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Blue Moon 4.4

by Donna Lamb

With morning traffic, they wouldn't reach downtown Monrovia for another twenty minutes. Richard tried to ignore the sniffling girl in the passenger compartment of his limo and think about the situation.

How can this have even happened? People don't just change from weedy male nerd to slender fashion model in the bathroom. Not even once in a blue moon, it just doesn't happen. And yet it had. He couldn't deny that, his roommate Joel, neurotic computer geek with physique to match had turned into ginger blond bombshell Jo without gaining the slightest ounce of common sense while losing almost forty pounds of useless male flab.

He looked at her in the mirror again. Even with her eyes almost constantly red since she'd appeared last night, Jo remained one of the top ten women in looks he'd ever had in his limo; including fashion models, starlets and trophy wives. He'd always thought he liked curvier figures but Jo's shape seemed elegant and right. Just thinking about the glimpses he'd had of Jo naked and the times he'd touched her, even held her made him feel -- well, he wasn't sure how he felt.

Jo is Joel, and you can't be wanting to score on Joel, that just isn't right! he told himself. But how? How had it happened? Joel had blamed it on that careless wish last night but Jo had just made what looked like a more dangerous wish and apparently, nothing happened. And wishes don't really come true outside of Disney movies, Richard reminded himself.

So what had happened? Cosmic rays? Air pollution? Alien abduction? Richard thought briefly of a teevee movie he'd seen once where aliens came down and rebuilt humans for some horrific purpose -- but that seemed as unlikely as some invisible genie granting wishes. Hormone imbalance? Maybe Joel had always been a little bit female and -- but how could that happen in a matter of minutes and without any surgery to help things along?

He looked in the mirror again, checking on her. She was covering first one eye then the other and looking out the window. What the heck was that about? And why are we still going to Joel's job in Monrovia when the people there think he's dead? Better not think about that too hard, it would creep him out, he decided.

Looking out the window had to be safer than staring at Richard, Jo felt. She didn't think about it precisely because it seemed dangerous to even think about it. Much safer to experiment with why she had double vision, and that blurry, for everything much further away than six feet or so. "I think I'm going to need glasses," she said aloud.

Richard almost snorted coffee out his nose. He'd been playing with some mental images of Jo that put her remark in a whole different context.

"Maybe I can get contacts," she said. "Everything outside the car is sort of b-b-b-...." She trailed off, having caught sight of Richard's amber eyes in the rear view mirror. She felt the color rise in her face, the warmth spreading from somewhere inside her. She felt her nipples crinkle against the soft fabric of her dress. "Richard!" she squeaked.

"You okay?" She sighed and the sound of it reminded him of steam escaping from pressure. He tried to get a better look at her but their exit came up just then and he had to deal with driving.

"I think so," she said. She couldn't tell him what she'd just felt. "I'm not sure what happened but yeah, I'm okay." Actually, I know exactly what happened and it scares me, she admitted to herself. She squinted to try to read a street sign as they turned off the freeway, hoping to distract herself.

Aliens, thought Richard. Aliens or hormones. He glanced in the mirror again, analyzing her expression quickly; the unfocussed gaze, the lower lip parted, chin lifted. Why couldn't it be aliens?