//------------------------------//
// Day 3 + 4: Heads or Tails 
// Story: Pandemic: of Twins and Tails 
// by Seven Fates 
//------------------------------//

He didn't feel much like cooking. Not after the soup stock debacle on earlier, and the hell of a time he had cleaning the granulated stock without kicking up the smell or wetting the granules and risking staining the floor. While it was trying, limiting his exposure to others in case he was contagious, he was too stressed out to give a fuck. As a result, he ended up just ordering in a extra-large cheese pizza.
That night, he ended up just digging out a gaming console that he bought a few years back. In lacking anything else to do, he needed a distraction. Given that the console allowed him to play games of eras past, it was quite the nostalgia trip for him. That said, Mario Party was never any fun if he couldn't get into a scrap with Pete over stars. Instead, he played a fair portion of the Legend of Zelda franchise while eating pizza and drinking beer well into Sunday morning.
Sunday, or at least what little daylight he hadn't slept through, was largely the same as Saturday. He chatted with Pete and Gage, complaining about how his ass was sore and that he was probably due to start sprouting a tail. They both did their best to keep his mind off it, but Gage was growing noticeably agitated throughout the day. Beyond that, he checked in occasionally on the news. The idea was that if he was focused on games or TV, he wasn't freaking out over what was happening to him, and in turn she wasn't going to harass him.
Unfortunately, it was as Robert Burns wrote—the best laid plans of mice and ponies men often go awry. When he was watching a news channel that evening, he discovered he'd been right. Lazy Pines and the surrounding area were now an emergency zone under an isolation/quarantine order. On top of that, the National Guard had been deployed to keep order in said emergency zone. It was stoking a hell of a lot of paranoia online, and Gage's puns weren't helping. 
Horsepocalypse my ass.
The other thing of note that the news brought about, was that this entire mess had been given an unofficial name: Equine Transformation Syndrome, or ETS for short. That, and people inside the ETS quarantine zone was being instructed to go to shelters the government was setting up. Nothing was said about potential spread outside the area, however. It likely meant that the government wasn't trying to create any more panic.
"Panic leads to mistakes, and mistakes cost lives," was what she had offered after all that was revealed. "One panicked idiot with a gun is all it takes."
Jacen wanted to disagree with the voice on principal, but she'd only been partially wrong. While it was true that it'd take only one panicked idiot, even without a gun, to cost someone's life. Was a gun more likely in his homeland? Sure. Was it the only way to tragedy? Not by a long shot. It wouldn't even take a knife. Just one mob of angry people, panicked and scared that they might be next, and an entire town or city could be plunged into anarchy. Just a flip of the coin, really... Heads or tails, the world gets turned upside down.
That night, he decided he should take a sleep aid. As much as he might have liked to have a repeat of his digital adventures as a mute psychopath with a pathological vendetta against pots and pig-men, it was more important that he get some decent sleep. He'd probably have plenty of time to kill while this strange transformation ravaged his system after all. Plus, the sleep would help ensure his shitty immune system didn't give out and kill him.
As he did every night, he stepped out onto his patio with a cigarette. Unfortunately, there was some sleet coming down at a bad angle, so the only place he could really light up was up against the wall that separated his patio from the Karen next door's patio. Even as he lit up, he could hear Karen shouting at someone over the phone again, but couldn't make out anything concrete beyond the fact that she was clearly talking about Equine Transformation Syndrome. It was none of his business, though. He was pretty sure he'd not been in contact with her since before he left for Vegas.
Jacen cringed slightly as he sat there. The smell of cigarette smoke had never bothered him before. When his parents were still alive, they'd been smokers themselves, so he'd been used to the smell even before he picked up the habit. Yet just like he'd noticed yesterday with the smell of that beef stock, he was becoming a lot more sensitive to smells. It might've been the stress, his imagination, or it might even have been some sign that his senses were changing like the rest of him. He simply didn't know, and it bothered him.
