The Dream
by Prudence Walker
Maggie grumbled as she heard the alarm
clock go off. She thumbed it off, sighing, as she tried to recall the details
of the dream that had been rudely interrupted. Her fading memories told her
that it was “the dream,” the one she wished she could have experienced for
real.
Climbing out of bed, she arranged her
stuffed animals carefully before making her bed tidy. She talked to them as if
they were alive, and in her mind, the part that housed the small girl she had
never been, they were alive. Each had their personality, and never a day went
past, that she didn’t spend time playing and talking to them.
“There you go Eeyore,” she said, placing
the stuffed donkey between lion heart and Boots her kitten.
Her job as a meter maid was made harder by
the fact that she was a TS. Not only was her job made more difficult by the
angry and often threatening motorists that over stayed their welcome and got
ticketed, her once masculine body was still not immune to being read. This
gave extra fuel to those that liked to vent their spleen on the source of those
annoying pink stickers.
Her day was divided between doing her meter
reading job and sleeping, with a limited time to go to the library, where she
talked to her friends on the computers, and finding time to scrounge enough
food to eat. She had a job she disliked because of the very nature of it caused
much ill feelings. Unfortunately jobs that allowed her the freedom to dress
enfemme, without formal education were few and far between. Eating was
unfortunately also a necessity, which required money. Maggie was barely
scraping though life; living from one paycheck to the next, without any
luxuries one normally took for granted.
Maggie was a gentle soul normally, just
wanting to do her job as best she could. Living as she did, she often drifted
into her dream world where she was a little girl. He inner child was rarely
ever allowed out to play, and the adult part of her despaired that magic part
of that which was the child, might fade away from neglect.
One particularly windy day, as she was
battling half way through her route, she saw an oldish looking woman loose her
bag of groceries to the insistent wind. Maggie watched as she approached and
saw no one bothering to help her as her packets of food skittered across the
sidewalk. One of the more errant packages, a bow of cereal, blew up towards
Maggie’s feet. Maggie stopped it with her foot and picked it up. She returned
it to the woman and helped chase after a few more of the lighter items. It
seemed to Maggie that the packages were imbued with a weird sense of mischief,
for when she was just about to grasp them; they evaded her fingers by inches,
forcing her to expend precious energy that she had little to spare.
Determined, now she had committed to help
the woman, Maggie persisted long after many would have given up. Puffing and
out of breath, Maggie presented the woman with the last of her shopping.
“Thank you my dear,” offered the woman, her
eyes seeming to drill right into Maggie’s soul. “You needn’t have troubled
yourself like that,” she added, reaching for Maggie’s hand and holding it for a
moment. She released the hand after Maggie smiled, and added a cryptic remark
as Maggie turned to leave.
“Once more you’ll be tested, before your
dreams desire.”
Maggie continued on, puzzled by the odd
remark, but as the reality of her job pressed in on her, she shrugged it off
and concentrated on her work. Further on, she came to a car whose meter was
expired. Noting that it had her mark on its front wheel, she knew it had
overstayed its welcome and was about to receive a nice pink ticket. As she
looked down to get her book, she saw a coin on the ground. It shone as if it
was freshly minted. She picked it up, looking at it denomination. Should she
keep it and buy an extra treat at a cake shop she knew, or give the person
whose car was over parked, the benefit.
Unhesitatingly, she went to insert the coin
into the meter. It wouldn’t go in, it seemed to resist as if it were alive.
Sighing, she dug another coin out of her purse and inserted it into the meter,
thinking,’ I’ll just use the new coin instead. She never saw the glint, as the
silver coin turned into a gold hued one, nor did she see the lettering change
on the face of it. “ Good for one wish.”
Having spent time gathering the woman’s
groceries, meant Maggie had to forego her usual break in the afternoon, if she
was finish her route on time. Sighing, she continued working, looking forward
to when she could go to the library to use one of the computers there, to visit
a particular chat room. A chat room she frequented whenever times permitted.
There she would indulge her fantasy of being a 5-year-old girl. Never having
experienced growing up as a girl, this allowed her to experience some of the joys
she had missed. She had a virtual mother and a sister, another who also
interacted as a child. The love she felt from these unseen faces in the form
of text on a monitor screen, sustained her starved of affection soul. It was
this love that kept the dark forces at bay, and stopped her thoughts from
contemplating taking another final path.
Arriving at the library, she found that
when she tried logging on to the chat room, a message came up, telling her it
was classified as porn and therefore now on the restricted list. Maggie felt
tears of frustration at not being able to access her one safe haven from the
drudgeries of her every day life. She checked her email account and found
several from her ‘mother’ and ‘sister.’
