“We weren’t entirely truthful last weekend when we told you that Davey couldn’t remember what had happened during the months he was gone,” Carson said. “Davey told us where he’d been and what he’d done, but... until a few days ago, we didn’t believe him, because we didn’t have evidence, and his story seemed pretty far-fetched.”

The Mural and the Cabinet

part 17 of 21

by Trismegistus Shandy

Thanks to Lucario and Maplestrip for feedback on story ideas, and to Yuki Kitsune for beta reading the manuscript.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

We're finally getting into the part of the story that justifies the "mature subject" tag.

Sharon got a call from her son Carson, inviting her to come and spend the day with him and his wife and kids the following Saturday. In the course of the conversation, he also asked her if she had any special plans for Sunday or Monday; she didn’t realize the significance of that until later.

It wasn’t unusual for her to go over to Carson’s house. Sometimes he would drop in on her by himself or with one of the kids, but if she was going to visit with Amanda and all her grandchildren, their house had a lot more room than her retirement apartment, which started getting a little crowded when she had two visitors, and was uncomfortably so with five, especially if two of them were young children with a lot of energy to burn.

But Carson was particular about her spending the whole day with them, which was a little out of the ordinary. Not enough for her to be suspicious, of course. It wasn’t until after she and Carson got to the house that things got a litle odd. She noticed that Carson was checking the time pretty frequently, which wasn’t like him, and made her feel a little hurt. Then it seemed like everyone else was checking the time, too. Then, a little before ten, Carson and Amanda met each other’s eyes and Carson said, “It’s time.”

“Time for what?” Sharon asked.

“Let’s go upstairs, and we can show you soon... Here, I’ll take your arm.”

Sharon was glad to live in a place with no stairs, but she could still do them when she needed to. Everyone got up and followed her and Carson... to Davey’s room?

“What did you want to show me?”

“Have a seat,” Carson said. There was a straight-backed chair in the room, too big for Davey, which she suspected they’d moved up here just for her. Why? She sat down and the others sat down on the bed or stood leaning against the wall, while Davey sat in his child-sized chair.

“We weren’t entirely truthful last weekend when we told you that Davey couldn’t remember what had happened during the months he was gone,” Carson said. “Davey told us where he’d been and what he’d done, but... until a few days ago, we didn’t believe him, because we didn’t have evidence, and his story seemed pretty far-fetched. We told him he should tell everyone he didn’t remember, because the truth was too unbelievable.”

“What happened?” Sharon looked at Davey, who was on the edge of his seat. He took that as a cue and started telling the most unbelievable story... and yet Carson, Amanda and the older kids were confirming it with occasional nods.

And then, just as he was telling her how he’d gone to live with the old wizard who had bought the cabinet, the gateway in the mural suddenly changed into a view of a cluttered room beyond, with a man a few years younger than her in a tasseled red shirt and loose yellow trousers standing a few feet away, and a younger man, probably in his early twenties, beside him.

“Let’s go,” Carson said, and offered her his hand.

“I’m not too sure about this,” Carson Jr. muttered. Sharon was still in shock as she took Carson’s hand and stood up. Davey was already rushing through the doorway, followed closely by Amy — and as they stepped through, they changed, as Davey had described in his story. Both got shorter and smaller, and their clothes got baggy on them — she couldn’t tell if they’d changed sex, from behind and in such baggy clothes.

“We talked about this, Carson,” Amanda said to her oldest son. “We’re not leaving you here alone.” She took his hand, and he shook it off, but followed his mother through the portal.

Still dazed, but fascinated by the idea of being young again — and a man? What would that be like? — Sharon went through with Carson.

In their excitement, no one had thought to warn her about the step down. She stumbled a little on the threshold, and someone — a teenage girl wearing Carson’s clothes — caught her and steadied her. She felt so strange — all her joint pains were gone, and she thought she was taller, too, but it was hard to tell — everyone else seemed to be a different height, and she had nothing firm to compare herself to. The teenage girl who was wearing Karsan’s clothes was probably shorter than before; certainly the grandkids were. And that gawky, acne-scarred boy in the pantsuit must be Hamanta.

