Midlife Crisis (Age Progression Short Story)

[Mytransformations]

Midlife Crisis (AP) by Mytransformations
Chapter One:

Stephanie Wilson donned her cap and gown and looked at herself in the mirror. The image of youthful grace and beauty, Stephanie was lithe and slender looking - not that her body was all that visible in her bulky graduation clothes. No matter, tonight she’d party with her friends, and she’d be sure to wear a very skimpy and revealing outfit.

Aside from her thin frame, Stephanie also boasted a perfectly diamond shaped face, with smooth skin and delightfully plump lips. Her large blue eyes seemed to sparkle and pop, even when she wasn’t wearing much makeup - though she still slathered the stuff on to enhance the effect even further. With a very visible sequin studded bra and stiletto heels, she was a total knockout.

She arrived a little latemid for the ceremony, but a pouty look and a little eyelash batting got her seated next to her sorority sisters. Stephanie heard a US Congressman and the University President drone on about the promise of the future and the importance of forward thinking. Stephanie didn’t even bother trying to suppress a yawn. The future? That was so far away to her, so irrelevant to her outlook. With a BA in communications, Stephanie wasn’t even sure what she was going to do for a first job, let alone what she was going decades from now.

Though Stephanie was seated with her other Alpha Tau fraternity girls, she only feigned enthusiasm as she heard the names of her classmates called. In truth, she couldn’t stop thinking about when the celebration would begin. Hopefully her frumpy parents wouldn’t try to tag along.

She didn’t have to wait long. In just a few hours, Stephanie had changed into a tight fitting tube top and an impossibly short miniskirt, and was rocking it at her favorite dance club. One cute guy was dancing and undulating in front of her, while another competed for her attention while gyrating right behind her. Stephanie loved the attention, and let both men buy her drinks.

“Crazy night, eh? I can’t seem to shake ‘em,” she said to her best friend Julia when the two of them had a free moment. Julia was the perfect best friend for a queen bee like Stephanie - beautiful, but slightly less so. She looked quite similar to her friend, but Julia was a few inches shorter and was gifted with a slightly slower metabolism.

“Stephanie, don’t you have a boyfriend?” Julia asked.

“Charlie’s nice, but he’s so boring. Besides, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Stephanie said with a wink. She went back to the bar, finding the two hotties from the dance floor still waiting for her. Which guy would she pick, she wondered - or would she engage in a dalliance with them both simultaneously? Stephanie’s confidence in her ability to snag up any guy was so great she surmised she could probably talk them into doing whatever she wanted.

“Gentlemen,” she said, holding a drink she didn’t pay for in each hand, “here’s to the present,” she finished with a laugh.

Chapter Two:

“Ugh,” Stephanie said, as she sat up in bed. “I have the worst hangover.” Her head pounded, and her body felt remarkably weak as she struggled to pull herself out of bed.

It took her a few moments to register the fact that she was in a bed as an oddity - why wasn’t she in her dorm bunk? Was she in the house of one of the guys from the club? She scanned the floor, hoping to gather up her clothes and make a discreet exit. But despite the fact that the floor was fairly cluttered with men and women’s clothing, she didn’t see her outfit anywhere. Perhaps she’d find what she sought in the bathroom?

Stephanie didn’t find what her clothes in the bathroom, but when she looked in the mirror, she received a big shock. Her face was puffier than she remembered, with slight bags under her eyes and the faintest outlines of lines near her lips.

“Ugh! Party all night, pay for it the next day,” she said to herself. As she studied her reflection more closely, however, she suspected something more than a hangover was affecting her. For one thing, her flowing, long blonde hair was shorter. Did she really get a drunk haircut in the middle of the night? Even by her standards that seemed unusual. Furthermore, her body looked a little different. Her sequin bra was replaced by a plain looking one, which appeared to be a cup size larger. Her tummy looked a bit softer and poofier, and even her hips looked a tad wider.

“I look like the frumpy older sister I never had,” Stephanie said to the strange image in the mirror. She reached up to pluck conspicuous looking gray hair, and as she did so, she suddenly spotted the most significant development on her body: her left hand bore a wedding ring. What had happened last night? Had her friends orchestrated a road trip to Vegas and gotten her hitched?

“Honey, are you up yet?” a familiar voice wafted in from another room.

“Yes?” she answered nervously, grateful that she might finally get some answers but dreading what they might be.

“I can’t remember the last time you slept in this late,” the man said as he walked up behind her.

“Charlie?” she asked, seeing his image in the mirror. She recognized him, but like her, he looked different. His eyes carried some small bags, and his athletic frame was a bit softer than she remembered. She immediately looked down at his hand and saw a wedding band. “We got married?”