As he stared out into the frozen water droplets pelleting the city, illuminated by the street lights down below, the phone in his pocket chirped. That in and of itself wasn't unusual. What was was that it was the notification sound he'd assigned to his SMS app, rather than the online app he usually used. Very few had his number, and those that did rarely texted him without good reason.
Sure enough, when Jacen removed the phone from his pocket and turned on its display, he saw a text message from Peter Harlowe. "U need 2 call Gage, ASAP. He's freaking the fuck out!"
As he unlocked the screen, he held down the home-screen button for a few seconds, and then said aloud, "Call Gage Mitchell's home phone." As he took a drag from his cigarette, he thought back to the discussion with his friend yesterday, about how Gage had just gotten over the flu that Jacen had passed on to him, he imagined that his friend was finally beginning to freak out about the news. If his friend was, he determined as the phone rang, then he could predict exactly what was coming.
The ringing stopped, but was almost immediately replaced by slurred yelling. "You son of a bitch, how could you do this to me!?" It didn't even phase him. Gage had a flair for the dramatic, and a tendency to overreact, even before his transition, so Jacen was used to taking a bit of abuse when his friend was out of sorts. "What did I ever do to you, Jacen!? You were like the brother I needed, even when my real brother was useless and unsupportive!"
Oof, he thought as he listened to his friend spiral off into an incoherent rant. He proceeded to up all sorts of things from the past. The that guy in high school who somehow found out about Jacen's hysterectomy and spread it around to everyone? Gage knocked him out. How he'd been there for Gage when he came out not just as a man, but gay as well... Even the time a distraught Gage got into his father's Everclear and ended up begging Jacen to 'help him with his V-card' after his mother said she wouldn't even consider supporting his transition if he didn't at least try being a woman. He'd rightly refused, but let his friend vent. This ETS shit's really got his hackles up if he's drinking and bringing up Keith and that cow.
"Right, time out," he commanded with enough force in his voice that his friend actually stopped. He didn't often raise his voice, after all. "I want you to take a deep breath, hold for ten, and then breathe out slowly through your nose. Do that until you feel you're ready to talk to me and not just at me."
It took the better part of a minute, listening to his friend breathing loudly into his phone, before his friend spoke again. "Sorry, man," his friend murmured in a sheepish tone. "It's been hard seeing what's going on, and hearing what you're going through. I think I had a bit too much to drink."
Clearly, he thought, although he refrained from actually voicing it. Besides, it tracked well enough. Even if he wasn't supposed to with some of his medications, it was still Gage's coping mechanism. "So I take it this is about ETS?"
"Mmmhmm," his friend hummed. Based on the degree of freak-out, he was probably not far from passing out, but in the off chance that he wasn't, Jacen would rather talk his friend down his from whatever crisis had provoked this. "You're gonna think I'm being stupid, but I'm scared. I spent all this time becoming who I was supposed to be, and if I did catch it from you, that means I'm gonna turn into a horse too..." There was a slight sniffle and a tremor to his voice. "I don't wanna be dumb animal... I don't wanna turn into a girl horse, get pregnant, and have foals..." 
It was hardly a stupid concern, from where Jacen stood. He knew how much transitioning had meant for Gage—how important it was putting Abigail away for good. The fact of the matter was that nobody had any idea how this sickness even worked. If it just went off of the victim's DNA, and the body was completely reformed, it was almost a guarantee that Gage would become a mare. It'd be devastating for him.
He felt a great measure of guilt in telling his friend what he presumed to be a lie—to tell his friend what he thought he wanted to hear—but he didn't know what else to do. "You won't be a mare, man," Jacen stated in a firm voice. "You wanna know why? 'cause you're a big gay man, and that means you're gonna be a big gay stallion! The biggest! All the other stallions are gonna look at you and feel completely inadequate 'cause of your big-ass balls an pendulous horse schlong." What in the fuck are these words coming out of my mouth? "Maybe some day you might want foals, but you aren't gonna bear them. No... You'll find a mare you trust, who trusts you, and you're gonna put them foals in her. You understand me?"
