Gruesome Tuesday

PART FIVE

©2004 Tanya J. Allan

This work is fictitious, and any similarities to any persons, alive or dead, are purely coincidental.  Mention is made of persons in public life only for the purposes of realism, and for that reason alone!  Certain licence is taken in respect of medical procedures, terms and conditions, and the author does not claim to be the fount of all knowledge!

The author accepts the right of the individual to hold his/her (or whatever) own political, religious and social views, and there is no intention to deliberately offend anyone.  If you wish to take offence, that is your problem!

This is only a story, and it may contain adult material, which may include sex and intimate descriptive details pertaining to genitalia.  If this is likely to offend, then don’t read it!

Unfortunately no politicians were injured or killed in the writing of this story, and no one else was either!

If you enjoyed it, then please Email me and tell me!  If you hated it, Email me and lie!

I will always welcome contact!

tanya_jaya@yahoo.co.uk

The legal stuff!

This work is the property of the author, and the author retains full copyright, in relation to printed material, whether on paper or electronically!  Any adaptation of the whole or part of the material for broadcast by radio, TV, or for stage plays or film, is the right of the author unless negotiated through legal contract! Permission is granted for it to be copied and read by individuals, and for no other purpose.  Any commercial use by anyone other than the author is strictly prohibited, and may only be posted to free sites with the express permission of the author!
AUTHOR’S HEALTH WARNING

Dear Reader,

Life can be a crock sometimes, so if it all right with you, I actually prefer happy endings!  So, if you want the hero(ine) to have a really miserable time, READ SOMETHING ELSE!

But if you want to see good prevail, and end up with a soppy smile, then I have achieved what I set out to do! 

Please enjoy! Tanya

5.Rob’s Story

 

As my curtains were pulled back, and consciousness returned, I was momentarily back in the past!  Particularly as I was woken up by my mother, sorry, by Sophie’s grandmother, but as I scratched my chest, and felt the breasts where none were normally, I was brought back to the rather unpleasant future!

I spent a hectic hour trying to get ready!  Sophie’s uniform was fine, and I knew enough about what she used to wear to get that sorted, but I was defeated by all the little tubs and bottles in the bathroom!

I had lived with them there since Karen, but had never an inkling what they were all for!  I rushed breakfast, and managed to catch the bus.  I felt so self conscious in a skirt and was convinced that everyone was looking at me!   I recognised Sophie’s friends, and sat with them.  Her memories gave me names and little snippets of details, but I was rather quieter than Sophie was usually.

“What’s up, Soph?” said a girl, Julia, I think she was called.

“My Dad’s in hospital in a coma!” I said, and then had to tell everyone the story.  Having no mother was also a factor as to how I was treated, and it was interesting how different people treated me.  Or it would have been had I the time and inclination to take an interest in such things!

Sophie seemed to be a popular girl, and I was surrounded by friends, and they just took me in hand!  They even explained to the teachers about the accident, and I never had to explain why I was behaving strangely!

I was rushed from pillar to post, and was very thankful to have access to Sophie’s memories.  Particularly in French and Art!  I was not brilliant at French, and my previous experiences with art were not entirely successful.  All, that is except one!  I once painted a spinning ballerina, and surprised everyone as to how good it was!   But that was it!

Trips to the girls loos were different, and I learned an awful lot from there!  A small black market selling make up, contraceptives and cigarettes was well established in one particular toilet, and I smiled as I realised the initiative that this showed!

My biggest distraction was my body!  This business of having large globular growths sticking out of one’s chest all the time!  It was fun for a bit, but after a while, they became a real pain!  They got in the way for everything!   In cooking, sorry, home economics, they managed to catch everything, as they did in practical chemistry and physics!  If I didn’t burn them with sulphuric acid soon, it would be a miracle!

We had hockey practice in the afternoon, and I was relieved to have something in which I could lose myself for a while!  It was actually good fun, and I even forgot my predicament for a very short time!  But being called Sophie made it hard to forget for long, as did wearing a draughty skirt, and having boys watch us as we ran about!

