We’d been awake almost twenty-four hours, and we were delirious with sleepiness. A few minutes earlier I’d been about to turn in, and Bobby had said: “We’ve stayed up this long, why don’t we go out and watch the sun rise?”

---

Night and Day

part 1 of 12

by Trismegistus Shandy

This story is set, with Morpheus' kind permission, in his Twisted universe. It's set a generation earlier than his Twisted stories. Thanks to Morpheus, epain, and Karen Lockhart for reading and commenting on earlier drafts.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

---

We’d been awake almost twenty-four hours, and we were delirious with sleepiness. A few minutes earlier I’d been about to turn in, and Bobby had said: “We’ve stayed up this long, why don’t we go out and watch the sun rise?”

“I don’t know, man. I’m about to drop.”

“Come on, man, it’ll be awesome. I dare you.”

“Sure, let’s go.”

I don’t think that was what Mom had in mind when she said we could stay up as late as we wanted. It was Monday of Spring break; we didn’t have school or church or anything the next day. Mom would have the day off, so she could watch my little sister, and it would be okay if Bobby and I slept late. Bobby lived in the same apartment building, and we were both in the seventh grade at the same school; his parents had let him come to my apartment for a sleepover, but so far we hadn’t slept any, daring each other to stay up later and later until sleep deprivation made us as high as a couple of kites.

So we walked out the front door, careful to close it softly behind us, down the stairs to the parking lot and around the building to the playground, where we’d have a better view of the sunrise. We looked around; the eastern sky was a lot less dark than the rest of it.

“Look,” Bobby said, “the moon’s setting too. I forgot it was the full moon.”

Over in the west the moon was just a little above the horizon; one of the taller buildings in that direction was jutting into its disc. After a few moments looking at the moon, we turned back toward the glowing eastern horizon.

“And wow, I just remembered it’s the spring equinox. The day and night are exactly the same length and it’s the full moon, that’s why the moon is setting exactly when the sun is rising...” Bobby was smarter than me, and read a lot; he knew a lot of stuff they didn’t teach us in school. Maybe they taught those things at our grade level in some schools, but not in school districts like ours where the teachers felt lucky if they managed to keep their students from killing each other.

“What a great night to stay up all night,” I said. “Hey, we should stay up all day today, too, if the date’s that important. Why waste any of it sleeping?”

“You’re on!” Bobby said. “Day and night, chasing each other’s tails through eternity, and us along for the ride... Apollo and Artemis, the bright and dark, the yang and yin...”

“What’s that?”

So he started talking about the Greek gods Apollo and Artemis, twin brother and sister, the gods of the sun and moon, daytime and night. “Apollo was like the best musician in the world, he played the lute like nobody’s business. A lute was like an old-time harp or guitar or something. All the girls fell for him, and he got plenty of tail. Well, not all of them, there was Daphne who ran away from him, and he chased her, and she turned into a laurel tree to keep from having to have sex with him. Artemis was the complete opposite, she was a virgin and wanted to stay that way. She’d go hunting all night with other virgin ladies, and when a guy who was out hunting spied on them, bam! She turned him into a deer and his own dogs jumped him and tore him to pieces...”

I watched the sky turn red as Bobby rambled on deliriously about all the Greek mythology he’d been reading. Now and then I’d glance back at the moon, which was almost completely obscured by tall buildings. The sun finally peeked its head over the horizon just as Bobby started saying: “Hail, Apollo, lord of the day!” and, turning, “Farewell, Artemis, lady of the night!...” But I barely heard him; I’d started feeling weird, first a bit queasy like I might throw up, and then tingling, like I’d shocked myself on an exposed wire. The electric feeling got worse and more intense, and I actually saw sparks flying off my body. Bobby saw and looked horrified.

By the time I lost consciousness, I knew what was happening. Or rather, I knew that almost anything could happen next.

