Chapter 2 : Now for the present...

My depression had the effect of making me lose my appetite for anything. I had lost huge amounts of weight and although it meant that shopping was cheaper, it also meant that nothing I owned really fitted anymore. I had dropped from a thirty-eight waist, to a thirty-two and trousers were a definite problem. All of them hung on me like I was a wire coat hanger and without a belt to hold them up there was no way they would stay where they were supposed to.

For the moment though, I didn't need to go out and buy anything as I had loads of stuff, just that it was a bit big. If I got an interview or something, perhaps then I'd go on a bit of a spending spree and maybe buy a new pair.

I got a proper routine together that started first thing in the morning with a job search. Being a technical person and qualified too, I couldn't go the normal high street employment agencies; I needed the web-based agencies.

To begin with, I had lots of jobs around the house that I needed to do, mainly cleaning and so on, but they dried up and I was left twiddling my thumbs. It was at this time that I discovered just how mind-numbing daytime television was. I saw a couple of films I had been meaning to catch up with, but at the end of the day, I felt that I had achieved nothing and in order to keep my spirits up, I needed the satisfaction of achievement almost on a daily basis.

I looked at the garden, but that was as far as that got as, although it was summer, we were having what can only be described as a typical English summer — rain, rain and more rain. Oh, occasionally it was interspersed with cloudy, miserably cold weather, but other than that, it rained.

I found myself surfing the internet, mainly due to boredom and so, after my daily job search, I would hit Google and surf. It's embarrassing to admit, but I kind of got hooked on porn. In my defence, I was a normal, red-blooded male with no girlfriend who hadn't had sex for lord-alone knew how long, but I went a bit overboard.

I had a dial-up internet account, so surfing during the day, was an expensive pastime. I got the shock of my life when the phone bill came in and it was in three figures! I knew right then that had to do something about it, but it wasn't so easy to stop.

I tried to find other things to occupy me, but it was all too easy to backslide when I got bored or something went wrong. I would just hit the explorer icon and off I'd go again, thinking "Just a couple of minutes". It really surprised me how the time flew when I was engrossed in surfing, finding that a couple of minutes would become an hour without even realising it.

I was 'saved' by finding literature, though I use the term 'literature' loosely.

I discovered 'adult fiction'. I read a few of the erotic stories and they were alright I suppose, but they tended to come from limited imaginations and tended to follow the same path — good-looking man with big dick (they're always eight or more inches), meets woman who's always good looking enough to be a model with big tits (surprisingly, always above a 'C' cup) and they bonk like rabbits. That's about it and after a while I became numb to the eroticism, requiring a little more than poor descriptions of impossible sex acts, between impossibly shallow people.

You can understand how that would get stale after a while (or perhaps you can't. It did with me). I turned to other forms of adult fiction and wound up more or less by accident, coming across some TG stories — Trans Gender. These involved at the very least, cross dressing and went all the way to sex change.

My goodness! What a revelation that was.

I got really hooked. I even found myself preferring those with little or no sex in, because then the author concentrated on the story and that made it more of an adventure. Plus, I found that few of the authors I read, were unable to convey the sexual tension and then it becomes like a police report!

It's just personal taste I suppose.

I started downloading these short (and some not so short) stories by the truckload. It was great. Reading broadens the mind and I had no shortage of material. Some of it was amazing.

I especially liked authors like Tanya J. Allan and her stories such as 'The Candy Cane Club' and 'Shit Happens, but so do miracles', I also liked Angela Rasch and Shannonq for her historical-based stories. One of my particular favourites was Samantha Michelle. These people had engaging styles and a very humorous approach to what could be a very touchy subject.

I would spend all day reading and was getting through stories at a phenomenal rate. Now don't start getting ideas that suddenly I found my true calling, it's not like that. I just enjoyed the stories, although in all honesty, I did find myself identifying with a lot of the characters due to the apparent underdevelopment of my own body — except the height that is!

