Chapter 10: Beatrice Gets Food Poisoning.

"Man, it's so weird that you're shorter than me now. You used to have a good two inches on me before!"

 "Uuuugh, don't remind me," Beatrice groaned. "It sucks. I couldn't even reach my pot rack earlier. I had to get a stepstool!"

 "Wait, really!? Wow, that's so funny!"

 Beatrice was now at Alice's apartment, and she was helping pack up her stuff. As they packed, they continued to make small talk… so to speak.

 "Not to me!!!" Beatrice muttered.

 Alice paused for a moment, then turned to look at Beatrice.

 "Come ooonnnn, I'd gladly give several inches of my height if it meant I could become an Altered. You're so lucky!!!" she smiled.

 Beatrice groaned in exasperation. "Alice, I don't spend all my time cooped up in my room reading fantasy novels and watching anime like you do," she said, gesturing toward an entire shelf filled with anime CDs, manga, and novels. "This whole experience… I don't even have words for it! It's been so weird! My eyes don't work the way they used to, my sense of smell is stronger, my skin's a different color, I'm shorter, I've got guns on my arms, I can't sit down properly without crushing my new wings – and that's not even mentioning that I've got an entire other person living in my head!"

 "It's our head, remember? You're in control because I don't know how to use this body, but that doesn't negate that it is as much mine as it is yours," Ambi chided her.

 Beatrice just grunted in response. "I need to sit… lay down," she sighed. As Alice spent all her money on new anime and novels, she didn't have sofas in her small apartment. All she had was her bed and office chair, and Beatrice certainly couldn't use the latter.

 "Hey… what this sticking out from under her pillow?" she muttered to herself, seeing something colorful sticking out from under Alice's pillow. Lifting up the pillow, she could only barely make out an image of a half-dressed man built like a professional bodybuilder ramming his sword through the head of what looked to be a fire-breathing lion.

"EEK!!! Don't touch that!!!" Alice yelled, diving onto the bed and hastily throwing the covers over the book.

"…suddenly, I don't feel the urge to lay down anymore," Beatrice sighed.

Alice just looked up at her, red-faced with embarrassment. Beatrice simply turned around and walked back into the living room. "So is there anything else we'll need?"

"Don't forget my textbooks! We'll need them so we can study during the train ride!" Alice yelled back from the other room.

"Are you sure you want me going through your bookshelf to find your textbooks?" Beatrice teased.

"Don't you dare!!! They're on my desk!"

Beatrice found the books and somehow managed to stuff them into Alice's already overflowing suitcase.

"I think we've got everything! I think we're good to go to the train station now!" Beatrice called out. "So, when does our train leave?" she asked.

No response.

"Uhh… Alice?" she called again.

"Umm…" Alice said, slowly emerging from her room. "10:30 PM," she replied, sheepishly.

Beatrice stood still for a moment, looking completely bewildered.

"Alice!" she stammered.

"Hey, this is not my fault! The only available seats were on the 10:30 train!" she replied.

"But it's like 2:30 right now, though! Why'd you have us pack so early???"

Alice just rubbed her head anxiously in response. "So… so we didn't have to do it later?"

"UUGH! What are we supposed to do for 8 whole hours!?" Beatrice groaned… or rather, it was her stomach that loudly groaned.

"Maybe we could get something to eat?" Alice asked.

Beatrice stood across from Alice at the counter in her kitchen. She was so hungry that it felt like she hadn't eaten in days, but for some reason the orange chicken and fried rice in front of her didn't seem very appetizing. It still smelled the same as she remembered it, but for some reason that smell wasn't making her mouth water and her stomach growl like it used to.

"What's the matter? You're gonna eat that, right?" Alice asked, already half finished with her plate.

"I don't think you should eat that," Ambi warned.

Beatrice kept staring at her plate. There was nothing wrong with it, but for some reason she just didn't want to eat it. She wanted to listen to Ambi, but at the same time her stomach was practically roaring and she didn't want to be rude to her friend who had just spent $10 on this meal for her.

"I don't know… everything about it seems fine, but for some reason I just can't bring myself to put it in my mouth. Ambi doesn't want to eat it either," Beatrice responded, looking forlornly at her plate.