She avidly read those and fired of a reply,
telling them of her plight. There was another email, part of a story that was
being sent from New Zealand from her ‘auntie.’ Maggie pulled put a floppy and
downloaded it for later reading at home on her old non-Internet viable
computer. She just managed to compose a reply, thanking her ‘auntie,’ for the
update, when the library started closing.
She went home disappointed that she hadn’t
been able to talk to Shelly, her virtual mother, Shelly was a self proclaimed witch
like Jenna, and was always promising that Maggie would get her wish. After
knocking up some dinner for herself, Maggie decided to try and write some
letters on her computer so when she next went to the library, she could upload
them from a floppy to be sent out.
As she sat, something dug into her bottom.
It was the coin she had found, still in her pocket of the trousers of the
uniform she was wearing. Maggie dug it out and was about to toss it over to
the table, when she saw its altered appearance.
“Wow! Its turned gold coloured,” she
exclaimed to herself, as she examined it more closely.
“Good for one wish? Huh! Wonder if it’s
true?” Maggie mused hopefully. She knew in her mind that magic coins don’t
exist, except in stories, but in her heart there lay a small belief of hope
that there was magic in the world. She thought of her dream, the one she had
most nights if she was lucky. The one in which she was 5 years old and a girl
and living with Shelly her mother. She clenched the coin and closed her eyes,
preparing to formulate her wish, then paused. As much as she wanted to give
her wish the chance to blossom, she wondered if she was being fair on Shelly.
She knew Shelly wasn’t born a woman, like so many of her chat room friends, and
if there was any chance that the coin was real, she couldn’t just something
that would affect others without their permission.
A thought struck her, luckily it didn’t
hurt, Shelly and Jenna had always said that they wished their magic was real.
So instead of wishing for something for herself, she would wish that Shelly and
Jenna really were witches with witchly powers at their disposal. As Maggie
made the wish in her mind, with all the will of her mind concentrating on it,
she thought she felt the coin warm and a faint satisfied voice echoed in her
head, “your wishes are done and done.”
‘Strange, that sounded like the woman’s
voice I helped today,’ thought Maggie, as she opened her hand and peered at the
coin. “Wow! It’s turned back into a sliver half dollar,” cried Maggie in
surprise. “I hope that means my wish came through.”
Far away in Texas and in New York, the
magic of the coin settled into the sleeping forms of Jenna and Shelly, imbuing
them with the knowledge and the wherewithal to perform real magic, magic that
had lain dormant for countless years. Had anyone been at Stonehenge or at the
some of the other centres of ancient magic concentrators, and had known where
to look, they may have seen an aura that flickered around the runes before
streaming in a direction that would end up in America. Streams from Egypt and
from Easter Island and many places in the world where magic was once practiced
all feed the stream into the two bodies of Shelly and Jenna.
Both Shelly and Jenna felt the difference
once they woke. They could feel the magic surging in their bodies and
instinctively knew the gestures and mental disciplines to manifest the power
constructively. Jenna woke first feeling strange, she could
sense the power filling her and there seemed to be a link to...someone she
knew, someone who also had an aura of power. Concentrating, she felt it come to
her, it was her sister Shelly. Jenna called her on the phone, knowing they
needed to talk.
“Jenna! What’s up, wait let me guess, you
have the power too?” Shelly answered, as she felt the power surge through her
own body. Shelly sensed something else as well, the person responsible for
this marvellous gift, Baruchah, the Yiddish name of her daughter Maggie. She
could sense her sister Jenna’s wariness of trying out her power, unlike Shelly
who was born for this moment and knew exactly what to do.
“Maggie wished on a coin for us to be
witches,” stated Shelly.
“But magic...”
“Doesn’t exist?” completed Shelly, laughing
gently, as she muttered a few phrases making use of it to give herself the
female body she dreamed of for so long. “Go ahead sis, make yourself a genetic
woman like I just did. I can feel your desire from here. I’m going to give
Maggie a hug when she wakes...no I’m going to wake her with a hug, want to join
me?” she asked, readying her transport spell.
“Sure. Just let me change first,” Jenna
begged, feeling a wonderful headiness fill her mind as she completed changing
her form to its natural counterpart. Once done, she could feel the magic flow
easier as if being more in harmony with nature.
Finding the transport spell in her head and
orientating on both Maggie and Shelly, Jenna appeared in Maggie’s bedroom in
the same instant as Shelly. The spell placed her beside Shelly, as it wasn’t
possible for them to appear in the sane spot. Jenna looked at Shelly, smiling
as she saw her friend for the first time. Shelly was wearing a long robe of
silk with loose sleeves at the wrists reminiscent of those worn by magic users
in past ages. It was a cream colour with iridescent threads in the weave that
flashed as she moved. Jenna looked down at her blouse and jeans and sighed.
