The others are too freaked out to talk. Once we found out this e-mail was connected with this blog I asked "Alia" to refrain from posting any of our correspondence until we had our own accounts set up and were ready to talk.
I think I'm probably the only one who's in a place to say anything, so here's what happened.
Lisa and I were in bed Saturday night. I was already asleep, she stumbled in drunk. I offered to take the floor, but she was pretty belligerent, saying "Head to toe, we're going head-to-toe. Go back to sleep." Right.
We wake up at the crack of dawn when she falls out of bed. I hear the thump and when I look over, I see her on the floor... I mean I don't see her, but I see her hand waving, "It's all right!"
She pulls her up and suddenly I get a glimpse of her and something's not right. "Lisa," I say, "Are you all right?"
"Yeah," she says. We come face to face, and she gives me this look like she doesn't know who I am.
Neither of us had any idea what the other person was looking at. So there was this initial reaction of "Who are you, I'm me, what are you talking about, what's going on..." I guess it hit us differently than the others, because even though the faces in the mirror were different, they weren't drastic changes.
The girl I was looking at was now a much younger form, thinner and perkier, with long dark hair rather than Lisa's shoulder-length blonde do. My own face had changed pretty noticeably, too. Somehow, my beard had shaved itself off overnight, like her I lost a few years off my skin and face... my hairline moved forward some, my hair lightened from its chestnut brown tone to a lighter, more gingery tone. At the time, the changes were strange enough, but we didn't sense the full depth of the weirdness going on until we heard a knock at the door. We stopped in our tracks, silently wondering if we would open it to find answers. Instead, more questions.
What I saw was a short, round-figured woman with rosy cheeks, with similar long dark hair and features to Lisa's. She looked back and forth between us. She turned to me and asked, "Lisa?"
I pointed at the girl by the bed. The woman in the doorway seemed struck. Seeing them side by side, they were clearly sisters. The older woman looked up at me gravely. "Shaun."
"Yeah. Do we... know you?"
She hesitated a moment before identifying herself as Anthony. I didn't want to believe it. Whatever had happened to us had affected everyone else at the inn similarly... even more strangely at that. My best friend for a decade, a former collegiate athlete, standing before me as a woman half-dressed in ill-fitting men's sleep clothes. I was too stunned to ask him anything about what had happened. I didn't know if he could answer, I didn't want him to.
He sat on the bed and swept his long locks out of his face. "It doesn't make sense." He had clearly already been thinking a while. "Between me and Zane, we both changed into... we're both like this, I thought you guys would... I mean, the pattern doesn't add up. I thought everyone was being changed... like this."
"You're a girl." Lisa finally said. Anthony nodded without glancing over.
"How did this happen?" I blurted out, trying to be constructive.
"I don't know," Anthony said, "I'm not sure it matters. I thought we were being changed randomly, but looking at Lisa... there's a similarity there, right?"
"Right," I answered back.
Anthony began to deduce there were specific people we had become, and that was when Lisa remembered the bags. I can't believe she hadn't mentioned them earlier, the mysterious discarded luggage in our room's closet. There was only one set, though. We opened it up to find it was a man's... mine. In it were, of course, better-fitting clothes, and a number of personal papers, and a letter attempting to explain the situation.
Now that I know this e-mail is connected to this blog, I don't need to explain to you how the wheels in our heads started turning. It quickly occurred to me that I was being told about my new life.
The man in question is Doug Green, a manager for Home Supply Depot from Santa Monica, California. There weren't too many extra details beyond that, aside form the fact that his wife is back there waiting for him.
That made me have to sit down. On first reading it, it just seems like somebody's life is being described to me. It isn't until you get to a detail like that that you pause and realize you're being told about the life you are going to lead. Just a few weeks ago, my fiancee broke my heart. Now I'm suddenly a married man? Heavy.
I'm trying not to show my emotion in front of the others, though. As soon as we became aware of the situation it was clear, even before we found out about their letters, that Anthony, Zane and even Lisa had more on their plate. But I can't help but admit to you that it's a lot to digest.
So I'm keeping my mouth shut a little, out of respect. We're just waiting to figure out what our next move is.
No comments:
Post a Comment