“I get a little stir-crazy sometimes, being cooped up in the apartment all night. But Mom says our neighborhood’s too dangerous for a girl at night, and I know she’s right.”

Night and Day

part 6 of 12

by Trismegistus Shandy

This story is set, with Morpheus' kind permission, in his Twisted universe. 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.

When I woke up that evening, I was lying supine on a hard surface, in a dimly-lit space, wearing something thin and not very warm. I couldn’t see much straight ahead of — I mean, above me, and I instinctively squirmed around to get a better look. I realized my legs and arms were strapped down.

“Hold still,” a woman’s voice said. “Just lie straight and stay still for a few more minutes... it’ll be over soon.” I did as she said.

A few minutes later I felt the surface under me moving, and the space above me opened up into a larger room as I slid out of the narrow cylinder I’d been in. Then an overhead light came on, and I blinked. A woman in her twenties wearing medical scrubs came over and undid the straps across my arms and belly, then the ones across my legs, and helped me sit up. I realized I was wearing a hospital gown and nothing under it.

“You can go into that bathroom there to get dressed,” she said. I clutched the back of my gown to keep my butt from showing and went in the little bathroom, where I found a bench and shelf as well as the usual toilet and sink. I found a complete change of my girl clothes, plus shoes, as well as the boy-clothes that Jamie must have been wearing before he changed into the hospital gown. There was a plastic bag dispenser on the wall; I took one and put Jamie’s clothes in it.

When I came out of the bathroom, the woman — a nurse, I guess? — led me out into a hall and down to another room, where someone else checked my vital signs and drew several vials of blood from my arm. Then she took me to a waiting room where Mom was sitting. “The doctor will be with you shortly,” she said.

“How did it go?” Mom asked.

“I don’t know about Jamie’s part,” I said, “but I woke up inside a narrow little cylinder, and then they told me to lie still for a few minutes. Then they pulled me out of there and let me get dressed, and weighed me and checked my blood pressure and drew blood and stuff.”

“I think they did the same with Jamie last week. Except it might have been a different type of scan. And a psychologist asked him some questions.”

Fifteen minutes later, and older man in a labcoat came out to the waiting room.

“Hello again, Mrs. Sullivan. Hello... I understand you’re going by Diana now?”

“Yes. Are you Dr. Darrington?”

“No, I’m Dr. Ware, one of her colleagues on this project. She’s a biophysicist; I’m a neuropsychologist. She may have some questions for you later, after she has a chance to study your scans, but for now I just wanted to have a little chat. Mrs. Sullivan, I’d like to talk to Diana alone for about half an hour, as I did with Jamie earlier; then I’ll ask you to join us.”

“Of course,” Mom said.

I followed Dr. Ware to his office, which could generously be described as cozy or ungenerously as cramped. I sat in the nicer of the two guest chairs.

“Now, Diana... Do I understand correctly that you don’t remember anything that’s happened to you in the daytime since the day you first altered?”

“Right, except I’m not sure that stuff happened to me, if you know what I mean.”

“Then you consider yourself a separate person from Jamie?”

“Yeah. I remember being Jamie up until a couple of weeks ago, and I still mostly feel like him, but I’m different from the version of him that lives in the daytime now. He’s different from the old Jamie too, at least a little bit.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, I haven’t met him, obviously, but we’ve been leaving notes for each other and sending emails, and I’ve talked to my friend Bobby about him... I think he’s more confident with girls than we used to be.”

“Interesting. What about yourself? What do you think has changed about you, besides turning into a girl physically?”

“Well, I guess I’m a girl mentally too. Maybe not a stereotypical girl, cause I don’t want to wear skirts and stuff, but I feel okay having a girl body.”

“Anything else?”

I thought about those guys the other night, and how I’d been so angry at them, not scared at all. The old Jamie would have been scared of being beaten up even if he wasn’t scared of being raped. But I wasn’t sure if I wanted to tell him about all that. I remembered hearing that doctors were supposed to keep their patients' stuff secret, in the old days, but now they had to report all kinds of things to insurance companies and the government, and maybe that only applied to adult patients anyway — he might tell everything to Mom.

“I’ve gotten interested in some new stuff,” I said. “Greek mythology and astronomy. And daytime Jamie says I enjoy playing with Jasmine more, but I think it’s really that he enjoys it less than we used to.”

“I’d heard from Jamie about the events leading up to the alteration, but I’d like to get your version as well.”

Did he think we’d remember it differently? Maybe we did. I told him about staying up all night with Bobby, and how we’d gone out to watch the sun rise, and how Bobby had started talking about the Greek mythology he’d been reading, about Apollo and Artemis.

“Interesting!” he said. “Jamie didn’t mention that aspect. Had you read any Greek mythology yourself before that time, or had Bobby told you about his reading before?”

“No, I hadn’t read any until several days after I transformed. He’d told me about some other stuff he was reading, I think about Odysseus? But I don’t think he’d told me about Apollo and Artemis before that morning.”

Dr. Ware made some notes on his tablet, then asked: “So was that a factor in your decision to call yourself Diana?”

