He had reason to do so; when I left the Inn last night, I was aiming to sin. I was going somewhat crazy hanging around the inn, waiting for a call. I spent some time on the beach reading a book, mildly diverted when some high school kids set up a net to play volleyball, maybe not looking away quickly enough when I realized how young they were. I waded some in the water, came out, put on some pants and went to get some food. Then, after eating it on the pier, I went to find some place to drink.
The drinking was good - there were some places serving decent microbrews - but it was not really the goal. I was, no denying it, looking for a girl. I was not having much success, though; most of the other vacationers were couples or families, and the ones from the rest who weren't immediately turned off by the gray at my temples were in a group that they didn't want to separate from. At about midnight I decided I had had enough; I started to stand when a woman sat down at the bar beside me.
She was a bit younger than myself - in her mid-thirties, although she was wearing a lot of cosmetics to cover up that they maybe hadn't been easy years. Or maybe she was trying to look younger, and it wasn't quite working. She had dirty blonde hair, a tight black dress that manhandled her breasts into perching high on her chest, and boots that had a stiletto point to their heels. She smiled at me, expecting me to buy her a drink.
I sighed. "So it's come to this," I said.
She smiled a little wider, probably to avoid scowling. "It's not so bad. You're looking for something and I can supply it."
We haggled a bit on the price, but not long. I did want what she was offering, after all. I paid for the drinks, and took Arlene back to the Inn.
There were a couple of vagrants sitting on a bench nearby, and they made some whistling noises at her as we walked past them. She shivered a little as we crossed the threshhold - it is starting to get chilly at night - and then we went to my room. And then we started.
As one might expect from a professional of her experience, Arlene was good. She started with her mouth, and then we moved to the bed. She had learned a lot of tricks, and I don't want to describe what we were doing when half-past two came around. Both our eyes were closed, but she was yelling "oh god", and as this feeling of becoming lighter flowed over me, her voice became higher. I felt myself going limp, so I tried to thrust deeper, but it did not good. I opened my eyes and was shocked by what I saw - where before I would have put Arlene in her mid-thirties, the girl making those noises was a teenager!
Without looking or thinking, I grabbed the feet that were digging into my armpits by the ankles and shoved her off me. She fell off the end of the bed and hit the floor with a thump. "Ow! What was that for?" She hauled herself up over the foot of the bed, intending to look angrily at me, only to have her jaw drop in shock. I was looking at much the same thing, and having much the same reaction.
I had gotten a bit of a tan over the past week, but now my skin was black. A deep, chocolate black all over, only a little lighter on the palms of my hands and soles of my feet. My belly was gone, as was my body hair, for the most part, with the exception of a small patch near my new vagina. I had the firm teenage breasts to match it, and my limbs and belly had also grown slender, like a girl's.
Arlene looked scared. "Look," she said, "I don't know how you made yourself look white, or older, or like a man, but I don't do kids. I'll do a lot of other stuff, but I draw the line at that!"
"Moi non plus!" I'd slipped into French out of shock, and she looked confused. "I don't do kids either!"
She looked down then, grabbing at her now much-smaller breasts. She saw that her pubic hair indicated that she was now a natural blonde, pulled some of the finer hair growing from her head in front of her eyes, and then ran to the bathroom to see her new face in the mirror. "I'm a girl again... Frenchy, what did you do?"
"I don't know!" Then I remembered what I'd read on the Inn's website which I had dismissed as fiction. I told her what I gathered from it; she actually smiled. "So, I'm not Arlene Randall any more. I wonder who I am!"
She opened the closet but didn't find anything. "You said there are supposed to be suitcases with new lives in them! Where are they?"
"Je ne sais... I do not know! You say we're teenagers; maybe our parents were staying in the next room, and the suitcases would be there?"
She considered that, and nodded. "Good idea, Frenchy." She ran, naked, from the closet, back to the bathroom that connected this room with the next. I fastened a couple of buttons on my shirt, which was now, distressingly, large enough to cover all that needed covering and followed her. While she was banging on the locked door, I caught a look at my new face in the mirror. Kind of pretty, I guess, though I banished that thought from my mind - she was too young for me to think that about, even if she was me. I did note her tangled hair and full lips, though.
Arlene was getting nowhere. I put my hand on her shoulder. "Mademoiselle Randall, I don't think there's anybody in there. I've been here all week and have not heard or seen anybody there."