This boy business was another potential minefield!  I was hoping that this pickle in which we found ourselves would be over soon, and I didn’t want to ruin Sophie’s chances with a guy just because I was me inside!  I hoped that my memory of my schooldays was clear enough, and uncomplicated by romance!  It was all a bit vague and I started to worry about that too!

In the changing room afterwards, I should have been in seventh heaven by being surrounded by semi-naked nubile young girls, and yet I wasn’t, as I was one of them!

Jenny approached me.

“Are you coming to the Justin Timberlake in December?”

“I don’t think I can, not with Dad in hospital and everything!”

“Who’s to stop you!  Come on, you’ll need a break!  He may be like it for years, so you can’t just hang about and never do anything!”

“I’ll ask my Gran!” I said.

“Mind you tell her that your Dad already said yes!” she said, with a grin.

“Yeah, okay!” I said, smiling at the devious nature of woman!

“Besides, Matthew is coming!” she said, with a wink.

I dredged through Sophie’s memory and found this piece of information struck a chord. The face, and the smile that I glimpsed earlier! Matthew was the older brother of another girl, Kate,  and he was gorgeous.  Sophie had seen him once, and thought he looked quite nice, but he was eighteen!

“He’s probably going out with someone!” I said.

“That’s not what Kate said! He asked her about you at the weekend!”

I experienced a very odd feeling!  Mentally, that information was useful, but whatever hormones I had welcomed the news by giving me a fluttery tummy, and made my pulse race slightly.  It was most peculiar!

“The other thing about him, he drives a car, and if you start dating, we can go out as a foursome!”

“Great!” I said. “But I’ve only seen him once, and he will probably hate me!”

“Sophie, don’t be silly, you know you always look wonderful and everyone falls for you!  It is that you never seem to like them!”

“They are always too young and silly!  That is why I like them older.  And the older ones don’t fancy me because I am fifteen!”

“You don’t look fifteen, and I think that is what puts off some boys, as you look so much older!  Just yesterday, one of the sixth formers form the boys school, asked me whether you were a sixth former!”

“Who was that?”

“Robin Lake!”

I tried but couldn’t picture him.

“He is their captain of the first fifteen rugby team!”

“Oh, him?”

“Yes, Miss Smartypants, him!”

I reddened, as the picture came through nice and clear.  He was a big lad, eighteen going on twenty five! But he wasn’t as nice as Matthew!

“Come on, hurry up, or we’ll miss the bus!” she said, and I managed to dress without missing out anything.

I caught the bus home, and was in after Steven.  Aunt Sally was there, and she and I organised an early supper, and then the two of us went to the hospital.  The grandparents had been there all day, and Dad (me) hadn’t moved a muscle.

We walked in and I recognised a couple of the nurses who smiled at me.  I went straight to the room, and looked at the still form on the bed.  I sat down and held my own hands!  It really was a surreal experience!

Sally had tears in her eyes as she watched us.

“You poor girl, you don’t deserve this!  Not both your parents!”

“He isn’t dead yet!  You mustn’t think that way!” I said.

She sat next to me, and looked at her brother’s still face.

“I feel I ought to pray, or something.  But don’t know how to!” she said.

I took her hand.

“You don’t need to pray, Aunt Sally, God know what is on your mind!” I told her, and she looked at me, quite surprised.

“You are the most amazing girl!  He is so lucky having such a wonderful daughter!”

I smiled.  I knew that, both of me did!

We sat, and I almost felt things were normal.  The heart monitor bleeped, and I was content just to be there.  Sally was quite fidgety, but as long I was here, I believed that there was a chance that we could reverse this damn thing!

But nothing happened!  The doctor came and saw me, and was very sympathetic, but was unable to give us any more idea as to when (if ever) the coma would clear!  I was doomed to being Sophie for a bit longer!

Aunt Sally took me home again, and was quite chatty, and my responses to her questions made her frown.  At one point she pulled over into a layby, and turned the engine off.

“Sophie, I want to ask you a question, and I don’t want you to think your Aunt Sally has lost it!  But something happened to your Dad when he was about your age, and he and I have shared a secret for years!  I thought he was pulling my leg, but now, well, I am not so sure!”

