Chapter 2: 2. What

"This isn't real," I told myself. "It's not happening. It's impossible."

I was still standing in the washroom, staring at myself in the full-length mirror. Except that wasn't me in the mirror, it was the imaginary character I originally made up for a tabletop RPG game I played about a decade ago.

Somehow she'd come to life, and somehow I found myself in her body.

It was impossible, unbelievable, and the more I tried to understand what was going on, the more it made my head hurt.

I finally turned away from the big mirror. There was a smaller mirror on the front of a medicine cabinet over the sink, and I pulled that open to see if there were any headache pills in there.

For some reason I wasn't surprised to find the same store-brand ibuprofen I usually kept in the bathroom back home in my basement apartment. What did surprise me was the handful of bottles of prescription meds. There were even a couple little glass ampoules like you saw on medical shows on TV, along with a box of needles.

I picked up one of the ampoules then frowned as I read the label, "Estradiol Valerate?"

The ampoule was too small for a prescription label, but the pill bottles all had proper labels on them. And every one of them had that same impossible name, Violet Moon. The first two seemed to be painkillers, but the third bottle was for something called Spironolactone and the fourth was Progesterone. And both of those along with the Estradiol rang bells in my head.

I knew I'd heard of that stuff somewhere, but I couldn't remember where. I was just about to put the pill bottles back when something else caught my eye. My heart skipped another beat as I froze again.

At the bottom of the label was the date the prescription was filled. August twenty-eighth, twenty-twenty-two. My bike ride, the last thing I could remember, that was in May of twenty-ten.

I hadn't just missed six months, I'd missed over a decade.

Except that was impossible. Everything was impossible. If it was really twenty-twenty-two I'd be in my early thirties. I wouldn't be eighteen again. And whatever year it was, I wouldn't be a girl.

My hands shook as I set the pill bottle back down, then pushed the door closed on the medicine cabinet.

I turned off the light, then stumbled back out of the bathroom and into the living-room area. I was almost moving on auto-pilot as I shuffled over to the sofa and collapsed ontop of it. I slumped down till I was laying flat, then just stared at the white stucco ceiling. I was overwhelmed, and I was certain I couldn't handle anything else.

At least the sofa was comfy.

My eyes closed as I tried to will myself to fall asleep. It was probably futile but I had a faint hope that when I woke up again I'd be in the right body, the right year, and back home in my basement apartment.

I'd only been laying there for a couple minutes when I heard a faint noise from the direction of the stairs. I opened my eyes but before I had a chance to move or even process what I'd heard a small black blob flew over the back of the sofa and landed ontop of me, square in the middle of my chest.

I let out a high-pitched yelp of shock and fear as my body tensed. My immediate reaction was to throw the tiny monster off me, when I suddenly realized the fuzzy black blob was just a cat.

It was purring loudly as it walked in a little circle ontop of my chest, and somehow it managed to step on my left nipple twice in a row which hurt like heck. Then the small cat literally flopped over and lay sprawled sideways across my upper chest and neck, with its tail and back feet by my right ear while its nose rubbed against me left cheek in between licking me with its rough tongue. And all the while it was purring like crazy.

"Of course," I sighed as I let all my muscles go slack again. "You must be Izzy."

Naturally my little blonde witch character had a familiar, and of course that familiar was a small black cat. Her full name was Izareal but Violet usually just called her Izzy. And of course the cat was acting like it knew me, like I was its favourite human.

I slowly reached up and began to pet the cat, and she twisted around and grabbed hold of my hand and started licking it. It felt weird, but along with the purring it was oddly soothing. I let myself relax again and my eyes drifted closed.

Next thing I knew I was waking up to the feeling of a cat standing on my chest and licking my nose and forehead. It felt like I'd been asleep for a couple hours, and the light outside had faded and the trees cast long shadows across the driveway.

I was both disappointed yet unsurprised to find I was still there in this strange body in an unfamiliar house.

"Ok that's enough Izzy," I said as I pulled myself up into a sitting position. The cat jumped off me as I moved, and perched on the back of the sofa next to my head.

I still had that massive black robe with me, but it had slipped open while I slept. I blushed and averted my eyes as I realized I was basically sitting naked on the sofa, my new petite girly body fully exposed.

The cat leaned forward and rubbed her face against my cheek as she started purring again, and it finally dawned on me she probably wanted food or something. And that thought clued me into the fact that I was actually pretty hungry and thirsty myself. And I had to pee.

"Crap," I sighed.

I got up and wrapped the robe around myself again, but I realized I really needed to find some actual clothes. I'd been avoiding searching the house for fear of finding my kidnappers, but by that point I pretty much had to admit there was nobody home but me.

My first stop was the washroom though, and Izareal followed me in there. I left the robe in a pile on the counter as I sat at the toilet, and the cat rubbed herself against my ankles as she kept purring. It was kind of adorable but also made me feel really awkward. Like my first time using the toilet as a girl wasn't awkward enough, I had to have a happy purry cat watching and cheering me on.

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When I finished up in there I wrapped the robe around myself again then nervously climbed up the stairs in search of a bedroom closet to raid. The cat nearly tripped me twice as she dashed back and forth in front of my feet on my way up.

At the top of the stairs was a little landing, with three rooms leading off it. All three doors were open, and I could see one was done up like a library or reading room or something. It looked really cozy and welcoming, with a couple big easy-chairs on either side of a little table and a bunch of bookcases packed with books and various nicknacks.

