyes stared back at me.

Then in a blinding rush, the shadows that were gripping us, swiping at us and holding us off balance swept down the lengths of our bodies and they were gone.

And we were both just gasping and trying to catch our breath and looking at one another as the full impact of what had happened sunk in.

  6

Jane

I was a man! A man! This was all wrong! It hadn’t meant to be like this! Not at all!

I had big man’s hands and I was wearing a suit. I felt my big stomach, following the girth right round the side of my torso and into my back; my stocky solid chest. It was a dull green jacket and waistcoat with matching trousers, shiny black shoes. What had been slim bare legs in denim cut-offs were now thick manly legs. I felt the thighs, the curious soft hardness of a man’s muscles covered in fat, then, hesitating for only a second, I put my hand to my crotch and through the expensive fabric felt the tubular bulge of a man’s penis, paling. Worse was that simultaneous sensation from the other side, completely alien to me of this big hand closing around what shouldn’t be there but undeniably was.

“Fuck me,” I said, and it was a deep man’s voice that came from my mouth. I covered my lips with my hand but that didn’t reduce the shock; it exacerbated it as I touched the slight invisible omnipresent stubble of a man’s upper lip.

“Jane? Is that fucking you?”

I turned my head to where the woman’s voice had come from and saw her – an exact duplicate of the woman in the painting, in the same sleeveless polo neck; the same a-line skirt and matching court shoes. It was Ricky. I knew it was. It had to be. But it didn’t look like Ricky anymore in the slightest. It looked like her; like the wife. It was the wife. It was an overweight middle-aged woman with thick round glasses and straight brown hair.

“Jane, speak to me,” she said, and though her voice was one that I didn’t recognize, the accent and intonation was all Ricky. “Fucking speak to me you stupid slag or— whatever the fuck you are now. Is that fucking you?”

“Yes! It’s me!” I cried in this thick weird manly voice. “It’s me Ricky… Jane.”

She… or he… she… Ricky took a wavering step toward me and I thought for a second she was going to topple forward on her face in those heels, but her foot came down surely. “What happened? What’s wrong with us? Was it that spell? It must have been!”

I stepped forward too. “Ricky. I don’t know why this happened. It wasn’t meant to do this. It was meant to change… reality. To change things so that we owned this house and all this stuff. It wasn’t meant to transform us into the owners – into them.” I pointed at the painting.

“Well it did, you idiot. It fucking did change us into them! Look at us! I’m a woman! I’m a fucking old woman! I’ve gotta be forty years old at least! You stupid fucking idiot! Look at me!” She touched her hair and her face, her round arms, her glasses. “This is real! I’m really her! A woman!”

“Take it easy. We have to keep calm. We have to figure this out.” I reached toward her but caught sight of my hand and arm and lost the flow for a second, bewildered by it. I didn’t know exactly what I’d expected to happen but this was a long way from it.

“Take it easy? Take it easy! Are you fucking loaded!? Look at me! I’m as old as my mum! I could actually be someone’s mum! I’m a woman for Christ’s sake!”

Tears were coming to her eyes and I reached for her, putting my hands on her fleshy shoulders. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

“How? How is it going to be okay? Look at us!”

“It’s alright,” I said. “Come here. It’s alright.” I pulled her up to my chest. She was almost a full head shorter than me, even in the heels and I enfolded her in my long arms. “It’s okay darling. It’s going to be okay.”

“I’m scared Jane. I don’t know what the hell’s happening. I don’t like this,” she whimpered, settling in against me as I drew her close, enfolding her in an embrace. And it was only then that I realised what we’d done. That this woman in my arms, that I knew was really Ricky, had reached out for my comfort and feeling protective I had reassured her and embraced her as though I were really her husband.

  7

Ricky

I was shaking, feeling so afraid and insecure but it felt so good to be held, even if it made me feel the change that had happened to me all the more. It felt weird to be the shorter one, to be embraced by a tall man. I should have felt homosexual panic, but I didn’t. I told myself it was because I knew this man was really Jane, but at another level I didn’t even think about it. I just felt like I needed the comfort and this man I cared about was here to give it to me, to crush me to his chest and make me feel small and protected.

