Normally when one wakes up their eyes open slowly. Some people even wake up with their eyes still closed. That is not what happened to me today. Instead, my eyes shot open. And what I saw wasn't what I expected to see. I didn't see the low ceiling of my own bedroom, I saw a ceiling that very distinctly wasn't my own, made of milk-white tiles, high above me.
"That's... weird?" I muttered, or at least... I think I muttered that. The voice that escaped my body wasn't the voice that I recognized as my own.
I felt the vibrations of my words escape my throat and I heard the words, but the voice I heard was clearer and far more baritone than the voice that I recognized as my own had ever been. It didn't matter if I was speaking in English or in Spanish, the two languages I spoke fluently, I recognized my voice and that wasn't it.
I stared at the ceiling tiles, confusion, and fear beginning to sneak into my heart. Part of the reason for the confusion and fear was that my other senses were beginning to slowly come to life and they were picking up foreign stimuli. I needed a few moments to begin to process what was going on beyond my line of sight.
The sense of mine that was flaring up the fastest was my sense of hearing. My sense of hearing was... weirdly powerful. Wherever I was was a weirdly and totally silent place aside from me and my breathing but outside of the place I had woken up in... I heard cheering. Among other things, I heard an incredible number of people cheering loud enough that their individual voices blended together to form an odd din. And that wasn't the only thing I heard either.
My hearing was so powerful that my first thoughts after hearing the din weren't to question the din itself but to wonder about my hearing. "How is it so powerful?" I asked myself, speaking aloud in that same strange, clear voice from a few moments ago.
The wide array of sounds I heard included but wasn't limited to the sounds of distant feet sinking into soft sand, the splash of water gently lapping at the feet and legs of children, the distant bleating of sheep, the sounds of fit bodies vigorous fucking, and an astounding number of individual voices chanting something that would have sounded right coming out of a Roman Catholic cathedral.
I listened to these sounds and stood still for a few moments. No sounds were closing in on me, and the part of my mind that was attuned to danger wasn't sensing anything. Wherever I was, I was in all likelihood alone. I knew that to confirm this I'd need to move, but I knew that when I moved I'd be forced to contend with the new and weird reality I found myself in. That said, even standing still I could sense the weirdness of the situation I was in.
My other senses were coming to life. My sense of touch was the next sense to fully flare to life. I felt an incredibly soft bed underneath me. And my sense of touch also informed me that I was naked.
I could feel the luxurious sheets touch my bare skin, be it my arms, my legs, my chest, or even my neck. And I felt nothing stand between my skin and the sheets. It was only when I processed this that I finally pushed myself up from laying down on the bed I was on and actually took a real look around me. I was still largely wrapped in the bed's sheets, but at least now I was upright.
I found myself at one end of a wide bedroom. At a glance, I'd say that the room I was currently in was roughly forty meters across and equally wide. It was sparsely decorated but the few pieces of furniture it did have were pieces I found quite interesting.
Aside from the bed I woke up on, which was the same shade of milk-white as the ceiling high above me, every piece of furniture was sea-shell green. There was a dresser on the other side of the room, a table on top of which was an empty journal and a cup which was used to store a number of pens and pencils, a nightstand next to me, and a vanity on one end of the room.
One end of the room was defined by a wall that was, rather unsurprisingly, milk-white. The other end of the room was split between being made of a milk-white wall, and a large wall made of glass that showed me the outside world. I looked through it and was surprised to find that I must have been fairly high up because all I could see when I looked through the walls was an impossibly blue ocean that stretched on for as far as I could see.
I turned my head and noticed a few other things. One of the things I noticed was that there were two doors. One was on the end of the room to my right, and the other was on the end of the room to my left. The wall to my right was the one that was half made of solid material and half made of glass. The one to my right was the one that was entirely solid. Both doors were thick things made from expertly cut stone.
Another thing I noticed was the wall behind my bed also had two doors. These ones were see-through and clearly led to closets. Within both of them, there was a wide array of clothes, including what might have been Halloween outfits tailored to mimic the aesthetics and fashion of the Roman Empire. I could see an almost comical number of togas, tunics, and even what I vaguely recognized from my college years as the armor worn by footsoldiers in the Roman Empire.
The last thing I noticed in the room was a small, surprisingly simple nightstand next to the bed I woke up on. On top of it was a single piece of paper that had a simple message written on it: "Open the first drawer and wear the outfit in it. Modern clothes will be off-putting to the locals." The handwriting was nondescript and the message it communicated was more than a bit ominous.
I studied the note, and then reached out to open the drawer. Before I could though, I actually got to see my hand, seeing a part of myself for the first time since I woke up. At this point, I had been awake for less than five minutes.
