Chapter 10: Changing Clothes

“Are you sure you won’t wear these clothes?” Jared asked again, his voice earnest, holding up the dead man's grimy shirt. “You’d be much warmer.”

“No,” I said, my own voice surprisingly firm, cutting through the damp air. “I’d rather die.” The fever-induced chills were still racking my body, a relentless tremor, but it was a deeper, more primal revulsion that made me refuse. It was a revulsion born of a different world, a different life, a barrier my very soul refused to cross.

“Well then, let’s cover you with more blankets. That should help,” he suggested, picking up the filthy bedding that belonged to the alcove's previous, deceased owner. It was a rare luxury to have a mattress at all, I supposed, even one so tattered that the grey, lumpy stuffing was leaking out like entrails.

“No! That’s still a dead man’s bed!” I recoiled, pulling my own threadbare blanket tighter, as if it were a shield. The corpse had been lying right there just moments ago. The thought of sleeping where he had died, on bedding that had soaked up his final, agonizing moments, made my skin crawl. Honestly, in my former life as a modern high school student, while I wasn’t obsessed with everything being brand new, personal items like clothes and bedding were things you never, ever bought second-hand, let alone scavenged from a corpse. In my mind, everything in this wretched hole ought to be thrown out, and the dead man’s clothes and bedding should be burned to ashes, a pyre to cleanse the filth and the memory.

“Parula, what’s wrong with you?” Jared finally asked, a flicker of confusion and hurt in his eyes. “You were never like this before.” He was finally starting to notice. The real Parula, the sweet, obedient little sister he remembered, was gone. My prolonged illness and my silence, born of unfamiliarity with the language, had masked the change. But now that I was speaking more, he could sense the difference, the wrongness. Of course, he couldn't possibly guess the impossible truth.

“I… I just don’t want to use a dead person’s things,” I whispered, lowering my gaze. “I’m scared.” It wasn't that I feared being discovered; what more could they do to me? Cast me out to die? I was already there. I just didn't want to break this boy’s heart. He had clearly cherished his little sister. The truth—that she was long dead, and her body now occupied by the soul of a man from another world—was a cruelty too great to inflict upon him.

“Oh… alright,” Jared said, looking troubled. The old Parula had been timid, he remembered, and she’d never had to use a dead person’s belongings before. MacDuff would have claimed anything of value for himself. So he had no way of knowing if this was a new quirk or an old fear. He couldn't understand my revulsion. In his world, you took what you could get, no questions asked. To not freeze to death was a victory in itself; where the clothes came from was a trivial, dangerous luxury of a detail. The chasm between our upbringings, our worlds, was too vast. We were destined to misunderstand each other.

“Fine,” he sighed, running a hand through his matted hair in frustration. “How about this? I’ll light the brazier. There must be some wood scraps or charcoal left.” He began to rummage around the small alcove, looking for fuel.

“Stop! Don’t you dare light that fire!” I cried out, my voice sharp with a panic that surprised even me. He was going to kill us. This tiny, twenty-square-foot hole had no ventilation save for the curtained entrance. Lighting a charcoal fire in here was suicide. The previous owner was a grim testament to that fact.

“What now?!” Jared finally snapped, his patience worn thin. He rounded on me, his face a mask of bewildered anger. “First the clothes, then the blankets, now the fire! What in God's name do you want from me?!” He was only trying to help, I knew that. His only thought was to get me warm, to fight the sickness. He knew nothing of medicine, only the simple, age-old wisdom that a sick person must be kept warm at all costs. My constant refusals must have seemed like a child’s petulant, maddening tantrum.

But what could I do? If he lit that fire, I might die, but that hardly mattered. This body was on its last legs anyway. But he would die too. And I couldn’t stand by and watch him unknowingly kill himself. How could I possibly explain the science of carbon monoxide poisoning to a boy from the slums of a gaslit, industrial hellscape? How do you explain an invisible, odorless poison to someone whose world is filled with tangible, brutal dangers? It would be impossible. So I just turned my head away, silent and stubborn. I knew how it must look: a strange, silent standoff. A boy, angry and confused, staring down a little girl who had turned her face to the wall in a fit of pique. And in a way, I was full of pique, a strange, internal turmoil I couldn't express.

Finally, with a heavy, exasperated sigh, Jared gave in. In a move that completely blindsided me, he suddenly started taking off his own clothes.

“Wait, wait, what are you doing?” I stammered, completely flustered. “We can talk about this! Why are you taking your clothes off? Hey! Why are you taking your trousers off too?!” His outfit wasn’t complicated. A shirt, trousers, held up by braces. In a few swift, angry movements, he’d stripped down to nothing. It wasn't as if I’d never seen another male body before, not after years of school changing rooms. It was the suddenness of it, the sheer, desperate unexpectedness of his actions, that left me speechless, my mind blank.

Jared tossed his clothes into a pile beside me. “Here,” he said, his voice flat, devoid of its earlier warmth. “Wear these. They’re mine, not a dead man’s. Is that acceptable to your high-and-mighty sensibilities?”

“But… what will you wear?” I asked, immediately realizing what a stupid question it was. His intention was painfully, horribly obvious.

“I’ll wear these,” he said, and without a moment’s hesitation, he picked up the dead man’s clothes and began to put them on. They were an adult’s clothes, and they hung loosely on his lean, teenage frame, but with the sleeves and trouser legs rolled up, they didn’t look entirely out of place. Once he was dressed, he stood there, his arms crossed, looking at me expectantly.

A part of me, the part that still clung to the standards of my old life, still didn’t want to wear his clothes. In this world of filth, they were relatively clean, but they were still grimy and looked like they hadn't been properly washed in weeks. And they were still someone else's clothes. But I was out of options. I’d refused him too many times already. It felt churlish, cruel even, to refuse again. And I knew his stubborn, caring nature. If I said no, he’d just come up with some other, equally mad scheme to keep me warm. In a way, he was right. I was sick, and I needed the warmth.

With trembling fingers, I peeled off the single, tattered rag that passed for my clothing. It came away with a single tug. For the first time, I looked down at my new body. It was so frail, so thin. All sharp angles and protruding bones, the skin stretched tight over my ribs. I’d thought, perhaps, that seeing a young girl’s body like this might remind me of some part of my old male self. But all I felt was a profound, aching pity. There was nothing alluring here, only a desperate, heart-wrenching fragility. The only sign of budding womanhood was a slight swell at the chest, two small, sorrowful mounds, smaller even than bread buns.

It was then I realized Jared was still standing there, watching me, his expression unreadable. I flushed, a wave of hot embarrassment washing over me. It felt, absurdly, like I was the one taking advantage of him. But why was he just staring? Were he and Parula so close, so much like true siblings, that all sense of propriety was gone? As a man, I wasn't particularly bothered by another boy seeing me, but from his perspective, looking at his "little sister"... wasn't this a little improper? A little strange? Or was this just another harsh reality of this world I didn't yet understand?