For a minute of long silence, neither spoke. Gage was probably in shock with the sheer absurdity of what his ears had been subjected to. Meanwhile, Jacen was in awe of the fact that he managed to get that absurd ramble without laughing. That silence extended another minute longer, and then Gage burst into raucous laughter. Jacen joined in, and before long they both were deep in hysterics together. He wasn't even entirely sure it was actually that funny and not just completely unhinged.
"Dude, what in the absolute fuck was that?" a breathless Gage finally asked. "Have you lost your mind?"
"Maybe," Jacen replied with a snicker. "Did it help you find yours?"
"Yeah... I'm still scared, but I think I get what you were trying to tell me." That's good, because I lost the thread almost immediately. "You want me to believe in myself and hold onto hope, right?
"Something like that." It occurred to him that, at some point—either during his rant or the insane laughter that followed—he'd dropped his lit cigarette into the accumulating slush on the patio. He would have thought there would be some drive would be there to replace it and smoke it to completion, given his nicotine dependence, but it simply wasn't there. "You good?"
"Yeah."
He leaned down and picked up the fallen cigarette, and put it in the ashtray on his patio table. "Get some sleep, and stop drinking when you're on antidepressants." 
Gage gave a tired, "Yeah, yeah," and then hung up, leaving Jacen in silence on his patio. He typed out a quick text to Pete asking him to check in on Gage tomorrow. Sure, they might be locked down, but it felt important that Gage see a friendly face, especially after that. The cops were probably too busy with this whole ETS shit to care if a friend wanted a wellness check done on someone. He was just glad that the two lived close enough that it was possible.
With a tired sigh, he made his way over to his patio door. His reflection was distorted, and he realised he was once again seeing a young woman where he should've been. Oddly enough, she was beginning to match his appearance, as if it was the most natural thing for a hallucination to catch ETS too. Her long hair was now grey and white like his, and her mismatched purple and pink eyes glinted with mischief. She also matched his movements as he reached for the door. A smile crossed her gaunt face when he found his arm frozen as he closed his hand on the handle. It was as though a hand had gripped him tightly by the wrist.
"Gage has every right to be scared, you know," she said in an almost conversational tone. It wasn't mocking, or even aggressive like it usually was. It was just spoken as a matter of fact. "He's not the only one... What's this going to do to you—to us—I wonder? Maybe my genes will be dominant, and you'll be able to relate even better with our friend."
He clenched his jaw and hissed out, "You're not my sister." He shut his eyes and unclenched his jaw. "You never were. You're just a symptom of the mental illness I've been struggling with for half my life... one that built upon grief and an imaginary friend I had as a child." When he opened his eyes, she was gone and the feeling of being touched. I almost wish I did have a living sister, just so you'd go away.
When he finally forced open the door, he heard her whisper, "Maybe I'm not her, but I'm still a part of you. Like it or not."





The dreamless sleep granted to him by the sleep aid was a blessing after the encounter the previous night. Although Sunday morning's dream had been free of her presence, she definitely would've been back last night. Just the fact that the hallucinations were progressing and becoming more involved was a sign that he should be calling Pharmasave to prep a certain prescription. It'd been so long since he'd needed an anti-psychotic to manage her that the bottle in his cupboard expired three months ago. Stressing out about ETS had clearly been hindering his ability to focus on his usual grounding techniques. 
So instead of another dream visitation, he simply went to sleep on his side in his bed, and woke up face-down on the floor at ten the next morning, still wrapped around his pillow. As he came out of it, he could tell something was up. The aching tailbone that had plagued him the entirety of yesterday was replaced by a tightness in the back of his pyjama bottoms. It was fortunate that he'd been keeping up with the accounts accounts from Lazy Pines over the last few days, because knowing that others were going through this same chaotic mess was helping to keep him from panicking.
If not for the desperate need to caffeinate, he might even have torn off his pants to investigate. The closest he got was adjusting his pants after a trip to the bathroom, so that his still-growing tail was free. He never once looked though, because he was honestly afraid to with the headache he had. While he would have to confront it eventually, it didn't have to be that moment.
