Chapter 5

Both parents in the family worked. Some people might think harshly of them, in terms of the fact that not only did they not stay home from work to help their children through this impossible situation, they also went to work without even checking in on their offspring.

But let us not be harsh. Granted, the kids were affected the most by their alien abduction, but the parents were clueless about how to deal with it too. There wasn't anything they could think of to do, no one they could think of to turn to for help. And in talking about it, they made themselves late for work.

Then there is the fact that, if they had looked in on the twins, they'd have found them naked and in what looked suspiciously like a lovers' embrace.

And it was a lovers' embrace ... of sorts. They had hugged each other in the womb. They had cuddled in the same bed for years when they were younger. They did love each other on a level that only twins can understand.

When they woke, their predicament was instantly refreshed in their minds. She saw herself, lying in her arms. He saw his own body, and felt it in his arms. For a few seconds, the world seemed to tumble and twist. Then their memories gelled - at least the memories they had about events since their abduction - and both gave a little groan as reality settled around them.

"Morning," said Carly, with a voice that wasn't hers. It was so startling that she rolled away from her body. She felt something move in her groin area. There was a stretching of unfamiliar muscles and skin down there. She looked to see an erection more or less waving around in the morning air.

"What the hell?" she groaned.

Craig, who had just laid there when his body rolled away from him, looked where she was looking.

"It's called morning wood," he said. "It's normal."

"There's nothing normal about this body!" she snapped. "All it wants to do is have sex!"

"It's not that kind of boner," he said. "It will go down when you pee."

"What?"

"It's hard, but only because you have to pee. It will go soft after you pee."

She remembered that very first time, in the campground bathroom then, and what he'd just said fell into place like an old memory.

"Right!" she said.

That ball of burning pain felt familiar too. At least that was in the same place as it had been in her old body. Once she felt that pain, it was almost all she could concentrate on. She rolled out of bed, feeling astonishingly powerful muscles propel her up and off the bed. She hurried to her bathroom and, by habit, sat down without closing the door. Something, either instinct or some new learned habit, caused her to reach with her right hand and push the stiff column of flesh jutting from her groin down, toward the front of the toilet bowl.

It was familiar in the sense that she had a hard time getting a stream started. But that had happened in her old body too. Again, perhaps by instinct, she gently milked her hard penis, not with a firm grasp, but with only two fingers, teasing it until she felt something loosen and a sudden, shockingly soothing sensation shot along the length of the thing in her grasp.

She sighed the exact same kind of sigh she always had when her over inflated bladder got emptied.

"Hurry up," said her voice.

She looked up to see her body standing in the doorway of the bathroom, waiting its turn. That the body was naked didn't unsettle her. It was her body, after all. She'd seen it thousands of times. She knew that body intimately.

She just couldn't feel that any more.

Likewise, as Craig looked down with different eyes than he had before, he simply saw himself sitting on the pot, with his hand keeping his peeing cock where it needed to be.

Such was their world, now. On one level, what they saw when they looked at each other seemed completely familiar. On another level, though, what they felt when they looked at each other was impossibly complicated.

This would turn out to be a critical phenomenon in their journey into the future.

And, perhaps, one of the most important components of this odd relationship they now had was that neither thought it was odd at all that they could hang out naked. Before this, they'd never have even thought about doing that.

Well ... Craig might have.

The point is that, because what their eyes saw, when they looked at each other, was what they still thought of as their own body, it wasn't like they were looking at their sibling. Seeing themselves naked was normal. Granted, they were constantly reminded that the human entity in that body was their sibling, but the visual data was simply so strong that it overcame what would have been natural timidity about being naked in front of each other.

Another important component of their new relationship was that, at least at first, it was much easier, when one of them got horny, to let the person who used to be in that body take care of things. Each did know how to make their previous body happy.

And it's always more fun when someone else masturbates you, than it is to do it alone.

But we're not there yet. Not quite. So let us continue.

Carly finished peeing. She was used to getting a piece of toilet paper and dabbing at the opening of her urethra. Since the opening of her urethra was now located in a different spot, she got a piece of toilet paper and dabbed at the tip of her penis.

"Wow! It did get soft!" she said, amazed at how something that had felt so hard could now feel as flimsy as ... what? There was nothing on her old body that had this consistency. Except maybe her labia. They were soft and squishy like this.

"Hurry up!" groaned Craig.

She stood up, still casually feeling her penis. She squeezed, pulled, and generally moved it around, while looking down, curiously.

Craig sat. His hands waved in the air.

"What do you do with your hands?" he asked. Then he was distracted by the soothing rush of urine into the water. Part of his mind noticed that that urine had a shorter distance to traverse from his bladder out of his body. Then the hot feeling of liquid jetting between his labia reminded him of what to do with his hands, and he reached, automatically to spread them apart.

He promptly peed on his hand.

"Ewwww," he groaned, jerking his hand from between his legs. Drops of urine flew through the air and landed on what used to be his abdomen.

He, of course, didn't feel that. But Carly did.