“Yeah. I mean, Jamie works for a girl or a boy, but I figured it would be less confusing for my family and friends if they didn’t have to specify which Jamie they meant every time they mentioned one of us. Jamie said he was thinking about going by ‘Apollo’ but I guess Mom put the brakes on that, or he just changed his mind.”

“Hmm. Can you clearly remember what your friend told you about Greek mythology right before you altered, as opposed to what you learned later on from your reading?”

“I’m not sure...” I thought back. “I know he said Artemis used to go hunting all night with her friends. All women. And all of them were virgins, and they’d punish guys who spied on them. And he said Apollo was a ladies‘ man, or ladies’ god, he’d get together with different mortal women.”

“Hmm. Jamie reported that he felt like he had to go out and watch the sun set every day if at all possible. Do you watch the sun rise every morning?”

“Yes.”

“Does it feel like a compulsion, or just something you like to do?”

“I guess it’s a compulsion. One time when I didn’t want to go outside for some reason it was kind of hard to make myself stay inside. And Jamie has wanted to go inside before sunset at least once, because he didn’t want somebody to see him change, but couldn’t make himself do it.” I didn’t tell him I’d been trying to stay inside so I wouldn’t turn into Jamie.

“Have you noticed any other compulsions? Like, say, wanting to go hunting at night?”

I twitched a little then, I think. I paused before saying: “Well, not hunting exactly. I get a little stir-crazy sometimes, being cooped up in the apartment all night. But Mom says our neighborhood’s too dangerous for a girl at night, and I know she’s right.”

“Let your mother know if you start feeling a compulsion to go out despite how dangerous you know it is. She’ll call us and we can get you some help.”

I nodded.

“Have you slept any since your alteration — that you’re aware of?”

“No, and I’ve never felt sleepy. Not even when I’m watching the sun rise, about to turn into Jamie.”

“Interesting. Do you remember having any dreams during the time between sunrise and sunset?”

“No... it’s like the time just jumps past me. I’m a little bit disoriented for the first few seconds, but I don’t really feel sleepy like I’ve just woken up, exactly.”

“Did you often remember dreams before your alteration?”

“Not every night, but sometimes. Once or twice a month, I guess. Why?”

“I have an idea about why you aren’t remembering your dreams, and if I’m right, you and Jamie will remember your dreams a lot less often than most people, but it will sometimes happen. We had Jamie under the scanner for a full ninety minutes —”

I winced in sympathy. It had been claustrophobic enough for five minutes; I couldn’t imagine ninety minutes of that.

“— that is, a full sleep cycle. The brain goes through different states during the course of the night, from REM sleep, that is, the rapid eye movement that takes place when you’re dreaming, to various other stages of sleep, and back to REM sleep again. People tend to wake up during REM sleep unless some outside circumstance — the sound of an alarm, for instance — wakes them at another part of the cycle. And you’re most likely to remember your dreams if you wake up while you’re dreaming. Well, in our scan of Jamie, part of his brain showed activity typical of sleep, while another part of the brain appeared to be wide awake.”

“So I’m asleep when he’s awake,” I said. “That makes sense. And if we’re always waking up at sunrise or sunset, it’s not particularly likely to happen during a dream if we dream only once every ninety minutes, right?”

“Exactly! Eventually, the sunrise cycle and your REM sleep cycle will line up exactly, like when the full moon happened to be on the spring equinox this year, and you may remember a dream. Let me know when and if it happens.

“Is there anything else you’d like to talk to me about?”

I thought for a few moments. “No, I guess not.”

“Then stay here, and I’ll have your mother join us.”

He was back in a minute or so with Mom.

“Diana seems to be adjusting pretty well,” he said. “I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about Jamie and Diana. For instance, Diana says that she enjoys playing with Jasmine more than Jamie does; they apparently disagree about whether Diana enjoys it more than they did before the alteration, or Jamie enjoys it less. What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Mom said. “Jasmine seems to like playing with Diana more than with Jamie, but I don’t know if that’s just because they’re both girls or for other reasons as well.”

“She told me Jamie was acting grumpy around her,” I said.

“Yes, I’ve noticed that, and I’m not sure why.”

I knew, but I wasn’t going to air our dirty laundry in front of Mom and this psychologist. Jamie and I could work out our own issues, with maybe some help from Bobby and Aidan.

“I think,” Mom said after a few moments' more thought, “they might both have changed in that way. But I’m not sure.”

Dr. Ware told us about a support group for kids like me and our families. Mom said she might take Jamie to the meeting if she had a day off on the day the support group met, but it didn’t sound like I’d be able to go to their meetings until winter. Maybe I could catch the tail-end of a meeting if they ran long. And he asked Mom if she’d enroll Jasmine in another study.

“We’d like to get before-and-after data on children who might be going to go through an alteration later on,” he said. “It won’t be very onerous — a psychological test and a full-body scan once a year until and unless she goes through an alteration, and then probably some more intensive tests for a while afterward. The annual scan will be just a few minutes, not the long one we did on Jamie today. And of course you’ll be compensated for each visit.”

“I can bring in Jasmine next time I have a day off,” Mom said. “Do you think she’s going to transform like Jamie did?”

