Riley Sadlier
6:28pm
It’s always been exactly that time. No deviations. No delays. It happens every day at 6:28pm and it’s done so since I was ten years old. I get a slight tingly feeling five minutes before as a helpful warning and that’s it.
It starts with the fur. Little pin pricks of pain as it shoots up all over my body. The horns hurt more but once they break the skin it settles down. My face shifts, my body hunches, my hands grow and the whole transformation is done by 6:38pm.
On a normal day I stay in my room and play video games. It takes an hour for my body to go back to normal. As a kid it would bum me out but now, I’m so used to it that it’s become just another part of my routine.
So, why is it 2:35pm on a Tuesday and I’m standing in a room barely large enough for the printer and the office supplies and I have horns and fur all over my body?
2:35pm is not an ideal time for this to take place.
I have a list of things to do. An upcoming meeting with my boss. This is my first adult job since university and they’re all going to think that I’ve gone home early. But if I come out like this, they’re going to be scared. An even worse reputation starter than if they thought I went home.
I haven’t had a chance to tell anybody here about my condition. There isn’t a box to tick on the application form for strange bodily transformations. Maybe I could list it as a disability? But that feels wrong. It only stops me doing things for an hour a day, and realistically I could still do them if I’m willing to terrify strangers. Hardly makes me worthy of a close car park.
My posture slips low and my back hunches over, naturally compressing me enough that I can slide in behind the printer. It’s not perfect. Now if someone pokes their head into the room there’s only a twenty percent chance they won’t see me.
As I get older, I’ve become less inclined to tell people about my monster hour. As a kid I told my class, thinking that it would make me popular. My Mum quickly put a stop to that. She said that the other kids weren’t mature enough and they might make me feel bad about it. A wise decision in hindsight. She fielded calls from anxious parents all afternoon, telling them that I made it all up. Luckily, I said it in primary school and not high school; pre-teens forget things faster. Teenagers can be mean.
When I was old enough to leave home, I moved into a sharehouse. I took a chance telling my housemates because I figured they’d find out sooner or later. To my surprise they were all really chill about it. That’s why it came as such a shock to me when the following Saturday I learnt that they’d organised a house party centred around me ‘showing it off’. I moved out as soon as I could.
That was years ago now and I haven’t felt confident enough to tell anyone since. Today it seems like I might not have a choice.
With tech as advanced as it is, part me remains hopeful that I can get through this hour without anyone coming into the cupboard. Who needs pens and paperclips when we all work on shared documents anyway? It should give me enough time to change back into my still awkward but much more human self.
The pain and tingling have stopped so now there’s nothing else I can do. I’m as transformed as I’m going to be. I know the changes by heart. The lengths of my claws and the size of my hands. The random patch of white fur in the shape of Tasmania on my left thigh. There’s a risk that I’m more grotesque. The change of time could bring about a different version of my monster self that I’m unaware of. I pull my phone out of my pocket and open the camera.
I feel instant relief to see that my transformation is the normal amount of hideous.
I lay the phone down on the printer and the ringtone blares loudly in the room. I quickly silence it and hope that the loud noise hasn’t given me away. It was my manager. Probably wondering where I’ve disappeared to. I’d like to think it’s a welfare check but I don’t think he’d be that kind.
Someone might have heard that. I check the time to see how long I’ve got left. It’s 3:06pm. Twenty minutes left and then all I’ll need to do will be to come up with some excuse.
I hear a voice near the door. A little high and calling out to someone. It’s muffled but I can hear ‘I just need to grab…’ and then it trails off.
I shrink as low as I can behind the printer as I hear the doorknob begin to turn. I should have barricaded the door. There’s no lock but maybe I could have wedged something below it.
It’s like time slows down. My body tingles with the detransition. Nowhere near as fast as I need. I listen closely to the slight creak as the door moves.
And just as everything had been slowing down it dramatically speeds up. Faster than before. She screams when she spots me and I bolt upright. I put my hands up to show I’m not a threat and I start to explain myself, but when I see her face I don’t bother.
She backs out the door and begins calling for help. Screaming like I was attacking her.
I hear Kevin’s voice call out from the other side of the office, saying that he’s coming to help. He’s a monstrous man anyway so I run for the exit. Sprinting through the open plan office. Bodies turning to face me from their swivel chairs. My fur in contrast to the olive-green corporate design.
I aim for the stairs, not wanting to risk the lift slowing me down. I almost trip down the stairs a few times as I’m so unused to moving this fast in my monster body. Things are more hunched and heavier.
Once I get to the foyer everyone freezes at the sight of me. Even the security stand frozen as I tap my pass through the gates and run out the door.
My horns have almost disappeared as I make it onto the street. I hide in an alley behind some bins for the seven minutes that it takes for the tingling in my body to stop. I look down at my hands and can see boring old human skin and I feel instant relief. If Sally had only waited ten minutes, then I could have avoided this whole thing.
I contemplate just going home but realise that isn’t an option as my keys are in my locker upstairs. I walk back into the foyer, everyone talking in little huddles.
I make it into the lift without anyone piecing together that I was the monster. As it climbs to my floor, I pray that my colleagues haven’t worked it out either.
Riley is a teacher/librarian and writer from Melbourne. He has had fiction and non-fiction pieces published in a range of journals and anthologies, with his proudest achievement being three non-fiction pieces for Archer. His fiction has appeared in publications such as Verandah Journal, Grit and Growing, and Verge.
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