A Bad Hair Day Everyday Read online

  “No, no, not my hair!”

  Once again he felt pain when he used his hands to protect his hair, but this time it was more like an electric shock that held him rigid for several seconds. The gel was now dissolving his hair as it covered his head. When movement returned, he again reached up and touched his head. To his relief, he discovered it was still there, but the wig he had forgotten about was now missing and presumed dissolved.

  “Wow, that’s a relief!”

  JJ didn’t know that the gel had in fact slowly dissolved not just the wig but all of the hair on his body, including that which covered his head. But unlike with the rest of his body, something that was not hair but looked like it grow from his skin to replace it, giving him eyelashes, eyebrows, and a full head of hair of duplicate color and style. It rippled a little until it settled down.

  It may have looked like hair to any human eye, but it was the Companion’s hands, ears and eyes and was more like an independent thinking defense system that the Companion had used in the past to keep its hosts safe.

  JJ examined his body as best he could with the help of a small make-up mirror. The skin was soft and silky and just the same apart from being hairless everywhere except on his head. He ruffled his hair, relieved that it had not gone the same way as the wig.

  He did not notice it fall back into place after he moved his hand away. JJ then wiped his left arm with a tissue, and a black stain that marked where he’d had a small tattoo a few moments ago was soon cleaned off. He started reading the manual again, looking for the camouflage section he’d seen earlier. He was certain that he had not seen anything about tattoo removal in it.

  ...Camouflage can be obtained with just a thought as the Companion can change both the color and the body characteristics of the Host to protect the Host from danger… as the protection, health, and safety of the Host is the Companion’s major…

  “Okay, yoga position room 101: Relax, and tune into your inner self.’

  JJ focused on thoughts of danger and his need to look different but also the same, as he only had a dress to wear. He had to look female; if not, he would get arrested, and without the padded bra, his shape was all wrong for a dress! He looked a real mess as all the makeup had gone, and his untaped dick was going to hang lower than the dress, which would sure divert people’s attention from staring at his flat, manly chest. I need camouflage went though his mind over and over again as he built up his concentration. Then it hit him: pain. Lots of pain shot through his whole body along with a blinding migraine, which increased in intensity until he passed out.

  Not having a head, the Companion could therefore not have a headache, so instead it shared JJ’s as it tried to make out just what the heck this stupid overgrown ape wanted from it. The jumble of thoughts just did not make any sense, so it rendered the creature unconscious so it could decide if it should kill this animal and go look for a better home.

  The idea of looking different but staying the same was a new concept to the Companion, so it slowly looked into recent memories and discovered that the creature had been tasked to destroy it but instead had rescued it or, rather, the box it had been trapped in, which was by all counts was the same thing. It should have wondered why, but being extremely intelligent did not mean it was not arrogant when thinking of lesser creatures. Its first and only idea was that this creature, like the k-lex , was willingly offering it a home in return for the many benefits it could bring. Why else would it have saved it instead of destroying it and then awaken it free of the painful restrainers? A willing host was just what it needed, and it did not need to be smart; the k-lex thought it was smart and had still died on this mud ball of a planet.

  The Companion then spread the creature’s mind like a rainbow of lights to understand “different and the same.” It was male but of slight build and therefore did not fit into the norms for current male attraction, which the creatures mind revealed to be strong, tall, and attractive to the opposite gender. This explained why it was currently pretending to be female by its use of clothing, false hair, and makeup and just proved the stupidity of these creatures that could be fooled so easily. The Companion wondered what the outcome of any mating rituals would be, as no attempt had been made to produce the correct smell of a female of this species, let alone hide the male reproductive organs other than covering them with material.

  So the answer was that this creature wished to look female while still remaining male. If the Companion could have sighed, it would have done so as now it understood the meaning of “different and the same.”

  The reason must be the simple fact of time available; the creature needed immediate camouflage, so only minor cosmetic changes were sought. This was, however, better than the over thinking k-lex. No, this creature was willing to let the Companion handle the details, so it was happy to do what it was asked as well as looking into how it could do a better job when time allowed.

  The human creature was correct, for in such a short time the best it could do was a few surface changes. The Companion slowly ate away at the skin and fatty tissue, replacing them with a superior surface construct of a softer, more feminine image.

  At the same time, strands of what JJ regarded as his hair was spun into a thick cord and grew towards the holding transporting case, which it thought of as a prison. Like a finger, it punched a little virus code of a program into the case’s computer with the very simple intention of activating the self-destruct feature in the case so that it would explode the next time it was opened. The hair even shut and locked the case before unraveling and returning to the same length as the rest of JJ’s head hair.

  More than just Camouflage

  When he came to, JJ wished he hadn’t, as his whole body hurt in a way that made being beaten with a meat mallet for several days feel preferable. He did not know how long he had been unconscious, but he was ravenously hungry and was able to wolf down the single power bar snack he had with him in seconds. Waiting for the morsel to hit his empty stomach, he wished that he had brought some more, as he now had an urge to eat chocolate: lots of it.