Pretty soon however, the well dried up and I found fewer and fewer stories to read. On this particular day, I actually couldn't even find one.

I turned to one or two of my favourites, but as soon as I started, I remembered the plot and realised it was too soon to start re-reading these stories as they were much too fresh in my head.

I accessed Google and search and searched through hundreds and hundreds of results, but found that I had either been there or they were pay sites and I wasn't prepared to go down that route. In the end, I gave up and closed the connection.

"Oh well," I thought. "It was a nice distraction while it lasted."

I went off downstairs and made a cuppa. Pouring the milk, I noticed that I would need to get some more shopping soon and since I had nothing to do the rest of the day, it seemed like I good idea to go sooner rather than later.

I was not particularly happy about the prospect of shopping, after all, it wasn't my favourite pastime, but it was either that, or get used to black tea, black coffee and bowls of dry cornflakes.

I was just heading out of the house, when the phone rang.

"Hi. It's Mike."

"Bloody hell mate, I haven't seen you in ages. How's it going?"

"Not bad Paul, You?"

"I'm off work at the moment, but it's looking positive."

"Listen, I'm in the area on Monday. How about a drink and some pool? It'll be like old times."

I tried to put him off, but to no avail. I had known Mike since I was a kid and I just couldn't bring myself to turn him down, much as I was worried about going out. I agreed to go with him and asked that he ring on Monday, just to confirm.

I put on my long waxed riding coat and headed out to the shops. Trisha had badgered me to spend some of the money I had saved on a car, but I decided against that until I felt that I could afford a decent one and the upkeep that went with it. In truth, I put the dream ahead of what I considered to be a luxury item. It guaranteed exercise anyway, although it was not at all pleasant in the rain.

I arrived at the supermarket and wandered round with a trolley. I didn't think I had too much to buy, but as I passed shelves, I ended up pulling something off nearly each and every one of them.

I was about to go to the check-out, when I bumped into Trisha.

"Hi Trish." I said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

"Hi Paul. You've lost weight." she replied with about the same amount of enthusiasm.

I ignored the weight observation. "How're you doing?" I asked.

"You know." she said depreciatingly with a shrug of the shoulders.

I almost felt like pointing out that there would be no need to ask if I already knew, but restrained myself. "Yeah." I said instead. "Me too." The last bit seemed appropriate somehow.

"What you up to?" I asked.

"Just work mainly." she said. "You?"

"Nothing much." I answered. "Mainly reading."

"Oh, anything good?"

"Some of it. Free internet fiction basically. Some of it's good, some not so. I suppose that's the thing with freebies."

We stood face to face for a few moments, neither of us saying anything. "You really do need to come and get the rest of your stuff you know." I said, taking the opportunity to pass the message directly in case that bitch of a mother of hers, had decided not to tell her.

"Yeah, mum told me you'd called." So she had been told. That upset me more than perhaps it should, but that was Trisha. She didn't think it was important, so it wasn't. It was to me however.

"I wouldn't mind, but I don't think it's good it being there, I mean you left and really, it still feels as if in some ways you're still there." I said, trying to be as reasonable about it as I could.

"I'll try and do something about it soon." she assured. "You didn't mean what you said about throwing it out did you?" she was using that "bat-the-eye-lashes-and-he'll-do-whatever-I-want" thing, but this time I wasn't going to fall for it.

"I might have to. It can't stay there indefinitely."

"That's cruel. I thought we were friends."

"I thought so too, but you left me, remember?" I responded, perhaps a little more tersely than I'd intended. I felt that okay, it was harsh, but we were no longer an item and therefore, her expectations of me continuing to do things for her, had to stop.

She didn't look too pleased with that remark.

"We were friends until one of us decided that the other wasn't fun anymore and what's more, 'friends' don't walk out and not return other friend's phone calls, while still expecting them to help them out."

"It's not like that, Paul."

