Midas Journal -- Episodic Story

[Whatevr89532]

[Note that the title is kind of a work in progress...hoping to think of something better for it.]
I got an idea of this story a little while ago... Figure I might as well post it, for enjoyment and criticism...
This story is about a young man who gains a strange power (care to guess what that power is?). It's written in first person, but the main character is (probably) never going to be the one changed.

Table of Contents
Entry 1: Mar 19
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Entry 2: Mar 20

Entry 3: Mar 23

[Whatevr89532]

Entry: Mar 19
Part 1

If you're reading this, congrats on finding it. This is a secret, top-secret file. I've hidden it as deep in my computer as I could, so nobody would ever find it...at least, not easily. Not without my knowing, or unless something's happened to me.
And if you're reading this, I'm not crazy. Okay? I'm writing this, journal thing just because I'm trying to make sense of what I've been seeing lately. I know nobody's ever going to believe me, so...top-secret file. Clear?

So...lately things have gotten really, really strange. The worst part, I guess, is I'm starting to get used to it...but I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's what happened:
A week ago, the Friday night after my 18th birthday, I went to sleep like I usually do. And I had a dream. But it wasn't an ordinary dream—it was really distinct, I could remember it after I woke up, and, well, I didn't feel like I had any control over it, even though I immediately knew it was a dream. All I saw in it was a man touching some fruit and it turned into pure gold, touching a cup and it turned into gold...something like that. Then there was this...flash, and then I woke up. Okay, so I had a weird dream. But that's not even starting with the strange stuff.

The night before one of my little circle of friends, Carlos, had stayed the night, sleeping on the floor under a blanket. I woke up in the bright morning light—you know the kind, it always interrupts a good sleeping-in, and you wind up giving up after a few minutes of flailing and getting up well before noon—and he was still sleeping there. The other side of my bed was up against a wall, so I had to step out where he was sleeping, practically on top of him, or else risk waking him up. I was careful enough not to actually step on him, but my bare foot did catch a good bit of the blanket. I didn't think much of it, stepping over the other side of him and going to the bathroom, but when I came back that part of the blanket had turned from blue to pink. Furthermore, the pink was spreading like someone was pouring a big bottle of dye on the spot, and it was somehow not staining anything but the blanket.

As the...the...pink spread to the part of the blanket over Carlos's body, his hair turned blue—no kidding...it just, all at once, changed color. And then his bangs grew out, the whole curly mass turned straight and smooth...I was already confused enough about that, and then I noticed the rest of his body.
There were two thins wrong with that picture: One, there was no evidence of his wearing any clothing under the blankets, even though he'd gone to sleep in boxers and a T-shirt the night before...and two, he was shrinking. The blanket started to trace contours, his stomach was sloping in. Then the blanket itself got, well, a lot smaller, so when he rolled over lazily onto his side I caught view of the front of the stomach...which had turned flat, smooth, a little pale...and his legs. They seemed longer than before, and they were getting a shapeliness to them, the bumps and ridges between the hips and the feet reforming into single, smooth lines. His hips started to spread out, pulling the top of the legs each way, and in trying really hard not to look there I snapped my eyes back up, to find the blanket forming a kind of loose sleeve around each arm.
Those arms were shrinking, much like the legs; his fingers thinned and shortened, the nails growing out just a bit and becoming polished, uniform. My focus was drawn to his face as one hand reached up and brushed the strange, blue hair gently. It had become smaller too, the chin less defined, and turned the same palish color as the rest of him. His eye shape had changed completely...even closed, they seemed so strangely large...
My eyes were drawn to Carlos's chest. I really didn't want to look, but it was hard not to. I was struck dumb by everything...it was like...well, the expression “like goes watching a train wreck”. No matter how much I wanted to look away from something I couldn't, because somewhere beneath the dread, fear, and otherwise freaking-out that was going on inside my brain I was mesmerized by it. His chest was growing...he...she... was filling out. The little bumps grew, and grew, until they had reached a fairly...large...size.