“Isn’t it awesome, Grandma?” the smallest child said. “Kashpur, this is my Mom, Dad, Grandma, and my brother Karsan and sister Ami.” So that must be Devi.

“We’re pleased to meet you,” the older man said. “I understand the transition and transformation can be a bit of a shock. I’ll show you to the guest rooms, if you like, and there should be loose clothes to fit everyone, more or less.”

“That would be lovely,” Sharun mumbled, shocked at her — his — deep bass voice. He followed the others through a door into a corridor and then to a series of doors to the guest bedrooms.

“We have three guest rooms,” the younger man — Sashtun? — said. “I suggest that Karsan the elder and Hamanta take one, the girl children one, and you, sir, and your grandson take the other.”

Grandson — he meant Ami. Sharun’s granddaughter, normally. Sharun could feel something between his legs, uncomfortably constrained by his panties; it was so strange... he hadn’t seen one of those since Alan died. “Are there, ah, mirrors?” he asked, startled again at the sound of his voice.

“Yes,” Sashtun said. “Here you go,” he added, opening one of the doors and gesturing inside.

Sharun went in, followed a few moments later by Ami, who had been hanging back, chattering in low voices with Devi.

“This is so weird and cool,” Ami said. “We’re boys now! I wish I wasn’t so little, though. Oh, well.”

“Let’s see,” Sharun said, looking around. There seemed to be some sort of robes hanging from a clothes-horse beside the large bed. “One of those looks like it might be your size, and one of the others will probably fit me.” He went over and picked them up, one by one, holding them beside him at neck level.

“Um, yeah. These clothes are too big on me.” Ami came over and picked up the smallest robe, then looked around. “I don’t see a bathroom to change clothes in, though.”

“See that folding screen over there? People used to go behind those things to change clothes back when they didn’t have indoor bathrooms. And even later, too... You can go behind that to change, and I’ll change out here.”

“All right.” Ami went over behind it, and as soon as he was out of sight, Sharun took a deep breath and started unbuttoning his blouse.

“Stay behind there until I say it’s okay,” he remembered to call out as he unhooked his empty bra. His chest was hairier than Alan’s used to be, coarse black hairs scattered around and going down in a narrower line past his belly-button and his waist.

“Okay,” Ami called out. “I’m done whenever you’re ready.”

“Wait a bit longer,” Sharun said. He pulled off his skirt, then braced himself and lowered the too-tight panties, unbinding and confronting the thing they’d constrained.

It was impossible to be sure, with the distance of years and the unfamiliar perspective, but he thought it might be bigger than Alan’s. That was a strange thought. There were other men before Alan, two in high school and one in college, but the most recent of them was almost fifty years ago — far too long to remember accurately.

He took the robe and the undergarment and went over to the full-length mirror, which was framed in bronze with bas-reliefs. Later on, he noticed the strange snake-like creatures with different animal heads intertwined that made up the bas-reliefs, and wondered if they really had animals like that here, but now he was focused on himself. He was pretty good-looking, about thirty or thirty-five. His hair was still the same length and styled almost exactly the same, but black, not his original blonde. His skin was approximately the same color, but all the liver spots and varicose veins were gone, and most of the wrinkles. His facial features were... kind of Asian? Not exactly, but definitely not like a male version of his original thirty-year-old self. He looked a bit like the men he’d seen earlier, their hosts — Kashpur and Sashtun.

“Are you done, Grandma?” Ami called, sounding a bit exasperated.

“Almost!” Sharun hastily got dressed and looked around for something to tie the robe with — it didn’t have built-in ties or buttons. He’d seen some wide strips of cloth that could be belts or scarves or something hanging on the clothes-horse... A little looking didn’t reveal anything more belt-like than that, and he tied one of them around his waist, then said: “Done.”