“Hey, I haven’t forgotten this time - our seven year anniversary is tomorrow, and I’ve got something great planned, don’t you worry,” he said as he kissed in back of her neck. Stephanie was used to this action providing her with an electric sensation of eroticism, but she tried to push those feelings aside. Her anxiety over the developments was too great to give herself up to passion.

Stephanie quickly decided it would be futile to argue the point with Charlie. He clearly believed he was her husband, and had been for seven years. She politely tried to excuse herself from the bathroom and threw on a plain looking top and jean skirt. She found her phone and scurried to the kitchen, eager to call Julia with some degree of privacy.

“Hiya, Stephanie,” her friend answered.

“Thank God you picked up,” Stephanie said. “Either I’m going crazy or someone’s playing the mother of all jokes on me.”

“What’s going on? Has Suzie been giving you trouble?” Julia asked.

“Suzie?” Stephanie repeated, too shorted to ask the question directly.

“Yeah - I know kids that age can be a handful. I can hardly keep up with my little Nikki, and she’s just two. Once she gets to be Suzie’s age, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“I’m a mom? Oh shit!” Stephanie cried out on the phone, too overwhelmed to continue to play the part.

“I know, right?” Julia said. “I feel waking up and screaming that every day. I mean, where did our twenties go? It’s like we blinked and they vanished.” Stephanie pulled her driver’s license from her surprisingly conservative looking purse. Her friend was right; according to the document, Stephanie had just turned 30.

When she hung up the phone, Stephanie realized her situation was far worse than she had originally surmised. She wasn’t going crazy, and she wasn’t being tricked. Somehow, she had either jumped forward in time, or lost all memory of the past eight years.

“I’m going to go out, you make breakfast for Suzie, ok?” Charlie called out to her.

“Sure thing,” she said nervously, not quite sure how to care for a daughter she’d never met.

As Charlie shut the door, Stephanie started to evaluate her life on a qualitative basis, rather than just try to unravel the mystery. So she had married Charlie - boring, safe, nice guy Charlie.

“Certainly could be worse,” she said, as she gazed around at her cozy, but pleasant looking home.

“Mommy, I’m hungry,” said high pitched voice, breaking her concentration.

In walked a six year old girl, who looked quite similar to Stephanie in her childhood pictures.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make you breakfast,” Stephanie said. Though she didn’t know where things were in her kitchen and had never been much of a cook, she found her hands naturally gravitating towards bringing out certain items, as if she already knew where to look and what to do. Before she knew it, she was serving fluffy chocolate chip pancakes.

Stephanie watched her daughter sloppily eat up her confection breakfast and then run up to her lap.

“That was my favorite breakfast,” Suzie said. “I love you, Mommy.”

“I love you too, sweetheart,” she said as she picked up her child. This wasn’t so bad, Stephanie thought to herself. She may have lost a few years, but she gained a family.

Chapter Three:

When Stephanie awoke the following morning, she found herself fortunately without a headache. Despite the initial trauma of yesterday’s surprising revelation, she felt relatively confident about embracing the new day.

Her back, however, was not so cooperative. As she tried to pull herself up, she felt increasing aches and pains in her spine.

“Ugh,” she grunted, as she finally rose to her feet. As she stared down, she was immediately aware of the fact that she had gained more weight. Her torso looked softer and more wobbly than she had remembered it yesterday.

“Eat chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, pay for it later,” she said, as she made her way to the bathroom with a mixture of a shuffle and a waddle.

“Oh no,” Stephanie cried out as she looked at herself in the mirror. The faint lines that had decorated her face yesterday had grown in size and intensity, giving her crow’s feet and sizable laugh lines. The few gray wisps of hair had become patches, while her chin had become mildly doubled.

“I can’t believe this,” she said as she re-examined her plush body. Stephanie’s breasts had grown in size once again, but this time it was obvious that they were starting to sag just a little. Her soft midsection was now a round pot belly, and her thick thighs and a widening ass didn’t help matters. Tiny age spots were visible on her neck and her hands.

Stephanie pulled at the sides of her face, trying to remember what she had looked like before all those wrinkles. For a moment, she saw a sparkle of her old self, but when she released the skin, she saw a haggard looking woman approaching 40. Even the spark in her formerly brilliant eyes seemed to have faded a little. She knew no plastic surgery could help with that.

A buzz from her cell phone told her to prepare to get ready for work. Stephanie scoured her closet for decent shoes, but all her fancy high heels had apparently been traded in years ago for conservative looking normal flats. In fact, her entire wardrobe seemed frumpy and plain.

