Yet again, Heather found herself walking up the stairs to Cam's loft while wondering what this night would bring. Her mood was much more positive this time, however. She wasn't worrying about whether she was turning into a monster: she knew about her monster side. She also wasn't worrying about whether their relationship could survive her being half bed-monster: she was feeling confident in their relationship after last night's intimacy and secret sharing. But she was, however, wondering just what Cam was up to.
That morning, as she'd been getting ready to head out the door to work, he'd asked her to come over after work again. Feeling both snuggly toward him and anticipatory of another night of being with her lover and getting to explore her new body with him, she'd said yes, of course. And then he'd said something about having an idea and taking a light day today, and she'd waved goodbye as she hurried off to catch her bus.
She hadn't thought to ask more at the time, and now she wondered. She'd also been noticing something else was changing in herself. As she was coming home and walking up these stairs, well, that was it: she felt like she was coming home, even though it was coming to Cam's place. They didn't live together, hadn't had that conversation, hadn't really made commitments despite being exclusive for well over a year. Was her monster half making a monster bond like her mother had described, or was it just the next step in a normal human relationship? How could she even know the difference? And would it matter? People had very different sorts of feelings about these things even when they weren't half bed-monster.
She didn't know and she felt that she needed to sort it out. Maybe see if she felt differently in dark and light. She didn't think she would, not when she was feeling like this at the end of a full day of work all soaked with light. And anyway, she needed to find out what Cam had been thinking about with his idea from the morning.
Unlocking the door to step inside the loft, Heather saw Cam was doing something at one of the windows of the loft. It looked like he was pressing a black stripe on the wall. And of course, since it was a late summer afternoon, he was shirtless and in shorts, sweat gleaming on his back and shoulders.
"Hey, babe!" he called out happily as he turned to her and waved her toward him, "Come check this out!"
Curiously, she walked his way, dropping her purse and kicking off her shoes. The heat of the loft beat on her workday clothes, but she ignored it for the moment. As she approached, she saw the black stripes were on every side of most of the windows now. Cam held the one that he was working with up to her, and she realized that it was an adhesive strip of magnet.
"What's this for?" Heather asked.
Cam pointed to some lumpy bundles of beige fabric on the floor next to him. "I got us blackout curtains. One of my buddies, he could swing me some heavy-duty canvas, and he and I cut it out to be the right sizes. Got the magnetic tape at a craft store, and then we can seal out the light any time of day or night we like."
He looked damned smug, and Heather thought that he was right to feel that way. "That's great!" she said, and pulled him down to her level to kiss him, feeling touched by what he'd done. His working sweat smelled quite deliciously masculine, and between the sweat, his shirtlessness, and his thoughtfulness, she could have thrown him down and fucked him there and then.
She didn't though, restrained herself, and asked how she could help. Together, they finished applying the magnets to the walls, then carefully aligned a matching set stuck on the canvas rectangles, adjusting and flattening until they had a cover sealing every window in the place.
"High five!" said Cam, and so they did.
And then Heather noticed a disappointing thing: a trickling feeling inside her as her period suddenly started up. She excused herself to the bathroom, frustration boiling up inside of her. Why hadn't she been keeping track of days? Well, she knew why. She never paid all that much attention anyway, just took the next birth control pill in the pack each day and opened a new pack when it ended. And she'd had better things to think about. But damn, she didn't want to menstruate today, she wanted to get fucked.
She frowned at herself in the mirror as she cleaned up. Some women might be intimate anyway while menstruating, but even just the thought made Heather queasy. She didn't like the blood and mess of things. Just pop a tampon up and make it go away for now. She did that, rinsed her panties, and was about to leave and get a new pair when an even more upsetting thought struck her. What would happen to her tampon if she turned into a monster? Would it stay in or would it fall out? Hell, what was monster menstruation like? Was that even something that her monster body did?
Heather decided that she needed to find out now, before she tried to go back to her evening with her lover. She took her clothes off, reached for the light switch, then hesitated. Nothing bad would happen, right? She flipped the switch and felt her monstrous transformation start. She leaned against the bathroom counter, rising and falling as her legs writhed into tentacles. Her mouth stretched out and filled with knives, her skin soaked up with slime, and something rumbled ominously deep inside her abdomen. She felt swollen and uncomfortable, and things were shifting around somewhere inside of her with a sickening queasy feeling. She had just time enough to reach the toilet before things burst.
Fifteen minutes later, she opened the bathroom door feeling drained and wobbly. Cam was looking worried for her, not surprising given the sounds he must have heard. She smiled weakly up at him and said, "Well, the good news is my period is over now."
He looked at her quizzically, not seeming to get it. Heather didn't really want to talk about it either, so she just said, "Let's just say things were a lot more rapid and dramatic than usual."
"You, uh, want to get a hamburger or something?" He gestured toward the door.
"Shit, Cam, I would kill for a steak right now."
And so they found themselves eating out instead of in, Heather building up her iron again with a heaping plate of barbeque. As she ate, her spinning head slowly came back to feeling level. Finally starting to feel better, she realized that Cam was saying something about air conditioners and she'd been nodding along.
"Yeah, yeah, I know," she said, "They're bad and you can never use one and that's why we don't live together."
He looked taken aback, which surprised her. Wasn't that always what he said? He was waving his hands in negation now and saying something else. She put another piece of brisket in her mouth, amazed at just how good it was, even with no sauce at all. She needed this. He asked her something else and when she nodded at him, he laughed at her.
That captured her attention and Heather asked, "What's funny? Why are you laughing at me?"