[Image, SRFW (somewhat risky for work)]

Before I could say or do anything, she opened her eyes...which had turned the same shade of blue as that hair...and looked up at me.
“Morning, Kael,” said a light, upper-alto voice from her lips. She got up, the former-blanket now acting as some kind of bathrobe, and I forced my eyes up to her face..forehead. She leaned over and gave me a very brief kiss on the lips before going off to the bathroom, and starting the shower.

Well, I was confused, to say the least. The problem of Carlos turning into a girl was complicated by the fact that the first thing she did was kiss me and not even worry about a lack of clothing, and that was made about twenty times worse by the fact that she was...hot. What I felt was a mixture of surprise, confusion, embarrassment...somewhere at the back of my mind, a kind of elation, stirring up more embarrassment and a good bit of revulsion.
I sat down on my bed, trying to work out just what was going on here. After a few minutes the shower stopped, and I looked up, ready for...well...okay, so I wasn't ready. Not at all.

To my surprise, Carlos walked out..as...Carlos, not the girl, wearing the change of clothes he'd packed last night.
“Hey, what's eatin' you?”
“Um...nothing. I think I had a..a weird dream, that's all.”
“Oh.”

The rest of the day was...normal. We played some games, and after awhile Carlos went back to his house. The whole time I made sure not to touch Carlos...or his clothes.


So after that I got to thinking that it was just a...hallucination, or some kind of dream where I woke up somehow already sitting up. Maybe I was sleepwalking. Dreaming. Dreamwalking. It was a good, normal three days before such theories were blown out of the roof, in other words proven totally wrong.

[Marky]

Very good story, in my opinion. Keep up working on this. It is very interesting to me, as I don't believe I've seen a story related to something like this.

[Haylie]

A unique idea, one of those things that makes me think to myself, "I never would have thought of that... but now I wish I had."

That's a good thing, by the way. I like it so far. Can't wait for chapter 2.

[Whatevr89532]

Entry: Mar 19
Part: 2

Three days later, it was a Tuesday—as anyone with half a brain should be able to figure out, but yeah. Carlos and I were walking home from school when...I'm not kidding...a guy jumped out from a nearby alley wearing all black and a ski mask, and holding a gun. It was ridiculous, in broad daylight, and especially considering neither of us had anything of value. He tossed Carlos aside without a word and grabbed me by the collar.
“Give me all your money!”
“I-I don't have any money!” Of course I was more than a little scared, but meanwhile I was wondering in the back of my head why such impossibly weird stuff was apparently going to become common). The guy put the barrel of his gun to my forehead, which resulted in a general mental meltdown. I reflexively tried to push it off, with both hands, and...again I've got to say, this was the weird part.
His hand started shrinking. His glove disappeared, and his whole wrist—the whole arm—got smaller, thinner, and lost a good bit of the hair to it. For that matter, the pitch-black sweater sleeve pulled back from that hand the same way I'd wanted to recoil from the gun. Surprised, the guy let go of me, causing me to topple over backwards (fortunately, unhurt). Still in a bit of shock and terror about the gun, I was pretty much paralyzed and watched from where I was.
His sleeve got a lot looser as it stopped a little behind the elbow, the collar of it turning a bright green and the part on his shoulder an equally bright yellow. The whole sweater thinned all of a sudden, and then turned the same color of yellow—it turned into a shirt, seemingly without anything much under it. As the other sleeve shrank, revealing an arm that was becoming much like the other one, the collar opened down suddenly, turning the same green as the cuffs, and a bow tying it together seemed to appear out of nowhere.
The ski mask disappeared altogether, revealing a rough masculine face for all of two seconds before the rugged beard smoothed over, the whole face becoming shorter and smooth, the brown hair shooting out to great lengths before two sides were tied by more ribbons from nowhere—these ones yellow.
His pants turned green next, and seemed to fold in on themselves at the same time as the gap between the fabric on each leg closed, and then it pushed to the front and back, all of which resulted in the whole thing becoming a skirt. The yellow shirt suddenly shrank around his stomach, seeming to shove that area inward into a very thin, flat shape. I then noticed the skirt was losing more than half of its length, briefly exposing legs that were losing a lot of hair and shrinking, which were quickly covered up by white socks that quickly elongated into stockings reaching just above the knees. Once the skirt had finished shrinking the two revealed a little bit of smooth, curved skin between them, and the leggings were quite tight enough to suggest more of the same all the way down.
The skirt pushed out at the top and back then, apparently responding to a drastic change in the anatomy of the body's hips, and the bottom part fanned out to match. Last of all I was able to see the bow, collar, and upper part of the shirt being pushed out by what was definitely a pair of modest, petite boobs.

