“You should stay here near the house,” Renee said to me, “and me and Todd will go way over to the far corner, maybe even a little way into the woods but not so far the trees block our view. And we’ll see if you still look like a girl from that distance.”

---

Twisted Throwback

part 8 of 25

by Trismegistus Shandy

This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in his Twisted universe. It's set about a generation later than "Twisted", "Twisted Pink", etc. A somewhat different version was serialized on the morpheuscabinet2 mailing list in January-April 2014.

Thanks to Morpheus, Maggie Finson, D.A.W., Johanna, and JM for beta-reading earlier drafts. Thanks to Grover, Paps Paw, and others who commented on the earlier serial.

---

---

From my dream journal for Saturday morning:

We’re picnicking at Terrell Park, just me and Mom and Dad and Mildred. Mildred’s her old pre-Twisted self, a couple of years younger than she is now, and I’m younger too, but I’m a girl. There was more but I forgot to write this down right away, and I’ve forgotten it.

Since I didn’t have to get ready for school, I lay in bed drowsing for a while after I woke up, and then turned on the light and read for a while before I needed to pee and had to get up. When I came back from the bathroom I finally remembered to write down my dream.

Then I went downstairs, still in my nightgown, to eat breakfast. Mom was making pancakes, and Dad and Uncle Jack were sitting at the table talking about the new insulation and heaters they were going to install.

“Good morning, honey,” Mom said. “Did you sleep well?”

“Pretty well, yeah. That smells good. Can I help?”

“You can take over the pancakes while I make the sausages. Your sister can’t eat these.”

“Oh. Right.” I felt bad for Mildred. Did she miss being able to eat grains and vegetables and stuff? Or did she not miss that any more than I missed wearing boy clothes? I might ask her. Or I might just watch how she acted during breakfast.

Mildred still hadn’t come downstairs by the time the first batch of pancakes were done and the sausages were almost done. “Go wake your sister up and tell her breakfast is almost ready,” Mom said.

Mildred’s room was dark, her door slightly ajar. I knocked and called out: “Mildred, Mom’s making sausages for you and they’re about ready.” No answer. I went on in and turned on the light, which got no response, and then sat down beside her and shook her shoulder gently. Still no response. I panicked for a moment before I thought to verify that she was in fact breathing. She was just very sound asleep. I had to shake her for a couple of minutes before she drowsily mumbled and rolled over; then I had to talk to her and prod her for a little longer before she finally sat up and got going.

“For some reason I’m having a hard time waking up,” she said, yawning and staring into space. “Um. Is it cold?”

“Yeah, kind of.” I did feel a little cool, though I felt so nice and feminine in my nightgown that I had resisted the momentary impulse to put on my old sweat pants under it.

“That’s probably it. Maybe I need a hot shower to wake me up.”

She stumbled into the bathroom and turned on the hot water; I left her alone and went back downstairs.

“Mildred’s going to take a hot shower before she eats,” I said.

“I fear that last night’s cold snap has affected her,” Dad said. “We really must get the house, and especially her room, insulated and heated better. What time do you suppose you will leave, Katherine?”

“Less than an hour, I hope. Go ahead and eat, Emily — you should shower pretty soon after Mildred’s finished, so we’ll be ready to go when she’s done eating.”

I got a plate of pancakes — Mom had made on another batch while I was waking Mildred — and sat down to eat. After a few mouthfuls I said: “We’re going shopping, right?”

“At the mall in Rome, and maybe some of the stores on Broad Street too.”

“Good. I really need new gym clothes. And — even though my trick makes me look okay without them — um —”

“Yes?”

I blushed, glancing at Dad and Uncle Jack. “I think I need fake breasts too? I mean, I know everybody else sees me with breasts, but I look at myself and I don’t look right. And when people see me in the mirror they notice right away that my reflection doesn’t look like me, and maybe that would help... Sarah suggested using makeup too, to make my reflection look more like me.”