During his late-morning tea, he browsed the social media and fidgeted with his Morgan dollar. There were all sorts of posts from people in Lazy Pines popping up, relating their situations. Many were in shelters, and a lot of them had been segregated from their families. Splitting up families by sexes... If we're turning into animals, I understand, but it's still cruel. These ponies should be together, not apart.
If he had any family nearby, he might've even reached out himself. The extra emotional support would've made this whole situation so much more bearable. Chatting or calling Gage and Pete were as close as he could get, however; his parents perished in a plane crash shortly before he immigrated to Canada. His paternal grandparents had both lost their lives to cancer, while his hyper-religious maternal grandparents broke contact with his mother after they heard that he was 'an abomination unto god'. Were they even still alive? There were no other uncles, aunts, or cousins, which left him with his long-distance brotherhood.
Just as he put the kettle on for a second cup, there came a knock at the apartment door. It was unexpected enough that he fumbled his good luck token. He was frozen as he watched it roll straight across the living room floor. To his consternation, it rolled straight into the floor vent, plinking loudly off into the duct-work. As his good luck token and memento from his father disappeared into the void, it felt to him as though someone had just stepped over his grave. "Fuck."
"Jacen? Are you there?" came a familiar voice, drawing his attention back to the door. "It's Dr. Weintraub."
Rushing over to the door, he put his eye to the peephole. Sure enough, that was his physician standing outside the door. For some reason, he didn't feel the surprise he ought to have. After all, she'd showed up at his door completely unannounced. If anything, he welcomed it.
It wasn't just the fact that he was interested to see what she had to say, although that had a major hand in it. It was the first direct human contact he'd had since he'd seen her on Friday. The InstaCart delivery and the pizza he'd paid ahead of time with explicit instructions to leave the items outside his door specifically so he could limit further spread if he was contagious. He also didn't want to cause a panic or for it to get out that he had ETS.
That he was excited struck him as odd. Despite his 'profession', he was something of a homebody and relatively independent outside of specific settings, instead letting others come to him on their own terms. The drive to be around others just for the sake of it had never been there prior. Was it the fact that he was having something of a mental crisis and a health crisis all at once? Or was it something else?
He opened the door and stepped back to allow her in. "Morning, Doc. C'mon in," he said with smile. It'd been snowing when he got up, but she looked a bit too bundled up—heavy winter coat, boots, two scarves and a tuque. The poor woman looked so warm that even her glasses were steaming up. But for a very official looking bag, he might've even assumed this was a casual visit. "Sorry about the mess, but I wasn't expecting any guests. I'd ask what provoked this unexpected house-call, but I think we both know the answer." 
Jacen watched as she removed her coat, hat, boots, and scarves, only to see that she was wearing a surgical mask beneath. "Tea?" he offered, shutting the door and slipping past. In the kitchenette the kettle had begun to whistle. He quickly turned the cooktop off and opened a cupboard to fetch a teabag. Turning his head back to her, he added, "I also have coffee, but it's instant."
She looked somewhat stunned, but her eyes seemed to be flicking from his face town to his lower back—to his new tail. "Coffee's fine, thank you," Dr. Weintraub replied with a soft cough, quickly turning her gaze away. The 'mess' must have some sort of joke, because she couldn't see so much as a hint of dust. Except for a pizza box on the counter, a crooked blue-bin that might've held four empty beer cans, and a few strands of his new grey and white hair here and there, the place was immaculate. "Black, no sugar."
He nodded and got to fixing up drinks. "Just take a seat, and then we can talk about ETS," he instructed, gesturing to the living room area. "Take the armchair or the love seat if it's not too much trouble; sitting on this damn tail is already a complete pain, and I can stretch myself out on the sofa."
Tara did as he asked, walking into the living room and taking a seat. It was hard not to notice the big screen mounted above an electric fireplace, its screen full of posts about Lazy Pines and ETS. She was about to comment on the matter when he spoke up. "Jaina, TV off."
There was a soft, "Sure thing, Jacen," from the device on the counter, and then the TV cut out. "Anything else?"