---

Fourteen years before this, the Antarctic Flu raged through North America like a wildfire, killing millions of people and almost killing millions more. My mom barely survived it; if she’d been just a little bit sicker, my older brothers would be orphans and my sister and I wouldn’t exist. But she recovered after knocking on Death’s door for a while, then running away just before he dragged himself out of bed to go to the door and see who was knocking at that hour. He was probably tired all the time that year, poor guy; he needed his sleep.

But I digress. Two years before I underwent spontaneous electrocution in the playground of my apartment complex, an eleven-year-old kid named Caz Lipton had the same sort of thing happen to him. He felt like he was being electrocuted, sparks shot off of his body, and he fell unconscious. While he was unconscious, his body transformed; he got six inches taller and twenty pounds heavier, most of it muscle. He’d been an enthusiastic but unskilled athlete before that, playing Little League soccer but almost never scoring a goal; after that, he played with kids several years older and he was an unstoppable force. And he wasn’t just taller, stronger, and better coordinated; he figured out a few months later that he could create an almost impenetrable force-field around his body for a few minutes at a time. Nobody could explain where the extra mass came from when he transformed, or why he transformed at all, or how the force-field worked.

A handful of other kids, about the same age as Caz, went through something similar in the next few months. Not all of them transformed the same way, and some didn’t transform physically at all, but had weird personality changes. Some of them had some kind of superpower like Caz’s force-field, though most were lame superpowers like you’d see in the comic relief characters in a superhero team movie. There was a girl who could make her nose glow red, for instance; I’m sure the kids at her school called her Rudolph, poor kid.

The next year, there were over a hundred kids transforming in some way, and still nobody knew why. But the scientists scratching their heads over it had figured out one pattern: all the kids had at least one parent who’d survived the Antarctic Flu. Only a small fraction of the kids whose parents had survived the Flu were transforming, at least so far, but 100% of the ones transforming had a parent who’d had the Flu.

And I’d heard on the news, a few nights before this happened to me, that almost a thousand kids had transformed so far this year. And now it was happening to me — whatever was going to happen.

I could become super-athletic, like Caz Lipton. I could get ridiculously fat, or even skinnier than I was already; I could get fur and claws like one poor kid who’d been on the news a few days ago, or maybe even turn into a girl. But what really scared me the most was the idea of my personality changing. Maybe my tastes would change just a little, so I’d like mythology like Bobby, or working on mechanical stuff like my older brother Jason. But I might become a completely different person. I had just time to pray: “Please, no,” before I passed out.

---

When I regained consciousness, I felt strange and disoriented for a moment before I remembered what had happened. I’d felt like I was being electrocuted, and sparks started shooting off me. I must have transformed in some way, and I looked down at my body before I consciously took in much of my surroundings.

I had breasts. I started to reach for my crotch, but stopped suddenly, not wanting Bobby to see me groping myself... but when I looked around, he wasn’t there.

I was still in the playground, and oddly enough, still standing up straight; I hadn’t fallen down when I lost consciousness. But Bobby was gone, and Mom was there; my little sister Jasmine was over on the swing set. Mom was pushing her, and their backs were turned to me.

Where did Bobby go, and how did they get here?

And where did these clothes come from? They weren’t the ones I was wearing before. They hung loose on me except in the chest, where my breasts pushed out against them, the nipples poking through the fabric. When kids transformed in a major way, all their clothes were burned off... Mom must have put some new clothes on me while I was out.

Then I noticed another weird thing. The sky was red in the direction I was facing, but the sun wasn’t above the horizon. And — looking around at the orientation of the playground equipment, and the buildings on the skyline — I was facing west, not east. That was the sunset I was looking at.

Twelve hours had passed. At least.

Just then Mom turned around, saw me, and gasped in shock. I won’t repeat what she said, it’s not something a good churchgoing lady should say. But after she’d gotten that out of her system, she said: “Jamie! What happened?”

“It looks like I transformed,” I said. “But... didn’t you put these clothes on me after my old ones burned off? And why didn’t you bring me inside?”

“What are you talking about? It looks like you’re a girl...!”