“We don’t know,” he said. “Only a few percent of the children of Antarctic Flu survivors have altered so far, but there are more every year, and the oldest children of survivors are only thirteen. When and if the numbers of children altering start to decline, we’ll be able to estimate how likely Jasmine is to alter, and at what age it’s most likely to happen.”

Of course, we eventually found out that every child of an Antarctic Flu survivor would go through a Twist, and that kids eleven to thirteen years old, like Caz Lipton and me, were extreme outliers like people who don’t Twist until they’re college age. 90% of Twisted go through their Twists between ages fourteen and seventeen, and 75% between ages fifteen and sixteen.

We now return you to your historically accurate muddle of nonstandardized terminology.

Jared had already put Jasmine to bed by the time Mom and I got home. Mom went to bed right afterward, and I hung out with Jared for a few minutes before he went to bed too. I looked over the book bag Mom had been holding onto while Jamie and I were getting tests done, and found that Jamie had done only about a third of his homework, probably on the bus home and the bus to the lab. I did the rest of it, and then checked email and social media.

There was nothing from Jamie — he probably hadn’t had a chance to use the tablet all day, having to leave for the lab almost as soon as he got home from school. But on my social media account, I had friend requests from Tony and Ali, and a message from Aidan saying:

“Jamie told Tony and Ali, and I think they’re okay with him turning into you. I told them to get in touch with you too, online, and maybe ask their parents if they could go over to your apt some evening and stay till after sunset.”

I confirmed Tony and Ali’s friend requests, then posted a public message saying:

“I hope everyone will go easy on daytime-Jamie. Imagine if you turned into the opposite sex at night; you might be pretty embarrassed, at least for a while until you got used to it. I don’t think he did the right thing, trying to keep me secret, but it’s understandable. Please forgive him.”

And then another one, with some of the interesting stuff Dr. Ware had said about Jamie sleeping and dreaming while I was awake, and vice versa. “I wonder if I can influence his dreams by what I’m doing, or if he influences mine? It’ll be hard to tell if we only remember our dreams once in a blue moon.”

Then, on further thought, I sent Jamie an email condoling with him for having to lie in that scanner machine for ninety minutes, and telling him what Dr. Ware had said.

I practiced with my new power off and on, reading about astronomy while I waited for my power to “recharge.” I found I could use it about every twenty or thirty minutes for up to four minutes. I wanted to go out and walk around, but I managed to resist until just before dawn.

A day or two later, Jamie wrote me again to say:

“I told Tony and Ali, like you and Aidan wanted me to. But I asked them not to tell anybody else. They seem to be sort of okay with it, I guess, better than I would have expected. Please don’t tell anybody else without checking with me first, okay? I think the rumors about me are dying down some, or at least the gossip around the school seems to have moved on to Cassie Linder’s latest shenanigans.”

I wrote back:

“Fine with me, but remember you won’t be able to keep me secret any longer once I start changing into you on the school bus in the winter.”

As the spring progressed, sunrise got earlier and sunset got later, and I had less time to play with Jasmine in the evening. A few weeks after my first visit to Dr. Darrington’s lab, Jasmine’s bedtime was before sunset, and I hardly saw her for the next few months, which was a lot harder than I would have expected. I exchanged social media messages with Tony and Ali, but their parents wouldn’t let them stay out late enough to visit me.

After another week and a half of practicing with my new power all night, and getting to where I could make the weird colors last for five or six minutes and use the power again just fifteen minutes later, I finally let myself go out again after everyone was in bed and I’d finished Jamie’s homework. I walked up to the convenience store, hung out there for a few minutes reading from a magazine, and then walked a little further in the same direction to the intersection of Porter Street, where I walked north for a few blocks before I headed east again and returned home via Angela Street. I did something similar the next night, and the next.

After several nights like that, my luck ran out. I was on my way home after ranging farther afield than before, and visiting another all-night convenience store where the night clerks didn’t know me. I had made a habit of glancing around and behind me from time to time, and after glancing back a couple of times at the guy who was walking behind me, I decided he was following me — he’d turned the corner when I did, and he was narrowing the gap between us. I picked up my pace, and when I heard his footsteps change into a run, I ran too. But his legs were longer; he caught up with me and grabbed my arm, and I stumbled and half-fell to the ground. I used my power, and the colors went strange — well, by that point they weren’t all that strange to me, but I figured they must have really freaked him out, because he clapped one hand to his eyes and yelled. I tried to pull away, but he tightened his grip and said: “What did you do to me, bitch?” He whacked me with his free hand, but not very hard, and not very effectively; it felt more like a slap than a punch even though he was using his fist, as it just grazed my face slightly. I kicked him, and he stumbled and fell on his back, still not letting go, pulling me down with him. He threw his fist at me but didn’t hit me this time; it went wide of my face by several inches. I kneed him in the groin and he finally let go. Then I got to my feet and ran; when I glanced back, he wasn’t following me, but I kept running and glancing back every few seconds until I got home.

I didn’t go out again for a while after that, though it was hard to make myself stay indoors sometimes.

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