Raising her arms above her head, Jenna chanted a quick spell. As she lowered
her hands down to her side, her clothes changed into a similar robe as Shelly,
except the colour was a buttercup yellow.
The change in attire, took only a moment of
time. Turning to look at the sleeping Maggie, they saw that she was clutching
one of the stuffed figures to her side. With a quiet, “shall we?” Shelly
moved forward to touch the sleeping Maggie, after getting the nod from Jenna. Maggie
stirred sleepily, before turning over and opening her eyes. Seeing two people
standing bye her bedside, gave her a moments fright, before the calming voice
of Shelly spoke to her.
“Hello my daughter, we much to discuss.”
“Shel… momma?” Maggie gasped before looking
at the other figure. “Auntie Jenna, you’re here too?” she said rubbing at her
eyes in wonder.
“You wished us to become true witches?”
Jenna asked Maggie gently, as she sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Yes, I found this coin, it said good for
one wish. I wanted to wish for my dream to come true, but then I thought that
if you were real witches, you could help more people with the magic and that
was more important than my silly dream coming true,” Maggie explained.
“I know what your dream is, Maggie,” Shelly
whispered, as she came and hugged Maggie. “You want to be my five year old
daughter and grow up as a girl, experiencing everything you missed.”
Maggie looked wide-eyed at her chat mom, a
sense of anticipation making her heart thud.
“You’re wondering if your dream is still
possible, well… let me ask you one thing. Do you truly want to be my daughter
and allow me to give you the love you missed out on in this reality?”
“OH MOMMA, YES!” Wept Maggie, flinging her
arms around Shelly.
“Alright then, lets begin.” So saying,
Shelly lifted Maggie out of bed and indicated to Jenna to take the other hand
of Maggie, making a circle, as Shelly grasped Jenna’s free hand.
Jenna felt the words of the chant enter her
head and repeated them in synchrony to Shelly as she opened herself to the
magic. For Maggie, she felt like she was being filled with energy, as the
magic flowed. She barely felt the changes as her body shed its accumulated mass
as the years peeled away. She did feel the remnant of her old sex as it grew
smaller and altered. Her arms lifted as her height shrank, until she had to
stretch to keep holding on to her momma and aunties hands. Finally it was
done; the nightie Maggie was wearing was now pooled in a silken mass around her
feet. Released from the circle, Maggie looked herself over, giggling in the
very high pitch of a child.
“ Momma, I’m liddle,” she squeaked, as she
ran her hands over her new body. She found her enunciation of words difficult,
but she didn’t mind, seeing as she still had all her knowledge of who she had
been. In her excitement, Maggie hadn’t noticed the room had changed; in fact
she wasn’t in her old place anymore.
“Yes you are,” confirmed Shelly, lifting
Maggie into her arms with ease, and planting a soft kiss on Maggie’s forehead.
“Where are we?” Maggie asked, as she saw
the room from the elevated position for the first time.
“Where you belong honey, with me in my
home. I hope you like your new bedroom my Baruchah,” Shelly explained.
“Oh it’s just onerfull momma and ... YES!”
She exclaimed, as she spotted her animals and dolls, piled neatly on the bed.
Maggie wriggled her way out of Shelly’s arms and ran to pick up an armful of
her friends. “My friends came too,” Maggie squealed in delight.
“Of course honey, you don’t think we would
forget them?” Jenna chided her gently.
Maggie tried to run to Jenna to give her
auntie a hug, but the much too long nightie tangled her stubby legs and she
nearly fell on her face. Only a quick twitch of Shelly’s finger that released a
levitation spell prevented Maggie from a nose wheel landing. Maggie squealed,
as she floated over to Jenna, where she was promptly snagged out of the air for
quick cuddle.
Maggie felt her nightie shrink to a more
suitable size, as more magic from her momma’s talented fingers was expended.
“You sure seem to be adapting well to
having magic at your beck and call sister,” Jenna mentioned enviously, looking
at Shelly in amazement.
“It’s funny you should say that, after all,
you had more power before with your physic abilities, than I did,” Shelly
began, I on the other hand, was always the witch of the chat room, Maybe it’s
because I was a witch with no power, I knew how the spells should work, it just
needed to magic to apply it,” offered Shelly, shrugging her shoulders.
“Speaking of chat rooms, I think a meeting
of the minds is in order,” Jenna responded.
“Indeed, this should be very interesting,”
smiled Shelly, with a hint of mischief in her eyes.
“Oh oh! I think so too, seeing that look in
your eyes,” laughed Jenna, feeling a sense of excitement at the prospects of
their news.