He was making his way over to the living room with a slice of pizza on a plate, and two mugs, one with tea, and one with black coffee. "Unless something new blows up about ETS, I don't want to be disturbed," he answered, placing the mug of coffee on a coaster on the table before the doctor. Once he set his plate and own mug down, he laid out on his side on the sofa. "I'm kinda surprised you came by, Doc—especially now that I get a better look at you; if I didn't know better, I'd say you just came down with the flu."
Dr. Weintraub did not look enthused by his comment. "I have," she admitted in a disgruntled voice, putting the mask into her bag before she picked up the mug. "I would be home resting if not for the fine mess you've gotten yourself—and me in turn—caught up in. In fact, once I'm done here, that's exactly what I intend on doing."
A fresh bubble of guilt rose in the pit of his stomach. He had no reason to think he was actually somehow responsible for her getting the flu, but the fact that she was here when she should be taking as many sick days as she needed bothered him. Others would be impacted by her absence, and if she was sick longer because she was here instead of home...
Fixing him with a level stare, the doctor blew some of the steam from her coffee. "I'm actually impressed that we were able to get any information out of the Colorado Department of Health." The corner of her mouth turned up. "Not that I had any doubts at this point, but we've been able to definitively confirm that you have ETS."
As he reached for his mug of tea with a snort of amusement, the tail that he had yet to acknowledge flicked unexpectedly. The sudden movement of the alien appendage startled him, and he ended up falling between the coffee table and the couch. "So what's that mean for me?" he asked, as he climbed back onto the couch with an aura of embarrassment. The second time around, he didn't cause a scene while reaching for his tea. "The feds coming to lock me away in a lab to run tests on me?"
She shook her head, and watched as he took a bite of the pizza slice. "At the moment, you're safe," she said, setting her mug down on the coaster. "Public Health is in the process of setting up a shelter for other ETS patients in this region, but the provincial governments are stonewalling. Nobody wants it in their back yard."
Was he supposed to feel reassured by the implication that he wasn't the only one in the region? In a way, he was. It shouldn't have delighted him in the least that others in the region were suffering the same transformation as him, but to know that there were others sharing the same pain as him... it inspired a warped feeling of kinship. That doesn't seem right.
"She said in this region," came a helpful whisper from the direction of the love seat. "We're not the only ones with ETS."
As Jacen sipped at his tea and casually looked over to the smaller sofa, it occurred to him that the voice was—regrettably—correct. She was there, draped over the back of the love seat, once again his female mirror, giving him a smirk as she basked in the victory of being right. Whether Doctor intended to or not, she had effectively told him that there were cases in the other provinces. I'd guess the cities of Vancouver and Toronto might be hardest hit.
"Would you consent to an examination while I am here?" she asked as they both finished their beverages. Dr. Weintraub wasted no time fetching what looked to be a clipboard and pen from her bag. A stethoscope quickly followed. "Nova Scotia Health Authority is currently taking a wait-and-see given your willingness to isolate, but there's something nagging at me, and I'd like to confirm."
Upon giving an affirmative, she instructed him to draw the curtains, and strip down to his boxers. When he removed the band tee he'd fallen asleep in, both of them were startled by something neither of them had expected. Both of his nipples looked out of place—slightly lower than normal. As if that wasn't unusual enough, the left one had drifted ever so slightly rightward.
She quickly scribbled something down on her clipboard, and then began taking a closer look at his face. "Have you noticed any vision changes, particularly in your right eye?" she asked. When he shook his head, she jotted something down. Did I miss something when I was looking in the mirror last night? "Other than your discoloured eyes and the pupillary change—" THE WHAT!? "—there's something off about your overall facial structure. You're also shorter, by about ten centimetres if I had to estimate."
It suddenly felt like the room was several degrees colder. How could I not have noticed I'm getting shorter!? He barely noticed as she listened to his heartbeat. I'm supposed to be good at picking up on patterns and reading people. How could I not even notice something like being four inches shorter? The doctor's face grew grim as she jotted something else down.
"Jacen, chill the fuck out," said his unwanted head-guest from her spot across the love seat. It was odd, but she actually looked concerned for a change—scared, even. "You're gonna have a panic attack if you keep this up."
