MTU: Hard To Look At - Chapter 2 (Patreon)

I did not remember anything after that until I woke up. I was face down and cold. My head itched like crazy. I opened one eye and there were thick greenish cords in front of me. Before I got a good look at them, my head itched again and the cords kind of swirled up and out of the way. A pant leg and a woman's shoe were a few inches away. I looked up and there was a hand near my face. Beyond that I was greeted by a shocked woman's face that looked odd. She was bent down as if to look at someone lying on the ground in front of her. She did not move and she was somewhat ashen. I was still disoriented.

I rolled onto my back. My body felt different, like I had a pair of somethings stuck to my chest. And my arms were no longer scrawny, being slender and smooth. And they had a funny orange cast to them. Sitting up, I looked down at myself and beheld a naked woman. She had an orange complexion and was completely hairless. My arms tentatively touched the breasts and I felt the touch. Great, I thought. I must have twisted into a woman.

I was still a little woozy and my head still itched. I reached up to touch my hair but stopped. My fingers were orange in color but I was struck was how long they were and how they ended in long, sharp looking nails. I more gingerly reached up and found the thick cords were on my head. I grabbed one to look at. It felt strangely leathery yet smooth. It was trying to bend itself around my hand. I pulled it forward and a snake head was in front of me, hissing. Incredulous, I looked back at the woman who had not said anything to me. It was the school nurse. She wasn’t ashen. She was stone.

I had turned her to stone. I must be hideous. My hair was snakes. All those times I had been called Gorgon and now I was a gorgon: The Gorgon, Medusa. I panicked. I ran to the door. It was locked.

"Gordon?" Called a man, I think it was Principal Jameson. I didn’t answer. What horrible things might my voice do? "Gordon? Stay calm, Gordon. We've called the Clinic to help you. What happened to Mrs. Rhymes is not your fault. Some Twists are dangerous to others. The Clinic will certainly work with you to gain control."

The Spiral Clinic was a place where they helped Twisted learn to deal with their twists and to help identify those Twisted who were dangerous to the public. I had no idea what they did to Twisted with dangerous uncontrollable tricks. And I didn’t want to find out.

I backed away from the door in a state of shock. I slumped to the ground in a corner where I could not see Mrs. Rhymes. Mr. Jameson called my name a few more times before giving up.

Time passed. Without warning I heard a surprised shout, "Oh, my!" Mrs. Rhymes exclaimed as she nearly fell forward. "What happened? I couldn't-- where's Gordon? "

I resisted the urge to look at her. "I'm over here. Don't come close or you'll probably be turned to stone again."

"Oh, you did turn into a w– Turned to stone? I wasn't turned to stone, was I?" She asked as if the idea was crazy. "Is that why I couldn't move?" She went to the door without looking in my direction.

As she tried the doorknob, Principal Jameson called my name again. She replied, "No, it's me, Elizabeth. Why is the door locked? Get poor Gordon some clothes."

The door opened slightly, permitting her to leave. I heard her exclaim, "Over an hour? It was like five minutes, tops." And then there was silence.

After a few moments it dawned on me that turning Mrs. Rhymes to stone had not been permanent. I wouldn’t be locked away for other people's safety. And then I started crying, I would still spend life as a monster with a hideous face and snakes for hair.

As I sobbed, the door opened and I heard a paper bag slide into the room. With nothing better to do I got up and investigated it. Walking over, I noticed I was definitely taller than I had been, perhaps a whole foot taller. My legs also felt unusual as I walked.

It was a large, brown paper bag with clothes in it. With a sigh, I picked up the plain, white panties on top and looked at them. Turning them the right way around, I had to bend almost in half at the waist to reach my feet. I slid one really long, sleek leg into the hole. I was amazed how smooth my legs were. I pulled the elastic to my narrow waist, trying to ignore how flat the area between my legs now was.