“Um, yeah, I kind of noticed that. But if I’ve been out for twelve hours why didn’t you notice before?”

“Twelve hours? You weren’t — wait.” She’d stopped pushing Jasmine, and when Jasmine heard us talking, she jumped off the swing and turned around.

“Oh my gosh! Is that you, Jamie?”

This was really weird in ways that had nothing to do with the weirdness other transformed kids had gone through, stuff I’d read and heard about.

“Language, Jasmine,” Mom admonished her, completely forgetting the much stronger language she’d just been using. “Let’s get you inside and have a look at you,” she said, turning back to me.

“Fine with me; I just want to know why you didn’t bring me inside earlier.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean, you left me in the same place I passed out all day! What’s up with that, Mom?”

“You mean...” She looked at me strangely. “Don’t you remember?”

“Remember what?”

“You woke up about nine-thirty. I got Jared to help me carry you into the apartment and put you to bed, after Bobby woke me up and told me what had happened. You were... different, but not that different. Not a girl. When did this happen?”

“Um — I don’t know, it felt like I just woke up. You mean I’ve been awake all day but I just forgot everything that happened since this morning?”

“It looks that way.”

We walked around to the other side of the building and up the stairs to our apartment. The pants I was wearing were tight in the hips, but loose everywhere else; the shoes fit pretty well, though. I wondered why I wasn’t freaking out about being a girl; just before I’d passed out, I was thinking of it as one of the worst things that could happen, almost as bad as getting a total personality change.

Maybe I had had a personality change. How could I tell? That could be why I wasn’t so freaked out about being a girl. Not that it felt normal, exactly, it just wasn’t as worrying as the idea of losing a big chunk of my memory.

Oh God, what if it happened again? Jared and I had watched an old movie from around the turn of the century where a guy kept forgetting things, pretty much everything that happened since he had a head injury. He couldn’t form new memories, so he kept being surprised by his surroundings whenever he got distracted, remembering nothing since the day of his accident. What if I kept forgetting everything that had happened since my transformation, kept waking up and being surprised by my body and my surroundings every time it happened?

Mom opened the door and we found my brother Jared watching a movie. He glanced up and said “'Sup?”, then did a double-take and said: “Who’s that?”

“I’m Jamie.”

“What happened?”

“He transformed again,” Mom said. “At least his clothes didn’t burn off this time, and he didn’t lose consciousness.”

“Never heard of that happening, but all these changes are pretty weird,” Jared said, still staring at me — at my breasts, actually. “First time for everything, I guess.”

Mom sent Jasmine to her room, and took me into her bedroom, where she had me undress and measured me all over — height, waist, hips, breast size, and so forth. Not surprisingly, I was as female in the crotch as I was in the chest. “I’m going to have to take you shopping tomorrow after work,” she said. “My bras would be too big on you.”

“I think I need a doctor,” I said. “I mean, it’s not normal — even for kids who transform like this — to lose memories like that.”

She sighed. “I don’t know if we can afford that. Let’s do some research on the Internet and see if we can find out about any other kids who lost memories after they transformed. If not... we’d better do it. We’ll get you into something that fits a little better and take you to the emergency room.”

So she gave me some of her underwear, which was a little loose on me, and had me put on one of her blouses over one of Jared’s T-shirts, and put back on the pair of Jared’s old pants I’d been wearing before. I was wearing new (well, used but not too worn) shoes — she told me, on the bus ride to the hospital, that she’d taken me out to the Goodwill to buy shoes after I transformed the first time and destroyed my old ones. And she showed me a photo on her phone of the way I’d looked that morning.

I was taller as a girl than I’d been before the sparking, but apparently before I changed the second time, I’d been taller still, almost as tall as Jared. And I’d had blonde hair, and would have been a chick magnet if it weren’t for the hand-me-down clothes.

Now I had black hair, and a lot darker complexion though I was still Caucasian. Mom said my breasts were almost a B cup, which was pretty big for someone who’d just turned thirteen; she thought I looked more like fourteen or fifteen.

