Ch 1: I Had a Dream…

Dread and darkness, I was filled with dread. I’d committed some horrible Sin, and the shame of it permeated my body, and my soul. Now, I was somewhere in the Outer Darkness, and the Angel of Vengeance was Watching, waiting for some sign of disrespect from me, in order to swing that huge flaming Sword, and give me the punishment I deserved. In desperation, I prayed: «Please, God, I know I’ve Failed you, I’ve been horrible, but I don’t want to die, not just yet, please, you’re a God of Mercy, as well as a God of Justice. Please, I know I don’t deserve Mercy, but I Need it, please…»

And then I woke up.

For a good five minutes, I kept Very Still, still feeling the horrid wave of dread and fear from the dream. Plus, I felt like that Angel might still be hanging around, waiting for one last chance to Teach me a Lesson. I hardly dared to breathe, I was so scared. After the five, the dream seemed done, and just that - a dream. I still felt unsettled, like something was wrong, but I felt that whatever it was, it wasn’t going to result in my head being chopped off, or someone else finding my eighteen-year-old body, dead from a heart attack. I opened my eyes – no Sword of Flame, just a nightstand with a lamp, a clock —reading 6:43 a.m. — and some plain white wall beyond it. I tried to see as far over my shoulder, without moving my head; still no angels, and no feeling of anyone lurking, even though there was still a feeling of something…not right. I peered around, just moving my head, but saw nothing but room…well, kind of. My eyesight’s pretty bad without glasses or contacts, so I just saw room-sized blur. It looked comforting, and felt comfortable, to be by myself.

I’d barely noticed what looked like a white shirt and blue shorts on the desk chair next to the bed, when I noticed a few things that were giving me that “there’s still something wrong” feeling I had. To start, I had a thick flannel nightshirt on, which was odd, but not too bad. It felt kind of snuggly good, actually, where I hadn’t warmed up the sheets. It was kind of a weird choice for sleeping in my own bed, though. I hadn’t worn a nightshirt to bed since I was twelve, except for sleepovers or summer camp. My mom still wore one when it wasn’t too hot, so I guess it made sense for me to have one as well; I just couldn’t figure out why I was wearing one. Plus, being six feet tall and two hundred pounds, I need something more like a flannel robe than a shirt…which was odd, since it felt like a normal-sized shirt. If anything, I felt like I was smaller. The more unsettling issue I had was this: I needed to pee, pretty urgently. As annoying as it was, it was quickly overshadowed by the blatant impossibility that I did not have my normal “equipment” to take care of the issue. As a reflex, whenever I wake up needing to pee, I give a flex of my pubococcyx, or PC muscle. My reflex was intact…but that seemed the only part of it that was. Well, I still had a PC muscle, but it was flexing alone.

I catapult-roused from bed, and noticed more things:

1. I was in my “old room”, in the house I grew up while my parents were still married, instead of the apartment my mom and I lived in, and have for a couple of years;
2. The mirror showed something odd:
1. Because I was in my old room, my furniture was arranged for it, instead of for the apartment bedroom, nearly half its size;
2. My old room had my dresser/mirror on the wall opposite to my bed, to reflect light from the window; because the apartment was so small, my dresser was normally underneath the window, but the mirror itself sat in my closet.
3. Now, I said my eyesight is bad, but it’s still good enough with colors. For example, while all of the furniture was dark brown walnut, the room itself seemed decorated in various shades of white, tan and gold. The room’s décor seemed to also extend to me; I noticed that I was not only a girl, but apparently a white girl, or a “café au lait” in skin tone.

I gasped, blinked…and did not wake from the dream-within-a-dream, as I expected. However, I still really needed to pee. I probably would have sat there, or gotten closer to my dresser mirror if it were not for my now one-sphincter-short bladder. As it was, I still wasted a good minute or two trying to make sense of how getting a second chance involved being female, before by bladder informed me that in some things, there were no second chances. I leaped up, bolted for the door, flung it open, leaped the three feet into the bathroom and slammed the door. Ooh, I probably shouldn’t have slammed the door that loud, but did I mention I really needed to pee?