"If you were gonna be a picky eater, the least you could have done is let me know before I ordered a $10 plate from Panda Express for you," Alice teased.

"I am not a picky eater!" Beatrice exclaimed defiantly, shoving a bite of chicken into her mouth just to prove her point.

But something about it didn't feel right. It still tasted like she remembered it, but it was her response to the taste that had changed. She used to like the flavor of rice and orange chicken, having subsisted off of it for an entire semester back in her undergrad years, but now it almost revolted her. And the texture seemed off, too. Still, she chewed it and swallowed just to prove that she wasn't a picky eater. And then she ate another bite. And another. Before she knew it, she had consumed almost a quarter of the plate. Still, she grimaced every time she took a bite and shuddered every time she swallowed. And each time she lifted her fork to her mouth, Ambi pleaded even louder in her head for her to stop eating.

It seemed that Alice had noticed that she didn't like it as well.

"You know, I was only just teasing you," Alice said. "You don't have to eat it if you don't want to.

Almost instinctively, Beatrice pushed her plate away the moment Alice said that. "I'm sorry, I just can't eat it for some reason. It might have something to do with Ambi."

She shuddered, still remembering the taste and texture of the chicken. "Got any pop in your fridge? I need to get that taste out of my mouth," she asked.

"Sure, Bea, I have some soda in my fridge," Alice smiled.

"Screw you," Beatrice said, grabbing a root beer from the fridge. "It's 'pop' and you know it."

"Funny… I've only ever heard it called 'soda' my whole life," Alice teased.

"You southwesterners are weird," Beatrice said, shaking her head as she sipped her can of root beer. The cool, fizzy soda tickled her throat as she drank. It was… sweeter than she remembered it. And she liked it. She liked it a lot. It almost scared her how much sweeter it tasted and how much she liked the sweetness.

"What is this?" Ambi asked. "It's so good! Is this some kind of honey? And why does it feel so… strange? It's like something's crawling around in my mouth!"

Suddenly, a sense of panic rose up in Beatrice's chest. Her chest tightened, her throat dried, and she nearly choked on her drink. She set her drink down on the counter, nearly spilling it in the process, before violently coughing into the sink as some of it spilled down her esophagus.

"Spit it out! There's something crawling in our mouth! Spit it out right now!!!" Ambi shouted.

Beatrice held up two fingers, which Alice saw and recognized as Beatrice's sign that what she was about to say was directed at Ambi, not Alice.

"Cough! Cough! Relax! Cough! Don't worry! Cough! It's - cough! - supposed to feel like that. There's nothing alive in there, nothing's crawling in our - cough! - mouth. It's pop. It's a fizzy, bubbly drink people make and sell. Cough! Cough! It has a lot of sugar in it though so I try not to drink it often," Beatrice said. She then continued coughing into the sink.

Suddenly, the panic began to subside as Ambi surely realized her foolishness, but she could still sense that Ambi was a bit skeptical. But even that skepticism, too, passed eventually as Ambi realized that Beatrice surely wouldn't willingly put live bugs in her mouth.

"Bullshit. You had a new one on your desk every day back when we lived together," Alice teased.

"Shut up! I said try. Present tense. Do you speak English?" Beatrice retorted.

"I like it a lot! We'll definitely have to drink it more often, then!" Ambi happily continued, ignoring Alice. "Sorry for earlier..." she said, remorsefully.

"Don't worry about it," Beatrice said, again holding up two fingers. "I don't need to yell at you for it since you felt your throat burn just as much as mine did. Anyways, I can definitely drink this more often, but I'm trying to watch my diet though… oh, well. Maybe I've inherited your metabolism, too. Don't bees consume a lot of sugar?" Beatrice replied.

"I take it that Ambi liked the soda?" Alice chuckled.

"Yeah, and she wants me to drink more," Beatrice grumbled. "My diet is ruined."

"Girl, you don't need to diet with a physique like that!" Alice said, noting Beatrice's athletic frame.

Suddenly, Beatrice's stomach started to rumble and she keeled over in pain.