We couldn’t find anything on the Internet about transformed kids who lost memories, so we left a few minutes later and waited for the bus that would go by the hospital.

When we got to the emergency room, we had to wait for quite a while since I wasn’t bleeding or unconscious. Mom hadn’t brought me to the emergency room this morning, she said. “I’ve heard on the news that most kids who go through this end up healthier than before, and I’ve never heard of one not waking up pretty soon after they transform. So I figured you were probably okay, and then you seemed to be fine, or better than fine, after you woke up. But now...” She shook her head.

“How long did I sleep?”

“You woke up about nine-thirty —”

“No, I mean later, after I woke up from being knocked out. Didn’t I take a nap later?” I didn’t feel at all sleepy anymore, and two hours wasn’t enough sleep after being awake for twenty-four.

“No — you’ve been awake since then. Huh. That’s right, Bobby said you two had stayed up all night to watch the sun rise.”

“So maybe I don’t sleep any more, and that’s messing up my memories. I mean, Ms. Stratemeyer” (my science teacher) “said that if you stay awake for several days in a row you start going crazy.”

“I don’t think it’s normal to lose a big chunk of memory after being awake only... let’s see... about thirty-six hours, minus a couple of hours asleep. Or knocked out.”

It was about half an hour before a nurse called me to get my vital signs checked, but then we went back to the waiting room for almost three hours before a doctor could see us.

“I see here it says your son transformed into a girl,” he said severely. “I know it’s shocking, probably traumatic, but please, it’s not an emergency. Hundreds of children have changed in various ways; few of them have been in worse health afterward, even if their new bodies were very different, and none of them had acute medical problems. You should take her to your primary care doctor during business hours tomorrow.”

“That’s not all,” I said. “I also forgot everything that happened for about twelve hours after I transformed the first time.”

“After you — wait, the first time?”

“He changed twice,” Mom said. “Once the usual way, with electric sparks shooting off and all, and his clothes burning up. But he didn’t turn into a girl then; he got taller and more muscular, and his hair turned blonde. Then twelve hours later — nobody was watching when it happened, like before, but I turned my back on him for a few minutes and when I turned around he’d changed into a girl. And the clothes he was wearing were fine, not even any little holes burned in them.”

The doctor scratched his head. “That’s a new one.”

“And after I turned into a girl, I couldn’t remember anything since I started feeling the electric shock. Before the first transformation.”

“That’s different. Could it be perhaps that you fell and hit your head when you lost consciousness during the first transformation?”

Mom and I glanced at each other. “Bobby didn’t say anything about that,” Mom said. “We could call and ask him, but it’s the middle of the night, he and his parents are probably in bed.”

“This Bobby was the only witness of the first transformation?”

“Right,” I said. “He’s my friend; we were hanging out and suddenly I felt that electric shock and passed out. Next thing I know, twelve hours have passed and I’m a girl.”

“Well... I’ll order a brain scan to see if anything’s wrong. Hmm, might as well make it a full-body scan to see if you have the internal organs of a girl as well...”

That made me feel queasy. He gave us some paperwork and sent us off, with a nurse’s aide escorting us, to another part of the hospital, where they had me change into a hospital gown and then lie perfectly still under a big machine of some kind for several minutes. We went back to the emergency room lobby and waited for almost another hour before the doctor called us back again.

“I can’t see anything abnormal on the scan,” he said, “nothing that would account for the loss of memories. There’s no sign of any brain injury. And you’re a normal, healthy teenage girl, as far as the scan shows... I hesitate to make predictions when we’re dealing with a phenomenon we hardly understand, but I’d guess that you’ll start your first period in a bit under a month.”

“Oh no!”

“Anything’s possible, of course, when we’re dealing with this kind of thing — but you ought to prepare yourself by buying pads or tampons. Ma’am, you should probably give her the talk, and take her to see a gynecologist. As for this second transformation...” He was quiet a few moments, and said: “Have your primary care doctor refer her to a neurologist if this memory loss keeps happening. If she transforms again without memory loss, though... there are probably researchers who would like to interview and examine her, if you’re willing. The stipend differs from one research program to another, but a hundred dollars per clinic visit is typical.”