[Image]

Her arms reached around her back, carrying a suitcase that must have been the handgun less than a minute ago. A sweet, high soprano voice spoke from the new girl's mouth: “Oh, I'm so sorry! Are you alright? I can be such a klutz sometimes...here, I'll help you up!” She reached down a hand and grabbed mine by force, pulling me up. Small as those arms were, and thin as they looked...wow, they were strong! So I came along for the ride in an attempt to not dislocate a shoulder.

She gave a small smile in my direction while I dusted myself off. “You alright now? I've got to go...say, do you..go to Phalos High?”
Not really knowing how else to respond I said, “Yeah...why?”
“I just moved in a few days ago...today was my first day of school but I sorta...got lost looking for it. I'm Rio by the way.”
“Rio. Right. I'm..Kael.”
She gave me a slight sideways glance. “How's that spelled? K-A-Y-E-L-E?'
“No...K-A-E-L. It..doesn't sound how it looks.”
“Right, got it. And you?” She looked off to my left.
“Carlos.” He must have gotten up at some point...he was now standing there next to me.
“Good to meet you both. Aaahm, I'd better be on my way home, bye!” With that, she gave a cheerful wave and then ran off in the direction I'd been facing, suitcase in hand.

I looked over at Carlos, and he waited until she was definitely out of earshot before speaking: “Okay...did I hallucinate or was that cute girl a robber with a handgun about two minutes ago?”
“...You saw that too?”
He nodded.
“I think you're right...nobody's ever gonna believe this, though...”
“Yeah. And there weren't any other witnesses—odd for a public street at this time of day.” He was right—there wasn't a single car or pedestrian in sight but the two of us.
“How about we just...pretend that what she said happened, happened, and she just smacked into us running...that way.” I pointed behind myself...opposite the direction she'd just gone off in.
“She didn't say that.”
“She implied it.”
“You're right. Close enough...”

From there the two of us continued our conversation where we'd left off, acting as normal and not-freaked-out as possible.
So...I guess if it was my doing...I can stop robbers by turning them into schoolgirls? That's got to be the weirdest power ever. But...I didn't say anything about what I'd seen the day after my birthday. I...just didn't feel ready.
Third time turned out to be a charm...at least as far as my not being able to keep it all to myself went.

[Whatevr89532]

[Separate post so my speaking doesn't get mixed up in with the story]
Glad to see there's some liking of it.
I already have an idea for part 3, probably last of the first entry...it'll probably be more common to have two parts at most per entry after this introductory one.

[Marky]

Awesome. And, another good entry/chapter. Looking forward to the next one!

[Ookalf]

Like most of you work, this story's pretty good so far. Keep it up!

Though, I have to wonder what happened to the robber. Did she change back later, like Carlos did?

[Whatevr89532]

Heh-eeh...why give a character a name if they aren't gonna show up again?
...[rhetorical question, please don't try to answer]
But I hope to make it all explained, in due time.

[dr5]

I like the story and cannot wait to see more of it.

[Whatevr89532]

Entry: Mar 19
Part: 3
This next part is what happened today. (That's right, I'm writing this at night—what better time to hide stuff from people?) See, I've got a friend, Seth, who's a couple of years older than I am. He graduated last year from Phalos High, and he's been spending the time until next fall working under a small business as a telephone handler, to help pay for his planned four or more years of college. After school Carlos had to go run some errands for his mom, so I decided to go visit Seth at work on my way home, to relieve doldrums. Turned out he got the rest of the day off today, starting just about when I walked up to the place (how weird is that?), so he said he'd walk with me to chat a little.

