Foreword to the foreword: This isn’t porn, nor was the original novel idea ever going to be porn. I don’t think I realized the possible connection that might’ve been drawn there. I didn’t really specify in the original foreword.
I’ve been enjoying the foreword lately, so I thought I’d keep going with that. I’ve finally started writing season 3 again, and I’m approximately two thirds of the way done at the time I’m writing this, so I should hopefully have the draft done in a couple of weeks, barring further unexpected events. I honestly thought I was out of hiatus content, but I was looking and found this piece. A quick note, barring extremely unexpected events, I will keep posting every friday until I finish season 3. This will ideally make me finish it quicker, and not lose any statistical momentum my blog may have.
This is the first chapter of a potential longer work, which at its current point, is just a gender swap short story. I worked on it for a bit when I had ambitions of writing a novel over the summer, and put it on hold when the outline got a little bit *weird*. I feel like I don’t need to give any insight to what this might say about myself, especially if you’re coming here from twitter. I’ll let you puzzle that one out.
In all likelihood, this project will remain abandoned (unless you guys just love it I guess), but it was fun to outline. I’ve still yet to write a proper novel, but this is not the only novel I’ve ever embarked to write. I’ve started to write three, other than this, one which was the original story that I called superzeroes, which got scrapped for being overly edgy garbage that, no matter how hard I tried to fix my original concept, glorified an awful abusive relationship, and made the abuser look cool.
Another is a project I called ‘Fletching’, which basically explored the concept of superheroes in a world where they lost. If you’ve ever read old man logan, it was a similar idea, but nobody knew what happened, and it didn’t take place in an established world, so the reader would figure it out over time. That one got scrapped about halfway in, as it was an exercise in writing without an outline, and went poorly. If I find a ridiculous reserve of energy, I may return one day to fix it. I would’ve actually already uploaded that first chapter if it weren’t for the fact that the intro to the story was easily the worst part of it that I’d written, and I could never be bothered to fix it.
The last novel I’ve started was an origin story for Adara, which would’ve explained some of the backstory of her and Jean. I wound up scrapping it due to me being woefully underqualified to write a Muslim character. That’s actually one of my regrets about the character, if I’m honest. I didn’t explore enough of her actual heritage, and instead based it off of my western understanding. I think a lot of the story involving the monastery (and events yet to come), as well as hidden mechanics of magic, could’ve been a lot cooler if I’d looked more into that.
Anyways, I should be putting these words into season 3 right now, so I’ll quit rambling. Here is chapter one (likely never to be followed up on) of ‘Cait’.
(photo credit: Pexel’s free photos)
A blaring alarm pulled John out of his sleep. He got out of bed, and slammed his knee into some piece of furniture. He couldn’t quite tell what it was, as it was too dark to see. He eventually groped his way around the room until he turned off the alarm. This was when he noticed something off. Firstly, it was Saturday, and he hadn’t set an alarm. Secondly, this was not his alarm clock. His heart was racing now, and he felt his way around the room until he found a light switch.
He flipped it on and looked around the room. Definitely not his. None of this was his. It was definitely a girls room, judging by the clothes he could see. The furniture wasn’t overly feminine. The walls were blue and most of the furniture was wood grain patterned. He could’ve sworn he went to bed in his own house.
Another thing he noticed was that the furniture was strangely big, and the ceiling unusually high. He realized at this point, that the furniture was not in fact shorter, he was. More accurately, he was not him anymore, he was in the body of a girl. He could feel long hair draping over his shoulders. His heart felt like it was about to burst. He took a deep breath. He could panic about this later, for now, he needed to figure out exactly what had happened.
The first question was what kind of scenario this was. Was he still himself, just as a girl, or had he transferred into another person’s body. Another concern was if whoever’s body this was, was in his body. That could be worked out later. He scanned the room and saw an iPhone plugged into its charger. He ran over, and thanked Steve Jobs for face-id.
First he went for the address book, and found not a single name that he recognized. He checked the ‘Mom’ contact, and saw it had a different phone number.
That was that, he had to be in someone else’s body. Logically that meant that they were in his. He was about to call his phone number, when he saw the time. It wasn’t even 8 AM yet, and he usually slept with his phone in the other room, so he wouldn’t be able to reach himself until later.
Next, he went for Facebook. Evidently this person’s name was Cait Wallace. She was 17, and went to North Elk high school, which was the same place John had gone. After a bit of scrolling through everything he could find on her phone, he found that Cait didn’t do too much of anything. She went to school, and watched a lot of netflix. She seemed to be in upper level classes, so that was something, but other than that she didn’t do anything. She had a couple of friends, Ashley and Erin. She texted them quite a bit, but nobody other than that.
The next question was why was a high schooler getting up this early on a Saturday. He checked the calendar, and there wasn’t anything there. He figured there was nothing else to do but ask. It sounded like someone else was up.
He opened the door as quietly as he could, since he was about to blunder around the house like he didn’t know where anything was, and that would likely raise suspicions. He managed to find a bathroom and two other bedrooms, before he found himself in what looked to be the den. In the kitchen, he saw two people he assumed to be Cait’s parents, and Cait’s younger brother, Josh. Cait’s dad was drinking coffee at the table, and her mom was cooking something. Cait’s brother was on the couch watching TV. All of them were still in their pajamas.
“Morning, Cait!” The man looked up from his phone. “You got any plans today?”
John swore silently. He had hoped that he could glean that from them, but Cait’s dad had to go and ask him that immediately. “I feel like there’s something I’m supposed to do, but I can’t quite remember. Do any of you know?”
“Cait? doing something on a Saturday?” The brother laughed.
“There’s not anything that I know of.” Cait’s mom replied. “Is it something with Erin or Ashley?”
“No, I don’t think so…” John shook his head. “Weird.”
He needed to act cool about this. He had briefly considered honesty, but there was a significant enough chance that he got locked in a mental ward or stuck in a lab, that he decided that wasn’t the best approach. These parents seemed like nice enough people, but that was too big of a chance.
He began to move back towards Cait’s room, but her mom called after him.
“Hey, Cait. Breakfast is almost ready, so don’t go far!”
“Okay!” John replied.
It was definitely weird hearing someone else’s voice coming out of his mouth. Then again, this wasn’t really his mouth, was it? Everything else about this was weird too, but he needed to figure out what to do from here. There weren’t going to be any impending crises, so that gave him some flex time, but he still needed to work something out. He’d call his phone, to see if someone is in his body, and if they could help him out. For now, he would eat breakfast, and hide away in Cait’s room for as long as possible.
A thought occurred to him, he wondered if Cait had a car. He looked around the room, and found a purse. He dug through it for a little bit, and eventually found a car key. That would definitely make things easier.
He heard a door open.
“Planning on going somewhere?” Cait’s dad asked.
“Oh, no.” John laughed a little. “Just couldn’t remember where I put it.” He stuffed the car key back into the purse.
CJAWorks 