“What?” I said, hardly daring to breathe.

“Well, one half term, when we were both home from school.  He was at boarding school, so I never saw much of him when we were growing up, except for the holidays!  He and I were stuck indoors on a really wet day, and we were just talking together, rather like this.  Anyway, his behaviour was very odd at times, it was almost as if he, now don’t be upset, but it was almost as if he was a girl!  He would talk about clothes and cooking, and boys.  It was very odd, and he was a good three years older than me.

“I must have shown that I was confused, and he asked me if I could keep a secret.  I said I could, and he told me something that I will never forget!

“His exact words were: “Sally, I’m not Rob!  I don’t know how, or why, but I am not your brother!  My name is Sophie, and I was born in 1988.  I am Rob’s daughter, he is my Dad!  There was an accident involving a washing machine, and we were both electrocuted!  I don’t know what happened to him, but I ended up here, in his body!”

“There, now you must think I’m potty?” she said.

“Sal, you aren’t potty!” I said, shutting my eyes and leaning back in the seat.

“Rob?” she asked, tentatively.

I nodded.

“Oh my God, I don’t believe this!” she said.

“Believe it girl, because it is true!  Thank God she was a bright kid, and saw fit to share this with you!  Without it I would be truly alone!” I said.

“Are you really Rob?” she asked, frowning.

“Yes Sal, I’m your brother!  Remember Rod Granger?”

“Okay, say no more!” she said, going red at the thought of him. Rod and Sally had embarked on a very steamy love affair some years ago!  It ended rather abruptly when Sally found out that he was already married!  We were all sworn to secrecy, and then Sally met good old Keith!

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

“What can we do?  I’m stuck until whatever happened is reversed.  Now think back, when did things change again?”

Sally frowned and looked out at the passing traffic.

“Half term was in the autumn, I remember Dad and Mum took me to watch you in a play, and you played the part of, of, my God, you were Sophie!”

“How did I do?”

“Brilliantly, you looked very convincing, so much so that the hero seemed to enjoy kissing you rather a lot!”

“Sean Simmonds, yeah, I had a few niggly doubts about him!  But, he got married, had kids as well, and he is a bloody Lieutenant Colonel now!  Go on!”

“Well, that was a week before the end of term, and then we both broke up, and you came home for the holidays.”

“Well?”

“I can’t remember!  I think something happened on Christmas Eve, but you were always different and I thought you were just teasing me!”

“How do you mean?”

“You told me that we must never tell anyone about you being Sophie, and I must always treat you the same, just in case we should forget, and then we might get into trouble!  I really just thought you were teasing me!”

“Even at the start?”

“No, I believed you then, but as time went on, occasionally you would talk about fashion or boy bands in the year 2003.  In fact, I started to worry when Boyzone started up, as that was a name I remembered you talking about!”

“You mean Sophie, not me!” I said, smiling.

“Don’t start!  I don’t know who you are, or were!  This is so awful!”

“Sal, lets get one thing straight, this is happening to me! How do you think I feel with these bloody things stuck to my chest?” I asked, pointing to Sophie’s respectable breasts.

She laughed, despite looking confused.

“So Sal, what happened on Christmas Eve?”

“I don’t know.  I really don’t remember, but on Christmas day you hugged me so hard, and you hugged Mum and Dad and went round almost crying and laughing all day! It was very strange!”

“Thank God!  Only three months to go!” I said.  “I can manage that, now I have a target!”

“What can I do, Rob?”

“Don’t call me that!  I need to be Sophie, so that she can pick up her life again!  I need you to be there to help me be the girl I have to be!  God Sally, I am so pleased that girl was clever enough to confide in you!”

“Can we do anything for her?”

“No, there is no way we can communicate with her.  She could leave us a letter, but not the other way around!”

“Oh my God!” she said.

“What?”

“She did!  I have just remembered.  Rob gave me a letter and told me to give it to, oh dear God!  He told me to give it to his daughter at a time that I would understand!”

“Where is it Sal?”