"Oh? So what is it like?" She was definitely upset with my interpretation of the situation, I could see her redden. She didn't answer anyway.

"That's what I thought." I said with more than a trace of sarcasm. The look she returned this time was particularly venomous.

There didn't seem any more to say and I left her there, paid for my shopping and struggled home with four heavily packed shopping bags, wondering with each step, how long it would be before the handles snapped. I got to the front door having successfully negotiated the difficult and busy roads without breaking anything other than out in a sweat.

I put the shopping away and had a coffee before I went back upstairs to the computer and the rest of the day passed quite uneventfully.

The next day I awoke feeling groggy and generally bad-tempered. I don't think I slept particularly well and I was feeling at odds with everything and everyone. Looking over at the wardrobe, Trisha was top of that list.

I went and got breakfast or rather coffee, to be more precise before going through the morning ritual of scanning hundreds of vacancies in search of that one for me. Needle in a haystack, I thought.

On the way back to the computer, I looked in the bedroom and the wardrobe door stood open. I went to shut it and my anger from the shop the day before resurfaced. I could see loads of clothes inside and most of them weren't mine.

I saw red. In the supermarket, I had no choice but to tell Trisha that I wanted her stuff out. I wanted to move on and her stuff being right under my nose all the time was making that damned near impossible. I was angry too, for what I thought was her unreasonable attitude. She had made no effort to straighten things out and I was fast losing what little respect I had for her.

I started removing the clothes and almost threw them in a pile on the bed. Soon I had emptied the entire cupboard of her clothes and put them in two piles in the spare room. Next I went downstairs and grabbed a bin-liner, went back to the bedroom and emptied the old shoes, boots and trainers into the bag, which I put alongside the two piles of clothes in the spare room.

Finally, I opened drawers in the chest and started on the underwear, t-shirts and other undergarments, which I added to the two piles that were sat in the spare room. I was pretty satisfied with my work and drank the coffee sat at the computer as it booted up.

I fired up explorer and downloaded any emails I may have had, hoping that one might be about I job. Disappointingly, the only mail I ever got was for cut price mortgages from companies that obviously didn't realise that I wasn't a resident of the good ol' US of A (if they were real companies at all), or offers for Viagra at unbeatable prices, fake watches or porn sites.

I went to Google and typed in a search string for free TG stories.

For once, I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that about the third result was a site I didn't recognise.

"Thank goodness for the internet!" I said and clicked on the link.

The website loaded quickly and I found a list of stories that it had. In amongst the short list of titles, I saw "A Fresh Start". The synopsis read "Changed by a magical spell, a man finds himself transformed and embarking upon a fresh start..."

"A fresh start eh? Wouldn't we all like one of those? It might be worth a look."

I tried not to dwell upon my need for a fresh start, after all, I knew about the reality and there didn't seem to be too much chance of one from where I sat.

I wasn't sure either about the subject matter, since many of the stories I had read with regards to magical transformations, had described wizards dishing them out indiscriminately and not being particularly bothered about who they did what with and for what reasons. On the other hand though I thought it might be a story like Bikini Beach. They were quite stringent there and the stories tended to be much lighter and more fun; more like stories of self-discovery with a twist.

I opened Word and then clicked back to the website, clicking control and 'A' to select all the text on the page. Then I selected control and 'C' to copy it, ending up, clicking Word back to the front and hitting paste. I watched briefly to ensure that the text was copied and then went back to the site. I tried some of the other stories, but for some reason, it had stopped responding and all I got was the 'Error 404' message. This wasn't unusual and I closed the connection.

"Oh well." I thought. "At least I got this one."

I went and made some more tea and a slice of bread and something purporting to be edible for a real breakfast, after all, I had worked up quite an appetite when I had my removals hat on. I returned, fully ready to be fed, watered and read. I moved the mouse, dismissed the screensaver and started on the story.