“So, I haven't seen you much the last couple of months,” I said. “Not since New Years. How are things with the job?”
“Well...let's say I'm looking forward to college, Kael.”
I remember thinking 'this, the job you absolutely loved for six months straight'...but didn't say that. Instead: “Wow, that bad?”
“I just don't feel like I'm accomplishing anything anymore. It's not that I hate my boss or those professionals that work with him...I'm just getting annoyed with how they pretty much ignore me. The customers on the phone have the usual range from friendly to demonic, of course...I guess I just feel underappreciated. I don't want a raise, know they can't afford it anyway and there's no reason for one. Just an occasional friendly nod, pat on the back, 'hey, great, you're doing your job' would do. You know?”
I did the natural, semisarcastic thing then, of course, and patted his back a couple of times. He paused in his walk to give me a halfway grin. “Thaaanks. Ha ha.”

We started to move forward again, two or three steps, and he suddenly stopped. “Whoa.”
“What is it?” I said, looking around. There wasn't anything...and then I thought, wait a minute, there was nothing around. There we were on the sidewalk, without any other people, no cars, pets, or anything. The closest houses even had thick blinds drawn. I began to suspect where this was going, and didn't like it a bit.
“I don't know...my back feels..warm.”
“It is spring, you know.”
“I know..not like that, though. It's like...aah, I'm not sure how to describe it. The kind of warm, fuzzy feeling a kid gets hugging a brand new teddy bear. And it's spreading..aah...”
What I could see was his button-down shirt starting to get tighter, especially on his stomach. And I knew for a fact Seth wasn't nearly as thin as he looked now..

I could hear his voice occasionally, making slight noises, could hear it slowly rising in pitch, but I was more focused on what was happening to his body. Now his khakis were getting tighter around his thighs—not shrinking themselves, as I could see his hips quickly expanding, and his bottom rounding out. They did shrink quite a bit on his legs, and at the top, between them—I was quickly able to see something that wasn't there anymore.
My attention was suddenly and inexplicably drawn to Seth's face. I could see the bits of fuzz he hadn't been able to shave with his electric razor this morning suddenly retracting, leaving its skin entirely smooth; the whole thing then shrank in, his lips turning a shade of red I was sure could only be achieved with lipstick. Then his hair—oh, this was weird—shot out, growing down easily to the small of his back, past that to the top of the round bottom, and turned a shade of light purple as something red—a scrunchie?—tied some of it up in the back.
“Ah...whoa... That was, a push.” I was startled by Seth's voice, now a smooth, mature alto. I was going to ask or wonder what..she..was referring to when I noticed bulges appearing under the now quite-tight shirt. Suddenly the shirt's buttons popped off, starting at the center and going up and down, exposing a good bit of the slender neckline, flat, taut stomach, smooth skin..and most importantly, a black, flower-patterned brassiere that had probably been Seth's undershirt before, and was now filled quite completely.

[Image, SRFW (somewhat risky for work)]

Blushing, she gingerly traced her neckline, touching some of the skin on the new breasts. “Wow...R-real...
“It all feels so....wonderful....” After a moment, she looked back up at me, as if noticing me for the first time in the last few minutes. “Kael...don't tell anyone about this, alright? I've been..Sarah, alright?” I nodded dumbly. I had a lot of questions, and objections, too, but...I felt stuck.
She ran off, toward her house. After a moment I shook myself off, and ran to my own house. I sat through a normal supper to get to writing this...hoping it'll help my sanity.

I called Carlos after I got home, and invited him over for lunch. My parents will be out tomorrow, most of the day, so I'm going to tell him. I just really hope I don't wind up in some kind of loony bin.

[Marky]

Nice. Another good chapter. You definitely have me hooked. I wonder if somehow the "victims" turn back to normal after not being around Kael for a little while? I know Carlos did, at first, but...hmm...yeah, that's my main question at this point. I guess we'll find out the answer to that, eventually? XD

[Whatevr89532]

Next one will hint at some of the "rules" of the ability...at least, as it's planned it will.

