6

Turlough and His Prim Coat

A stream of semen stained the inside of Turlough’s pants.

“Wot the hell is that fecking arse doing so early in the morning?!” muttered Turlough, looking around Steigirchen’s Library for a bathroom. There were two other people sitting at Turlough’s table using the Information Interfaces. One sat across from him focused on his own studies, the other beside him now looking disapprovingly at the inside of his pant leg.

“Guh—I w-wasn’t looking at por— you see its not my fault that this hap— you know wot, won’t bother explaining,” said Turlough, knuckles white and body rigid with embarrassment. The person beside Turlough produced a generous amount of space to let the young man past. Turlough pulled off his coat and wrapped it around his waist —although he wished he could wrap it around his face. Turlough left his Information Interface on in the hopes that when he left the person beside him would see he was only looking at historical records from the era of Galladrad’s Veining. Nothing sexual about that. He pinched the backside of his neck as hard as he could and for as long as he could as he rushed to the lavatory. It stung, but Turlough knew it would be hurting him back too.

A chonách san ort! (It serves you right!)

The blazer held its shape around Turlough’s waist even as he awkwardly maneuvered between the library book stands, resisting any path that crossed with another person. It was a good make, this one. A reliable coat, as he needed it to be, especially now . His legs wobbled as he nearly walked into a woman using the water fountain, but the coat remained rigid and unfettering in its purpose to help Turlough reach his objective.

The library bathroom echoed the sound of the creaky doors as Turlough entered. Much like the rest of the library, it sported a granite and wood motif with dark-coloured paints providing stark contrast of colour on the gothic walls. Turlough kept his eyes to the floor as he advanced in, there were mirrors lining the walls above the sinks which he so desperately wanted to avoid. After patting about his surroundings, Turlough was able to find the towel ladder by the windows. He took off his pants and readjusted his blazer to hide his modesty. Even though Turlough was alone in the restroom, the silence felt like it was shaming him. “And I’m not even to blame for it…” he croaked, slightly teary-eyed grabbing a hand towel. Just as Turlough was about to wipe the stain off his pants, he paused. Then gasped.

This was abnormal.

From what Turlough had gathered in this life so far; human bodies endured roughly ten-thousand years and didn’t sexually mature until about nine-thousand-nine hundred, which wasn’t consistent with Turlough’s past experiences in maturity. All the other times, male puberty developed in the teenage years, but as consistent with the body type of the people here, Turlough had no sexual desire at his current age of thirty-seven. To have seminal production even be possible prior to his body’s second puberty was a curiosity worth investigating. Turlough cringed inwardly on himself as he realized he would have to preserve the cum stain in his pants and take them back to the lab to have a closer look.

Cén fáth nach bhféadfadh an t-asal sin i dteagmháil léi féin tráthnóna? (Why couldn’t that ass have touched himself in the evening?)

He knew nudity was not considered a posture of shame in this world, but Turlough still felt hot with embarrassment as he left the bathroom. A sort of relic shame he carried with him to this world. With pants neatly folded over his arm, Turlough walked fast-pace through the library halls, down the staircases back to the main hall and through the glorious exit doors to find a dark alleyway to die. No. As tempting as that thought was, Turlough’s curiosity was stronger, pushing him past the dark backstreets towards his basement lab a few streets over.

The morning streets were thankfully very light on foot traffic, the sun barely breaching the edges of the shortest buildings and most early birds just starting to open their curtains. Turlough had once again stayed overnight at the library in the midst of research. Its not that he didn’t have access to an I.I. in his lab, he could have easily stayed in his basement apartment and studied from there, but it was the atmosphere of fellow academics delving into their primal desires to know that Turlough felt kindredness. And the feeling of belonging was fleeting with Turlough’s history.

A street cart rumbled towards Turlough along the path of the rail tracks. He grabbed hold of one of its poles and pulled himself aboard, startling a young-appearing woman who was clearly asleep a moment before. Turlough sat as far from the woman as he could, still very aware of his lack of leg attire, neatly folding his pants of shame onto his lap.

Steigirchen was one of the more building-heavy places Turlough had been to lately. The majority of towns in the growing world were hard to distinguish between house and forest, with the native greenery sometimes being the foundation for the homes themselves. In Steigirchen, Turlough would say the houses were distinct from the plant life if it wasn’t for the behemoth world tree that grew in the centre of the city. Roots as thick as tree trunks protruded from the interlock paths forming the uneven walkways that made the roads of Steigirchen. Coloured flags on string were tied to the tree’s branches and spread out in all directions to the city’s edge, making the town look like it was in a permanent state of festival celebration. The centre tree was also in perpetual flower, raining petals overhead the Steigirnen people and their settlement. Some of the floral twirlings landed in Turlough’s dull-blonde hair but he didn’t care to shake them out. It still felt inappropriate to move when he didn’t have pants on.

After three years at the University of Saxden, following extensive medical studies on the Human-Distorter body, Turlough moved to Steigirchen in pursuit of historical studies. He felt it was always important to go through medical school first to understand his new body and its limitations, then delve into history to get his bearings. Many historians flocked to Steigirchen to have first-hand looks at the historical documents hosted in the city’s many museums and libraries in the hopes that they would be able to extract more information from them that wasn’t previously observed. Turlough had the same intentions with his studies on Giants.  

