Gildenheart -1- Six-Oh-Five

Gordon never knew exactly what hit him, high above the Syrian desert in his fighter jet one moment, and the next, shaking off the effects of a high-gee exit from the plane.

He turned over several times, the world spinning in a blue that seemed to have no horizon. The automatics in the ejection seat released him and he pressed with his left hand the button that would delay his chute release.

“…copy?” said a voice in his ears.

His thumb found the press-to-talk button and he replied. “Negative, Sugarbase. I’m hit, the plane is toast and I auto-ejected. Captain Gordon Victor to Sugarbase, over.” He scanned the sky, looking for whoever might have shot him down, wondering vaguely and with no urgency how they had managed to sneak up on him without instruments or base detecting them.

A burst of garble in his ear failed to clear up completely. “…identify…spot…Gordie? Over.”

He’d finally located the ground after assuming the recommended position for descent, limbs extended, chin tucked into his flight jacket. He still hadn’t spotted any other craft in his corner of the sky. “No clue. No bogies before or after. Last instrument had altimeter of 4500 meters, five degrees north of west, nominal cruising speed. I don’t even see my own plane. Gordon Victor, over.”

The radio buzzed and yarped at him but nothing he could recognize. He triple-clicked the talk button to signal a need for Sugarbase to repeat just as he noticed an object approaching from below. It grew rapidly, looking like no aircraft he had ever seen. Before he could move to call in a report, it reached him and he diidn’t remember anything more.

* * *

The knocking woke him up. In the darkness, Gordon heard a muffled voice. “Five-fifteen. Train leaves at six-oh-five.”

Train? He thought a little murkily.

The knocking came again. “Make a noise, so I know you’re awake,” the voice insisted.

“Present!” he called out, rising up on an elbow. His voice sounded odd. His chest felt odder, heavy. He wondered vaguely if he had caught a cold.

Footsteps moved on down the hall.

Gordon fumbled around in a near complete darkness. In his mind, he was back in his cadet quarters in Colorado Springs and there should be a lamp on a table beside the bed. He found it but instead of a button switch at the base, it had a chain. He pulled the chain and the room became visible.

Not a room he had ever seen before.

Across the room, near the door sat an old brown monstrosity of a dresser with a large cracked mirror reflecting the image of a startled looking teenage girl.

Gordon raised a hand to his face, and the girl raised a slender hand to hers.

Briefly the room seemed to spin about Gordon as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. He patted his face, watching as the girl patted hers. He didn’t feel at all as if he were dreaming.

He looked down at himself and gasped. He had the same prominent breasts as the girl in the mirror, almost decently covered by a pale pink shirt. Large dark nipples pushed against the fabric of the…blouse? He almost screamed but put a hand in his mouth to stop himself.

The room didn’t just spin this time, it seemed to lurch as he tried to pull himself out of the bed, getting tangled in the bedclothes and the long, navy blue skirt he seemed to be wearing. He almost fell, splat, into the middle of the floor but caught himself on the bed and stood up.

“Holy crap,” he whispered. His feet—such delicate looking toes peeping out from under the curve of his new breasts!—were bare and the floor was cold. Beside the bed sat a pair of women’s boots, not high heels but not flats either. Stockings were stuffed into the boots. At least they looked like stockings.

Someone knocked on the door again. “Five twenty,” said the same voice as before. “Coffee and cinnamon rolls downstairs.” The voice sounded friendly and female with a bit of accent of some sort. “Vickie?” The doorknob rattled. “You’re not still in bed, are you?”

Vickie must be me, Gordon realized. Vickie? “I’m cold,” he said. It was no lie, his teeth clicked together. The knob began to turn. “But I’m up, I’m up!”

The person outside the door chuckled. “I promised your mama I’d get you on the train ever’ morning, sweetie, so shake your lazy tail.” The steps moved on.

Gordon frowned. “I’m not lazy,” he complained. Then realized that he, or rather, Vickie, had been sleeping in her clothes, probably to save time in the early morning. It was a trick he remembered from his one college year before going to the Air Force Academy. Someone giggled, nervously, and he suspected it must be himself.