“We can buy you some makeup, certainly. And... I’m not sure. We can find materials to make prostheses for you in Rome, but we might need to go to Atlanta, or order from a specialty store online, to get breasts that were designed as breasts —”

Dad got up from the table, though his plate wasn’t empty. “John and I are going to the hardware store,” he announced. “Katherine, do you wish me to warm up your car so that it will be ready for Mildred?”

“Yes, thanks.” She kissed him as he went out; Uncle Jack winked at us and followed him. When they were gone, Mom giggled.

“I think we embarrassed your father.”

“I know I embarrassed me...”

A little later Mildred came downstairs, looking more awake but still not perky. “Ready to go shopping?” Mom asked.

“Sure, soon as I get some food in me. That smells good.”

She tore into the sausages, and if she regretted not being able to eat the pancakes, I didn’t see any obvious sign. I went upstairs and showered, and by the time I got dressed Mom and Mildred were finished eating and loading the dishwasher.

It wasn’t that cold outside, still ten or twelve degrees above freezing, but it was colder than it had been since last spring. I shivered a bit when we stepped outside; Mildred didn’t react to the cold in the few moments it took us to get to the car, but once we got in the toasty car and on the road, she perked up more. I tried to do some reading for my Modern History term paper and for other classes, but Mildred wanted to talk, and I didn’t mind talking. She asked about last night, and I told her and Mom a little more than I’d wanted to say when Dad and Uncle Jack were around.

“I wish I could have gone,” she said, “but I guess you didn’t want your kid sister around —”

“That’s not so,” I said. “But — well, I wasn’t sure if it would be okay to invite you. Renee’s pretty close to our age.”

“Besides, it sounds like if Morgan was creeped out by your Twist, she’d hate me on sight.”

“...Maybe.” I wasn’t sure what to think of Morgan yet. “I might have given you the wrong impression about her... It seemed like she was trying to be nice even though she was weirded out by me being, um, like I am.”

When I brought up the subject of makeup and breast prostheses again, Mildred said: “You can have all my old makeup. It doesn’t work right on my scales; I tried Friday before school and it looked terrible so I washed it off.”

“Perhaps Emily had better buy some of her own, too. Her complexion isn’t exactly the same as yours used to be.” Mom’s darker than Dad, she has some Italian and Pakistani ancestors a few generations back, and I take more after her than Mildred does.

Than Mildred did, before.

When we got near Rome, Mom had me and Mildred look up some stores on our tablets, and before we went to the mall, we stopped at a craft store and a birders‘ supply store. Armed with several of our new purchases, we went into the ladies’ room at the mall, and before we left (after attracting some odd looks from a couple of other women, who were apparently too distracted by what we were doing to notice how my reflection didn’t look like me), I had small bags of birdseed pinned into my bra, which Mom and Mildred assured me made my reflection look a lot more like the real me that people saw. They made me feel a lot better too, when I’d glance down at myself or see myself in the mirror, though the latter was still not a fun experience, and I avoided it as much as possible.

From there we hit several clothing stores and a shoe store. None of them had the selection of the big store we’d gone to in Marietta, or so Mildred complained, but shopping as a girl was so new and exciting to me that I didn’t notice any deficiency. Mildred bought a lot more stuff than me, as her Twist stipend had been approved almost immediately; apparently the Medical Bureau had asked for more evidence that I really needed new clothes, while Mildred’s physical need for them was obvious. Still, by the end of the day, I had a couple of changes of gym clothes and two or three new blouses and skirts. I resisted buying pants and shirts, though, at first.

“They just seem too much like the stuff I used to wear,” I said.

“But they’re totally girly,” Mildred said. “Look at the embroidery on those jeans.” They had flowers all along the outside of each leg.

“I’m not saying I’d never wear them, but... not yet, okay?”

“You need some clothes for working in the yard or hiking,” Mom said. “And with winter coming on you’ll regret not having pants.”

“Maybe... I think in cold weather I’d rather wear warm stockings under a skirt. If the only time I’d want to wear pants is when I’m working and maybe getting dirty, why don’t we buy some used ones at a thrift store?”