The street cart slowed but didn’t stop as it neared a sign which read ‘Blühen Strabe’. Turlough couldn’t exit through the back end of the cart, having to walk past the woman one more time.

“Normally people choose one or the other—clothes or full buff. You prefer half on, half off?” asked the woman.

 Turlough could not get to his lab without one last embarrassment it seemed. “Just stained me pants with tea earlier. ’Felt uncomfortable keeping them on,” gritted Turlough through his teeth. The woman snickered as Turlough turned a bright pink hopping off the locomotive.

Another uncommon characteristic of this world was the lack of locks on the doors. At city-level, society was by-large in such an equal state that robbery was effectively eradicated. Still though, Turlough fastened a simple chain lock to secure his lab when he left. One more old habit he just could not shake.

“Now what was that spell that would help me open the lock again?” Turlough kicked his shoe back and forth on the street floor thinking. “Ah, feckkit all—” said Turlough biting his forearm and concentrating on the hidden lock into dislodging itself. The security lock was serving to be more of a pain to Turlough than a piece-of-mind item he had intended it to be. Turlough felt the weight of his concentration alleviate as the head of the lock chain swung off the rail. He rolled down his sleeve catching a glimpse of other bite marks from the week. He really needed to brush up on his Ouroborics.

Houses were identified by name in Steigirchen, and it was Steigirnen custom to greet the home before entering. Although it wasn’t necessary, Turlough undid the twist around his waist and donned his prim coat. He straightened the shoulders and cleared his throat. Turlough loved partaking in cultural customs.

“Nice to be home, Te Isles,” said Turlough nodding his head and entering. The very first item which greeted Turlough inside was a pencil-crayon portrait of a red-haired woman with a few pale lines on her face, bright grey eyes, and a rose lipped smile. “Marta, my darling,” bowed Turlough, kissing the portrait before taking off his shoes and hanging his coat on a hangar. A few more drawings of Martha hung in the hallways. All slightly different looking, but overall exhibiting the same aesthetic. Aside from the abundant portraiture though, the walls were empty. Most of Te Isles’ basement was. Turlough had only moved in thirty days ago and he didn’t like carrying too much with him on moves, so his living accommodations always appeared empty no matter how long he’d been living somewhere. Before entering the lab, Turlough got changed into an outfit with some pants (finally), set the water to boil on the stove, and once he had a cup of coffee in his hands, got ready to have a closer look at his jizz.

Te Isles’ lab was open for anyone to use in Steigirchen, but once a person had occupied the space, it was sacred to the individual until they moved out. Turlough flicked on the lab’s lights, turned on the microscope and scraped a small part of the sperm stain onto a glass slide. He set the magnification to 400X as he carefully scanned the slide row by row. It appeared to be all pant fibres and prostate secretion, no spermatozoa to be found. His body was not suddenly sexually mature, just mimicking ejaculation. Turlough sighed in relief. That fact helped him feel a little less ashamed about what happened in the library, though he wished he could still convince the person sitting beside him that he wasn’t jerking off.

“I guess that means Wirtrin is already mature though…” mumbled Turlough, jotting down his thoughts on a paper pad.

“Ding dong,” said a woman’s voice.

Turlough turned around in his wheely chair. “Delland! Wot’re you doing up so early?”

Delland looked down at Turlough. At standing height, she was a head taller than him, with white-blonde hair she liked to tie into a bun, dressed in a lab coat wherever she went in case there was research to be done. “I was walking to my meditation class and noticed your door was left open. Knowing how neurotic you are about locking the lab, I thought maybe you’d moved out. And Shouldn’t that be my question? You’re up at 6:30 looking through your microscope already? Must be a big find.”

Turlough bit his tongue as multiple lies rose to his lips and fought each other for voice, desperately trying to find a way to hide the truth behind the pant stain. He digressed that perhaps his lab partner wouldn’t judge him too harshly.

“I ejaculated in public and brought the sample home to see wot it was made of.”

“Why would you do that,” blanched Delland, stifling the urge to gag.

So much for her understanding.

“No, don’t you see—I’m only terty-seven. Distorters can’t foster children at this age.”

Delland’s eyes widened, and her movements slowed. She brought a hand to her hair and tucked away a stray strand as she tried to hide her shock, “I…I didn’t know you were so young—you’ve always spoken in a way that speaks beyond years. I just assumed you were somewhere in your thousands...”

Turlough smirked. “No, Delland. Here I’m just a young lad.” Delland cocked her head at the strange wording. He was such a strange man.

Dropping her backpack to the floor, Delland stepped in front of Turlough. “Take off your pants. Let’s have a look if your penis has the post pubescent ring.”

Turlough’s face skipped the transitional pink colours and went straight to red. “N-No, I’m not comfortable with that.”

“Asking to get changed in separate rooms when we were living together, scared of showing your skin, it’s like you grew up with Leavers,” said Delland shaking her head. “Why are you so avert to being natural?”