 "AAH!" she gasped before she quickly covered her mouth and ran into the bathroom. Her insides were on fire!!!! She began to retch as she dashed toward the bathroom. As she retched, her mouth began to taste like rotten eggs.

 "I told you you shouldn't eat that!" Ambi groaned.

 "Bea!? Bea, are you okay?" Alice yelled, running after her. While she ran, her sunglasses fell off her face and Alice nearly stepped on them.

 Before she knew it, Beatrice was vomiting her entire lunch back up into Alice's toilet. She gripped the porcelain seat as she dry heaved over the bowl, her body attempting to forcibly expel every last bit of solid matter in her stomach.

 It was awful. Her mouth tasted like rotten eggs and stomach acid. Her throat burned and she kept trying to spit out little bits of chicken that had gotten caught in her mouth when she threw up. Then, she opened her eyes.

 "OH MY GOD! WAAAAH!" she yelled, jumping back from the toilet before dry heaving some more. It was filthy! Was she really touching that just a few moments ago!? The entire bowl was stained several odd, grimy colors that only became more disgusting toward the center of the bowl. The seat was much better, but it still had several nasty stains on it.

 "WHAT THE FUCK, ALICE!? DO YOU NOT CLEAN YOUR DAMN TOILET!?" Beatrice turned and yelled at Alice before running over to the bathroom sink and throwing up into it.

 "What the hell, Bea!? Throw up in the toilet; don't make me clean up my sink after this!" Alice yelled.

 "I'm not touching that! Just look at it!" Beatrice yelled in response.

 "What do you mean!? It's completely white! I just put chemical cleaner in it last week!" Alice argued.

 "No you didn't! Just look at it! It's… it's…" Beatrice suddenly realized that she didn't know what color the toilet was. It was a strange, disgusting color that made her stomach tie itself into knots inside her abdomen every time she thought of it. It was revolting just to look at. In fact, looking at it only served to increase her nausea fivefold.

 "I don't think she can see it," Ambi said. "And just so you know, I call that color 'filth,'" Ambi continued.

 For the next hour or so, Beatrice continued to dry-heave into Alice's trash can. Alice retrieved her sunglasses and gave them back to Beatrice, but Beatrice opted not to wear them for fear of accidentally touching something else that was filthy. Afterward, Ambi suggested that Beatrice might not be able to eat human food anymore.

 "That's a possibility," Alice said. "Wait, hold on, I have an idea!"

 She then quickly ran to her cupboard and produced a large bear-shaped bottle of honey. Since bees eat honey, surely Beatrice would be able to eat this, right?

Beatrice was initially hesitant due to her lingering nausea, but Ambi's (and hers) mouth watered the moment their eyes recognized the contents of the bottle. Almost instinctually, she eagerly snatched the bottle from Alice's hands. The moment she tore off the lid, her antennae shot straight up. Its smell practically surrounded her. It was a sweet, thick aroma that made drew in her mind an image of a large meadow full of beautiful flowers. In that moment, she wanted nothing more than to shove the entire bottle right down her throat. Her instincts all but took over and before she knew it, she had thrown the lid of the bottle to her side and was squeezing the contents of the entire bottle directly into her mouth. As the thick, sticky, yellow fluid oozed down her throat, she noted that while it did taste exactly as she remembered it, she liked it a lot more than she used to. In fact, part of her even wished she could eat nothing but this for the rest of her life.

 Almost as quickly as it came, the taste in her mouth began to subside. Opening her eyes, she saw that the bottle was nearly empty and began desperately trying to lick the inside. She only stopped when she heard Alice giggling beside her.

 "You look ridiculous right now!" she chuckled.

 Embarrassed, Beatrice put the empty bottle on the counter and covered her reddening cheeks with her hands.

 "I don't understand… it's like I couldn't stop myself!" she said, shakily.

 Alice continued to tease her while she kept apologizing, and eventually the two (three?) decided to rest and talk for a bit about Beatrice's new body, her abilities, and their upcoming trip. Before any of them knew it, several hours had passed and dusk had arrived.

 It was now time for them to head to the train station.