We did that, later in the day after lunch and more shopping at the consignment stores and vintage stores on Broad Street, and an hour at an old bookstore that I loved to stop at every time we went to Rome. I realized only afterward that I’d spent a lot more time among the nonfiction shelves than the fiction, and that all the books I’d actually bought were nonfiction — more than half of them history, and most of the rest political science or economics. There was more evidence for one of Uncle Greg’s theories.

As we were on our way from the mall to the restaurant we’d picked out, Lionel called me. “Hey,” I said.

“Want to come over and hang out?” he asked. “The new game in the Phantoms of Phobos series was released today, and I just finished downloading it.”

“I’d like to,” I said, though a moment later I wasn’t sure I wanted to play Phantoms of Phobos V (or was it VI?). I did want to hang out with Lionel, though. “But I’m in Rome with Mom and Mildred, and it’ll be several hours before we get home. I’ll call you then and see if it still suits to come over.” I’d just remembered what Renee had said, about how I sounded like a boy over the phone, and I wanted to cut the conversation short.

“Sure. Or, you know, maybe tomorrow.”

“We’re going to Grandma and Grandpa’s house after church tomorrow — probably for several hours. But maybe in the evening. I’ll let you know.”

But when we got home, by the time we hauled in all our purchases and Mom and Mildred dragged me into a makeup lesson (they didn’t have to drag very hard), and Dad and Uncle Jack dragged me into putting on my new thrift-store girly jeans and pastel tie-died T-shirt and getting sweaty putting in new insulation in the attic and down into the spaces between walls around Mildred’s room, it was pretty late. I didn’t want to talk to Lionel on the phone if I could avoid it; I messaged him apologizing for not calling or messaging him sooner, and promising to let him know when we got home from Grandma and Grandpa’s house Sunday.

---

There’s no entry in my dream journal for that Sunday; I must not have remembered my dreams at all. I was up early, but Mildred was already up and showering before me. Apparently the extra heaters in her room had helped her wake up perkier.

After breakfast, and after we’d all showered, Mom helped me apply some makeup — we worked at the vanity in her and Dad’s bedroom, since I didn’t have one yet. “Yet another thing to buy,” Mom sighed. I still couldn’t tell what I looked like to Mom, except by listening to her descriptions, and Mom couldn’t tell what I looked like with the makeup on except by looking at my reflection; but after a few minutes we got to where my reflection looked reasonably okay. Except for the Adam’s apple, and my chin — a higher-necked dress might conceal the former, but probably only surgery could do anything for the latter.

I wore a long-sleeved light blue dress we’d bought Thursday, and Mom said I looked great in it; even I thought I looked better than I’d looked yet, with the birdseed-bra and the makeup, and I felt better as a result. When we got to church, of course, everybody was very interested in us, but I was pretty sure they were mostly looking at Mildred, and a lot of people were glad to see Uncle Jack again too; I didn’t feel singled out. With me being unpracticed at dressing up and putting on makeup, we were a little late, and didn’t have time to talk to many people before the service started. Most of them asked Mildred more questions than me, and I didn’t volunteer a lot of details of my Twist.

Ms. Taylor, who was a friend of Mom’s, came up to us and said: “I see both of your children have gone through their Twists.”

“Yes,” Mom said. “Emily, who used to be called Cyrus, went through her Twist on Tuesday, and Mildred on Wednesday. It’s been quite a week.”

Ms. Taylor looked at me. “You look nice, Emily. And you chose such a pretty name, too; it was my grandmother’s name.”

“I think it chose me,” was all I said.

“I know how hard this must be for you, Mildred... I remember when your cousin Paul went through his Twist, but I’m sure it’s even worse for a girl. We’ll be here for you, don’t forget that.”

“Thanks,” Mildred mumbled, looking away. I squeezed her hand.

“Is there anything we can do?” Ms. Taylor asked Mom.

“Not much right now, I think. Unless you have influence with the school board or the principal at the middle school — I think we may have a confrontation with them over the bullying Mildred’s going through, if they don’t take prompt action.”