After adorning herself in some unremarkable clothes and a modest amount of makeup, she headed to what her phone’s directions told her was her office. Apparently her college degree was a waste - Stephanie was working as an admin for a marketing executive.

When Stephanie returned home, feeling tired and run down, she opened the door to find two strangers sitting on the coach.

One of them was a hefty looking man who was losing most of his hair; the other was a teenaged girl who had dyed pink hair and a nose piercing.

“Hey,” the man said in a low, nonchalant voice as he walked in the door.

“What’s for dinner, mom?” the teenaged girl asked in a petulant tone. With a sense of dread, Stephanie realized that this was her family.

As she looked at Charlie flipping through a newspaper, she was amazed at how much he had changed. His distinctive, beautiful curly hair - his best feature - had mostly vanished, leaving an unsightly scalp in its wake. Her beautiful baby was texting and bore a frown on her face, looking far less endearing to her than she did yesterday.

“I’m pretty tired,” Stephanie said after a lengthy silence, feeling it would be useless to try to explain what she was going through to them. “Let’s just order in a pizza or something.” Charlie didn’t reply verbally, he just nodded, cleared his throat a little, and absentmindedly scratched his bulky belly. Stephanie couldn’t imagine why she had ever felt attracted to this man.

“I might be going out later,” her daughter casually informed her after they placed the order. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

“What do you mean you don’t you?” Stephanie asked.

“What do you want me to say, Mom?” her daughter flippantly replied. “Just don’t wait up for me.”

“Suzie, what do you have going on?” she asked, feeling the protective parenting instinct coming in full force.

“Suzie? The name is Suzanne. I haven’t been Suzie since I was six,” she shot back.

“I’m sorry,” Stephanie said, deciding to let a little of the truth slip out. “But from my perspective, it’s like you grew up overnight.”

“Ugh, that’s so typical of your generation. You always want to infantilize your kids,” Suzanne replied in a sarcastic tone. “It’s pathetic.”

Stephanie was about to reply, but the doorbell rang. She opened the door expecting the pizza delivery guy, but instead a muscular man with a toolbox said he was there to service their satellite TV box.

“Can we, you know, have a free upgrade to more channels?” Stephanie asked in her best sultry voice as he worked on the unit.

The man didn’t even turn his head. “Just let me do my job, ma’am,” he replied curtly. The last word in that sentence felt crushing.

When the pizza arrived and the cable guy left, the family ate in silence. As soon as she was done with her last slice, Suzanne announced she was heading out.

“Oh no you don’t,” Stephanie countered. “Don’t you have homework, or studying to do?”

“Who says I’m not going over to a friend’s to study? You never even bothered to ask where I was going. You just assumed the worst of me,” Suzanne said.

“Well, are you going over to a friend’s to study?” Stephanie asked. Her daughter, not expecting that reply, blushed.

“I hate you,” she said, and bolted out the door. A few moments later, she sheepishly returned. “Remember, Mom, I have soccer practice tomorrow,” she hastily added, then made another hasty departure.

“I could have used some backup there,” Stephanie said to her silent, taciturn husband, who was working on his fifth slice of pizza.

“I don’t think I could have done any better,” he said with his mouth full.

“That’s not the point. We’ve got to maintain a unified front,” she said.

“Come one, weren’t you a pretty tough to handle teenager?” Charlie asked. Stephanie had to admit that she was a pretty difficult when she was younger, though she hated how far away that status was. In her mind, she was a teenager just three years ago - now she was well on her way to being an old woman. Did that mean the fun in her life was all gone?

She decided to put that hypothesis to the test, wriggling her breasts at Charlie. He didn’t remove his eyes from the pizza. Finally she walked up to him and started to rub his shoulders.

“As long as we’re alone...” she said suggestively, kissing her husband on the ear.

“Ok,” Charlie replied, as casually and with as little excitement as if he had just been asked to help with the dishes. He followed her upstairs, and as he undressed, she got a clearer look at his flabby body. Apparently he had a sedentary job as well - Charlie the athlete had been smothered in a cocoon of flab. Not that she was any thinner; she had to admit with some reticence.

As they rolled around in bed, she couldn’t feel the spark unless she started to think about the cable guy. He was fit and probably around 25, and was the first man she could ever remember not responding to her flirting, but his image was far more arousing than Charlie’s body.

After some disappointing sex, Charlie fell asleep. Stephanie was disgusted to find that he was a snorer. She tried to stay up as long as she could to listen for her daughter's return, but fell asleep at around 2 in the morning.