“I’d better… I guess… I need…? I dunno?” His teeth kept chattering and that made up his mind. “Coffee,” he muttered. Hot coffee and sweet rolls sounded good. He sat on the bed, then had to get up to get the fold of the skirt out from under him. He smoothed the fabric and sat down again, looking at his feet, and the boots and stockings sitting nearby.

His feet felt icy and the chill penetrated his body, causing two spots under his blouse to crinkle up like gigantic goosebumps. “Boots,” he whispered.

The boots didn’t look too hard to manage, a little more than ankle-high with square two-inch heels and buckles on the side. And the stockings turned out to be thick woolen things like tall socks. But did he know how to put on stockings? 

He decided to treat them like the long athletic socks he’d worn playing baseball for the Falcons. That provoked some memories, good and bad, and while he relived hitting the most triples on the team two years in a row (as well as never starting at a regular position for three whole seasons) he made relatively quick and smooth work of putting on the stockings.

Bemused and blinking, he stuck his legs out and pulled up his skirt to his knees. “Those are some nice legs,” he said. Someone giggled again but he ignored her. Under the skirt, he seemed to be wearing two slips, one of which had lace and ruffles and was properly a petticoat but Gordon didn’t know that word. Quickly pulling the skirt down, he reflected that at least the skirts had kept his legs warm when his feet had been cold.

Before putting on the boots, he found a bit of pink lace tucked into each one which puzzled him until he realized they must be garters to hold the stockings up, which had already started too droop a bit at the tops. More nervous giggles. “This is dumb,” he complained, “and why do they have to be pink?” Up came the skirts again and Gordie quickly tied the garters; he had been a boy scout, after all.

The boots went on next. While bending over to fasten the buckles, Gordon made another discovery, he did not bend at the waist quite how he would have expected. He had already guessed he might be wearing a bra or something similar but feeling through his clothing he found that some stiff, substantial undergarment covered him from bust almost to mid-thigh. The—corset?—whatever—pushed his substantial breast up and forward from below and the sides, but did not cover his… nipples that still pushed against the fabric of his blouse.

“What the heck?” he muttered, blushing a bit. And he had slept in the thing? But it really wasn’t uncomfortable, more like a continuing soft hug. It restricted his from bending or turning or taking a deep breath but… The mounds on his chest certainly needed some sort of support.

Feeling through his skirts, the corset seemed to end just at his hips, a little lower in front and a little higher in back. It fit very closely and probably narrowed his waist by two or more inches. He stood in front of the mirror and marveled at an extreme but natural-seeming hourglass figure.

The girl in the mirror stared back at him with blue eyes wide, mounds of blonde hair bed-tousled and plump pink lips slightly parted to show perfect white teeth and a slight overbite. “Sex,” he said quietly to the girl. “No one could look at you and not think about sex.”

Steps in the hallway stopped at his door and a softer voice than before asked, “Vickie? Are you decent?”

Gordie blinked and a giggle escaped. I’ve got to quit doing that, he chided himself. “I guess?” he answered. Well, he was dressed wasn’t he? Besides, it was another girl. Another girl? More giggles.

The door opened and the other girl, this one dark-haired, did indeed enter the room which was really barely big enough for two. “You aren’t ready yet?” the brunette scolded. “Missus Fairley will tell Mama if you’re late coming down and you’ll get a spanking Saturday when she comes to collect our wages!”

“What?!” Gordie exclaimed. That couldn’t be right… wasn’t this Vickie whose body he had landed in a grown woman? He glanced at his reflection in the cracked mirror. Maybe not, in the face she looked as if she might be a young teenager. Then again, that was an impressive bust and she had wide womanly hips, too.

Did she have a job just so ‘Mama’ could harvest her wages? Under threat of physical violence? “She wouldn’t dare!?” Gordie heard his voice squeal.