The second was obviously a guest room, it contained a bed and side-table, but it had that generic 'unused' look to it. The last room was the master bedroom and it was obviously well-used. There was a big bed, a couple side tables, a large old dresser, and a door to a small walk-in closet.

Best of all there was an outfit already laid out on the bed, as if someone knew I'd need it.

Black cotton panties and a stretchy black sports-bra were next to a pair of black socks. Then there were tight black leggings, and finally a simple black short-sleeve dress. On the one hand it was a lot of black, but on the other hand it matched my little blonde witch character's aesthetic. She was kind of goth, but not the moody emo kind.

I stared at the panties and bra for a few moments, then made up my mind. I dropped the robe and started pulling on clothes, and when I was done the only things left on the bed were the socks and the bra. Unless I was going to put on shoes I preferred to be barefoot, and I just wasn't ready yet to deal with the bra.

Izzy bonked herself against my ankle then purred loudly as she gave me an intense look.

"Ok," I sighed. "Now we'll go look for food. Just don't trip me on the stairs, cat!"

I'd barely taken one step towards the staircase when the cat launched herself out of the bedroom and down the stairs. By the time I started heading down I could hear her meowing in the kitchen.

Once I was down there it didn't take long to find the cat food. It was in the cupboard Izzy was waiting impatiently in front of. I picked up a little tin of some fancy chicken flakes in gravy, then it took me three tries to locate the cutlery.

There was an empty bowl on the floor by the end of the counter which explained her impatience, and I opened up the little tin and scooped the contents out into her bowl. Izzy descended on that like she hadn't seen food in a month, while I found the blue recycling bin in another cupboard. I dropped the tin and lid in there, and finally turned my attention to my own empty stomach.

The fridge was well-stocked, as was the pantry cupboard. I didn't feel comfortable trying to cook or make anything involved, considering I was basically in some stranger's home. Even if they did kidnap me or something, it just felt weird.

I found enough ingredients to make myself a sandwich, so that's what I did. A couple slices of bread, mayo, a couple slices of meat from a package, and some fresh lettuce. I also pulled a little bottle of spring water out of the fridge, and finally located the plates in a drawer under the counter.

Then I spotted the cat's water bowl, it was nearly empty so I stopped and rinsed that out and refilled it for her. Finally I took my plate and my water back to the sofa, and sat myself down there. The TV remote was on the coffee table, so I picked it up and turned on the TV and had a bite of my sandwich.

The big flat-screen came to life, along with a satellite receiver box underneath. I found myself looking at one of those TV Guide info-channels. The time and date were in the top corner of the screen, and once again my blood went cold.

According to the TV, or according to the satellite signal, it was a quarter after five in the evening, Saturday September Tenth, two thousand and twenty-two. My last bike ride was twelve years and four months ago. I'd be thirty-four years old now, if whatever happened to me didn't happen.

My dinner was all but forgotten for a few minutes as I just sat there and stared at the clock on the screen. I wondered what happened to my friends, my family. And for that matter I wondered again what happened to me. All I had were questions though, no answers.

Eventually I remembered my food, and I ate the rest of the sandwich in silence. Then I drank some water, and finally I set the plate and bottle down on the coffee table. I never did end up watching anything on the TV, and when the clock hit six I finally just turned it off.

By that point it was getting towards dusk. The sun was low in the sky and there weren't any lights on in the house. Moving like I was on auto-pilot I shuffled over to the big windows and pulled curtains closed, then flipped a couple switches by the front door. Some stylish recessed lighting in the ceiling came on, illuminating the kitchen counter, the desk, and the middle of the room near the bathroom door and the stairs.

My eyes stayed on the desk for a few seconds, then I headed back over there and sat down on the swivel-chair.

The car keys were still there but I'd lost the urge to try and escape. I had no idea where I'd go, and for that matter I didn't know where I was now. It might have been some cunning idea to learn more about my kidnappers, or maybe I was just curious and still half-stunned, but I ended up sliding open the desk drawers and started snooping around a bit.

The top drawer didn't have anything special. There were some pens, a tangled mess of USB cables, a couple spare keys, some USB drives, that sort of thing. The bottom drawer was deeper and had a bunch of those hanging files at the back, but at the front was a black canvas purse.

I pulled that out and opened it up, the first thing I found was a black wallet. And in there I found a bank card, credit card, and finally a drivers license and health card.

By that point I wasn't surprised to see all the cards bore the name Violet Moon. But the other information on the drivers license left me with a cold heavy feeling in my gut.

The birthday on the card was my birthday. Going by that and the date I saw on the TV, both me and Violet Moon should be thirty-four years old. The card listed her height as a hundred and eighty-five centimetres. That matched my height, or at least it was my height before I woke up like this. And finally the photo on the card was no cute eighteen year old girl, it depicted a woman in her thirties.

The thing that freaked me out the most was I kind of recognized her. Or at least, I recognized her as well as you can recognize someone you've never seen before based on a tiny black and white pixellated image.

The picture on the drivers licence looked like a female version of me, of my normal self. Like if I'd let my hair grow out and put on some make-up and somehow softened up my facial features.

Somehow Violet Moon was real, she had the same birthday as me, she looked like I would if I was a woman.

"I've gone crazy," I mumbled to myself. "It's the only answer."