There was no bra, not that I wanted to deal with one right now. I picked up the shirt, no, the blouse, I corrected myself. Pulling it over my head reminded me of the snakes on my head. They were flying out away from my head making it hard to get the blouse down on my body. I angrily thought about cutting them off and they started hissing. I politely thought about them drawing themselves upward and the volume of snakes interfering with the blouse disappeared. I pulled the blouse down and put my arms through the short rounded sleeves. The blouse was light blue and had a scooped neck. I definitely had cleavage. My unusual skin tone contrasted obviously against the blue blouse. I thought at first that my normally pale skin had tanned. Instead, it was actually a kind of an orange metallic, almost copper color. The faces of the snakes on my head had a streak of this orange color running around their mouths and disappeared into the green color of their bodies. A pattern similar to scales playing across my skin as well but my skin still felt smooth, not bumpy or scaly.

Without looking down, somehow I could see what looked like running pants in the bag. I closed my eyes and the bag came into sharper focus. I could feel the snakes moving, turning their attention toward the bag. As they got into position, the area of focus widened. I reached up grasping a snake from the other side of my head and said, "You look over this way." That snake hung nearly straight out in the direction indicated. Quickly the area across the room came into focus while the bag on the floor beside me was also in focus. I opened my eyes and the sense of the bag and the area across the room diminished but I could still see what the snakes saw. I could see all around me. At least the snakes gave me a cool ability.

My elation was short lived. Someone had drawn some circles where eye holes would go if someone were going to put the bag over their head. Written next to the holes was "Do not cut out! Extreme danger!"

I could just imagine Tommy's crew had been involved. I knew I shouldn’t let their antics get to me. But they did. I put the running pants on and noticed the mirror near the eye wash station. Could I turn myself to stone? It would not last forever if what happened to Mrs. Rhymes applied to me. I gathered what courage I could and approached the mirror from the side.

Leaning in from the side, I closed my eyes and asked one of the snakes to look at the mirror. The face of the snake came into focus, his head bobbing gently in mid-air. I stepped forward and turned toward the mirror. I opened one eye slightly. I could see a beautiful woman's face wreathed in snakes. I opened both eyes and was shocked by how stunningly beautiful my face was. Even the way the snakes undulated in the air around my face added something tantalizing to my look.

I focused on my eyes, wondering if I was just immune to my own gaze. They were a rich orangish-yellow, the color one sees near sunset before the sun turns fully orange. The lid was human, but the pupil was definitely snake-like. In fact, there was a second lid that I was looking through. With a careless thought, that lid twitched and opened. There was a loud crack as the mirror exploded. Instantly, the snakes were covering my face. There was no pain. But, I knew three of the snakes were injured.

The snakes got out of the way. All that remained of the mirror was small bits of glass. Drops of blood dotted the wall where the mirror hung. The room was vivid, with colors I had never seen before. Something caught my eyes' attention and I saw a bird land on the sill outside the window. Within a second, the color drained from its body, leaving behind an incredibly detailed statue of a bird.

I snapped my eyes shut too late. When I reopened them, the colors had returned to normal. I opened the second lid again and examined the bird. It was as if I could see lines and colors inside the bird. Suddenly, I desperately wanted to touch the bird. I closed the inner lid and the desire mostly disappeared.

A drop of blood landed on my nose. One of my snakes was still injured. The other two had stopped bleeding already. I gently reach up and grabbed the injured snake on the first try without having the grope around for him. He was nearly severed in half about five inches from the left side of my head just behind the ear, if I still had ears. I wasn’t sure if I did.

I went to the door and knocked. "I need some bandages. I cut myself."

"Are you bleeding?" Asked Mrs.  Rhymes.

"Did you cut yourself?" Asked Principal Jameson.

"Not on purpose," I replied. "I seem to have shattered a mirror and some flying glass has nearly severed one of my, um, head appendages."

"I'll be right back," the nurse said.

"Did you strike the mirror?"