I felt choked up, overwhelmed by emotions that I couldn’t understand. I’d never felt like this; so unsure of myself and desperate for… something… for someone else to… I didn’t know. I just didn’t know what to do.

“It’s going to be okay,” said the man… Jane. “We just have to figure this out for a minute and keep calm.” He pulled me away from his chest and looked down into my eyes. “Can you do that?”

I nodded. “I think so.” I wiped my eye. “But why has this happened?”

He released me and stepped away, leaving me instantly at a loss, wishing he hadn’t let go. “I didn’t think it was supposed to work like this. The Golden Gloom.”

“The what?”

“It doesn’t matter. I was sure it would change things but leave us the same but obviously I got it wrong.” It was so freaky to hear Jane talk in a man’s voice, to look like that. He looked so completely different that my brain didn’t want to label him as Jane. I didn’t know what to call him but Jane didn’t fit. He was “the man” somehow; just “the man.” And he seemed so calm. I was all over the place but he sounded in control; confident… manly.

“Are we stuck like this?”

He turned to face me. “I don’t know. I don’t think we should be. Not while the magic is still active if my reading meant anything at all – though I’m starting to doubt it did.” He paused, musing, looking down at himself. “It’s unbelievable. It’s so complete!”

I looked at myself, at the loose flesh on the back of my bare arm; the rings on my fingers, the diamond wedding ring; the slim silver lady’s watch on my wrist. “Well how the hell do we turn back? I don’t want to be stuck like this.” I lifted the glasses away from my eyes and my vision instantly clouded to a thick blur. “I’m blind without these things! I don’t want to be old. I don’t want to be a fucking woman!”

“Okay, just calm down for a second,” said the man. “Listen to me. We can do this. I’ll tell you how it works.”

“How what works?”

“The magic.”

I nodded, sitting on the sofa arm, but when I put my hands on my knees I felt the bare skin and looked down at the light reflected on the shiny hairless skin, startled and unsettled by what I was seeing and feeling.

“It works by focusing on what you want,” he said. “Which is what must have happened to us. Think about it. I wanted to own the house – to be respected – to be in charge of people. Now I’ve turned into the husband – some big-shot businessman who has all that.”

“Well I didn’t want to be a woman.”

“No. But you said you wanted to shop and spend the day chatting with friends; to swim in the pool.”

“To be looked after and enjoy luxury. Like a rich fucking housewife. Fuck. You’re right.”

“In a fucked up way, this is what we wished for.”

I looked up at the painting then back at him. “Then how do we bloody undo it?”

He thought for a minute. “By doing the opposite. By thinking what was good about our real lives. That has to be the way.”

I wasn’t so sure. “And you think it will work?”

He looked me right in the eye. “Well if it doesn’t then we’re going to be stuck this way.”

8

Jane

“Listen,” I said, “I’ll go first, make sure it works. Then you can go; alright?”

“I guess.” Ricky nodded her head, the sleek bobbed hair swinging from side to side. She readjusted her glasses and looked at me expectantly. “Are you sure this will work?”

I was going to say, fucked if I know, but I didn’t. Instead, keeping a measured tone I said, “Of course. Don’t worry.”

I had one last look down at my strange bulky body then closed my eyes, creasing my brow as I tried to concentrate on what was good about my life as Jane – why I didn’t want to be this man.

I was maybe twenty five years younger for a start and pretty sexy, even if I wasn’t one of these well dressed professional types. I pictured my slim hairless arms and my long legs and my face and told myself how much I wanted to be a woman again; to be young. I didn’t own a mansion but I was healthy and had my entire life ahead of me. For a second it crossed my mind that maybe being the man would be preferable because I’d be rich, but I put that out of my mind and though harder, really visualizing myself as I wanted to be.