Ms. Taylor looked angry and shocked. “We won’t stand for that. I’ll get on the phone to the school board members this afternoon —”

“Wait a bit, okay? I’m meeting with the principal tomorrow, and we’ll see if he takes prompt action. If not, I’ll let you know. And — Mildred’s cold-blooded now, so if the heating in the sanctuary gets erratic like it did for a few weeks last winter, she’ll have to stay home where it’s warm. We don’t want her going into hibernation in the middle of the sermon.”

Mildred gave a sour smile at that. The organist started playing the processional, and we hurried up and sat down.

After church, we spent a little more time visiting with various people, but not a lot, because we needed to get to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. A couple of guys near my age who I spent more time with at church than at school asked me what it was like being a girl, and I just said: “It feels like I’ve always been a girl. Remembering being a boy is what feels strange.”

When we got to Grandpa and Grandma’s house, Aunt Rhoda and her family were already there, and so were Uncle Greg and Aunt Karen. Grandma came and hugged me and Mildred, and so did Grandpa; he said to me: “You said you felt your image all askew, but knew not what was wrong nor how to change. Now as a lovely maiden you appear; is this the target aimed at by your Twist, or but a step toward another goal?”

“It’s a step, I guess. A big step. I want this — what you see — to be real. But right now it’s partly clothes and makeup, and partly my trick. Underneath it I’m still too much like my old self.”

Grandma nodded. “I knew a girl like you when I was in college, dear. She was taking supplemental hormones, if I remember right, and was going to have some kind of surgery when she’d saved enough money... I suppose you’ll be doing that eventually?”

“I guess so. But it’s not as simple as it used to be...” I told her how the infrastructure for helping transgendered people had gone rusty with disuse.

Then Uncle Darren’s son Vernon arrived with his twin sons Jerry and Carson, who were about a year younger than Mildred — he generally had custody of them on weekends, which was why they hadn’t been with him when he came over to our house Tuesday night. Todd and his parents, Faith and Ben, got there about the same time (Faith is Uncle Greg’s daughter, Dad’s first cousin). As Grandpa and Grandma started talking to Mildred about her Twist, I went to greet them.

“Hey... Emily?” Todd said. “Sorry, I missed a couple of classes and lunch to go to the dentist Friday, and it turns out I missed your girl-debut. How’d it go? Anybody treating you wrong?”

“Not bad,” I said, flinching as his mom took a photo of us. “A couple of smart remarks, but the teachers shut them down pretty fast. Mildred, though... She’s got it rough.”

Mildred was over at the other end of the room talking quietly with Grandma. “I imagine so,” Todd said, looking at her. “Maybe worse than Kerry...”

Faith meandered over that way, taking photos of Mildred and Grandma from two or three different angles. I sighed with relief. She got a photography compulsion from her Twist; she takes more photos at family gatherings than on other occasions, but she’s constantly taking photos at work or while out shopping or whatever as well. And she cares so much about the quality of her photos that she carries around an actual dedicated camera, with special lenses and stuff, instead of just taking pictures with her phone like other people. I like her, but I wasn’t looking forward to being around her after my Twist, with my trick’s weakness to cameras.

“Kerry only had two more years of high school to get through before she could run off to Spiral,” I said. “I don’t know if Mildred can stand six more months of middle school and four years of high school.”

Renee came over to us and said: “Did Emily tell you about her trick?”

“I heard something,” Todd replied. “It’s like Rhoda’s, right? You’re making yourself look like a girl even though, um.”

“I’m still the same physically. Yeah.”

“I guess that’s useful. For you, I mean, given your Twist.”

“Yeah, it’s about the best trick I could have. The only thing that would be better would be if I could fool cameras and mirrors — or, no, what would really be better would be if I could change myself physically.”

“That’s weird,” he said. “I mean, I read about all kinds of Twists, when I was worried about what mine might be like, and I read about a lot of kids who changed sex — physically I mean, and usually mentally as well. And there are some who get compulsions to change themselves — but it’s usually something small and achievable, like getting tattoos or piercings or exercising all the time to stay in shape.”