"No," I laughed. "I looked at it funny." I noticed a pair of sandals in the bag and put them on.

"Some kind of eyebeam in addition to your other trick?" Jameson asked.

"Actually, it's probably all just one trick," I began and I told him about the second lid. "If I keep that lid down, it should be safe to look at me." I explained.

"So, you've seen your reflection?" Jameson asked with sincere curiosity. "How do you look?"

"Different." I coyly answered.

The nurse returned and after she heard about the mirror she wanted to come in.

I turned away from the door and she entered. "On my left," I explained, holding the limp snake in hand.

"That's a bit too high up for me to reach."

I had forgotten I was taller now. I grabbed a chair and sat down.

As she approached, the other snakes started hissing.

I concentrated and they pulled away from the damaged snake.

"You can control them?" she asked.

"When I try," I explained. "Do I have ears?"

"I can't really see through the mass of, um, appendages," she replied in the same rhythm I had used to refer to the snakes. She started to bandage the snake when she stopped. "Oh, my, it's growing over."

"What is?" I asked and then I felt the snake disappear. "Did it fall off?"

"How did you know?" She asked. "There was only a thin piece of skin holding it on. The end was sealing over before I got here. As the stump closed, the end just fell off. Do you want to see it?"

Without warning I turned around. She flinched then relaxed. "I don't bite," I quipped. "Although I don't know whether these little guys do."

"You look lovely," she announced, looking me in the eyes. She started to laugh. "I did it to myself, didn't I? I lifted your inner lid."

I nodded and pointed at the bird. "I did experiment before saying it was safe. This is the science lab."

She held out the dead snake. It seemed slightly shriveled compared to the active ones.

There was a knock at the door and two men entered. Both were wearing doctor's coats over their suits. Shortly behind them followed Mr. Jameson. "There she is," he said. "Apparently he's, I mean, she's not as dangerous we originally suspected."

"I'm Dr. Parker," said the taller of the two gentlemen, though he was still a few inches shorter than me. He reached to shake my hand. He was obviously Twisted as his skin was actually white, not the pale pinkish color normally called white. "My partner is Dr. Lewis. There was something in the report about external transformation?"

We all shook hands as Mrs. Rhymes answered, "That would be me. I'm the school nurse and Gordon was knocked unconscious after his Twist, as is common. When I went to check her eyes, I was apparently transformed into stone for a little while."

"65 minutes, at least," Mr. Jameson clarified.

"I'm fine now,” she insisted.

"Has this trick manifested since then?" Dr. Lewis asked. He was a normal looking man in his early 50s, slightly balding with dark and gray hair. That didn’t mean he wasn’t Twisted.

"I did it to that bird out on the window sill about fifteen minutes ago," I admitted, pointing at the bird. "I can control it."

"Well, let's gather the bird and take the two of you back to the Clinic. I'm sure some of the trick specialists will want to examine you to determine the limits of your trick."

"I thought it took a few days to get an appointment at the Clinic," Mr. Jameson said.

"Usually we let the newly Twisted take a couple days getting use to their new body before we run them through our battery of tests. But, with a trick as potentially dangerous as this one, even if it only lasts an hour or so, we like to assess the trick as soon as possible."

"If it wears off, how dangerous can it be?" I asked.

"What if she had been driving a car when you had petrified her?"

Before I could reply my mother suddenly arrived in the room. She seemed to suddenly appear in front of Mr. Jameson, "I was told my Gordon had his Twist and you were with him. Where is he?"

"Pleased to see you again, Mrs. Harrison," he answered. "Gordon is the young woman standing over there."

"What?!" she exclaimed turning in my direction. "Gordon? Is that you?"

"Hi, Mom," I replied with a little wave. "You said you always wanted a daughter."

She approached me. "My beautiful boy is now my beautiful girl." We hugged.

"Ma'am, we were just going to take Gordon to the Clinic for evaluation. Would you like to drive him down instead?"