  “WTF has it done to me?”

  He took a look at himself. After he finished examining his body, JJ pulled the small mirror from his clutch bag to look at his face.

  “Er, well, very little. I kind of look the same as I did after the makeover, so why do I feel like I have been hit by a truck?”

  He had an odd feeling that he was missing something as he flicked his shoulder-length hair but could not think what it was.

  “A new wig?”

  He reached up and pulled on the wig, only to discover it was fixed in place. It also gave him several painful paper cuts when he tugged at it. The hair was soon forgotten as his mouth dropped open when he checked to see what the odd feeling across his chest meant. To his shock, he saw his skin begin to ripple as two mounds of flesh were now featured on his once-flat chest, and both were topped by nipples larger than the normal small male ones he so had recently hidden under a very padded bra. If that was not bad enough, he turned his worries to the ache coming from his balls, which had been pushed back up into his body. His dick was now sort of somehow fixed back between his legs.

  JJ was a little unsteady on his feet, but he knew he needed to read more of the instructions. When he tried to open the case, he discovered it had locked itself, and his hands were now shaking far too much for him to work on the locks. Instead, he decided that he should now see if he could make his way out of the building.

  Back to Normal?

  The image JJ’s eyes saw in the small mirror was not quite how others would now see him; his eyes showed him that he appeared to have much the same look as the makeup artist had created, which was for the best. The Companion did not wish to receive any counter instructions at the moment, as the process was inconvenient to reverse at this stage.

  It did not finish the facial structure until after the Host creature had put the mirror away.

  The Companion had done the best that it could to follow the “different but the same” request in the sort time available. Making improvements to the female camouflage, it moved layers of fat to give a softer and more feminine appearance. The breasts were not true mammary glands at the moment and did not have the correct feel, as that would have taken longer. When there was time, it would start to seed real ones capable of milk production. The vocal cords of the animal had been reshaped to give a correct sound range, but nothing could be done about the male reproductive parts, so it just hid them as best it could.

  Ignoring the ruined tights, JJ slipped the dress back on without any underwear and found it fit much better than before. He did not feel uncomfortable that it was tighter on the hips, but he wished it was a not so short and told himself that he must remember not to bend over or reach up to avoid showing everyone his pubic hair free true nature.

  Leaving his hiding place, he saw that it was now late in the afternoon of the next day, but he felt so hungry that it could have been longer! He returned to the staircase, noticing that the window he had broken had been repaired.

  JJ’s stomach rumbled, and his ankle throbbed and made him limp painfully as he walked down to the ground floor.

  “Food! I must get something to eat before I pass out. God, I have never felt so hungry! It must be the gel in the skin eating me alive!”

  He went to the nearest small shop, one of several that covered the ground floor. If he had not been so hungry, he would have surely wondered why everything was open and normal so soon after he had blown the top off the building.

  From the looks he was getting, he was feeling very self-conscious. A mirrored wall in the shop gave him both the answer as to why and also a surprise.

  He could see that he looked like he had just stepped out of a disaster movie
or, rather, a young, attractive woman had. Even without makeup, the person peering back at him was female and rather attractive. It was as if he were looking at his twin sister. He could recognize parts of himself still there, but the shape of the face and its features were all feminine.

  “A fast getaway may be the best idea, and then I will have to open the sodding case to change me back before I need to buy a new wardrobe!”

  Pain shot up his leg from the ankle.

  “Okay, so a fast limpaway, then! But food first, and perhaps something different to wear to attract less attention.”

  To change his appearance into something more casual, he tried on an extra-large white T-shirt from a remainder sales bin. It had a picture of a pop group on the back and the words B.F.S. World Tour on the front.

  “Hey, that’s Bowling for Soup ! I like them!”

  The new look was completed with a belt around the waist. The T-shirt was longer than the dress he still wore underneath it, and he softly hummed, “High school never ends,” one of the pop group’s more popular songs, as he went to pay. He did not even notice the added pile of 22 bars of chocolate on the counter. After paying, JJ started on the chocolate while innocently asking to use their phone to call for a ride home.

  The Wrong Plan B

  The only Plan B he had now was to risk phoning his employers. He did not like this plan, as it sounded far from professional, but it was the only Plan B he had left, so phone them is what he did.

  They seemed surprised to hear from him, so they must have thought that he had made his getaway long ago.

  Within an hour, a car with a couple in sharp suits picked him up and drove off. Neither of them spoke to him as they drove, but they did give him funny looks, which made him feel really ill at ease. However, an uncontrollable weariness descended on him as he finished off the last of the chocolate bars, and he soon fell asleep. He slept until the car stopped and then sleepily opened his eyes.

  “Where are we?”

  The two suits did not answer but just opened his door. JJ got out and saw that they had parked the car high up overlooking the sea. He peered over the edge to the water below.