The other girl tapped her own lips with a finger and glanced at the door, giggling. Which made Gordie giggle, too. Dang it.

“Not Missus Fairley; Mama Gildenhart. She spanked you just last month, remember? For trying to run away on Halloween? With that boy?”

Gordie shook his head vigorously. Good Grief! He certainly didn’t remember that! Running away with a boy? He felt his face grow hot and a glance at the mirror showed the girl there blushing, too. He could understand that some boy would want to run away with her.

The brunette grinned and nodded. “Mama did, ‘cause you did and you promised you’d be good and everything. You cried and begged and you only got nine swats.” She sniffed. “A little kid’s whoopin’ and you cut up something terrible.” She kept grinning as if it were a big joke.

Gordie put a knuckle between his teeth and bit down to stop himself from giggling. I do it when I’m scared or nervous, he told himself. The other girl giggled, too.

The brunette wore a buttoned-up waist-length jacket and an open overcoat and Gordie saw similar garments inside the open door of the room’s only other piece of furniture: a wardrobe as old and brown as the decrepit dresser. All the other clothing inside appeared to be either dresses or skirts and blouses like he was already wearing.

Phyllis pulled out a jacket similar to her own and held it out for Gordie to slip it on. “See,” he told the other girl. “I’m ready.” He fumbled a bit with the buttons, not quite realizing he had first tried to close them the wrong way. Phyllis made short work of buttoning it up.

Why am I doing this, he wondered. Why am I getting ready to go somewhere with this girl? Where are we going? Is it that I don’t want her to think I’m crazy? Am I crazy? Am I a dead Air Force pilot or just a crazy girl?

“You’ll need your coat, too, silly. It’s freezing outside,” the brunette suggested.

Phyllis had to use both hands to take it out of the wardrobe and help him put it on. Dang, Gordie thought, this is a heavy coat. “That’s why I come by in the mornings—to help you get dressed,” the brunette joked. She pushed Gordie’s hands away as she buttoned it up for him.

They both giggled but Gordie wondered just where in the world Vickie lived? He’d grown up in Southern California, went to college at UCLA and Colorado Springs, trained in Texas and served on bases in Florida, Europe and the Middle East. Other than four winters at the Air Force Academy and one in Germany, he didn’t have much experience with cold weather. And this heavy coat said there must be some serious cold outside.

“Get your stuff,” the girl said, motioning toward the top of the dresser. She turned away to go back to the door, easing it open to look down the hall. Was Missus Fairley coming to check on them, wondered Gordie? He tried to suppress giggles while taking inventory of the spread of Vickie’s stuff in front of the mirror.

A purse. Well, the other girl had one, too, with a long enough strap that she wore it crossbody, left shoulder to right hip. A small pile of cheap jewelry: necklace, bracelet… earrings? They must be earrings, of the kind that simply hooked through a hole in the ear lobe instead of having a clasp.

But….

Folded under the gewgaws was a small wad of money, several bills in fact. Acting almost without thinking about it, Gordie scooped the money and jewelry into the purse, closed it and put the strap over his neck and shoulder like he’d seen the other girl wearing.  

He moved toward the door, “Let’s go,” he said.

But the other girl did not get out of his way. “Your hairs a mess. And where’s your hat? You dunce, your ears will freeze,” she said. She was herself wearing a hat, a black, felted thing with a furry-looking underbrim. Pointing at Vickie’s hat hanging on a hook on the side of the wardrobe, she glanced toward the sound of foot traffic in the hallway. “We’ll be last and all the cimmanun rolls will be gone and the coffee will be cold.”

Gordie fetched the hat, giggling at the other girl’s version of cinnamon then glared at the innocent chapeau. It was similar to the other one but it had a pink ribbon the same color as Vickie’s shirt. Gordie sniffed but put it on and followed his new friend into the hallway, pursuing the smell of coffee and hot spice.

They hurried, dodging around older slower residents, not quite running. There’s a lot of people out here, we must live in a big boarding house or something, thought Gordie. We’re holding hands and giggling. Gordie sighed.