I have no idea how long that lasted. All I know was that I was still holding the slice of bread — now dog-eared and hard as nails - and the tea was cold with a thick skin on top. I frowned as I looked at the clock in the corner of the screen.

Probably, near two hours had passed and although the status bar at the bottom of Word was reading Page1, I had no idea what if anything I had read. I decided to take a gulp of the now cold tea and grimaced.

I started from the top again and the next thing I knew, it was dark outside; the only light in the room was from the monitor. It was ten-thirty and this time, over eight hours had passed.

My bum was numb from sitting for so long in my lumpy old chair and my joints all felt like they had been glued together. My back complained loudly as I tried to stand and my head was pounding. As if that wasn't enough, even having just spent best part of ten hours out for the count, I was completely knackered.

It wasn't only the physical discomfort I was suffering after having sat for so long in one position, I felt strange, odd; certainly not myself. Perhaps it was just the impromptu naps.

I had no idea what had happened either time and went back downstairs for a fresh cup of tea. My mind was racing and something in the back of it was telling me to go finish the story.

"Finish it?" I thought. I didn't think I had even started it. Both times I had tried I had drifted off and re-emerged to find that hours had passed.

What the hell was happening here?

I decided that stress was part of it. What with Trisha leaving, not picking up her things and the job situation, I hadn't been sleeping well and today, my body and mind may just have said "enough!" and I had fallen asleep. Oh well, perhaps a little mindless pap on the television and then bed for some proper sleep.

The events of that night seemed dreamlike to me when I awoke the following morning. I wasn't sure whether they had been real or imagined. I thought about it some more as I sat to pee in the toilet. It was all so baffling I thought as I wiped, flushed and washed my hands. I slipped on tracksuit trousers and a sweatshirt and trundled off downstairs, hitching the trousers up every other step or so.

"Damn these things!" I growled as I got the bottom of the stairs and stopped to retighten the drawstring.

"Must have come loose." I muttered and went into the kitchen. I boiled the kettle for the first cup of tea. My mind was being slow this morning and I had no doubt that it was the effects of the night before.

I sat in a bit of a mindless haze, staring out of the window into the weed-ridden handkerchief of a garden. As I sipped at the scalding tea, my mind changed the vision to that of rolling hills, stretching out for hundreds of yards in all directions, flanked by woods. The sky was a clear azure blue and two horses stood grazing in the warm morning sunshine.

Wild flowers and long grass nodded in the gently blowing breeze and the trees rustled. I could vaguely hear the sound of birds chirruping their calls to mates sitting in nearby nests, signifying their success in finding food. I was back in that dreamland, a fantasy place nestled deep in the countryside somewhere; that place that was just out of reach in reality, but was home to me whenever I wanted it. I shook myself back and weeds and rotting fences returned.

I had drunk half of the tea and curiosity about the story had got the better of me. I took the rest of the drink upstairs and fired up the computer, then opened the 'Fresh Start' document. At least I wasn't in an angry mood like I had been the day before. In fact, since I finished the tea, I actually felt quite good — which was nice.

"Alright then; third time's the charm." I said to myself and was just about to start reading again just as the door went.

This was starting to get annoying. Something was definitely trying to stop me from reading this damn story. Still, I went to the door to scare off whoever was there, after that, I could get back to the plot.

I was wrong.

The doorstep had someone standing on it I wasn't expecting.

"Trisha!" I exclaimed. "What brings you here?" She looked at me in a curious way, which I completely missed.

"Hi Paul." she said in a serious tone and I ushered her in, offering her some tea.

She followed me to the kitchen and I put on the kettle.

"How are you keeping? You're looking well." I enthused. Again, she had that questioning look in her eyes and still, I missed it.

"I'm fine. You're looking er, different." That stopped me dead in my tracks.

"Different?"

"Yeah. Can't put my finger on it, but there's something different about you."

"Is that bad?" I asked.

"Not at all."

"Then I shall take it as a compliment." I replied, smiling. "I must confess. I do feel particularly perky at the moment."