“At home.  I put it with my dolls house.  Only I had two boys, didn’t I?”

She started up the car, and we drove over to her home.  Uncle Keith gave me a hug, and told me I was being a brave girl.  The boys, Mark and Lewis, were going to bed, they were 8 and 6.

Then Sally and I went up into the attic.  It was dusty, but there was a light, and she found the box with her dolls and the dolls house.

She rooted around for a while, and produced an envelope!

“Got it!”

It was addressed to Sophie Mills.

I took it, and opened it.

30th October 1978

Hi Sophie (hee hee)

                  If you are reading this, it means that Aunt Sally has come through for us!

                You were right, you did have a hard time, but I reckon that you got the rough end of the deal!  Have we had our monthly yet?  If not, have fun!  If so, hee hee!

Rugger is an utterly futile game, and should be banned by international agreement!  Mind you, the boys butts are cute in those tight little shorts!

                  I don’t know how long this nightmare is going to last, I hope it is up soon, I am getting fed up with Latin and rugger!  Mike is great and you must keep in touch with him.  I like him, and he is a good mate!  I have chosen the RAF section in the CCF, if that isn’t what you would have done, shoot me later!

                I told Sally at half term, while I was at home.  And gave her this letter for you.  I don’t know if it will help, but I feel alone here, and you must feel the same!  This way, at least one of us can get some help!                     

        Your parents are much nicer as grandparents!  You were right, your Dad is/was stricter than you!  I will never ever complain about you again, you are a sweetie!  Oh, did you go to the Justin Timberlake concert?  If it hasn’t happened yet, then go, and the memories will be there for me when I get back, if I ever do, that is!

          I really miss you and Steven, and it is funny having an aunty who is three years younger than me!  I want to come home Dad, please do what you can!

        I love you.

                  ME!

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

P.s.  Sean Simmonds is confused and thinks he is gay, and fancies you/me rotten!  I reckon I can sort him out!

I started to cry for her.  She was all alone in an alien world, and I wanted to go there and help her out!

Sally gave me a cuddle, and we wept together for a few moments.

“Right, Sophie, I have to take you home!” she said, and I nodded.

The drive was only a few minutes, and we hardly spoke.

“Do you want to come and stay until Christmas?”

“No, I have to be there for Steve. Granny and Grandpa are fine, and at least we get some time with them!  I think I will go to this concert that Sophie wanted to go to, I owe her at least the memories!”

Sally smiled.

“I’ll speak to Mum, and make sure she knows that Rob approved!”

“Thanks!”

We arrived, and went in.

“Any change?” Grandpa asked me.

“No, he is still away with the fairies!”

“Poor devil!  God this is awful for you Sophie!”

“Its awful for all of us!” I said, and went up to bed.

The week progressed, I told Jenny that I would go to the concert in early December,  and was told that the minibus would pick us up from her house.  That weekend I went and spent some time with Jenny and Caroline.  They were in the lower sixth, the year above me (Sophie), but I always got on better with them than most of my own year group.

I didn’t say a lot, but just picked up the youth culture that Sophie always told me I didn’t understand.  She had been right, I still didn’t understand it, but then again, neither did half the youth!

On the Saturday we went to the cinema at Watford.  We had a pizza before and were walking across to the cinema when a group of boys saw us.  Matthew Kaiser was one of them.  His sister, Kate, was in the same class as me.

“Hi Jenny!” said one of the boys. I didn’t know him, and she called him John.

“Hi John, what’s up?” she said.

“We were going to see the Pirates of the Caribbean!” he said.

“So were we!” said Jenny, and I watched as Matthew pushed through to be nearer me.  He smiled at me, and I smiled back.  He was sort of hunky, if I thought like Sophie, that is!

“Hello Sophie, you don’t know me, but..”

“Yes I do, you are Matthew, and you are Kate’s brother!” I said, and he went red.

“Oh, I didn’t realise you knew me!”

“You asked Kate about me, and she told me!  You can’t keep anything quiet with girls!” I said, and he laughed.

He was older than most of the boys who had approached me so far, and I felt comfortable with him.  I didn’t know what Sophie would have done, so I just smiled at him!