My hand and the arm it was attached too were both incredibly thick things. My fingers were long and far thicker than they had been before. Before today I had been fit and moderately muscular, but the arm I was looking at was incredibly thick and I could see the curvature of each muscle of mine.
I studied this for a moment, before taking my other hand and tearing the soft sheets that covered the rest of my body off of me, all while my eyes were glued to the parts of me that were hidden by the sheets. I audibly gasped when I saw what was revealed to me.
I wasn't just muscular. The body that was revealed to me was more muscular than that of a professional wrestler at his prime. My legs and my core were both covered in tanned muscles, including muscles that even I, a medical professional and fairly athletic man, was totally unfamiliar with.
I used my powerful vision to carefully study my new form. This body wasn't the one I had gone to sleep having. It was like someone had taken that body and pushed it to be as comically idealized as possible.
My skin was as tan as it had been before, thanks to a lifetime in the Puerto Rican sun, but that and the fact that I had the same facial structure as before, something I discovered by running a hand over the edges of my face, were about it as far as similarities went. Every part of me, including my masculine organs, were larger and molded to mimic some sort of idealized man.
I spent a few moments exploring my new body, both laying my eyes on it and also touching some of my muscles. Eventually, I began to slowly move my body parts and somehow I was both surprised and a small part of me was not surprised to find that each movement was easier than it had ever been.
My methodical exploration of my body informed me that it was definitely mine. I sensed even the lightest touch and my body responded to my efforts to move it with both a precision and effortlessness that had never been the case before even at my athletic peak.
Every movement, no matter how slight, came as easily as breathing. On a purely instinctual level I also sensed that my flexibility and bodily control had somehow also been increased but I wasn't in a position to confirm that just yet. Eventually I sighed and shook my head.
"This is impossible... I must be... dreaming." I told myself, attempting to persuade myself that this was just a dream. I didn't believe it though. I sat still, silent for a few moments. Ultimately, I shook my head again, trying to clear my mind and reached out to open the dresser. I opened it super easily and found a distinct, toga-like garment within.
The piece of clothing was a beautiful shade of red. I studied it, trying to remember how to put it on. I had actually gone to numerous Halloween parties dressed as some sort of person from the Roman Empire, so I had worn togas before, and so it only took me a moment of mentally trudging through memories before I recalled the process by which I properly adorned this sort of clothing.
"Do I... really want to put this on?" I asked myself, as I placed the piece of clothing carefully on the bed next to me and actually left the soft bed for the first time. I pushed myself off of the bed and planted my feet on the cold floor. The floor I was now standing on top of was cold to the touch but it was also deceptively soft. It had looked hard, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that that was apparently a deception meant to, I assume, give it a stylized appearance.
"This is all... really weird." I mused, only just now beginning to piece together the sheer impossibility of all of this. I wanted to believe it was a dream, but there was a quiet voice in my head that was telling me that that part of me was only denying reality. I internally struggled with those two voices, considering which to listen too, before I began to laugh.
I spent a few moments doing nothing but laughing, clearing my head, and deciding to take stock of my situation. When I stopped laughing I thought about my situation as objectively as I could.
Last night I had fallen asleep in my bed, in a medium-sized apartment, many kilometers away from the ocean. I had been in the city of Laguna, Puerto Rico. And now I was in an unknown place, in a body that might as well have been someone else's, but that I knew was somehow mine.
My senses were sharper than they had ever been, to the point that I could hear and differentiate between the assorted noises that were audible outside of the room and even the very building I had woken up in. If I touched the toga-like garment a mysterious note suggested I wore and concentrated, I somehow knew I'd be able to feel even the thinnest and tiniest imperfections.
I was quiet for several moments. Even my breathing stopped. After a while, I chuckled and spoke to no one in particular. "I guess... I should just embrace it?" I asked myself, knowing that I was talking just to fill the room with noise. I chuckled and spent a few moments properly putting on the toga.
When I was in the garment I walked over to the vanity and studied myself in its mirror. The outfit was thick, even for a toga, and by itself covered nearly all of me. That was impressive since this unusual transformation had increased my height.
I was tall before, standing over two meters when I stood up straight but now... Now I was closer to two and a half meters tall. I could now also study my face, thanks to the mirror. My face had undergone a transformation not unlike the rest of my body. I wasn't humble and my face before this odd transformation had been handsome but now... There was something almost unsettling about the perfect symmetry of the face in the mirror that stared back at me.
I had perfectly straightened teeth, a jawline to die for, and the strangest eyes I had ever seen: my eyes were the color of amethysts, and what was weirder was they were entirely one color, instead of the usual array of colors of the various parts of eyes. They were large violet orbs that further highlighted the vast differences between my new appearance and my old appearance. They were admittedly quite nice to look at, but they were also entirely unlike any other eyes I had ever seen.