Curse You, Red Barron -3- Sentence (Patreon)

No one could have felt more surprise than Red did waking up in his own bed. Alone. "Wow," he said. "It was all a dream after all."

Or maybe not. The hangover after a night spent drinking seemed real enough. After one attempt to rise, he lay very still, hoping that the bed would not attempt to throw him out the window or down the stairs. Being still drunk and hungover besides seemed unfair, and Red opened his mouth to complain about it when the door to his room opened and in came his roommate.

Caleb Benjamin was as dark-haired as Red was not but they were of a size, six-foot-five and a lean 220, plus Caleb had that BMOC mustache. Both fifth year students, they had once had basketball scholarships, but were now ineligible to play for the school teams. Neither having the slightest hope of turning pro, they had stayed on to finish their degrees; Caleb in History, pre-law, and Red in Business Administration. In six more months, they would be done and proud bearers of baccalaureates that were worth the paper they were printed on and maybe a bit more.

"Morning, roomie!" boomed Caleb before slamming the door of their student housing half-quad.

Red covered his head with a pillow and uttered curses.

"Sorry," said Caleb, noticing his roomie's pain and making a good guess as to why. "Need a little hair of the dog? I've got some wine in my desk." He spoke loudly and with mischievous enthusiasm.

That did it. Red was up and staggering for the door with both hands clamped over his mouth. Caleb followed him down the short hall to the bathroom they shared with the other half-quad, just to be sure that he made it. Needling his roomie was one thing, a mess to clean up in the hallway another.

Once certain that Red could finish his attentions to the porcelain altar, Caleb headed back to their room. "I'll save you some sausages at breakfast," he called back cheerfully.

"Rat bastard," muttered Red. "You're a real asshat, Hound!"

"Ah-woo!" howled Caleb before shutting the door. "Hound" being a sort of half-translation of "Caleb" from Hebrew, it often served as his nickname. It was also a reference to his style of ball play in that he was always “hounding” the ball, trying to intercept passes, block shots and harass the ball handler.

After throwing up, Red felt almost human. Not enough to eat greasy sausages and watery scrambled eggs in the cafeteria but good enough to take a shower. He peered at himself in the mirror first, his eyes were only the slightest bit bloodshot and he needed a shave. Other than that he looked pretty good.

But what a strange dream he'd had.

Smiling a little about his panic the previous night, he headed back to his room to pick up needed items for his shower and shave. He found it hard to believe that he had almost decided to just chuck everything and run from his troubles. What he really needed to do was to firmly tell his girlfriends what was what.

"It's alive!" clowned Caleb as Red entered the room. He’d gotten ready to go down to breakfast and was now dressed in jeans, sneaks, and a t-shirt with the name and logo of some local band. At least, Red thought "Filthy Urban Raccoons" must be a band name since the five animals depicted on the clothing all were playing instruments.

"Har, har. It's Saturday, you wanna meet for some one-on-one later?" Red made the offer as a gesture of peace.

"Sure. I need money for a date tonight. Ten a game? Noon-thirty?"

Red shook his head, betting against Caleb with a basketball in his hand was foolish. Both had been benchwarming subs most of their college career but for money, The Hound could always bring it, one-on-one. Red was the better shooter but Caleb’s energy and savvy were dangerous on court, especially with money on the line. "You wish I were as stupid as you look, don't you?" Red inquired.

"Stupider," agreed Caleb. "Let's just keep the proportions as they are, shall we?"

"Hey!" protested Red after thinking about that one for a bit. Okay, Caleb was smarter than he was but making a man with a hangover think about an insult that hard was just mean. Red rubbed his temples, theatrically. “Ow-w,” he groaned, only half-faking.

"Go get your shower," said Caleb. "You smell like the offspring of a garbage-eating goat and a brewery truck."

Grateful to escape Caleb’s humiliating verbal tactics, Red made his escape down the hall.