Ami came out, looking adorable. He was clearly a member of the same ethnic group as Sharun’s new body, and the others, not quite like anything Sharun was familiar with from Earth. His hair was still long and femininely styled, like Sharun’s, and his nails still had pink nail polish — it was only then that Sharun realized his own nails still had the coat of clear polish she’d applied a day or two ago.

“C’mon,” Ami said. “Let’s go see if everybody else is ready.”

“Wow,” said Karsan. She and Hamanta stood side by side in front of the full-length mirror in their guest bedroom. She’d seen once before how Sashtun had changed sex when crossing the threshold of the portal, and heard Devi talk a little about his experience of being a girl in the other world (though not that much, she now realized); but feeling it from the inside was something else completely.

“Wow is right, about you anyway,” Hamanta said. “I look even worse than I did when I was eighteen the first time. Apparently my acne would have been worse if I was a boy?”

“I’m not sure that’s it,” Karsan said. “You notice how we look like we’re from the same ethnic group as Kashpur and Sashtun? And when Sashtun came to our world, she looked like any white American — even a little like my mom when she was younger. I think we’re probably getting a mix of our own genetics with those of people from the area around the portal.”

“Yeah, makes sense. Anyway, let’s change clothes. I look ridiculous and you’re not much better.”

The clothes provided for them were loose robes, something like a kimono but less elaborately layered. Karsan tried to remember what Devi and Sashtun had said about color symbolism in the culture here, but not much was coming to mind.

“I’ll take the orange one, I guess,” Hamanta said, starting to undress. Karsan found the sight of his bare chest strangely distracting. Had the portal changed their gender identities, their sexual orientations, or both? She’d never asked prying questions of Sashtun about his experience of becoming a woman while visiting their world; it hadn’t seemed polite. When Hamanta took off his pants and panties, she gasped and turned away after a moment, concentrating on her own undressing. She didn’t have any immediate desire to do anything sexual with Hamanta’s penis, but... she couldn’t easily stop thinking about it, either. It was a decent size, certainly no smaller than Karsan’s own when male, and uncircumcised. Would Hamanta want to have sex tonight? Would Karsan? They’d talked about the possibility, after they’d both succeeded in getting Monday off work and arranged for the kids to miss a day of school, but they’d agreed they’d wait and see how they felt after they got used to their new bodies for a few hours.

Karsan’s breasts were a little smaller than Hamanta’s original ones, she found when she got her shirt off. The left aureole was a little wider than the right. She took off her pants and briefs, and didn’t take time to look closely at her new lady bits before slipping on the panties Hamanta had discarded and the robe that Hamanta hadn’t claimed, light green with darker green hems.

She turned around and saw Hamanta wearing the orange robe. He was tying a sash or belt around his waist, so Karsan looked at the clothes horse again, found one, and tied it on.

“I don’t see any bras here,” Hamanta said, eyeing her critically and then shuffling through the things on the clothes-horse. “Maybe they haven’t invented them yet? You’d better borrow mine.”

“Oh. Yeah, it might help.” Karsan untied and took off the robe, then put on the bra Hamanta gave her, with some help. It was a little loose, even after Hamanta adjusted the straps, but better than no support at all. Maybe they could make money by exporting bras to this world. Or by “inventing” and patenting the bra, if they had a patent system here.

They tried on each of the pairs of slippers they found, and Karsan found one pair that almost fit her, but none of them were quite big enough for Hamanta. So he went barefoot for the moment.

“You look good,” Karsan said. She kind of wanted to kiss Hamanta, but was a little afraid of where that would lead. She compromised by taking his hand. Hamanta smiled and squeezed hers.

“Let’s go join the others,” he said.

If you want to read the whole novel (51,700 words) right now without waiting for the serialization, you can find it in my ebook collection, Unforgotten and Other Stories. It's available from Smashwords in epub format and Amazon in Kindle format. (Smashwords pays its authors better royalties than Amazon.)

You can find my earlier ebook novels and short fiction collection here: