Consensus, Day 2-2: Anxiety

Zach! You won’t believe it! I’ve suddenly become ripped beyond belief! I don’t know how it happened, but it did! I don’t need the wheelchair anymore either! I'm not feeling fatigued at all!

Violet’s sculpted fingernail dangled over the send button like a chandelier, not allowing herself to complete the final step of the messaging process. The 33-word post on discord was just sitting there, unsent, as a contemplative look was frozen on her face.

She checked the clock. 7:30am. She had been deliberating over this reveal for the entire night now. Why was she so afraid? It was just a simple message informing her boyfriend that she suddenly had incredible reflexes, unyielding stamina, and enough strength to lift her entire couch!

But there was a catch. If she admitted that she wasn’t wheelchair-bound anymore, then he’d figure out that she, at one point, was actually wheelchair-bound to begin with! She’d done her best to hide that information, now it was coming at the cost of this brand-new, exciting information!

At least before, hiding everything below her waist in a video call was trivial. Hell, she’d be sitting down 99% of the time during their chats anyways. Looking at the photo mode which displayed a mirror image of what her webcam captured, it was almost impossible to not notice the differences at display.

Her spindly frame was gone, replaced with firm, sinuous musculature that coated her arms like chain links of taut beef. Her body suggested years of dedicated athleticism—Zach knew Violet would rarely leave past her porch most days.

If the sight of her in a wheelchair made her fearful of being babied, the sight of her on the opposite end of the spectrum would be some other horrifying, judgemental assumption!

She tried to adjust her camera, to find an angle that would better hide her improved features. But all the feedback footage showed were athletic hips, complete with inches of smooth, rounded muscle that flowed down her lengthened legs and a chiseled six pack to rival beer. Her tongue slithered through her plumper lips, the homebound NEET girl becoming helplessly aroused by the statuesque sight of her own burgeoning body. She felt the nipples of her larger breasts harden as they peeked through her tight tank top, desiring to be squeezed, played with, anything.

She quickly slid on a button-up blouse to better hide her obvious perky nipples, only to find the attire to be surprisingly tight.

Violet had always had a repressed sex drive. Sure, she craved the lewd act as any kissless virgin would, but her easily fatigued body combined with her fried dopamine receptors—masturbating every single day out of sheer boredom—left her severely lacking. Now, it was as if she were a catholic fitness freak discovering what “rubbing one out” meant for the first time.

As if her hand was possessed, it reached down towards her crotch, applying two fingers to her throbbing clit. A terse stream of air escaped through her teeth at the mere flesh contact, her brain ready to reduce itself to its most primal mode of thinking.

She rubbed her sleek thighs together, attempting to stave off an orgasm as her thoughts inevitably drifted towards Zach’s chiseled features. With a hunky face like that, he surely had experience with fitness! She’d be called out as soon as he took one good look at her face.

Do-do, do-do-do-do! Do-do, do-do-do-do!

Her headphones suddenly blared with the ditty of the incoming call theme. Her mouse zipped about, wasting precious seconds as her brain was forced into making a split second decision.

Oh shit! It was Zach! He was hitting her up with a surprise call!

Her sticky fingers quickly grabbed the nearest blanket, bundling herself up with it until only her face was still visible within its folds. The comforter was warm—too warm—but it would have to do. Violet’s anxiety wasn’t ready for any breach in the status quo, especially if Zach was involved.

She answered the call, putting on her best innocent face as she smiled at Zach’s face from within the computer.

“Hey Vi!”

“Heeeeeey Zach!” Violet responded, squeezing her blanket tighter as she desperately attempted to act natural. “What a surprise call!”

“Heh, I suppose it is! Normally, I call a lot earlier! Thought I’d let you get a bit more sleep, y’know. Though I must say, you look awfully cozy right now!”

Violet tried her hardest to make the responding giggle as innocent and carefree as possible, which appeared to pay off. Violet’s makeshift disguise was working! Now all she had to do was lie to Zach for the rest of her life!

Saying it aloud like that, Violet was beginning to regret every single choice she made. They were always the wrong ones! Even as her anxiety attempted to prevent the worst case scenarios from occurring, it would ultimately end up as the harbinger of that very situation.

But Violet was a lucky girl. Zach knew exactly how to raise her spirits, to help yank her out of that pit of uncomfortable thoughts.

“Oh Viiiiiii, guess what?”

“What?”

“Guess!”

“Um, you saw a kangaroo or something?”

“That’s Australia, silly!”

“Haha, quit screwing with me and tell me already!” Violet demanded lightheartedly.

Zach held a piece of paper up to his camera. It was a little out of focus and a third of it wasn’t in frame, but Violet immediately recognized it as a plane ticket. Her eyes widened in absolute disbelief.

“Looks like I’ll be over there a month earlier than anticipated, Vi.”

Her heart did a somersault in her chest, which manifested in her screaming at the top of her lungs. A cocktail of surprise, elation and sheer happiness, all loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear.

“Yes, yes, yeeeeeeessssss!” Violet exclaimed, barely able to restrain herself from leaping up and down in excitement. “Ohmigosh ohmigosh, Zach, how!?”

“I talked to a few family members and they found my little story of young love really enticing. My Grandpa is in that perfect age group where he doesn’t understand the internet but also doesn’t fear it!”

Violet held back another scream, this time allowing only a soft “eeeeee” to escape from her teeth. But her celebration with Zach was interrupted as a loud pounding on her door was heard, nearly jumpscaring her.

“Oop, just a minute, babe. I’ve got a knock at the door. Probably the postwoman or something. Though, I don’t remember ordering a package…”

Leaving her chair while still wrapped up tight in the blanket, Violet left the confinement of her room to see what the fuss was about. When she got to the door, she temporarily froze—the blanket slipping off of her body at the sight of the person on the other side.

“Mr. Grove?” Violet asked, confused as she opened the door for him. Usually, he’d only approach her when she was sitting on her porch.

“You harlot! You trollop! Now, you’ve really done it!” Howard Grove shouted with ferocity, his face beet red as his mustache hairs only caught about 50% of his spittle.

“Wh-guh-huh?” Violet spoke with confusion and anxiety, unable to properly respond.

“Oh, don’t act like this wasn’t premeditated, bitch!” he continued with the accusations. “That focused scream of yours was loud enough to shatter my rare collection of priceless glassware!”

If Violet wasn’t at a constant sense of unease and fear, she would have likely fought back against Howard. At her current state of strength, she could’ve easily punted the old bastard like a football—region difference notwithstanding. But Howard’s sheer intimidation prevented her from any desire to retaliate. She had simply spent too long fearing retaliation from those who could incapacitate her with a tip of the wheelchair to process this scenario logically.

“P-please, we can resolve this peacefully! There’s no need to shout!”

“Oh sure, say ‘stop shouting’ after my precious collection has been shattered to pieces by your very voice, you cheap streetwalker!”

Violet’s body was actively improving right before Howard’s eyes, but he was too blinded by rage to notice. Her leggings strained against her skin as bulging triceps begged for freedom, the cheeks of her well-rounded ass swelling into spheres of unparalleled perfection.

“Here’s what you’re going to do, trollop. You’re going to follow me back to the house and clean up that mess you just made!”

Violet nodded in agreement against her better judgment, still terrified of Howard’s recourse, limited as it may be. “O-of course! Lead me right to it! I’ll do it right now!”

“You’re damn right you will!”

She followed the man who she now rivaled in height into his house. The inside was as ancient as he was, tacky wallpaper with carpeting everywhere, complete with that distinct off-smell Violet couldn’t quite place. Leading her into the living room, Howard drew her attention to a particular trophy case where the destruction had occurred, but Violet was shocked a far more severe incident hadn’t happened earlier.

This living room was the fire hazard hazard to end all fire hazards. Violet would be surprised if Howard didn’t have the nearby fire station on speed dial. The grand fireplace was surrounded by carpeting, and what appeared to be a display case of explosives from World War I were present. Above the fireplace was a prop phaser from Star Trek, simply labeled “Chekov’s gun.”

Violet just hoped she could get in and get out without any further complications.

Then Howard, against all better judgment, opened up the double doors of the trophy case, allowing a sizable glass waterfall of coin-sized shards to spill onto the floor, further exacerbating the mess.

“Goodness, it pains me to look at it any further! Clean it up, now!”

He immediately began walking away, only for Violet to stop him in his tracks. “D-do I get anything to clean this up with?”

Howard sighed begrudgingly and handed her just a dustpan.

“B-broom?”

“You don’t get a ding dang broom! You don’t deserve it!”

And so, the poor neighbor girl was forced to get down onto her hands and knees, picking up each individual piece of the shattered display set one by one, painstakingly adding them to the growing pile of shards within the dustpan. Every once in a while, Howard would waltz into the room only to berate Violet further at how terrible of a job she was doing. As if him spilling a bunch of the pieces into the thick shag carpeting didn’t artificially inflate the process to begin with.

“God, this is demeaning,” Violet whispered from underneath her breath. “What I wouldn’t give to burn this whole tacky house to the ground just so I wouldn’t have to deal with Mr. Grove’s bullshit anymore.”

As Violet continued to clean up amidst Howard Grove’s periodic barrage of insults, Sinuous tendrils of steely, sexy muscle wound around her arms and thighs all the way to her elbows and knees, creating deep trenches of definition as they tensed with her every movement. Despite the inconvenience of picking up each glass piece one by one, Violet found that the shattered pieces were particularly dull, unable to even scrape the thick skin of her fingers and thumb.

What should have been a long, tedious process was completed in no time at all, her movements almost machined in their precision as she meticulously placed each piece into the lone dustpan.

“Phew, finally done. Hopefully, I haven’t kept Zach for too long.”

But as she stood up, stretching from her prolonged pose on all fours, disaster struck.

Her burgeoning chest—of which her modest blouse could no longer contain—resisted containment by popping off of the buttons with a “pew!” as she contorted her torso from the stretch.

