Fortnight of Fear Read Online Free PDF Page A

bedroom. “I think I’m feeling the strain,” he smiled at her. She leaned over and kissed him. He lay with his eyes open listening to Mozart playing in another room, and looking at the way the gray afternoon light crossed the ceiling and illuminated the pen-and-ink drawing of a man and a woman entwined together. The drawing was like a puzzle. It was impossible to tell where the man ended and where the woman began.
    He fell asleep. It started to rain, salty rain from the sea. He slept all afternoon and all evening, and the wind rose and the rain lashed furiously against the windows.
    He was still asleep at two o’clock in the morning, when the bedroom door opened and Anna came in, and softly slipped into bed beside him. “My darling,” Anna murmured, and touched the smoothness of his cheek.
    He dreamed that Anna was shaking him awake, and lifting his head so that he could sip a glass of water. He dreamed that she was caressing him and murmuring to him. He dreamed that he was trying to run across thebeach, across the wide gray sands, but the sands turned to glue and clung around his ankles. He heard music, voices.
    He opened his eyes. It was twilight. The house was silent. He turned to look at his watch on the bedside table. It was 7:17 in the evening. His head felt congested, as if he had a hangover, and when he licked his lips they felt swollen and dry. He lay back for a long time staring at the ceiling, his arms by his sides. He must have been ill, or maybe he had drunk too much. He had never felt like this in his life before.
    It was only when he raised his hand to rub his eyes that he understood that something extraordinary had happened to him. His arm was obstructed by a huge soft growth on his chest. He felt a cold thrill of complete terror, and instantly yanked down the quilt. When he saw his naked body, he let out a high-pitched shout of fright.
    He had breasts. Two heavy, well-rounded breasts, with fully developed nipples. He grasped them in his hands and realized they weren’t tumorous growths, they weren’t cancers, they were actual female breasts, and very big breasts, too. Just like Anna’s.
    Trembling, he ran his right hand down his sides, and felt a narrow waist, a flat stomach, and then silky pubic hair. He knew what he was going to feel between his legs, but he held himself back for minute after minute, his eyes closed, not daring to believe that it had gone, that he had been emasculated. At last, however, he slipped his fingers down between his hairless thighs, and felt the moist lips of his vulva. He hesitated, swallowed, and then slipped one finger into his vagina.
    There was no question about it. His body was completely female, inside and out. In appearance at least, he was a woman.
    â€œNone of this is real,” he told himself, but even his voicewas feminine. He climbed slowly out of bed and his breasts swayed, just the way that Anna’s had swayed. He walked across the room and confronted the full-length mirror beside the dressing-table. There was a woman looking back at him, a beautiful naked woman, and the woman was him.
    â€œThis isn’t real,” he repeated, cupping his breasts in his hands and staring intently at the face in the mirror. The eyes were his, the expression was his. He could see himself inside that face, his own personality, Gil Batchelor the bus salesman from Woking. But who else was going to be able to see what he saw? What was Brian Taylor going to see, if he tried to turn up for work? And, God Almighty, it seemed absurd, but what was Margaret going to say, if he came back home looking like this?
    Without a sound, he collapsed on to the floor, and lay with his face against the gray carpet, in total shock. He lay there until it grew dark, feeling chilled, but unwilling or unable to move. He wasn’t sure which and he wasn’t going to find out.
    At last, when the room was completely dark, the door opened, and a dim light fell