"Ewwww," she parroted. "You are so gross!"

"Shit," he groaned. He was finished peeing, but the event wasn't complete.

With his feminine legs spread, he stood and hobbled to the sink. He washed his hand off first and then, still spread legged, returned to the stool where he got a wad of toilet paper and swabbed his pussy lips. He dropped that in the toilet, flushed, and then washed his hands again.

"I miss my cock," he said.

"Penis," she reminded him.

"I miss my penis," he said, doggedly.

"It's right here," she said, pulling on the tip of her foreskin, stretching it until it looked like it should be incredibly painful. Except it wasn't. It actually felt good, in fact. "You can play with it any time you want to."

She grinned at her joke, but he didn't.

"We have to figure out how to change back," he said, angrily.

"I'm all ears," she said, still pulling at her foreskin, moving her penis all around.

She giggled.

"Actually, I'm part penis."

"Ha - ha," he said, not amused.

"This changes things," she said.

"Gee, you think so?" he asked, sarcastically.

"Yeah. I always just thought a lot of guys were dicks."

She stretched things to the max and let go. Her penis snapped back to a modest, limp length of two or three inches.

"Turns out ... they are," she said.

They got dressed, which wasn't as simple as it sounds. Again, Craig wanted to wear his own clothes, instead of "girly stuff." The problem was that, even though they were twins, his body had grown taller and wider than his sister's. So his clothes were two sizes too large for his new body. Meanwhile, Carly tried to put on her favorite T shirt, which got stretched out of shape by her new male upper body.

Finally, they found something each was happy with. Craig didn't even try to put on a bra.

Breakfast, at least, went normally.

That is until there was a knock on the froont door. Carly went to answer it automatically. When she opened it, Sherry Masters was standing there. Sherry was one of her best friends.

"Cher!" gushed Carly, using the nickname all of the girls in Sherry's circle of friends used. That word came out automatically, but the voice that issued it reminded Carly of their predicament, and she panicked. They weren't ready for this.

"Hi, Craig," said Sherry, frowning. Craig never called her "Cher." He always opted for "Chair," instead. It didn't make any sense, but then boys never made any sense. Plus he actually sounded happy to see her, which was also strange. "Is Carly here?"

"Uh ... yes." Carly couldn't think of what to do. She winced, thinking she should have said "No," instead. "He's in the kitchen," she blurted, and immediately winced again.

"He?" Sherry's frown deepened. "Who?"

"She can't see you!" Carly rushed on, remembering her mother's plan. "I mean you can't see her. She has a disease!"

"What? What disease?"

Carly thought frantically. Suddenly, she couldn't think of any diseases except the flu and, for some odd reason, polio.

"Streptomycin!" she blurted. It was all she could think of at the moment. It was a word that popped into her mind that had something to do with diseases.

"What are you talking about?" asked Sherry. "That's a medicine, not a disease. We learned about that in health class last year. They use it to treat tuberculosis."

Sherry was in that group of kids that some classify as "geeks," by virtue of the fact that they pay attention in class, do their homework, and get good grades. Sherry was being raised by a single mom, who worked two jobs to support Sherry and her brother, who was a couple of years younger. Sherry had no intention of living that kind of life when she grew up. Her plans were firm in her mind. She would go to college, and get a good job. Then, and only then, would she think about men and relationships and having children.

But that meant scholarships, because there was no way her mother could afford to put her through college. So Sherry worked hard at using her brain to get to a better place than her mom ended up in. And it just so happened that Sherry had a pretty good brain, which remembered the lesson in class about dread diseases in history, and how they had affected global culture. In fact - something that would play into what was about to happen - she was intensely interested in going into medicine. Which was why she remembered the information about TB that Mister Summers had given them in class a few short months before.

Her brain now jumped to the obvious conclusion, given that her only information came from Craig, who Sherry had placed in the status of Neanderthal man.

"Carly has tuberculosis?!" she gasped. "No way!"

Carly thought furiously. She wouldn't have chosen that particular disease, but it did make sense. It was communicable, and they quarantined people who had it, didn't they?

"Way," said Carly, trying to make her brother's voice sound sad. "It's bad. She can't see anybody. She could infect the whole town."

"Nonsense!" said Sherry, pertly. "TB is only communicable if the patient sneezes or coughs. I can cover my mouth and nose with something. I'll be fine. And it takes prolonged exposure to a person with untreated TB for infection to be communicated. Didn't you say she was on streptomycin?"

She brushed by Craig, intent on seeing her friend, who was in need.

What she found, when she located the person she was looking for in the kitchen, was a girl who sat, knees spread wide, elbows on the table, shoveling cereal into her mouth as if she were starving. Craig looked up at the girl and, around a mouthful of Raisin Bran, said, "'Sup, Chair?"

Sherry stopped dead in her tracks. Something was wrong. Something looked wrong about Carly. And something sounded wrong too. Of course there was the tuberculosis issue, but her friend didn't look sick.

And she had, very clearly, addressed Sherry as... "Chair."

"Where is your mask?" asked the part of her mind that was still working on the only real information she had.