Chapter Four:

Stephanie pulled herself out of bed with great effort. She didn’t need to get to the mirror to realize it had happened again. All she needed to do was look down.

Her breasts had sunk low on her chest, her once pert nipples pointing downwards. They fell to either side of her jutting belly. Her belly button was deep and sunken, and saddlebags framed her wide hips. Her ankles were hidden in vein-covered ‘cankles’ and even her knees were hidden by doughy flab.

When she finally did make it to the mirror, she realized she was now unquestionably a middle aged woman. Her beautiful flowing hair was now short, frizzy, and gray. Her eyes were framed with deep wrinkles and bags, and her dull pupils gave her the look of a world-weary woman who had forgotten what it was like to be young. Her cheeks were puffy and carried jowls, while her neck and double chin appeared fused together.

On the side of the sink was a box full of different vitamins and a few prescription meds.

“Taking pills? Ugh, could I be any older?” Stephanie whined, surprised that her voice sounded so gravelly and deep. Though she didn’t want to validate the tray of pills by actually taking them, she wasn’t sure if she had any serious health issues. She checked her cell phone to see what day it was, and then downed the odd assortment of pills marked “Saturday.” They left a sour, bitter taste in her mouth.

She tried to do something with her frizzy hair, and noticed how violently her plump ‘old lady arms’ jiggled as she raised them to her head. The frizzled hair would not stay put, not matter how much effort she made in trying to comb it. She didn’t even bother putting on any makeup.

As Stephanie struggled to fit her large, fallen breasts into a bra, she felt an intense rush of heat. At first she thought there must have been a fire or an explosion. She tried to bend over to peek through a window, but her back pain wouldn’t let her. Furthermore, there was no smell of smoke and no noise.

“A hot flash,” she bitterly realized.

She finished getting on the rest of what she would have once called ‘old lady clothes,’ and headed out of the bedroom. When she staggered into the kitchen, she saw Charlie, eating a few slices of bacon from the frying pan. His hair was now completely gone, apart from a small clump on the back of his neck, and that was all gray. He was flabbier and more wrinkled than she had remembered him as well. Charlie didn’t even acknowledge her when she stepped into the room.

“I’m going to see Julia,” she blurted out, though she knew she hadn’t made any plans.

“Ok,” Charlie said, and she got into her car. The small, sporty car she had used in her 20s and 30s had now been evidently traded into for a boring, sensible Dodge. She texted Julia to make sure she was ok for her to visit, and was fortunate that she was free and still in the same town.

Stephanie knew that whatever middle aged who lady answered the door would be Julia, but she still wasn’t prepared for what she saw. Her friend wore a pair of peaked, old fashioned glasses, wore her graying hair in a bun, and was big around she even made her newly expanded body appear thin by comparison.

“Hiya, Stephanie. Thanks for coming and seeing me,” Julia said, in a warbled, older sounding voice. “I’ve been something of a sad sack lately.”

“My life isn’t exactly on the upswing either,” Stephanie confessed, not sure what to tell her old friend that wouldn’t make her sound crazy. “It’s like the prime my life has passed too quickly.”

“Heh, yah,” Julia said. “My husband left me a woman half my age a week ago, and you’re married to a man that can’t get it up even with pills. Our prime has certainly passed.”

Stephanie desperately wanted to invite her friend out to go clubbing, to try to recapture the magic of what it felt to be young and desirable. But she knew that in their present condition, they’d either not be allowed in or they’d be laughed off the dance floor. Their days of turning men’s heads were over. The only sensible thing to do was just accept fate.

She had lunch with her friend and then headed out to her car in a melancholy mood. She turned on the radio, but was surprised to find she couldn’t find a station that played the music she enjoyed. It was all loud and strange sounding, so unlike the music of her youth. She turned the music off, and drove back home in an unpleasant silence.

When she arrived, she wanted to see what her daughter was up to, but couldn’t find her anywhere around the house.

Eventually, she peeked into Suzanne’s room. It was neat and tidy – too neat and tidy for a young woman, and the bed was carefully made. It was the room prepared for someone who wasn’t living there.

“Do you miss her?” Charlie asked as he joined her at the door to Suzanne’s room.

“Yes,” Stephanie said. She missed the chance to get to know her own daughter before she went out into the world.

“I’m sure she’s fine at college. That’s why she doesn’t call. Kids these days only call to let you know something’s wrong,” Charlie said.

“Probably,” Stephanie demurred wistfully.

“I’m glad she got into Alpha Tau,” Charlie added. “I bet she’s having the time of her life in school.”

“I bet she is,” Stephanie agreed, hoping her daughter was appreciating what she had while she had it.