“I think I know why,” I said, and I told him what I’d been researching when my Twist happened. His eyes widened.

“That sucks.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“I guess not.”

“Do you want to go out in the yard and test your trick some more?” Renee asked.

“Sure.”

About then Faith came back and took a photo of us; I turned away just as I saw her coming. “I need to talk to you for a minute,” I told her, and explained how our Twist-compulsions weren’t going to mix.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” she said. “I’ll delete those pictures of you, or maybe crop you out of them. And I’ll try to avoid taking more pictures of you, but if I do, I’ll try to delete them soon afterward.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Just then Grandma said it was time to ask the blessing; we all held hands and Grandpa prayed, and then we served our plates and dug in.

“What about you, Mildred?” Todd asked as we were standing in line in the kitchen, the old folks all ahead of us. “Have you figured out your trick yet?”

“Yeah,” she said, with a mischievous smile. I quickly put in:

“She’ll show you later, when we go out in the yard... Mildred, you know you’ll get in trouble if you use it in the house.”

“Is it messy or destructive?” Todd asked.

“It could be,” Mildred said meditatively. “If I use it right.”

I imagined her making Todd see several snakes in front of him when he’d already served his plate and was on his way to the dining table. “Yeah, I expect it could.”

But Mildred suddenly frowned, and said: “I don’t think I’d better go out in the yard with you, though. It’s too cold today.”

If we hadn’t been holding plates and silverware I would have hugged her then. “I won’t stay out long,” I said. “But Renee and I need to do some tests with my trick, see if it has a distance limit.”

Mildred’s eyes lit up, and I smiled, realizing what she was probably thinking. “Yeah, you should test that,” she said.

We served our plates and sat down, and for a while we were all too busy eating to talk much. Several of them hadn’t seen Uncle Jack since he arrived in town, and they wanted to hear about his recent travels; Faith and Ben and Todd especially wanted to hear about his visit with Kerry and Jeff. But of course Mildred and I were the main topics of conversation before long, with people asking us about our Twists and how we felt about them, and the older folks reminiscing about their own Twists.

“I remember how self-conscious I was when I started constantly folding origami,” Vernon said. He was making all the loose napkins on the table into cranes, boxes, stars, and flowers as he spoke; Grandma always set out extra when he was around. “But it wasn’t long before it started to seem perfectly natural and I didn’t care what people thought about it. I’m sure you’ll feel the same about wearing girl’s clothes before long.”

“I already do.” Did he understand that I really was a girl, inside, and didn’t just have a Twist compulsion to wear girl’s clothes? But before I could correct his possibly false impression, the conversation turned toward Mildred’s Twist.

“It’s not like that,” she said, responding to something I hadn’t heard clearly. “I don’t feel cold. Or hot, either. I haven’t ever felt cold or hot since my Twist. Only when it’s cold I feel sort of slow and sleepy, and I feel perkier when it’s warm.”

“I suppose Spiral will be extra nice for you, then, what with the climate out there,” said Faith. “Have you talked to Kerry since your Twist?”

“No, not yet... maybe we can go see them after Christmas?” she said, looking hopefully at Mom and Dad.

“It would be good for you to talk on the phone with her,” Mom said. “I don’t know if your father and I can take much time off work for another trip to Spiral so soon, though.”

“She could travel with us, if it suits,” Ben said. “We’ll be going to Spiral the day after Christmas and staying for two weeks. Todd’s coming back the day before school starts, and he could escort Mildred, but Faith and I will stay with Kerry and Jeff for a bit longer.”

“That may well suit,” Dad said. “Let us think upon it and discuss it further. Other changes of plan may make it unnecessary.”

“You mean we might be moving to Spiral ourselves by then?” Mildred asked.

“We have not ruled it out.”

After lunch, prolonged by a dessert of Grandma’s amazing apple walnut cake, several of us went out into the back yard. Mildred bundled up and stepped out to look at the thermometer on the porch; Mom came with us, and shivered.