"Oh, I can't," she blushed. "I ran over here as soon as I got the call. I'll have to run back to the office and drive over." She turned to look at me. "I'll meet you there, okay, Dear?"

"That'll be fine, Mom. I know how you are when you're in a hurry."

We left the biology lab after one of the Clinic physicians retrieved the bird from the window and received the shriveled snake from Mrs. Rhymes. Mr. Jameson arranged it so there were no students in the hallway as we left the school grounds. I got into the back seat of a minivan behind Dr. Lewis who was in the driver seat. On the ride over to the Clinic they asked me to tell them about my experiences so far. They didn’t interrupt me with many questions. When I asked why they didn’t have any questions, they laughed and told me there would be plenty of questions once we got to the Clinic.

Mom was already at the Clinic when we arrived. An office assistant handed Dr. Parker a file as he stopped at her desk and then he indicated I should follow him to his office. Dr. Lewis stopped to say something to my mother that I did not hear.

Dr. Parker closed the door to his examination room and said, "Do you want to talk first or do the exam first?"

"Let's get the exam over with."

"You'll have to disrobe for that."

I don’t know why that surprised me. I had been coming to the Clinic every year since I was twelve for examinations. For known descendants, they took a base-line against which they could measure the changes every twist usually involved.

He pointed to a screen behind which I could disrobe and I did so putting on the thin patient's gown hanging behind the screen. It was barely long enough to reach my mid-thigh.

When I came out he said, "Lie down on the examination bed and relax. This won't take long."

Lights in a variety of colors and intensities played across my body. At one point all of my snakes started hissing and my sense of surround vision disappeared as the snakes had all closed their eyes at once.

"Did that hurt?" he asked.

"The snake-like appendages didn't like that light. They seem to hiss on their own when threatened."

The test ended. As he went over the results, I got dressed again.

"There are a few anomalies in your test. Nothing completely unusual, as I've seen things like this before." He pulled up a few images on the computer and pointed to a few discolored areas between my liver and my stomach. "This is a weird gland, sort of like a pancreas. Not sure what it does or how it will affect what you eat." He pointed to another discoloration surrounding my hands. "There's some kind of lymph-like tissue in your hands unrelated to the normal human lymphatic system. Not sure what that's for either." Then he pointed to the head on one of my snakes. "Finally, I think these, um, snakes are poisonous. That looks like a venom sac. I'll make a note for Dr. Adelaide to see if she can milk any venom out of them to test its toxicity level." He turned off the screen. "I don't think any of that should raise any red flags. Just let us know if you have any unusual food cravings or experiences with food that are unusual."

"Okay," I replied a bit surprised at how different I was.

"One last physiology change. Despite the snakes and scaly skin, you are in fact a human woman, with ovaries and a uterus. You’ll most likely start your cycle soon since you’re past puberty. You should have a long talk with your mother about what to expect." He seemed somewhat amused by this and it also seemed like something he had said many times before. "Any questions about anything we've discussed or that you've observed?"

I put being a woman aside so I could ask the more pressing questions. "Why is my skin shiny?"

"The outer layer is closer in cell structure to snake skin than human skin. But you are still warm blooded, your skin has pores like human skin does. You’re probably less likely to bleed from a shallow wound than you were before."

"Will I shed?"

"Your body probably won't. But the snakes on your head might? I don't know."

"Do I have ears? I can't find them and everything is slightly muffled."

"You lack ear cartilage. Your auditory canal just ends and ten or so snake appendages grow out around the hole. Their bodies act as your external ears, channeling sound into your middle ear. Your hearing test was still within human range of frequencies with some slight loss in the high frequencies but you can hear sound at volumes much softer than normal. Your ability to pin point sound direction may also be affected since unlike an ear, the snakes surrounding your external auditory canal move. That might distort or enhance your ability to determine the direction a sound comes from."

"Maybe their movement explains why it sounds like the room is noisy when I can't see a reason for it to be noisy."