The shared bathroom had two of everything, including two shower stalls. And the water was always hot, Having attended the school for more than four years, both Caleb and Red knew which residence halls to avoid. Red hopped into one of the stalls and hung his shaving gear on a towel bar. He washed his hair first and soaped himself up doing a little scrubbing of problem areas like his feet and the heels of his hands. He rinsed off and started to lather his face to shave but he stopped.

His cheeks and chin were smooth and hairless already. So were his arms, his chest and his legs. In fact, the only visible hair he had below his neck was his groin. He looked further down and saw the missing hairs circling around the drain in the water he had rinsed off with.

He leaned against a wall of the shower stall, feeling sickened. It hadn't been a dream. 

Just what had those witches done to him? He tried to remember.

* * *

"You're not in the usual run of accused at these courts," Hannah had said after the vote of the coven had convicted him on all charges. "You're a worthless piece of male flesh but you're not human filth."

"What?" he'd asked, confused. If that was a compliment, it wasn’t just left-handed; it came all the way from behind the bleachers.

Dondee explained. "Mostly, when we send the summons out we get rapists, wife-beaters or worse."

"Their punishments are usually pretty terrible and permanent," said Hannah. "You're different. You might actually be redeemable."

"He has a conscience, small and weak and ineffectual but it's there," said Dondee. "And there's no real malice in him, just selfishness and callous disregard for others."

"He doesn't understand what it means to be one of his victims," put in Sylvia, still standing in front of the bar and acting as prosecutor. "He needs a severe lesson in empathy."

"We'll have to get creative with his punishment," said Hannah.

"His curse," agreed Sylvia.

* * *

Red stood in the shower watching all the little red and blond body hairs and whiskers he used to have go floating down the drain. What else had those witches done to him? Or, what else were they going to do to him?

He finished his bath, moving mechanically. His skin felt smooth and as he washed, he peeled away layers of callus from hands and feet, knees and elbows and watched them dissolve in the water from the shower. Even the scar on his lower leg where he'd been cruelly spiked during a baseball game back in high school when he'd run forward to cover second base. The scar disappeared, too.

Without calluses, he realized, his shoes would hurt his feet. A person has calluses for a reason, he wanted to tell the coven but maybe this was part of his punishment for being a dick. With that thought he checked his groin but everything was still there. He wished he could remember better what happened last night. He had a feeling of doom.

He turned off the water and stepped out of the shower to dry off, hoping no one came in to see him and his naked skin. His towel seemed rough and abrasive. He was reduced to patting himself dry, to avoid the feeling that he would take off another layer of skin if he rubbed too hard.

He stepped into the pair of walking shorts he had brought with him, not wanting to put on his boxers because he didn't feel quite dry yet. 

How was this curse supposed to work, anyway?

He looked at himself in the mirror. He looked younger, in the face at least. The hair on his head was almost carrot-orange but his beard had always been more ginger-blond. Which was why he'd never grown a mustache or beard, it looked dorky. He'd always secretly envied Caleb his bushy black mustache, though he had teased him about keeping a pet muskrat, too.

He smiled as an experiment. Oh, crap, he looked about seventeen! Had the shape of his face changed, too? A little more flesh in the cheeks?

He stared at himself even harder. His carroty sideburns were gone. The pores on his face looked smaller, almost invisible. No little acne scars on his forehead or chin. And all his hair on his face wasn't gone-gone; he still had the light dusting of nearly invisible fine blond fuzz that made him look even younger. And no sun wrinkles around his eyes.

Would anyone notice this? How could they not? It was pretty obvious and what would people think?

Possibly the most disturbing change was the new shape of his pubic hair, a flat-topped triangle set low in his crotch. No manly diamond shape with red-blond hairs trailing up his belly to his navel. At least that wouldn't be visible to anyone unless he was naked.

How could those witches do this? Not why -- how! What kind of power did they have? Dondee said that some of them used to be worshipped as gods?

Magic? Magic was real. He felt cold, frightened. They could do anything to him....