“You’d better go back inside, Mildred,” she said.

“It’s warmer than when we left for church,” Mildred pointed out.

“But still too cold for you.”

“She’ll be okay for a few minutes,” I said. “I’ll make sure she comes inside in — say, ten minutes?”

“Make it five,” Mom said, and went back inside. Mildred followed me, Renee and Todd out into the yard; Jerry and Carson had already come out a few minutes earlier, and were playing on the swing set.

“You should stay here near the house,” Renee said to me, “over there, by the gate to the front yard, maybe — and me and Todd will go way over to the far corner, maybe even a little way into the woods but not so far the trees block our view. And we’ll see if you still look like a girl from that distance.”

“I see,” Todd said. “Maybe if...”

“We should all go off and look at her from different directions,” Mildred put in.

“Someone should stay with you and watch to make sure you don’t go into hibernation or something,” I said.

“It’s not gonna happen in five minutes,” she said, annoyed. But she was a moment slower to respond than I would have expected, and she spoke more slowly. The cold was already affecting her a little.

“Come on,” Renee said, taking her hand; “we can move around and look at her from different spots.”

Renee and Mildred went off toward the spot she’d first suggested, and Todd, after a moment, said: “I’ll take that spot first,” pointing to another not quite as distant corner.

“Okay. I’ll be over there by the gate.”

I was okay while we were walking around, but I shivered a little when I stood still. My church dress wasn’t as warm as the stuff the others were wearing, even with a coat over it. I started pacing back and forth, keeping an eye on Mildred and Renee. Then I suddenly stopped short, seeing a copperhead right in front of me.

It had to be one of Mildred’s, I thought. After that cold snap, wouldn’t the real snakes be going into hibernation? And what were the odds, anyway? Before Mildred’s Twist, we’d only seen snakes in Grandpa and Grandma’s backyard four times in all the years I could remember, and only one of them was a copperhead. But I stayed away from the snake anyway, just in case. I looked at Todd, who had reached his post and was looking back at me. Suddenly he startled, looking down at his feet, and backed away. I smiled; now I was sure the copperhead was Mildred’s. I looked toward her and raised my hand in a thumbs up; Mildred did the same. A few moments later she and Renee started back towards me, and I headed for the back porch, walking right toward the copperhead, which vanished as I approached it.

We met up near the back porch — at least Mildred, Renee and I. Todd, though he had started out nearer me than Mildred and Renee, had circled around a long way to avoid the snake he’d apparently seen, and then stopped suddenly and made another detour.

“What’s Todd doing?” Renee wondered. Then she glanced around uneasily, fixed her eyes on a spot nearby, and shrieked. Mildred and I couldn’t help laughing.

“You’d better let Todd alone,” I said to Mildred. “And get on inside where it’s warm.”

“We’d all better go,” Renee said, “there was a snake over there — maybe just a king snake, but maybe a coral snake, I only caught a glimpse of it. — Jerry! Carson! Come on inside — not straight toward me, go around through the gate to the front yard —”

“No, there isn’t,” I said. “Enough fun, Mildred, let’s go... Jerry, Carson, false alarm.”

“But...”

I looked back at Todd, who suddenly startled and made another detour on his way back to the house. Mildred giggled.

“Nice to know that a few minutes' chill doesn’t make your trick stop working,” I said.

“Will one of you please explain what’s going on?” Renee said.

“I make people see snakes,” Mildred said.

“That aren’t there,” I helpfully clarified.

“And apparently it works from hundreds of yards away, like Emily’s trick,” Mildred added with a satisfied smile. We went on in and waited in the foyer until Todd came in.

“I’ve never seen that many snakes on a day this cold,” he said.

“Wanna see a few more?” Mildred asked. “I can arrange that.”

He stared at her for a moment, then laughed. “You little sneak! That’s why your dad didn’t want you showing off your trick in the house.”

“She did it to him as soon as we got home from the Twist clinic,” I said.

“Good for you, squirt.”