"Mask?" asked Craig, swallowing. "What mask?"

Sherry saw her friend dart a look past her. Looking over her shoulder, Sherry saw Craig standing there, hands up as if to say, "I don't know." She turned back to the person she believed to be Carly.

"The mask you're supposed to wear so you don't cough your tuberculosis germs into the air?"

"My what?"

"Tuberculosis!" yipped Craig's voice from behind Sherry. "You have tuberculosis! Remember?"

"Oh!" said Craig, unconsciously reaching to scratch where, in the past, his balls had been. "Yeah. That. I'm better."

Sherry's eyes widened as her friend casually scratched her crotch, right there in front of everybody. She was distracted from thinking about that as "Carly" went on.

"A little better, I mean. I'm still really sick. And you could catch it, Chair, so you should probably go."

Again, Sherry saw what was obviously an intense look directed toward her friend's brother.

"Yes," said the boy behind her. "You should probably go. I'll call you later."

Sherry turned.

"Why would you call me?" she asked. Her radar was on now, and warmed up. Her curiosity was aroused as well. Something was very wrong, here. And she wanted to find out what it was. She turned back to Carly and took a stab in the dark.

"You don't have TB at all ... do you." It wasn't a question. "What's going on, Carly?"

"What?" Craig started to panic. "Nothing. I'm sick. That's all."

"No, you're not. You don't have any of the symptoms of TB. You haven't coughed once since I got here."

Craig started coughing violently, and waving his hands at Sherry, "warning" her away.

It was too late. Anyone could see they were forced coughs.

"You have to leave," moaned Carly from her brother's body.

"No I don't," said Sherry. "Something's going on here, and I want to know what it is."

She sat down across from the girl at the table.

"I'm sick!" moaned Craig, who had stopped coughing as abruptly as he had started. He added a couple of weak coughs for effect.

"Come on, Carly," wheedled Sherry. "You can tell me. We're best friends. What's wrong? Maybe I can help."

"You can't help," moaned Carly, approaching her friend's back.

Sherry turned her head. There was a contemptuous look on her face.

"Butt out, Jerkoff. Us girls can handle things from here on out. Go squeeze a pimple or something."

"I don't have any pimples!" squealed Carly, her hand automatically going to her cheek.

"Then go jerk off. That's what guys love to do all the time, right?"

"Cher!" yipped the guy Sherry had just addressed. "I can't believe you said that!"

Again, Sherry's brain perceived something wrong. This time it was the way this boy was behaving. Actually, it was more to how this boy wasn't behaving. She couldn't put her finger on it, but Craig just seemed to be acting different somehow. He wasn't the usual, swaggering butthead who so irritated her most of the time.

Suddenly, something clicked. Craig had just called her "Cher." And before that, her best friend had used the hated "Chair" when addressing her. Twice, in fact.

She went quiet. She was at a complete loss. None of this made sense. She couldn't come up with any hypothesis to investigate. She turned to look at Craig, and then back at Carly. For the first time since she got there, she really examined her friend. She was sitting in a slouched position. Her hair was a mess. It didn't even look like she'd brushed it that morning. She held her spoon in her fist, rather than as a spoon should be held, between fingers and thumb. Those knees were still splayed apart.

"Something is wrong here!" she said, tensely.

Complete silence met her pronouncement.

Finally the boy behind Sherry spoke.

"Maybe we should just tell her."

Sherry's now firm decision that something was very, very wrong, was cemented when her best friend looked at her brother and said, "No fucking way, Carly."

Sherry's first reaction was to the word she knew Carly never used because she thought it was vulgar and stupid.

Only then did she realize that Carly had just called Craig ... Carly.

"I don't understand," moaned Sherry, looking from one twin to the other.

Carly's reaction was understandable. She had empathy for her friend. Women are nurturing, and Carly responded to the situation in a completely normal way.

The only problem was that she was in a male body when she did it.

She flowed toward her friend and enveloped her in a big, comforting, intimate hug of affection.

"It's going to be okay, Cher," she murmured into her friend's hair which, for some reason or other, was a lot lower down than it used to be.

"What are you doing?!" yelped Sherry, struggling in the tight grip of the person she thought to be Craig Austin. "Let go of me, you creep!"

Her fists flailed against the firm chest that had been pressing against her. Carly let go in horror, and stepped back, arms wide.

"I'm sorry, baby," she groaned. "I forgot that ... I'm sorry." Sherry watched as the boy turned to his sister and said, "We have to tell her. This isn't going to work. We were crazy to think we could pull this off!"

What made the difference, at that moment, was the way in which the words, "I'm sorry, baby," were delivered. Sherry and Carly were, in fact, best friends. They had spent hours and hours together, doing this or that, but always talking. It was, in fact, Carly who had first called Sherry "Cher" while they were dancing and singing in Carly's bedroom, pretending to be stars on stage. And another pet name Carly used a lot, when she addressed Sherry, was "Baby." Carly was the only person, in fact, who ever called Sherry "Baby."

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