AND WHY SHOULDN'T I? He nearly shouted his response, but he caught himself before he could scare the life out of Tara. Instead he settled for thinking very loudly at the manifestation. I'M TURNING INTO A FUCKING HORSE!
"I need to check your breathing, and then check on your tail," she said, placing the stethoscope to his back. Once she'd run him through the breathing necessary for the test, her face grew hard to read. There was yet more writing on the clipboard. "I apologise ahead of time if handling it is uncomfortable. I just need to verify one more thing and then I'll be out of your hair."
When he felt her touch to either side of his tail, he nearly jumped. It felt so, so wrong. How was it possible that she was touching both sides and yet not? The closest comparison he could come up with was the 'dead finger' sensory illusion his Mom had shown him when he was a boy. When it finally felt like she actually was fully touching either side, there was a gasp from the doctor.
"What the fuck?" Tara whispered to herself as she wrote down her final notes and placed the clipboard on her bag. The fact that she'd actually said it loud enough for him to hear was kind of chilling. Dr. Weintraub was typically pretty unflappable, but that was definitely a shocked utterance if he'd ever heard one.
"What's the rub, Doc?" asked Jacen as she took off her glasses and rubbed at her eyes. "You're kinda freaking me out."
It took the woman a few moments to compose herself, during which she braced herself against the side of the armchair. "I think you should take a seat before I share my findings with you, Mr. Cadlow," she said in a shaky voice. "There's no easy way to say this..."
He crossed his arms and remained standing between the coffee table and the sofa. In a shaky voice, he demanded, "Just tell me."
With a sigh, Dr. Weintraub retrieved her clipboard. "There are abnormalities in your heart and your breathing," she explained. "While only faint right now, there is a clear second heartbeat. Were you a sexually active young woman, congratulations might have been in order. That shouldn't be physically possible, though, but neither should this entire transformation." Tapping her notes with her knuckles, she shook her head. "Without imaging, I can only guess that something similar is happening to your lungs. There's slight changes in your torso shape that may be to account for this."
Two hearts? Blood pressure might explain those headaches at least, he thought, looking up at the ceiling. Four lungs though? What the actual fuck?
"As for your tail..." She trailed off, watching him with a critical eye. "You have two of them. Both of them are neatly partitioned to match the split in your hair. I hypothesise that—"
A chime from Jaina's counter-top node interrupted the doctor. "There has been a spike in activity regarding the ETS topic, and new data has become available," the device said in its calming voice. "Shall I put it on the TV?"
It felt like a hand clamped down on his shoulder. "Don't do it." There was alarm in her voice. Why did she suddenly care now of all times. "Take some time to calm down! Please!"
"Do it," he announced as he heaved a heavy sigh. 
With a forceful jerk that dispelled the touch on his shoulder, he turned to regard the screen. So too did Tara. On the screen, were ETS victims—colourful eyes and hair on full display—but there were also oddities about them. There was a woman with a horn on her forehead, while someone looked to have featherless wings on their shoulders. One even looked she had bat-like wing traits. It was like something out of high fantasy. Unicorn... Pegasus... Demon?
In a very small voice, he began, "What is happening to every p—" Whatever he'd intended to say, the words never came. The breath wasn't there, as he hadn't actually taken a breath in what felt like an eternity. Blinking pinpoints were swimming in his vision, and from what sounded like very far away, someone was calling his name.
"Jacen!"
When had he fallen down? He couldn't remember. One moment, he was looking at the wings and horns on the TV screen, and then the next, he was staring up at the ceiling from the floor. Every single cell in his body vibrated like a struck tuning fork, and nothing really seemed to want to work properly. Tara appeared in his field of vision soon after, and she was saying something, but he couldn't figure it out.
When she touched the back of his head, her fingers came back bloody. That didn't seem right... It was also getting hard for him to keep his eyes open. The doctor seemed to notice as well, because suddenly there was a phone in her hand. Still, he couldn't understand what she was saying. The only thing he could clearly make out was the sound of a girl crying. Then, his eyes closed.