We went on in; the older folks were sitting around the living room, talking. Dad looked at us and said: “Are you feeling well, Mildred?”

“Sure,” she said. “Five minutes didn’t hurt me any.”

“Or make her trick stop working,” Todd said.

“Please have a seat, Mildred. You may wish to do so as well, Emily — this discussion concerns you as well.”

We all found seats, Renee and Todd too. Dad spoke again:

“Your mother and I have discussed this during the last few days, but we thought it well to seek the advice of our extended family before making a decision.”

“About how soon we’re moving to Spiral?” Mildred asked.

“Your question involves a presupposition which is, among other things, under discussion. Should we, in fact, move to Spiral because of your Twist?”

“But... the kids at school are so mean!”

“It was like that for Paul,” Uncle Greg said. “But it was much worse for him in the first few days, perhaps weeks, after his Twist than later on. He ended his high school career as a less popular student than he had been as a sophomore, but he was hardly a pariah, either.”

“And with Kerry, the real bullying didn’t last long,” Faith said. “The teachers and administrators came down hard on the bullies, and they pretty much left her alone after the first few days. She wasn’t as popular as before, but she didn’t lose all her friends — not more than one or two, really, and those she wasn’t very close to to begin with.”

“Kerry and Paul look a lot more human than me,” Mildred said sullenly. “And if it was so great for them in Trittsville, why’d they move to Spiral the first chance they got?”

“Mildred has a point,” Dad said. “And her welfare must be our primary consideration. But there are other considerations which we will take into account if we can do so without compromising her safety or happiness.”

Grandpa said: “Think too of generations yet to come, your children and the ones who’ll follow them. Among them there will be a few whose Twists give them an aspect singular and strange. By staying here a year or two or five, perhaps you’ll open many people’s eyes, and pave the way for others in their turn.”

“Please think about that, Mildred,” Dad said, “but do not fear that we will pressure you to stay and suffer for years to further the long-term welfare of future Twisted. If your situation at school becomes truly unbearable, we will take you out at once, and decide then whether to home-school you until the end of the semester, or the end of the school year, or move to Spiral as soon as possible.”

“But please try it for a few more days, at least, honey,” Mom said. “Give the teachers a chance to discipline the bullies, and give the principal a chance to discipline the teachers who aren’t doing their job, and give your friends a chance to get over their shock at your Twist.”

“Okay,” Mildred said. “A couple more days.”

“I said it before,” I said, “but I want to say it again — if Mildred needs to be in Spiral, it’s fine with me if we move in the middle of the school year or even the middle of the semester.”

“That is a possibility,” Dad said. “But it will be difficult to find a good place to live in Spiral before the end of the semester, in any case, even if we begin at once to search for housing online and ask our kin in Spiral to help. I do not think we will move in the middle of this semester, though we may take Mildred out and home-school her for the remainder of it.”

The discussion went on for a lot longer than that, but there weren’t any important new points raised. Grandma asked me how the kids at school were treating me, and I told them. Grandpa, Grandma, Uncle Jack and Aunt Karen all volunteered to help Mom and Dad with home-schooling Mildred in various subjects if they found the teachers and principal too slow or ineffective in stopping the bullies.

By the time we got home, it was a lot later than I’d expected. I saw I had a message from Lionel, and another from Vic, and I messaged them back, but it was late enough that it didn’t suit for me to go over and hang out. Mildred and I practiced our tricks on each other in front of the mirror in her room after supper; she was getting more control over what kind of snake I would see, but I still couldn’t get her to see the feminine me in the mirror, or to see me with longer hair or different-colored fingernails or anything.

---

---

I'm planning to post chapter nine next Monday. But if I get comments on this one from eight or more people, I'll post the next chapter a few days early, probably around Thursday (assuming Internet problems or other obstacles don't intervene).

---

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.

Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes	Smashwords	Amazon
When Wasps Make Honey	Smashwords	Amazon
A Notional Treason	Smashwords	Amazon
The Weight of Silence and Other Stories	Smashwords	Amazon