"Well, our new parents have to be somewhere!" She stormed back in the room, slid on her panties, and then slipped back into her dress. One of the shoulder straps immediately dropped to her elbow, so she stepped out of it and walked over to my suitcase and pulled out a t-shirt. "Do you mind? Thanks." She had it on before I could answer, and then was out the door, banging on the door of the room across from mine. I hurriedly slipped back into my pants, and even with the belt tightened to it's last stop, I had to hold them up to keep from tripping over the cuffs as I followed her out into the hallway.
Screams followed after every door she banged on, but it got the job done. Within minutes, everyone was up and gathered in the lobby. I mention what I'd read here, and a couple others say they saw it, too, but hadn't thought it was real. We looked around, but didn't see any couples that looked likely to be either her new parents or mine. While she was talking, I did a head count... And there were only eleven.
As the others dispersed back to their rooms to find their suitcases, Arlene and I ran around the building, looking for any place where two more people could be, but we couldn't find them. We eventually found the person who'd been transformed into the biggest guy and had him kick down the door (after discovering that our new forms were not up to the task, of course).
There were, as expected, four suitcases to be found in the empty room. Arlene discovered her new name was Heidi Lasker, and that the names of Heidi's parents were Don and Jillian. They seemed to be a fastidious family - all the clothes in the suitcases were freshly cleaned and folded, and they had even taped photographs to them so that we would know which belonged to which. It was with no small amount of trepidation that I opened mine, and read the letter enclosed.
To the new Betty Okonkwo:
When I won the essay-writing contest that allowed me to come to school in America, I knew it would change my life, but not as much as it did. I am not sure how well I will fit into my new life yet, but I can at least tell you about mine.
My name is Betty Okonkwo; I was born on 15 October 1992, in Lagos, Nigeria. I have no brothers and sisters that I know of, but since I have not seen my father in over ten years, it is certainly possible that I do. I have always done well at school and have applied for many scholarships in the past; to be chosen for a full scholarship at a private school in Massachusetts was a dream come true. I would have to live with a host family, which is where the Laskers come in; they graciously volunteered to house me while I attended school with their daughter Heidi.
I have always particularly excelled in my science courses, and though many of my neighbors back home use "witchcraft" as an explanation for everything, my mother raised me to be skeptical of such claims. Now, seeing what this place has done, I wonder.
As yet, I have no friends here other than Heidi, and I am glad that I will continue to stay with both her and her parents; other people at this place were not so lucky. Mr. Lasker believes that it is possible for us to return to our true forms if we were to return to the Inn in reverse order from how we stayed, so I would request that you not allow my grades to suffer; as you are likely an American and an adult, it should hopefully not be too difficult for you to maintain my modest achievements.
I hope that my life is not too much of a disappointment,
Betty Okonkwo
There were other things in there - clothes, a Nigerian passport, a key to the Laskers' house in Newton, and a reminder that classes would start this coming Tuesday, 8 September. I dropped to the bed, almost unable to absorb it, and suddenly exhausted; it was, after all, past three in the morning by then. The adrenaline drained from me, and I would have fallen asleep right there, but Arlene led me back to my room.
When I woke up again, at around ten o'clock, she was already dressed in some of Heidi's clothes, and had tied her hair back in a ponytail. "Hey, sleepyhead! Are you ready for the first day of your new life?"
I protested; we couldn't just pretend to be these girls.
"Why not? I don't know if you've noticed, but we're young, cute, and while Heidi's parents aren't rich-rich-rich, I googled their address - that's a nice spot in the suburbs. Did you know Newton, MA, is one of the safest communities in America? We're going to a top-flight private school, and I didn't check between your legs, but I'm a virgin again! This is, like, the best second chance possible!
"Now, I've laid out some clothes for you - yes, I know it's a dress, you should get used to it. So, take a shower and get dressed, I'll help you. After that, we've got to start looking for our new folks - school starts on Tuesday, so we've got to be 'back' by then." She did the little finger-quotes around "back".
"But--"
"Listen, we've got to go back - maybe we'll change back before that happens, but maybe we won't. If we don't, then we're just two unsupervised teenage girls far from home. Now, you say that after you sent that email in, they sent back a username and password for the blog, right? You should post what happened to us on there; maybe one of the other visitors knows why there's no sign of the new Don and Jillian Lasker."
So that's what I've been doing, although it's taking me longer than I expected - Arlene is ready to go out and start asking if people have any idea what's going on, but I felt it necessary to include all the details, and it takes me a bit longer to write in English. We're heading out now; I hope we find something useful.
-Marc
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