Mom’s eyes and mine got wide. A hundred dollars would go a long way. But it wouldn’t be worth it if I lost my memories every time I transformed. Fifty years from now I might wake up as an old man or woman, puzzled at why I’m not still thirteen, surprised that I’m in a nursing home instead of the playground.

When we got back to the apartment, it was almost three in the morning. Mom crashed right away, but I still didn’t feel sleepy. I went to the living room and watched a movie with the sound turned down. After it was over, I got worried about suffering sleep deprivation, even though I didn’t feel at all like I had the morning before when I’d been awake for twenty-four hours. I was about to go lie down on my bed, but I remembered that Jared was sleeping in our shared bedroom, and I was a girl now. Probably Mom would say we should move my bed into Jasmine’s room. But for now, I just laid down on the sofa and closed my eyes.

An hour later I got up without having slept a wink, turned on the TV again, and watched another movie. But halfway through I got restless, and wanted to go outside. I unbolted the door, went out and quietly closed and locked it behind me. It was still dark, but the sky was brightening a little in the east. I walked around to the playground so I could see the sun rise.

And the moment it poked its head over the horizon, I was suddenly several yards away, wearing different clothes, facing the other direction, and watching the sun set. Bobby was staring at me in fascination.

“Let me guess,” I said, “I just lost another twelve hours.”

“Dude!” he said, “you’re a girl!”

“Yeah, I kind of noticed.”

“I mean, Jared told me how you turned into a girl yesterday evening after I went home and crashed, and your mom took you to the emergency room because you couldn’t remember anything. And then when they woke up this morning you were a guy again but couldn’t remember being a girl. Do you remember being a guy all day today?”

“No; last thing I remember, I came out here to watch the sun rise.”

“Oh wow... a few minutes ago we were hanging out and playing Roar and Rampage when you said you wanted to go out and watch the sun set.”

“Hmm. I bet this change and loss of memories is caused by watching the sun rise or set. Tomorrow morning I’m going to stay indoors and keep the curtains closed.”

He looked thoughtful, and said: “But then you won’t change back into a guy! Why not watch the sun rise tomorrow, then stay inside during sunset?”

“Because I don’t want to lose my memories again.”

“Huh. That makes sense, I guess. But I think it would be worth losing a few hours of memories to not get stuck as a girl.”

We stood there staring at each other for a few moments, and then I said: “Want to go for a walk?”

“Sure.”

We walked a long way down the street our apartment complex is on, as far as the convenience store, and then back again after looking at the magazines but not buying anything. Bobby’s mom had called my mom in the interim and asked for him to come home to dinner, so he left as soon as we got back. I changed into slightly better-fitting clothes and then ate supper with Mom, Jared and Jasmine; Jason had called and said he had to work late, but he’d come by later. (He’d moved out and gotten his own place a year earlier; he was seven years older than me and four years older than Jared.)

“You should have come here right away after you changed into a girl,” Mom said, after I told her what had happened and that I didn’t remember anything since sunrise, “not gone for a walk with Bobby.”

“Sorry. Normally you don’t mind me walking around if I’m with Jared or Bobby or somebody...”

“You’re a girl now,” she said. “At least at the moment. You’re more of a target, more vulnerable. And you should have told me what happened right away; we need to figure this thing out.”

“Sounds like it’s triggered by watching the sun rise or set,” Jared said. “And I’ll bet changing back and forth from girl to boy is your superpower.”

“That’s what I figured. I’m going to stay in and keep the curtains closed tomorrow morning and see if it doesn’t happen.”

“I was going to take you shopping today,” Mom said, “but I’m pretty tired, and the stores won’t be open much longer. If you stay a girl by not watching the sun rise tomorrow morning, we can leave as soon as I get home from work tomorrow.”