"I have one last test. I want to get a look under that second eyelid you've got. Since I can't look myself without being petrified I'm going to ask you to look into this camera with your eyes wide open."

"Are you sure?" I asked. "The mirror did not survive my trick."

"I picked this camera because it was cheap," he admitted.

He started the camera's video recording function and clamped it into a stand. "I'm going to leave the room. I want you to stand over there and look into the camera. If it doesn't break, walk toward it. Once you get close to it or it is destroyed, you can close your inner lid and call me back in."

I announced to the camera I was about to open my inner eyelid then I did so. The colors were fascinating. I walked toward the camera until I heard a crack. I closed my inner eyelid and called him back in.

"That was fast," he said as he retrieved the data card from the camera and inserted it into the computer.

"I was at least 15 feet away when it I heard a loud crack." I explained.

The video started running on the computer screen. We heard me announce I was ready and then I took a step or two forward and the video ended abruptly.

"So much for that," Dr. Parker laughed. "I guess I'll have to see what Dr. Adelaide might be able to find out. She specializes in examining Twists." He pointed to the chair and started asking questions about how I felt about being a woman, how my head felt, etc. When he found out I could see through the snakes, he gave them an eye exam. As I had suspected I could have them focus in any direction I wanted and when I concentrated, I could see, reading multiple eye charts at once, almost as well I could with my normal vision. At one point I had them all pointing outward from my head in all directions and I could literally see everything in front, behind, beside and above me at once.

After that session I met with Dr. Lewis again. He had me take the personality test that I had taken several times before. It was a series of strange yes/no or either/or questions where the choices were usually less than clear cut. I didn’t notice any changed in my attitudes while taking the test.

"So, I know it hasn't been very long, but have you felt any strange compulsions other than wanting to touch the bird as you told us in the car?" He asked.

"Not that I've noticed."

"Do you still want to touch the bird?"

"No."

"One moment," he said as he left the room and returned with a birdcage. "He's fine now as you can see. I'm going to leave again. I would like you to petrify him again and talk to me about the compulsion. But, try not to touch him just yet." He exited.

The bird from the window sill was sitting on a perch in the cage. I opened my inner eyelid and the colors all around struck me with fascination again. The bird lost his color like before. "I can feel it now, with my eyes fully open. I want to touch the bird, to feel the lines of color inside him. Okay I've closed my inner eyelids."

He reentered. "How do you feel about the bird now?"

"I kind of still want to touch him but more out of curiosity."

"Okay, come sit down again." He said. As I did, he was looking at his watch and writing some times down. "Does it bother you that you have this compulsion?"

"No. I think it has to do with the colors. When my trick is active I can see these vivid colors that aren't normally there. And inside the bird are these colored lines and swirls that obviously aren't there now. I think there's something about those lines and swirls that means something to my twist."

"If you figure it out, please let me know," he said. We talked about my new height and how I had not picked out any clothes since twisting. He then said, "Now, I see you use to have issues with being bullied by the other kids at school. Do you think that will stop now?"

"Probably not," I answered frankly. "They use to call me Gorgon and that's what I've become. It would be funny if it wasn't me."

"That's called irony."

"I know."

"Will you change your name? Most Twisted who change so drastically change their name."

"When I thought I'd killed Mrs. Rhymes, I thought I was a monster and thought about calling myself Medusa."

"Certainly a more feminine name than Gordon, or Gorgon for that matter. And you aren't a monster. You are a lovely woman."

"I have snakes for hair."

"Certainly exotic, like the coppery tone of your skin."

"And I turn people to stone."

"Not because your face is ugly. That's just your trick." He pulled out a photograph. It was one of the few photographs of the old me that I knew of and I guessed he got it from my mother. "As I said, after spending years being picked on for this unfortunate set of features, how ironic is it that you are a living beauty who can actually do what they taunted this poor boy with. You should be happy with how you look. After all, you’ll look like you do now far longer than you looked like that," his voice rose as he spoke and then he stopped, putting the picture in his breast pocket. "You don't have to decide now. You could always pick a less conversational name like Mary or Beth."

