Singapur

Chapter 1 : The Awakening

thump thump, thump thump

huhhhh 5 more seconds, pleasee

thump thump, thump thump

gosh darn why the heck is the alarm clock so loud?? Waitt, Wait a second.....

thump thump, thump thump

huh?

"AUFWACHEN FRäULEIN KATHARINE!"

waittt is that german?

*Click*

All at once my 5 sense were being assaulted with a concotony of the stimulus. With my mind practically in disarray, I decided to do what I do best compartmentalize.

First things first scent, I could smell the freshness of some flowers in my room. Was it Edelweiss? Lavender? Who knows? But one thing's for sure it definitely smelt foreign. Next on the list, touch. Other than the reassuring feeling of the bed, there seemed to be nothing particularly out of the ordinary except one rather odd thing. A strip of fabric constricting my chest.

Feeling rather alarmed by it I hurriedly grabbed my chest only to feel a huge lump of flesh that I am quite sure has never been there. Further adding to my alarm was the fact that my crotch area felt strangely empty. Thrusting my hand down into my pants I tried hard to find that reassuring feeling but to no avail. With my hands consistently grabbing a whole load of nothing, I decided that there was nothing I could do about that. And thus my moved to my next course of action, open my eyes.

Big mistake

To say I was shocked was an understatement.

Everything looked so different. For one the color of my room was completely off. Instead of the marvelous seaweed green which I personally coated my room in, it was instead replaced by a shade of silverish indigo. Absolutely disgusting. On top of that everything looked so girlish. My sleek carbon fiber bookshelves? Gone replaced by an old fashioned Teak bookshelf. My collection of stuffed toys? Gone replaced by a bunch of frilly dolls, the kind more fit to be in a toy museum than a habited room. What was most triggering of all was that my phone was gone! I knew this because only in some alternate world would I use an old fashioned alarm clock in favor of my trusty Samsung note 7, a phone which has dutifully served for well over two years by now and has amazingly enough, yet to explode on me.

With this sudden realization, I went full-on retrieval mode. Jumping out of my bed, I started to frantically search the ground for my ever-elusive mobile device, all the while casually ignoring the fact that there was a person about 1 meter from me shouting, presumably, for me to get up.

As I fumbled around on the floor I hear a voice behind ring out "Katherine, was ist los? Soll ich helfen?" before hand gently grasps my shoulder

"Yes, actually could you help me find....." I turn my head over to face my brother and my jaw dropped to the ground "holy macaroni."

'My brother' had somehow, lost his balls and grown boobs in place overnight. Instead of the singlets that my brother likes to strut around in no matter rain snow or shine, 'he' was instead clad in a one-piece dress reaching at least to the ankles. Talk about a 180 change in fashion taste.

Furthermore, my brother was slim af and I mean it. "he" had not a strand of blubber on him which is a shocker since the last I remembered, size-wise, he shared more similarities to  Hermann Göring than Joseph Gobbels. Maybe I should ask "him" what weight loss program he used hmm.....

"Was?" My "bro" retorted, clearly rather bewildered as to why I was looking at "him" as though he was from Mars.

"Nothing, haha" I replied back before instinctively covering my mouth, realizing something really weird. How did my German babbling "bro" manage to understand a single word I was saying?? When I visualized the words in my brain they were all English yet when I say it all out somehow or another my braindead "bro" managed to understand it..  wait whattt am I dreaming or smth?

"Beeil dich Katherine oder das Essen wird kalt" My "bro" muttered, glancing back one last time with a look of prime time confusion on "his" face before leaving the room.

Finally, I was alone in "my" room, free from the tyranny of my screeching noisy brother, I take a deep breath, soaking in the weird germaness of everything before burying my head straight first into my pillow in complete shock. In my mind, one phrase repeated over and over again in my mind, what the heck is going on??

Literally 10 minutes before,

When in the world is my bus going to arrive!

Sitting at Mac Ritchie bustop, I tapped my foot impatiently. My bus, despite numerous reassurances from my bus app has yet to arrive at my station and I was growing rather frustrated.

Today was one of the scares few days in which I got to go back early from school and being a JC student like myself that was a godsent. I had mentally planned to revise my chemistry before moving on to do some overdue math homework and, if time permits, play a few rounds of Rainbow Six Seige with my friends before finally taking an 8 hours nap and waking up the next day refreshed and ready to tackle another day in hell I mean JC.

But noooo SMRT just has to ruin my life by delaying my bus for a good 20 minutes and, on top of that give me false hope through their nefarious bus app. Guess that's what happens when you but ex-generals in charge of the major state-owned corporations......

But besides that, there was also the fact that today felt particularly  off.

Barring the glitch in my bus app, time intermittently felt slower for some reason. It was as though someone decided to fiddle around with the speed buttons on video players periodically changing it from x1 to x1.5 over and over again.

On top of that, my perception felt strangely warped. Like someone had replaced my lenses with fisheye glass and now I was seeing everything rather distorted.

Me being the rationale one chalked it up to tiredness. After all throughout the week, I had been studying hard for the upcoming mid-year exams and as a result, my sleep schedule has become absolutely whack as of late.

On some days I would reach home absolutely beat from school and sleep for about 7 hours only to wake up at around 2 am and study till it the following day. On other days I would sleep ultra-early at around 7 o clock, wake up at 3 am and study till 7 am before hopping onto the first bus of the day and traveling to school. Suffice to say I really shouldn't be alive now but due to some divine intervention I am and well thank god for that!

Deciding after another 5 minutes that enough was enough, I started walking towards the overhead bridge in order to take a bus to an MRT station and hopefully, emphasis on hopefully, get home before 6.30 if not today was truly a wasted day.

Just as I was marching off in frustration, I heard a screech and the familiar rumbling of the bus. Turning my head to the side, I see my bus lumbering over to the bustop.

Final freakingly I thought to myself, absolutely overjoyed that the bus finally decided to show it's face. Changing trajectory, I turned towards the bus, only to run into one teeny problem. I was stuck.

To clarify it's not stuck stuck but if you stuck your hand into the bottom of a maple syrup jar and tried to pull your hands out kind of stuck.

I could, to some extent, move but it required such herculean effort to move even millimeters that honestly there wasn't much point.

On top of that, there was this persistent humming sound in the air that was making me really nauseous. Yet paradoxically I could not move a muscle to vomit let a lone cry for help. I was just stuck there in suspended animation. All the while the bus continued to lumber towards me, it's front side bearing down intimidatingly on my helpless body.

As the bus closed in on me, I closed my eyes bracing for the impending impact. Yet all I felt was a slight push then in an instant, my whole body felt like it was sucked down a drain then, just as quickly the sensation was replaced with a whole laid of nothingness before the whole world went dark around me.