"Perky?" she asked. I just giggled and shrugged and went to the kettle to finish making the tea.

We sat and chatted about this and that, while I sat on the kitchen chair, one leg curled underneath me. Before long, all the animosity that had coloured my perception of her since the break-up and especially a couple of days before in the shop, seemed to be melting away and at the end of it she said she was actually enjoying herself, but unfortunately, had to go.

I told her that she knew where I was and was welcome anytime. Before she went, I hugged her and gave her a peck on the cheek. She returned the favour and that quizzical look once again came over her face.

I understood how she must have felt. The last time we had clapped eyes on each other was in the supermarket and it was an uncomfortable moment for both of us. I guess my lively (or should I say perky?) mood must have been somewhat disarming. I grinned to myself. "That'll keep her guessing" I thought, but it never occurred to me at that point that I had practically had a one-eighty degree turnaround about this woman, a fact that ordinarily would have raised suspicions.

She had stayed till nearly half-two and with fresh tea in hand I went back up to the spare room and got ready to read the story. There was no way I was going to be disturbed now.

At four the following morning, I rose from my computer desk with a really nice wood grain finish embossed into my face. Once again, I had obviously drifted off trying to read the story and once again I had failed.

I turned off the computer with a frown, went to the toilet and then straight to bed.

Monday morning was a pain. It was the day that most people started work for the week and despite the fact that I was in good spirits and optimistic about the prospects of finding further work, Monday's still depressed me.

When I worked, Mondays depressed me because the weekend was over and I was starting a week of work, now they depressed me because I wasn't. Was there any pleasing me?

I had woken this time at about nine. I slipped on the tracksuit trousers and t-shirt I had on the day before and went to the kitchen. Once again, I found myself hitching the damned things up all the time and had to tighten the drawstring again. This time though, I noticed that I was actually standing on the hems of the legs and although I hitched them up as far as they would go, they were still on the ground about my heels.

I needed some tea and some time before I did my job searching to try and work out what was going on. I was sure it wasn't just me falling asleep, I was pretty sure it was something else. I was having a hard time trying to fathom it. I sat down to wait for the kettle and rolled the bottoms of my trousers up a couple of inches to stop treading on them.

There were a number of things going on in my head and while I sipped the tea, I tucked my hair behind my ears and considered things.

Firstly, I had now tried four times to read the story and each time I had fallen asleep. Each time I woke afterwards, I felt as tired, if not more than I had before I started and in the last case, I had actually 'slept' for some fourteen hours. If that wasn't enough, I had even gone to bed for another four or so after that.

I needed to find that website again and see if there was anything I should have read, before I started reading the story. Perhaps there was some hypnotic 'thing' embedded in the page and that was what was sending me to sleep. I caught a glimpse of my fingers as I got up to go upstairs and noticed that my fingernails needed filing. They'd got longer and needed some shaping and perhaps a little polish.

Polish? I ignored that, putting it down to being tired and confused thanks to the current problem with reading the story on top of everything else. I did however notice that my cygnet ring was missing. That was something I wasn't expecting. I had had the ring forever, it was a bequest from my one and only great aunt when she died. I had to wait five years before I could wear it, it being too big, but when I put it on, I immediately refused to remove it and as I had grown, it had become too tight to slip it off my finger anymore.

I eventually found it in amongst the bed clothes.

I slipped it on and found to my surprise, that it was so loose now that it would slide right off of a straight finger thanks to gravity. It hadn't been like that yesterday.

I shook my head in disbelief, Let it drop from my finger into my hand and placed it on the bedside table. I went and performed the obligatory job search, before I searched for the website.

Bringing up Google, I typed in what I remembered to be the search string I had used to find the site the other day and hit return. It took me about ten minutes to go through all the results and none of them took me where I wanted to be. I changed the search string to 'A Fresh Start' — the name of the story I was trying to read, but again, though there were fewer results, nothing I found matched what I was looking for.

