TG short stories (M2F)

A Simple Test... Part 4

Marcy felt something strange.

Like something was moving inside of her.

Her calmness faded, and she began to feel tense again. She'd thought that the change they were having her undergo was done! What was this?

"Um, excuse me?" Marcy called to the girl on the other side of the room.

"Yeah?"

"I feel like something is wrong," Marcy frowned with a quivering lip.

"Don't worry," the girl said, "it's going fine. Just relax. Everything has changed correctly so far."

"Okay," Marcy said softly.

She felt a tingling down in the bottom of her torso. It began spreading to her thighs.

She decided not to try and look. Her thighs touched against each other. Wait. Then they... weren't? She felt the feeling continue, spreading down her legs.

Then she realized - she couldn't spread her legs apart anymore.

Okay, now she had to look.

She pulled aside the cover on her hospital bed, and what she saw was a lot different from her first change.

Her legs had fused together to form one body part, like her torso had continued down as one apendage, tapering to a point. It had also gotten longer.

As she watched, she saw... scales? They began growing down from her waist, and soon were rapidly covering her lower body. When they reached the tip of her new apendage, she saw two growths suddenly sprout from it, translucent, blooming out like two flower petals.

They were fins. Like on a goldfish.

She looked over herself.

"I'm... a mermaid??" she said in shock.

She couldn't deny it. A mermaid tail lay out in front of her, colored a soft shade of purple.

Marcy hesitantly reached towards it, and felt it. To her surprise, she felt warmth beneath the scales, rather than cold like she was expecting.

Being an experiment in a lab, she would've expected the mermaid tail to look ugly and mutated. But no. It looked... oddly pretty to her.

She fingered one of the scales, and pulled on it.

"I wouldn't -" the girl said.

Marcy yanked it free, and let out a short screech.

"- do that if I were you."

Marcy held up the scale she'd pulled out. This... this had been part of her body. It was purple, but when it caught the light it would give off a slight rainbow shimmer. She set down the scale on the side of the bed.

The girl got up from her chair, and walked up to Marcy's bed. She wore her auburn hair in a 2070's style, seemingly going for a retro look - or at least, retro to Marcy.

"How do you feel?" the girl asked.

"It... it looks beautiful," Marcy said, looking over the tail.

The girl seemed surprised. "I asked you how you were feeling."

Marcy snapped herself from her distraction. "I... I guess... other than what I just did to my tail, I feel fine. All of that... felt very fuzzy."

"You didn't feel like you were mentally aware?" the girl asked, writing something on a tablet.

"No," Marcy shook her head, "I mean, it felt like that feeling when your foot's asleep, only it was everywhere on my body that something changed."

"I see," the girl wrote something else down, seemingly erasing what she'd just written. "How do you feel in general? Emotionally?"

"I'm... I'm stunned. I knew that a lot of crazy stuff was being developed with genetics, but this... this is amazing!"

The girl seemed surprised again. "You... you don't feel... upset? Or mad?"

Marcy's expression fell. "Should I?"

"There is no right and wrong here in what you should feel," the girl said. "Because this is a rather, mm, drastic procedure that requires extra consent, it is not yet practical to run completely blind controlled experiments. Simply say what you are feeling."

"I... I really don't know," Marcy said. "I'm just... I was not expecting this."

The door opened, and Marcy saw that it was Sharon and Liam.

They seemed just as surprised as the other girl, who whispered something to them, and then handed Sharon her tablet, then left the room.

"My," Sharon said, "that was fast. We left only thirty two minutes ago."

"Is that... bad?"

"Strange," Sharon said, "but no."

"I'm much more interested," Liam said in his comforting baritone voice, "why our friend is so... cheerful."

Marcy fidgeted. "I... I don't know. It's just... I'm a mermaid! A mythical creature! That's amazing!"

She experimented with bending her tail, and dropped her jaw as she felt how easily she could flex it. She lifted her fins up, curling her tail until they hung in front of her face.

"You're oddly not freaking out...," Sharon said.

"Do... there have been other people before me," Marcy said, "Did they freak out?"

"Somewhat," Liam said. "And interestingly, they weren't in the dark, like you were."

"This... this is some sort of psychological test?" Marcy asked.

Sharon nodded. "To see your reaction about changing and not being told before hand. Although... I'm wondering if perhaps you are not representative of most people's reactions..."

Marcy shrunk down in her bed, looking away timidly. "I know. I'm weird."

"That's not bad at all Mark," Sharon said, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

"Marcy."

"Marcy?"

She swallowed. "Well, I'm a girl now. I figured it makes sense calling me that."

"So quick," Liam stroked his chin, "to change to a different name."

"Mark... just didn't feel right."

Sharon and Liam nodded.

"You feel fine though?" Sharon said.

Marcy nodded. "In fact... my body feels kind of refreshed. I don't know what kind of answer you really want about how I feel emotionally or mentally though..."

"We'll give you another survey to fill out," Sharon said. "And as a reward, there'll be some fast food waiting for you afterward."

She reached out enthusiastically for the tablet. "Gimme."

Sharon smirked, tapping the screen a bit, then handing it to Marcy.

Marcy began filling out questions as her two visitors went to leave the room.

"Wait," Marcy said.

"Hmm?" Sharon turned to her.

"How long is this going to last exactly?" Marcy asked. "You've said that it won't be permanent exactly?"

"Well," Sharon said, "that depends. For now though, you will go back to normal in about twenty-four hours. If you wish to do this again, don't worry, you won't need to starve yourself like this time."

Marcy smiled, anticipating the taste of fast food, and started on another survey.