! CN, & Warning this chapter is a little dub-con ish.

Nothing violent happens, there is just not fully informed consent. Tread carefully if this is a trigger for you. !

METAMORPHOSIS

Jake.

Pain in my head. My legs were immobilised. The air was thick and humid. I forced myself into full consciousness and tried to free my legs. They were swaddled with damp fabric. It was dark save for a vertical strip of dim light to my left. Panic took me and I scrabbled at my legs. "UrrrAAAHGH" A strange wail escaped my lips.

"Whose there?" I said.

"It's me," a raspy voice answered. I did not recognise it.

I flailed my arms around and felt the edges of the bed, the sheets, I was in the hotel. A light came one an illuminated her naked silhouette in the bathroom doorway. The pain in my head was just a hangover.

"Are you okay, Jake?" Beth asked.

But it wasn't Beth. Thought speak and then human vocal chords that weren't quite ready to be used and then finally her voice. But who was she? What was she? The old instincts started to kick in. To run the old calculations. Play dumb until you can escape? Go tiger and fight? Pull out the stupid little pin in my watch that the US army gave me. They'd have a helicopter and a bunch of marines to my location in a time they considered impressive? I would not be doing that. Beth was still silhouetted in the bathroom doorway. Not attacking. Not threatening. I realised I didn't want to do any of it.

"You spoke to me in thought-speech," I said.

"What?" she said, with a sort of fake laugh.

"Don't gaslight me, Beth."

"What's— what does that—?" she trailed off.

"You don't know what gaslighting is?"

"I—" she fake laughed again.

"You don't know what INCELs are?"

"Sure I do—"

"Beth, last night you led me to believe that you were a normal human woman from this time period, and I don't think that's true. This is your last chance to be honest with me."

"Or what?"

I hadn't thought that far ahead. I could defend myself if she got violent, but apart from that I didn't have a plan. I stalled for time by stretching out my hand and clicking on the bedside lamp. Finally I could see her face. Her youth. Her beauty. All to lower my defences?

"I'll leave," I said.

"But this is your hotel room?"

"I don't care. There's nothing in here that can't be replaced."

"You sure about that, man?"

Something in her cadence brushed the edges of a memory. She called me "man" the way a boy might call another boy. And then I saw it. You might have mistaken them for veins at first, but I knew better. It was the sketch work of feathers appearing across her face.

"No," I said

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Tobias?"

He had to leave.

He had to stay.

He had to leave.

He had to stay.

He had to leave.

He had to stay.

I watched the woman change back into the elderly red-tailed hawk, still standing on the threshold. His instincts were probably screaming at him to get higher than me.

I pointed to the back of a chair by the window.

"Wait there. Don't move," was all I could say. I waited for him to flap past me before covering myself with a sheet and grabbing some clothes from my suitcase.

Underwear. Jeans. Shirt. Jacket. The room was too warm for a jacket but I wanted to be covered.

I barricaded myself inside the too-bright bathroom, and tried not to look in the mirror as I dressed. Clumsily getting my feet caught in the folds of my jeans. Putting my tshirt on inside out and leaving it that way. I wanted shoes, but there were none in the bathroom with me.

There it was. The spacey-but-panicked feeling of a flashback lurking at the edges of my consciousness.

Focus Jake. What do you want?

Find out what the hell Tobias was thinking of course! Fucking creepy, slimy…

My breathing was fast. Shallow. Erratic. I pulled in a deep breath but the flashback was taking hold of me. I needed to get it under control. I needed to walk but the bathroom was tiny. I took another deep breath and opened the door.

"Not yet, man."

I walked from the bathroom to the wall of windows overlooking downtown and then walked back again, breathing in for eight steps and out for eight. On my second walk back I scanned the view and saw a hotel sign across the street.

"Hilton," I said and took eight steps away from the window again.

I ignored him and on my next trip to the window I said, "Hilton, Moon."

The anger bubbled up in my chest, and a distant, detached part of my brain registered the fact that I'd landed back into my body. Back into the here and now. That'll work.

"It's a fucking grounding exercise, man. I learned it in fucking therapy. Its a fucking coping strategy for my fucking flashbacks."

"Tobias, you probably do too. We were in a highly fucking traumatising situation for fucking years."

"Are you serious?"

"You're my friend, and you fucking assaulted me."

"Wait what?"

His question threw me back for just a second. To the beauty of Beth, the pleasure of the moments I spent thinking she was just a pretty girl who wanted me — and then a white hot jolt of betrayal cutting through the memory. I was losing my grip again.

"Don't," was all I could say.

"Don't."

"Did I fucking stutter, Tobias? Don't talk to me until I've got this under control."

He was silent so I began again, carefully working my way out of the unbearable unnamable twisting in my chest that my therapist called trauma. I walked. I named. "Hilton, moon, streetlight." Eight steps, breath. "Hilton, moon, streetlight, car." Eight steps breath. "Hilton, moon, streetlight, car, tree." Eight steps, breath.

Tobias waited while I found four sounds, three feelings, two smells and one taste.

I was back in my body. I was okay.

That's when I realised that something else was nagging at my consciousness. Someone, actually.