The Transmundane
PART TWO
A bit over a week after starting the experiment, Jill woke up suddenly suffocating! Something was all over her face and she clawed at it to be able to breathe again. Once she drew sweet air into her lungs, she noticed the stuff was her own hair! It exploded overnight from shoulder-length rather coarse copper-brownish to heavy, long, dark red silky strands! Once her pulse calmed down she was elated at the change! She stared at her reflection—marvelling at her clear, slightly more tanned skin and delighting in the sensations of her beautiful thick hair brushing her back.
Showering with this much hair was not much fun but she managed. It was while she made breakfast that she noticed the problem. She stepped on her hair and tripped—it had grown that much just in the last few hours! She took her scissors and reluctantly cut the amazingly thick stuff back to waist-length, and went back to her housework. It did not take long for the cut ends to begin to tickle her calves! She figured it was growing at the rate of about a foot an hour, and seemed to be accelerating. A very nervous Jill called her friend Mike and begged him to come over.
“What’s going on, Jill? You made it sound like an emerg...” He froze when he caught sight of her with her red hair dragging along behind her. She invited him in and cried as she told him everything. She watched as emotions flashed over his face as the story unfolded. She was relieved when he just asked her to review her notes. She was embarrassed when he pointed out the mathematical error she made in making up the hair potion. She was relieved when he was able to show her how to make up a corrective ‘shampoo’ and use the wand to set things right.
They were sitting around the fire in her living room, sipping wine, and just thinking. She was just getting ready to thank him for his help and beg his forgiveness and silence, when he started talking. “Jill, I’d like to help you with your project if you’ll let me. You deserve to be who you want as much as I do.” Jill almost swooned from relief and they talked for another hour or two before he finally went home.
They took lunch together the next day at work and he showed her his plans for continuing her project. It was mostly her own ideas with a few intelligent tweaks and addressed a few glitches she had not thought of—like ensuring her metabolism did not go crazy during her growth. He explained that one of the early challenges was that forcing cellular growth all too often triggered aggressive forms of cancer and other complications, but they knew how to minimize that risk now.
Working together, they started with things that were either invisible, like improved health and metabolism, or were easy to explain, like eye color, for the time being while laying the foundation for things to come. The few co-workers who noticed the differences were easily placated, although Jill sometimes was depressed at how little she was actually noticed around work.
After a few weeks though, Jill was changed enough that she was actually pretty. Her face structure looked subtly different—thicker lips, higher cheekbones, maybe thinner brows? It was hard to put your finger on the details and Jill had taken to carrying beauty products with her to help explain the changes. Guys at work began to notice her, even asking her out, making her heart race!
She looked at Mike as she thought about the date offer. He was her first real crush and they got along wonderfully... but in the last few weeks, he seemed more vested in the project than actually in her. She had upped her flirtation and he did not seem to notice at all. She told her potential beau that she would let him know by the end of the day. She asked Mike about getting together for dinner. He gave her a long unreadable look and mumbled something about not being sure it was a good idea before going back to work. She called the other guy and set things up.
The next morning, she felt great physically and horrible mentally. The date went well, including some rather heavy petting over a nightcap, followed by an extended make-out session. She spent every second wishing she was with Mike. The next morning she found that the flood of hormones the petting released in her body accelerated some of the potions to boot so she the bra and slacks she wore the day before already fit poorly.
Mike’s emotions flashed all over the place as Jill related her night’s events. She saw anger, frustration, longing, jealousy, resignation, and then a sort of sad calm move over his face. He seemed to want to tell her something, but she could not get it out of him. Jill decided to not date again anytime soon to give Mike a chance to work his issues out.
Her resolution was quickly tested as last night’s guy asked for another date and more guys paid her yet more attention. She was caught between her own poorly-developed defences against unwanted advances (when would she have ever come up with ways to say no to guys?) and her slightly out of control hormones. She had felt a subtle but pervasive urge to be touched and held and kissed and... well, more. Her scientific side understood what was probably driving it but it was still hard to resist.
By Monday morning she was doing her own new version of the ‘walk of shame’. She had been on four separate dates, and had sex with two of the men—in fact, had had several rounds of sex with the last one. Once her body tasted orgasms, it seemed, it instantly became addicted to them. She dearly loved the sensations of being touched on her increasingly sensitive erogenous zones, of being filled by a man, of feeling hot sperm in her.
She was troubled by the loss of control, by the increased pace of the changes, and by her sense that she really wanted Mike. She even called his name a couple of embarrassingly intimate times, but the guys did not seem to notice. It felt like it took her an hour in the shower to feel even somewhat clean again and when she looked in the mirror she almost did not recognize herself—taller, slimmer, bustier, and... dare she say it? Beautiful. She looked like a new person... ‘a beautiful body with a dirty soul’ she thought to herself sadly. The fact that nothing fit right again just made it worse.
She could barely talk to Mike even as he obviously noticed the increased changes in her and obviously knew why. She saw him grit his teeth as he turned to his own work, and she heard a beaker shatter in his hand. When she went to help him, he brushed her off with a growl. They barely spoke for the rest of the week. Her resolve to not date other men held up for just two days. Jill was late to work that Thursday morning, wearing the clothes she had on the day before and trying to be discreet as she used the showers in the locker room to wash up. She pretended to not notice the new hole in the wall and the scratches on Mike’s knuckles.
She spent most of her time in a funky despair. What was the deal with Mike? She asked him out several times and he either seemed to ignore her, or just shook his head sadly.
Mike on the other hand was in his own personal hell. His own libido has been going crazy, forcing him to masturbate several times a day—usually thinking of Jill and almost forcing him visit Sue and his other booty calls more frequently. He felt he blew it. he had a chance to be with Jill, then found himself sidetracked into her project. The more she improved, the more he lusted after her—but she was clearly having fun with the other men around her.
When she asked him out to dinner a while ago he wanted to say ‘yes’ so badly it hurt, but two things held him back. Most importantly, multiple notes in the research warned against being intimate with someone else affected by active spells—numerous results were documented with some being pretty horrific. He tried to tell Jill about this, but somehow it got tangled up in his mind with his struggle over his jealousy and his strong sense that she had every right to mess around with other guys just as he was messing with Sue et al. What he managed to mumble out sounded more like some lame excuse rather than a rational reason.
When she had showed up disheveled a few days ago, and with her changes visibly accelerated, he knew what had happened. His jealousy exploded for a nanosecond, making him crush a flask he was holding. On another occasion, he put his fist through the wall when he noticed she had obviously spent the night with a guy. He tried to bury himself in visiting his other female companions, but while they helped with the biological aspects they did not help with the emotional, and things just got worse between them.
Then, she let it drop that she had a date with Daniel. Mike particularly disliked the head salesman, feeling that he was a bit of a slime, especially with women. He was the kind of guy that liked to celebrate his achievements at local strip joints. That was the last straw. That next Friday night, he began a new potion.