Lie
“I…” Crap. Now I have to come up with an excuse. “Earlier… I was having a really bad… cramps… in my stomach.”
Maria’s frown deepened. “Were they that bad you had to call me? You didn’t take anything for it?”
“Um… I did. They were bad, but nothing was working.”
“OK, and why’d you get naked?”
“Well, I was when they started.”
“Right, right. Well, if they come back just call me, I guess. Did you need me to drive you to the clinic?”
“Yeah, I thought so.”
“OK. You want me to hang around a while?”
Jared needed nothing more than to be with someone to handle his new form, but being around someone he’d forever known as a human in the same form was not easy on his psyche. Simultaneously, being around someone who looked like him and did not judge him for his appearance was helpful. “Yeah, if you don’t mind.”
“You got it. I wasn’t doing anything anyway.”
For the first time since his transformation, Jared smiled. “Yeah, thanks. Um, you called me Jazz, right?”
Maria narrowed her eyes. “Yyyyyyyyyeah. I’ve always called you that.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I was just… wondering. How did you come up with it?”
“I mean… It’s short for Jasmine. Wasn’t that hard to come up with when I was 3.”
Jasmine. He remembered her saying that name earlier. That’s who I am in this universe. But was it a universe? As in a place separated from the one he was born into? How much did his current past and human past coincide? Were his parents skunks too? What animals were everyone else? Finding all of it out wasn’t going to be easy or fun. He had to ask questions without sounding like a loony, although he more than felt like one. “I think I’ll go get dressed.”
“Yeah, you do that,” Maria joked.
Jared/Jasmine strutted back to the bedroom where his/her closet was waiting. Opening it revealed a wardrobe which at first glance looked the same as it had been. His shirts, pants, socks,
and underwear were all stacked on a white metal rack neatly while his jackets hung from the rod above. He made to reach for a pair of underwear when his paw stopped. A frown furrowed his brow. That isn’t mine was his immediate thought, but it was supplanted by the realization that the opposite was true. Yes, those slim panties stacked up in a row were in fact his. But of course. The Jasmine version of him had bought clothes for women. Why wouldn’t she?
Written by TheGreatJaceyGee on 27 January 2023