My eyes popped open as I felt it – the Golden Gloom – rippling again on my body, just as Ricky, still in his woman’s voice, said, “It’s happening!”

I kept the focus as much as I could but if anything, seeing the change start to happen helped to accelerate it. I could see my womanly form showing through as my thick arms slimmed down and the relief boosted the motivation in my mind to change back.

My thick flabby belly contracted as I pressed my newly slender fingers into it, my clothes transforming back into the trashy stuff I’d had on when I arrived. My hair was growing out, getting longer again but it shook and flowed like there was a strong wind lifting it. My height dropped, disappointing me a little and I staggered to the side as once again the gloom flushed out my system and swept away, leaving me in my former shape.

I was breathing heavily, feeling wired and buzzy but felt fantastic like I’d just come off the back of a roller coaster.

“There,” I said, putting my hands on my hips and striking a sexy pose. “Piece of cake!”

Ricky had a slender hand pressed to one cheek and was just staring, her lips parted slightly. “It’s un-fucking-believable.” I looked at her startled. It seemed stranger now to see this woman who looked exactly like the owner of the house, peering at me through her thick glasses. There was something off about her pose; a slight masculinity maybe, and obviously the choice of words had been wrong; but apart from that she really looked like a middle aged woman, not like Ricky at all.

It was highly disconcerting and it didn’t help that my gut was telling me to scarper before she called the police, despite knowing that she wouldn’t.

“And that’s going to work the same for me?” asked Ricky.

I nodded. “No reason it shouldn’t. From what I read, there’s a time limit to how long it can go on working but I think it’s twenty four hours – something like that.”

“Okay.” Ricky held his arms out so he could see them. “I just tell myself that I want to turn back?”

“And why. You have to think about what’s good about your real body; and life.”

Ricky frowned. “Fucking nothing’s good. My life’s in the pissing toilet. Except for being with you.”

I gave him a little sad smile. “Well you don’t want to be a woman in your forties, right?”

“No I fucking don’t.”

“Well there you go. Just concentrate on being a bloke again.”

She closed her eyes tightly and I looked her up and down, freely now without having to feel I was staring. It was just unreal, knowing it was Ricky in there. With her standing straight there was absolutely no indication that she wasn’t exactly what she looked like.

Then the light dimmed, even the sunlight coming in from outside, the air taking on a syrupy sunset-light consistency, and the shadows stole over Ricky’s body, concealing the changes that were taking place as her body slimmed down but grew taller at the same time. The glasses disappeared and the hair withdrew, then in a final flicker of shadow and light the room went back to normal and Ricky was just standing there like his old self, staring down at himself then back at me.

“Holy shit,” he said. “That was the weirdest fucking thing I’ve ever done.”

I flashed him a grin, then sobered; because weird experience or not, this had been one total fuck-up actually. We were still standing in these fuckers’ house and the Golden Gloom had been a big flopping waste of time.

“We’ve screwed this up,” I said.

“What you talking about?” said Ricky, wiping his nose on the back of his hand.

“It’s a bust,” I said. “All this wealth and we can’t touch it.”

“What the fuck are you on? We can just steal stuff.”

“In the back of a two-seater BMW? Think about it. What can we take? We don’t know the safe combination. We aren’t safe crackers. Everything that’s worth anything in here is going to be too big to take. The woman’s jewelry maybe but that’s probably locked away too. We’ve fucked this up, and if we’re not careful we’re going to get busted.”

“Fuck,” said Ricky. “Well we ain’t leaving without nothing. Let’s just—”

A buzzer rang. Ricky froze mid-sentence. I locked rigid and stared back at him. There was a pause and then it rang again.

I crept closer to the window and peeped round the curtain then immediately wished I hadn’t.

It was a policeman. It was a mother-fucking policeman! And he hadn’t seen me – I’d pulled away quick enough – but he’d sure as shit seen the movement. He knew we were inside and if we didn’t answer the door we were screwed.

“What’s going on?” asked Ricky. “Who was it?”

“We’re fucked,” I said I said to him. “We are well and truly fucked.”