After supper Jasmine came over and hugged me. “I’m glad you’re my sister now,” she said, “even if you turn into a boy again tomorrow.”

I tousled her hair. “It’s kind of weird, but I don’t mind being your sister either.”

Jason came over an hour later.

“Whoa,” he said, looking at me, “Mom told me you’d turned into a girl, and then back into a guy... I guess you changed again?”

“Yeah, at sunrise. No, I mean sunset.”

Mom and I explained what had happened, and Jared pitched in with his theories about it. Jason shook his head. “I’ve heard some on the news about these kids that change suddenly, but I’ve never heard of it happening more than once to the same person.”

“I don’t think it is, not the same way exactly. The later changes haven’t felt weird or electrical; it’s just suddenly twelve hours later. And my clothes don’t burn off, either.”

“This morning you were complaining about waking up wearing girl’s underwear and a blouse,” Jared said with a smirk.

“If I can’t stop from changing into a guy again, he’s going to be complaining about wearing a bra too,” I said. That was the first time I called my daytime self “he,” like he was a separate person — which he was.

“I’m taking her shopping after work tomorrow,” Mom explained. “She can’t go around in Jared’s hand-me-downs, and my clothes are all too big on her.”

“Let me know if you need me to help out,” Jason said. He earned decent money as a mechanic, and now and then he helped us out with the rent or something when Mom had to miss work because of being sick. I suspected he was making money on the side in less legal ways, but we didn’t talk about it.

“Actually,” Mom said, “can you and Jared move Jamie’s bed into Jasmine’s room?”

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” I said. “I don’t think I need to sleep anymore. Did the daytime-me sleep any?”

“Not that I know of,” Mom said, “but I was at work most of that time.” She looked at Jared, who said: “Not when I was around.”

“I didn’t sleep any last night, and never felt sleepy,” I added. “Maybe we can get rid of my bed and free up some room.”

Mom looked thoughtful. “Well... let’s not get rid of it until we’re sure you never sleep. Maybe you can just get by on a lot less sleep, like an hour or two every few days... Wasn’t there a kid like that on the news a while ago?”

Jason shrugged. I said: “I’ll try to look it up on the Internet.”

So we didn’t move my bed that night. Jasmine was sent to bed as soon as she’d had a hug from Jason, and another one from me, and an hour later Jason left and Mom went to bed. Jared and I played Roar and Rampage in two-player mode until he got sleepy and went to bed. Then I got out the tablet Jared and I shared and started looking up stuff about people like me.

You’re probably wondering why nobody in this story has used the word “Twisted” yet, why we were talking about “superpowers” instead of “tricks.” That’s because when this phenomenon was new, nobody agreed on what to call it yet. Some people were calling us the “Transformed,” some the “Changed” or “Altered,” some “Supers” (at least those of us with powers), and a few — in those days it was only conservative talk show hosts — were already calling us “Twisted.” It was a dark night when that stupid pejorative caught on as the standard term for us. I still don’t like it, and sometimes refuse to use it, though I know it’s a lost cause.

I spent most of the night reading about other kids like me. More or less like me; no two were exactly alike, and I couldn’t find anyone else who’d transformed more than once, or anyone who routinely went more than twenty-four hours without sleep, though there was one kid who only slept one or two hours a night since his transformation.

Just before dawn, I started feeling a hankering to go out and watch the sun rise, but I resisted it. A lot of the kids I’d read about had some sort of compulsion since their transformation, and it looked like I had one too. It got harder and harder to stay indoors, and after a while I thought: “Maybe if I just open the blinds a little...” but suppressed that thought. I went into the bathroom, which had no windows, and took a shower.

I’d barely started exploring my new body when I lost another twelve hours.

---

---

If you've enjoyed this and the other free stories I've posted here, you may also enjoy these novels and short fiction collection -- available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format. Smashwords pays its authors higher royalties than Amazon.

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The Weight of Silence and Other Stories	Smashwords	Amazon