“Oh, shit!”

The button struck one of the logs in the active fireplace, dislocating it from the pile and causing it to roll out of the fire ring, dangerously close to the carpeting. Desperate to prematurely stop a Rube-Goldberg machine of her own creation, Violet grabbed a fire poker from the side wall and attempted to gingerly nudge the log back to where it belonged.

Unfortunately for her, the carpet had already caught fire and was spreading fast.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!”

Not one to think fast, Violet dilly-dallied about in place for a few seconds before uselessly attempting to stamp out the fire with her shoe. Violet was very surprised when a rather forceful stomp of her foot shattered the wood paneling of the floor beneath her, causing her to lose her balance as part of her leg dipped into the basement.

She dreaded the thought of Howard finding out about this. His living room, reduced to ash! A glance to the right and suddenly Violet realized that maybe soot would be a preferable outcome to the alternative—rubble. The fire was spreading to the display case of explosives as if this were a cartoon. Violet freed her leg from the hole she had created, ready to mitigate as much damage as possible…

“You harlot! You bitch! Look at what you’ve done!” screamed Howard from directly behind Violet, somehow sneaking up on her.

Violet reeled around and—not knowing her own strength—accidentally impaled Howard Grove with the fire poker in her hand. The sharp metal tore right through his torso like a toothpick through baked pie, not stopping until it reared its head out of the other side of his body.

A pained yet subdued grunt of agony would be Howard Grove’s last utterance before collapsing dead before Violet, a steady stream of blood trickling from his agape mouth and pooling within the carpeting. Violet froze in horror, though her body continued to improve without her input, becoming more impossibly beautiful by the second. Her unchanging facial expression was unable to effectively process what was unfolding before her, even as her cheekbones rose and lips filled out.

She wouldn’t get a chance to properly process it either, as an explosion suddenly engulfed the entire living room.

Left dazed yet unharmed, Violet rose from unconsciousness minutes later. Rubbing intrusive debris from her eyes, the first new sight before her was a terrifying one.

The wallpaper was singed and blackened, lights flickered or were off entirely. But light ultimately didn’t matter, as a large hole in the wall brought natural light into the room, as did sporadic fires that still dotted the place. Crumbling bricks and wood provided a discordant soundtrack as they periodically broke off and fell to the floor.

She got to her feet, most of her clothing reduced to scraps upon her untouched form. Sure, she was covered from head to toe in soot, but there wasn’t a scratch to be found upon her body.

Violet jolted back in horror as she caught a glimpse of a particularly horrifying sight before her. The charred, impaled corpse of Howard Grove now permanently burned into her memories.

“Wh-what have I done!?” Violet gripped her head with her hands, falling to her knees. The sounds of police sirens could be heard in the background, barely overpowering the haunting tempo of the raging fire before her. “This… it wasn’t supposed to happen this way! I-I was supposed to just be a normal girl who’d get to meet the love of her life soon! It-it can’t end this way! It can’t—”

Violet checked the clock. 7:30am. Wait, she had just been looking at… what?

She looked directly in front of her. Discord was open, the unsent message awaiting its chance to be sent off to Zach. Her clothes were back on her body.

The memories suddenly flowing back, Violet checked the nearest window. She was equal parts confused and relieved to see that Howard’s house was completely unscathed.

Had she… gone back in time!? Just letting the thought pass through her brain sounded ridiculous, but there was simply no other way to explain it!

Everything was back to normal as it had been during 7:30am, with only one crucial difference—her body. It went from athletic to downright gorgeous! She sooner belonged on a stage with female bodybuilders than she did browsing internet forums and arguing about anime.

If she was developing powers, then perhaps they were the only consistency, even as she meddled with time. But she couldn’t be sure, she needed to test something nonchalant yet impactful. She had been in situations where she wished for time to fix itself before, maybe she just needed to be in a particularly desperate mood?

Curious, she hit send on the post, letting Zach know on no uncertain terms what was happening with her. Immediately, the three dots emerged from the bottom of the screen, Zach typing away at a yet unseen response. Closing her eyes, Violet thought not of the response, but of that familiar sight of the digital clock by her bed. The distinctive neon green of the analog numbers.

Her eyes opened. 7:30am. That familiar feeling of deliberation washed over her body. The message before her remained unsent.

Several unorganized giggles escaped from Violet’s mouth as she looked down at her hands like a mad scientist would to their creation. No more anxiety. No more deliberation. If she was afraid of the potential outcome of a situation, she could just see how it would play out in real time.

Her giggles escalated into full-on laughter, unconcerned with the volume of her tone. She hoped that asshole neighbor would complain again. Maybe she’d make this “first” encounter particularly gruesome for that asshole.

Without the looming specter of consequences, it was like Violet was a completely different person.

A far sexier, less empathetic person. The people she hated, they were not permanent obstacles to her. They were mere dialogue trees to navigate like a video game, with a quicksave option by her side should she need it.

Violet stood up tall. It was time to make some things right in the world.