Considering my impending trip (on Teusday, see the sig?) the second entry may not come till next week sometime, apologies all around if that happens...

[Whatevr89532]

Entry: Mar 20
So instead of getting more normal today, things got weirder.
What a surprise.

I explained everything to Carlos over lunch. Everything. I started with the gun-wielding robber turned schoolgirl, figured that was a good starting point because he was there to see it. Then I moved on to Seth. Sarah. Okay, that was out of the way. By this point we were sitting on the couch, on opposite ends, and the TV, naturally, was off. I wasn't sure how to move on from there:

“This is all pretty crazy. Woo. So it looks like you can touch guys, and turn them into girls—generally girls who are a lot happier. I thought you were acting a little odd around me..trying not to touch me, I guess?”
“Oh..I thought that wasn't noticeable,” I said. “I was trying to be discreet.”
“Oh, you were, I know you too well, man. But...wait a minute. that started Saturday. How'd you know about it then?”
“Okay...Ahm, Carlos. Did you have any kind of..dreams that night?”
“Yeah, I remember dreaming I was some girl, and getting up and taking a shower in your house...and then I woke up..in...the....shower.” He paused a moment, catching on.
I cut in before he could say anything else: “I had a dream that night too. It didn't make any sense to me, some guy turning stuff to gold. And I thought—that day, I thought I was dreaming when I got up and..and watched you change into that.”
He paused a moment, and nodded. “Okay. So...it was an accident, right?”
I nodded.
“But I saw that, ah, Rio girl yesterday in school. She never turned back. Why would I?”
“Well, after you went into the shower, I was..really freaked. I think I panicked, and my brain locked up, thinking how you couldn't be a girl, and there was no way what I'd seen was real.”
“So..you panicked, and you were able to turn me back by disbelief.”
“You could put it that way.”

Carlos paused. It was one of those awkward pauses where one person has no idea what to say (AKA me), and the other (AKA Carlos) is working up the courage to say something that isn't going to make sense to the first person. Okay, so I couldn't tell it was that kind of pause at the time, but looking back...uh...I'll just go on, alright?

At the end of that awkward pause I mentioned, Carlos said, “Try touching me again.”
“What?!”
“Hold up, it's not that crazy. I just want to see what happens. If it works, you know? I mean, it looks like you could turn me back if I don't like it.”
“But, it's not that simple. I don't even know how I did that.”
“That's easy, you denied it. With the other two, you seem like you didn't believe it, but it was more of an amazement than a straight-out 'this can't be' deal.”
“...Okay...but...I don't even know what happens to a person's mind, when I, do that. I mean, I'm pretty sure that robber guy lost every bit of whoever he was before turning into Rio.”
“You don't know that though. You've got to try and figure out just what happens when you touch people and change them, so maybe if it's not too bad you won't seem like a freak afraid to touch any other human being.”
I started to calm down a little. Carlos was doing his 'logic' thing now. “Yeah...yeah...but what about you​​? I mean, you want to be the guinea pig for this?”
He grinned a little, which only confused me a bit worse. “Eeh..you got me. I sorta want to know what it's like to be the opposite sex...especially if there's a chance I could turn back. Besides, I remember being sorta happy in that 'dream' I had Saturday morning.”

I thought on it for a minute. I tried putting myself in his shoes, but it was sort of hard. I like my present gender, thankyouverymuch. But...Carlos is adventurous, likes to try new things. He might enjoy it, and not in a 'pervert' kind of way. Finally I nodded hesitantly. “Okay...”

Carlos held out a hand, and I tapped it hesitantly with my index finger. It was like dropping that lead nitrate stuff into pandemonium capacitate, or whatever—it happened fast and spread fast. All at once, that hand had limber, thin fingers, pretty, long fingernails, and the attached arm thinned. Carlos watched intently, almost a little too excitedly—his black shirt tightened, turned a light blue and sleeveless, while his shoulders shrank and his stomach sucked in, and his face shrank into a blue-eyed, blue-haired form I immediately recognized.
It was on to the hips, which got wider, pressing out his jeans—though those got tight, fast, accenting thin, long legs Carlos suddenly had, and revealing a hole between them no man could pull off having. The shirt had shrunk so fast I had missed it, exposing the stomach and the shoulders and most of the rest of, well, her—and turning a little frilly, rounding out on the front expectantly just before Carlos's chest expanded straight into it.