“Momma? Will I be able to see awnty Prue
and her hair munching moose?” (Maggie in her five-year-old kitten persona had
always called Prue’s muse, a moose and made it take on an identity of its own,
whenever she visited the chat room. One of its quirks was the ability to chew
hair while whispering in Prue’s ear.)
“I think so kitten, she should be still in
the room for another hour or two,” Jenna replied.
The three held hands again and instantly
they seemed to appear in a room with a large circular pink couch. There was a
round table in the centre with all sorts of food and drinks on it. Maggie ended
up sitting between Shelly and Jenna, and she bounced impatiently on the couch
as the others drew in the others one at a time. One minute there was just the
three, then a brunette popped into view with a magically applied nametag on her
blouse. Maggie didn’t need no name badges, as she instantly recognised her
auntie Prue from New Zealand.
Maggie squealed and ran to her surprised
aunt, giving her a hug as she hopped on her lap. Maggie seemed to see a fuzzy
appearing moose head with a tiny body, poking out from under Prue’s hair.
Maggie giggled and scooped up the mystical moose, and set it on her own
shoulder, as she tried to tell her auntie everything in one continuous
sentence.
“Whoa there! Kitten, let me get this
straight, you found a magic coin and wished on it, and now both Jenna and
Shelly are real witches, and that’s how I’m here? Wherever here is?” she
asked, quirking her eyebrow at Shelly for further elaboration.
“Yupper awntie Prue, you gotted it right
first times,” Beamed Maggie, feeling proud that her rush of words had been
understood.
“Here,’ is a pocket in time, where everyone
can meet in the form of their choosing,” Shelly explained. “No time will elapse
in real life until you want to return.” She further added.
Others then started popping into the room,
Janet, Donna, Cathleen, Bob and Rich were just the first of many to feel amazed
to see each other in the flesh, even if that flesh was a product of their own
minds and the way they saw themselves. Explanations took time, only in the
reality of the room as no time passed in the real world. Some like Cathleen
chose to appear as a child, as Cathleen had a daughter mother relationship with
Jenna in the chat room. Needless to say, there was a lot of tears and hugging
going on as everyone finally met everyone else. Then the real bombshell fell as
Shelly called for silence.
“I’m going to begin with a once in a life
time offer,” she announced, into the near silence. “Anyone wishing to keep the
body that they have chosen can do so. Those like Danielle, Heather, Rich and
Bob with health problems will have them fixed regardless of that. All you need
to do is visualise how you want things to be and log in tomorrow. If things
turn out not quite as you desire, you can alter them. “Stuck” is not an
option, unlike some of the stories you may have read.”
Babble reigned as the implications sank in.
Shelly was inundated with questions of. “Will I need a new identity? What
about my parents and friends?” Shelly explained that reality would fill in the
discrepancies from their old life to the new, and that they could select those
that they wanted to know both realities. Further, Shelly told them that any
particularly unpleasant memories they didn’t want to keep could also be
changed, but she wouldn’t allow a complete memory rewrite.
As people in the real world logged into the
chat room and saw the others logged in, a message would come up from Shelly
Shalimar, inviting them to come into the party. If they accepted, they appeared
amongst the others, and were given the same choices. After several hours, many
opted to leave, anxious to begin their new lives, but promising to remain in
touch so they could share their experiences. Jenna suggested that maybe they
should each tell their own individual stories of how their lives changed and
post them for others to read.
Shelly stayed on in the room she had
created for a while, to catch those late comers from the other side of the
globe, while Jenna and Prue left with Maggie to put the over excited child to
bed. It was a really poignant moment as for the first time they could tuck her
into bed for real and give her the first of many hugs that had previously only
been cyber ones. Jenna gave Prue the ability to transport herself (and her
moose) to wherever Shelly or Jenna happened to be at any given time. This
would mean she could visit Maggie and her momma or Jenna and Cathleen, who had
decided to become Jenna’s daughter, at any time of the day or night. Jenna also
provided a linking spell that would allow Prue to sense when she was needed or
invited over.
That night, for the first time in her life,
the dream that Maggie had always wished could come true, did not fill her
slumbering mind. Instead, her dreams changed to scenes and memories of a life
growing up with Shelly and Cathleen and Jenna. When she finally stirred the
next morning she wondered if everything that had happened the previous day was
indeed true or just a fevered dream. She lay there, motionless, hoping that
when she opened her eyes, it would be to the wonderful room Shelly had created
for her and not the same old room in her old life. She cracked open one eye,
and checked the room, holding her breath...YES!
The end,
or maybe its the beginning.
This story is dedicated to a wonderful
person that I’ve grown to know and love. May all your dreams come true Maggie O’Malley.
Since 12/19/03