  “Err, are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  With no warning, one of the suits pulled out a gun and fired.

  The bullet grazed JJ’s head as he turned to run, which, apart from being rather painful, would have been very lucky had it not been for the next three, which hit him firmly in the chest. The force of the bullets did less damage than would have been expected but still knocked him over the edge. His body hit the side of the cliff twice on the way down before hitting the water below, where he sank like a stone.

  The last thing to go though his mind was,

  “Mom, I need you. Where are you?”

  At this point, JJ died.

  Companion

  The manual said that Companion was intelligent. It was wrong.

  The Companion was made up of billions and billions of thinking cells, which acted as one. It was more than intelligent; if a descriptive name had to be given, then the word super- extelligence would have been a better fit.

  So the Companion did not think or act as an individual, and the idea, for example, of it sitting quietly in the corner reading a book would be quite alien to it. Nonetheless, it ticked all the boxes to qualify as a living creature, plus the human box of Thinking . At the present moment, however, the animal (including human) instinct of Survive was so high on its list that all the other boxes may as well have been on a different planet.

  Another difference between this species and the human one was the Companion’s ability to translate instant thought into instant action. The term “multi-tasking” didn’t even come close; everything that needed to happen just happened at once.

  Companion Makes a New Home

  In this instance, however, there was no way the Companion could leave its present Host, as it had taken over all the skin: the so-called largest organ in the body of the Host. It would take time to leave, and a new host would have to be nearby. It did not control the entire body; that was the Host’s mundane work, so the Companion still needed the Host to be alive to do that. This Host was as good as dead, but that would have been very inconvenient for the Companion, so it was determined not to let it die so soon.

  At the first shot to the head, JJ’s skin had hardened to the maximum degree, so it absorbed the bullets to the chest without penetration. The Companion could not stop the internal damage and brocken bones from the impacts; even with the extra skin protection, it had not prevented the Host from receiving structural damage from the rocks on the way down. JJ had sustained two broken legs and a broken arm, and the damage to the head meant that the Companion could not ask for instructions, not that Hosts ever gave intelligent instructions anyway.

  As soon as JJ’s body hit the water, the Companion’s reactions ticked another box, this time the one called Learn , which merged and joined with Survive . As if billions of minds were earning a Masters degree in body engineering, the following reactions occurred: a chemical was released into the blood stream, which sent the Host into a very deep sleep; all body apertures were sealed apart from waste disposal; a filter system was set up via the skin’s surface to extract oxygen from the sea water along with gill-type flaps in the neck to keep the lungs breathing; desalinated water would also be taken into the gut when needed. In this way, the Companion could live off the Host’s body for a long time, but not without doing the Host permanent damage, so the part of the Companion that the Host would have regarded as his hair was given independence from the whole to hunt and feed the Host, plus protect the host from hostile creatures; various chemicals would be added to the water by the Hair to attract small fish, which it could then trap and devour in a similar way to that of a sea anemone. This Thinking defense system also produced an awful lot of spite, The semi independent defense system created by Companion looked like long hair and had what was a purely defensive nastiness to start with, which larger sea creatures soon learned to beware of and avoid but would later evolve into something that would surprise even the Companion.

  The Companion removed any useless and unnecessary attachments to the Host’s body that got in its way by rotting them away, so JJ’s dress and shoes were soon set free to find their own way in the world. The Companion retained what the Host thought of as something called a “large T-shirt” mostly because of the way it billowed out to make the Host appear to be a larger-looking creature.

  At this point, the Companion could take things a little slower. If left alone, the body with its help was capable of repairing itself, but now the Companion had time to complete the requested task of full camouflage along with updating the body to be the superior female gender of the species, the gender the Host so clearly needed to be. It would be an interesting project, and when it was finished, the Companion knew that the Host would have been very pleased with the plans had it been conscious.

  The days soon turned into weeks then months as the healing process ran its course. Changing the internal body structure was difficult, but the Companion was able to use DNA switches, which meant the body did most of the work itself. It took a little effort to remove the male reproductive organs and correct the plumbing to fit into the newly created exterior female parts. As soon as the new internal female organs began to grow, they linked up perfectly to the exterior aperture and began to produce their customary chemicals as well.

  The brain began to swamp the body, which then demanded the body react in the way it should. The Companion had previously removed the fake breasts so that the body could start budding its own the way any other human female would do. The Companion spent its time tuning into the peculiar thoughts produced by the comatose creature that thought of itself as a human. The strange things that this creature dreamed it needed to be happy initially confused the Companion and were going to be very hard to achieve; however, the Companion as a species had flourished by giving its hosts everything they wanted, be it more food, greater strength, longer life, or more mates. It could do almost anything to make it a much-needed part of its Host body. But with this one, it was going to have to do more then it had ever done before and give it perhaps an entirely new life: a better one.