...Great. It was the same girl Carlos had become before..on Saturday morning. But she was wearing clothes.
No shirt. Because Carlos only wore a T-shirt, and apparently whatever made this work couldn't, or wouldn't, create fabric out of nothingness.
After a moment she grinned up at me. “I'm gonna have a look at myself in the mirror. Be right back!”
She ran off to the nearest bathroom (Guess whose? Mine? Right.), and after a moment came back, still grinning from ear to ear, and sat on the couch right next to me.
“Aww, you're blushing. That's cute.”
“Um..Carlos?”
“Carla.”
“Carla. Do you..feel alright?”
“I feel great! I don't think I've ever felt so confident about my body before in my life.”
I spoke slowly and carefully. “So, you're not just randomly cheerful for no reason. Right?”
“Yeah. I have a legitimate reason. And changing was fun.”
(Not the word I would use to describe it, but okay.) “Uh..glad I could help?”
“Of course, thank you.” She nodded. “Seriously though..let's see what's different.”

“Well, you're sitting..um..there...and apparently have no problem being practically topless. And you're enjoying tormenting me.”
“Only because you're being so shy. C'mon, we're friends!”
“...Right. So, um..do your memories feel any different?”
“Hmm..” She paused a moment, thinking. “I still remember every bit of being Carlos. You know, hanging out as guys...all that stuff. I've got other memories though, as Carla. They're almost exactly the same until about the time I hit puberty.”
I was hesitant to ask this, but went for it anyway: “...What then?”
“Oh, you started to act a lot shyer around me. I've always been open with myself—it seems—so you were kind of embarrassed when we're together and I'm not perfectly modest. I can recall teasing you a lot—it's fun!—and some serious conversations about it, too. I mean, we're friends.”
I put my hand to my forehead at this point. “What's wrong?”
“I...have two memories now too. No idea how that happened.”
“So I don't have to go into detail, I hope?”
“No..plenty of detail in my brain now,” I said. “I guess you don't want to change back anytime soon.”
“Nawh. Let me try it for a few weeks. At least long enough to discover the nightmare of a period firsthand, non-memory...see if it's..you know...worth it.”
“Um..by then I might be unable to deny it though. I mean, it's pretty hard to right now, with the whole 'dual memory' thing...?”

“Well..you can't be the only person that can change people, right? I mean, that wouldn't make any sense.”
“Spoken like a genre savvy,” I commented.
“Yup.” She nodded. “So even if you can't, there's probably someone who could—if I ever get to hating this. Can't imagine it now, though...”

...So what happened the rest of the day? We...talked. The conversation degenerated into our usual kind of conversation. Gah, I mean the kind of conversation that's usual with Carlos. With Carla. Both memories agree it's usual. That's...really confusing. Whatever. It got awkward a couple of times—for me only, of course—but...I don't know what to make of it. I guess I didn't lose a friend. Wonderful. I've just gained a strange power I know absolutely nothing about.

Yeah, okay. It's kind of nice to have a...hot girl as a best friend now. But it raises a lot of uncomfortable questions, not to mention the fact that I'm easily flustered by...ahm...beauty...and she just laughs about it.

Anyway, the rest of the day...after we had our typical (not going over that again) remainder of the day, she picked up a shirt that Carlos's coat had morphed into and put it on for her walk home. We said goodbye.
And here I am, writing this. I don't know if it's possible for things to get stranger.


NO WAY.


I did NOT just say that, did I!?



Just...forget it. I'll write something else when it happens. Yes, when.

[Marky]

Hmm. Another interesting chapter. Heh, I'm just left with more questions after this chapter, too. XD