We all went into the cinema together.  There were six boys and three girls.  I found myself sitting next to Matthew, and smiled.  I admired good planning in a bloke!

The movie was great, and I half expected an arm to snake across my shoulders at some point.  But, by half way through, it didn’t and I was mildly disappointed.  But also relieved as this was not a complication I was prepared for!

Then came a really scary bit and I jumped and found myself grabbing his hand.  There we stayed, he wasn’t deliberately holding it against my will, as it was just quite nice.  I sort of left it there, and he sort of held it!

At the romantic climax, I wasn’t prepared for the kiss that he gave me.  He leaned across and gently kissed my cheek. I looked at him in surprise, as he gave no warning at all!  It wasn’t unpleasant, just not expected!

“I’m sorry!” he whispered.

I found myself squeezing his hand.

“Its okay!” I heard Sophie’s voice say, and then we were kissing properly!

My heart was racing, as every female hormone in my very female body was on overdrive, and my body responded normally.  I let my brain go blank, and became Sophie!

The kiss was not an experienced one, but it was a heartfelt and genuine one, and I responded in kind.  I let his tongue glide between my lips, and we touched tongues for a second.  I felt my body react in ways I did not expect!  My nipples hardened, and I had a tingling sensation between my legs.  I wrapped a hand behind his head, and I then felt the arm snake over my shoulders.

The film ended, and we were oblivious, and only realised when Jenny’s laughter filtered through!

We disentangled, feeling embarrassed and somehow quite pleased.  My brain was in a real twirl!  I was Sophie!  I told myself this over and over again, and somehow the whole episode seemed perfectly right!  In fact, I had  not had one stray thought about the various naked and semi naked females that I had seen over the last couple of weeks!  It seems that I was a normal heterosexual female, after all!

As we left the cinema, Matthew took my hand, and we walked out hand-in-hand.  We were due to catch a bus, and he offered to take me home.

“I am staying with Jenny, and so is Caroline.” I said.

“Then I’ll take all of you home!” he offered.  And we accepted. 

He drove his Mum’s Vauxhall Corsa, and he drove it very well!  He dropped us off at Jenny’s house.

I stayed behind as the others went in, grinning and winking at me.

“I just wanted to say sorry!”

“What for?”

“Kissing you, I should have asked!”

“Don’t be silly, who ever asks?”

He smiled.

“Thanks.”

“I liked it.” I said.

“Are you going to the concert in December?”

“Why, do you want me to?”

“Very much!”

“Then I’ll go!”

“Really?  Kate said you weren’t going to!”

“Kate is out of date, isn’t she?”

He reddened and nodded.

“You are very pretty!”

“Thanks, you are pretty smart yourself!” I said, meaning it.

“May I kiss you again?”

“Who has to ask?”

“I do!” he said, and kissed me!

Standing like this was more comfortable, and the kiss went on and on.  Finally he broke off, which was just as well, as I was almost ready to lie down and open my legs!  Shit, this sex business what hard!  Girls got knocked just as hard as boys, and I could see how accidents happened!

“Goodnight Sophie. Can I see you again?”

“If you want.”

“I want, very much!”

“Then I’d like that too!”

“Bye then!” he said, and kissed me gently on the cheek.  I watched him drive off, and turned and walked inside.

Jenny and Caroline were full of it, and I got a real ribbing, but I didn’t care.  Hell! Had I fallen for the boy?

I went to sleep, remembering that kiss!

I woke up the next morning, feeling odd!  I didn’t feel ill, but I didn’t feel well, and when I got up I realise why!  I cursed Sophie for being female, cursed myself for being inept at electrical things, and cursed the curse that I was now experiencing!

I was a miserable cow all day, and felt rotten!  I felt heavy in the abdomen, and sort of bloated and my boobs ached! I made sure everyone was aware of my mood, and found little sympathy amongst school friends and teachers alike!

It lasted about four or five days, and as I sat by the bed in the hospital, I earnestly prayed for this all to be over!

To be continued in Chapter 6

 

since 03/28/04