After a short silence, giving me time to consider what he said, he continued, "Speaking of your snakes, I read in your physical exam results that you can see with their eyes. Do you feel what they feel?"

"If they bump into something I know about it. But I haven't felt anything like pain from them. Not even when they got cut by the shattered mirror or when the one that was severed fell off.

"I think I've gotten more use to them than I would have thought possible before. They just kind of float around in the periphery of my vision unless I think about them. And yet I could give them all individual names if I wanted to. These two were cut in the mirror explosion," I reached up with two hands and pulled the two snakes forward pointing to where their wounds were already almost healed completely. "And this stub was the other injured snake." As I grasped the severed snake I notice it was longer than it was before. "I think it's regenerating as the stub was shorter at the school."

"Well, I think I want to schedule a followup with you in a month or so. I feel as though you are still learning too much about yourself to begin any in-depth introspection about your less exotic changes." He stood up. "Be sure to tell Dr Adelaide the snakes are able to regenerate."

Feeling a little better about myself, I met with Dr. Adelaide. She was a curvaceous woman who looked far too young to be a doctor. She had a serious face and long blond hair. She wore a tight sweater and a skirt that together resembled a cheerleading outfit. "Oh, my god! Snakes for hair. They, like, told me about it. But, like, seeing the snakes, like float around your head. Wow.” She paused. “Sorry. Please sit. So, like, tell me about your twist. It says here you, like, turned someone to stone, too. That's far out. If it didn't last, like an hour, I'd totally ask you to do it to me right now."

"Really?"

"I, like, study twists and I might have you stone me before you leave."

"Okay," I replied cautiously.

"Now, I see you, like, destroyed a camera with your eye beams. Bummer. But I have a tunnel I want to put you in if you'll follow me."

We went to another room. It was long and narrow. She placed a small camera on a chair at the far end. She had me destroy another five or six cameras plus some of her other recording equipment in the room before we were done.

About an hour later we were back in her office. She began explaining how she thought my trick worked. I only understood half of what she said. She said something about the different body parts as different colors perhaps meant they were different kinds of stone. She suggested I look at various normal stone materials with my sight to see if they were multicolored, too.

"I may have pushed you, like, too far. I'm sorry," she said as she rearranged her computer and stood up. She removed her lab coat and shoes as she spoke, "I'll totally, like, call you in a few days after we, like, test the venom we got out of your awesome snakes. I have one last request. I'm, like, going to stand here and I, like, want you to totally petrify me and then, like, press record on the computer so I can, like, totally watch myself turn back, like, to flesh. You are free to leave after you, like, start the recording." After that she removed her blouse and skirt, waiting in just her bra and panties. "I'm, like, mega-sorry if this makes you, like, uncomfortable."

"I- I don't mind," I stuttered. I might have looked female, but up until a few hours ago I had been a teenage boy. Looking at the doctor in her underwear was making feel an unusual feeling in my borrowed underwear.

"Are you, like, sure?"

I nodded and she immediately removed her bra and pulled her panties down. She stepped out of them and gathered them up into a ball on her chair. I stared at her naked body a bit too long I realized when she interrupted me saying, "I'm totally ready whenever you, like, are."

"Are you sure?"

She just nodded and stood still.

She looked so much like she were waiting for me to photograph her that I joked, "Say, 'Cheese.'"

As she broke out in a genuine smile I dropped my inner eyelid. Her body stopped moving and began to lose its color. A second later she was solid stone. The varying shades and colors of stone in her body were vivid. The urge to touch her was overwhelming. I closed my eyes. When I opened them I did not open the inner lid. The colors were gone. The urge was different, more of a curiosity. I ran a finger over her protruding nipple. She was already cool to the touch.

I started her recorder before I left the room. I locked the door before closing it.