I tried the history icon and went back to the day I found the website. Normally it records every site you visit, but this time, there was nothing.

As a last resort, I typed in magical websites and again, nothing.

I was at a loss. I had the story, though I couldn't read it for some reason. I copied the text from the web page, so I had to have been somewhere for that to have happened.

I opened the file again to try and see if there was anything I could find out...

I awoke to the sound of the door at two that afternoon.

It was Trisha again.

"Hi Paul."

"Oh, er, hi Trisha." I answered, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Twice in as many days? We went for months without any contact at all and now I have seen her three times in four days. Things were looking up.

Once again I invited her in and once again, we chatted about this and that in the kitchen over cups of tea.

I thought about telling her that something was happening, but I couldn't. It was so strange even to me; I couldn't see her understanding any more than I did. I sat curled up on the chair again and flicked the hair out of my eyes as she looked at me, that strange expression on her face.

"What?" I asked. She blushed.

"I don't know. You're different."

"I know. You said that yesterday."

"Have you done something with your hair?"

"Not particularly. I'm still using the same stuff we were using before you left. I suppose it might be slightly longer over the months you've been gone, but not much."

"Actually, it's much longer. Stand up a minute." I stood up and she pulled the curls straight down my back and didn't stop until she reached my bum. "There!" she said triumphantly.

"There, where?" I asked.

"It's right down to your bum." I could only shrug.

"I guess." I responded, not knowing what else to say.

Her hand lingered on the top of my butt and I wondered what I should do. I missed Trisha but the parting changed things between us and I couldn't understand why. I spent so much time thinking about what to do that I lost the opportunity to do anything.

When it came time for her to go, I walked her to the door. She turned on the step and reached out her hand and touched my face.

"Hmm, soft." she said in a dreamy kind of way. "You must have shaved this morning."

"Er, no. In fact I haven't shaved since Thursday."

"Bullshit! Even you would have had to shave by now." She was right. I had never had much in the way of hair growth on my face and when I was at school, I really wanted to grow a beard. I looked forward to the time that I would be able to, but it never happened. Even at the ripe old age of thirty-two, I only shave once a week and then what I have to take off is less than most men grow before lunch!

Again, what could I do but shrug?

We gave each other a customary peck on the cheek then she left.

Firstly, there was no way that my hair could have grown as much as she said in the three months we had been parted and secondly, why hadn't I needed a shave?

"It's that damned story! It must be!" I exclaimed and ran up the stairs to the bathroom.

Looking in the mirror, there were subtle changes that seemed to have taken place. There were no whiskers and my hair seemed much longer, lustrous and silky than it usually did. My face seemed the same, but then it didn't at the same time.

"Same but different." I said to myself, as if to emphasise the fact. I wondered what else had 'changed', although that thought came out somewhat guardedly, as I wasn't sure that anything really HAD changed. I removed all my clothes to give myself the complete once-over.

An odd thing I noticed as I stood in front of the mirror was the fact that I seemed to be shorter than before. There were marks on the mirror that used to line up with my eyebrows and now I had to look up slightly to see them (the marks, not my eyebrows!). "Nah!" I shrugged. "Can't be."

I was also developing in the chest area. I couldn't just shrug this off as 'man boobs'. I had lost those over the first couple of months after the break up, but I wasn't sure that paranoia wasn't what had grown. I noticed too that the hairs on my legs were now very much finer and that was also true of those on my arms. As for the hair on my chest and torso, well, that was just not there at all, though like my face, this area was another that seemed to refuse to become particularly hirsute.

Perhaps it was my imagination, but I could have sworn that my Willy was smaller too. I gave it a bit of a rub and nothing happened. Not that that's particularly unusual, if it doesn't want to play, it doesn't want to play. I was feeling pretty stressed at the thought that changes were happening to my body, so my mind wasn't really on the subject of self-gratification.