Sarah's Story

Sarah woke up with a fuzzy head and a horrendously dry mouth. As her brain slowly started to pull itself into a state that would allow simple motor functions she was able to move and establish her surroundings. It was her own room. "That's a good start," she thought as the haze began to clear. A sudden influx of the previous night’s sights and sounds poured into her head. She wished she hadn't woken up. "At least I'm alone," she said nervously patting the bed around her while her subconscious desperately tried to hand her some evidence that she did arrive home without company. It was not a good start to a day where you are supposed to be meeting your Ex and his apparently gorgeous new girlfriend. Then again when that is the only item on your itinerary for the day a debauched night of drinking before is probably the easiest way of dealing with it. Not the best, but certainly the easiest.

A shower and a cup of industrial strength coffee helped her to overcome the balance and eyesight problems enough that she was able to venture to the cupboard. The cupboard was full of a very special kind of magic. The pills contained inside catered for every hangover eventuality. Flu strength capsules for claggy red wine morning death. Ibuprofen for driller killer gin morning death. Soluble paracetamol for queasy cocktail morning death. Today was different, today Sarah required full strength aspirin for a Guinness pure pain morning death. Nothing else would do. However, when she opened the door to Sarah's Hangover Cure-All Emporium and rooted through the vast array of pills and coloured boxes there was no aspirin. She toyed with the idea of trying some paracetamol but she knew her unnecessarily overactive brain wouldn't allow her to feel the effects. She was very set in her ways about her hangover cures. This was not good. A trip to the shop was going to be required en-route to the aforementioned meeting.

The mid morning sun hurt. It really, really hurt. Each step caused a sharp sting to race up her spine mingling with the sun pain at the point where her head met her neck. She needed to get to the shop quickly before her hangover Tourettes kicked in. It's not so bad insulting inanimate objects or animals but if a child passed her way she knew she couldn't be held responsible for her actions. Two months ago she called a child a shit licking fuckhead because of its noisy lolly munching. It's not that Sarah has anything against children in particular just a very low tolerance of them in a post Friday night state. No child on earth would deserve the tirade of abuse today's grump would manifest itself as. "50 yards, if that," she thought, "please keep the streets clear."

Her focused walking had meant that she hadn't noticed quite how clear the streets were. They weren't empty in that post-apocalyptic last woman on earth kind of way but definitely quieter than normal. Sarah’s mind didn't even pick up on the fact that the type of people that were in the street were markedly similar. The odd Mum with a pram, a few gaggles of teenage girls heading to the city for a Saturday shop. There were a few suited ladies heading into work to put an extra hour or so in. Nothing strange enough to really shout out and wake her from a heavy ‘I must get to the shop’ induced trance.

Stepping inside the shop brought with it an overdue sense of relief. Almost without anything other than pure instinct she grabbed the packet of tablets and headed to the till. This moment was the first real hint at what a rather odd this day would be. Unfortunately Sarah failed to notice.

"Hello my dear and how are you today?" Mrs Cheung said.

"I'm fine, just hung-over Mr Ch…" Sarah concentrated a little more on the person she was addressing. "Sorry Mrs Cheung I'm used to seeing Terry behind the counter on Saturday. I thought you usually went to town with your daughter at the weekend?"

"Oh usually but Terry wouldn't get out of bed today. He didn't seem ill. He just told me to leave him alone and do the shop. Must me some mid-life crisis thing."

Sarah paid for the tablets and the carton of Strawberry Ribena to take them with. She didn't think about the fact than in the five years she had been living in Stoke Newington, Terry had not missed a single shift. She didn't think about the complete lack of men on the bus. She didn't think about the eerie absence of men on tube when she got on at Angel. It was one of the most perception dulling hangovers she would ever suffer from.

The sudden burst of natural light as Sarah emerged from Goodge Street station nearly reversed the effect of the painkillers entirely. The breeze counterbalanced it though and her desire to stab madly at the people around her very quickly subsided. It had been a lucky journey she thought, no one had even come close to pushing her into a mildly psychotic rampage. However she still had to meet the Ex and his lady.

The Ex did have a name but Sarah had chosen to delete it from her everyday language. Unfortunately it was quite a common name and this had caused several embarrassing moments where she had gone through all the pronouns and nicknames in her rather large vocabulary just to avoid calling people she met or knew with his name by his name. After a particularly drawn out evening of doing this to a very perplexed colleague she really wished she’d given the Ex a pet name. She hadn’t because of the involuntary retching she suffered by seeing other couples using this particular fawning show of affections. But it would have been far easier never saying the word poppet, petal, honey bunny or sugar ever again. Maybe not sugar.

It was this stubbornness and inability to bend her opinion about many, many trivial things that probably ended the relationship. Now he was happy with a beautiful, clever girl that would say yes to anything he wanted a yes answer to. Sarah's mind reeled at the prospect of her being with him and acting like that for the rest of her life. She had genuinely missed him when they broke up but was now coming to terms with the fact that lust and naivety had guided her into a relationship that was always going to be difficult. The warning signs had been there and Sarah had hoped they would maybe subside with time. They didn't. It had not been a messy break up, all very amicable. She hated the way that she would talk of it like it had been a mutual decision knowing that had it been up to her she would have kept it ticking on. She also hated the way that he was probably right to have ended it.

As she neared the meeting point her hangover had calmed down enough to roll a cigarette. As she lit it she waited to see if that first drag would either soothe the jitters and mild hand tremors she was suffering or cause a catastrophic meltdown of her already fragile physical and mental state. So far so good, the worst effect she felt was a bout of light-headedness that could soon be resolved by sitting on one of the many overly arty benches nearby. It was not long before she felt a light touch on her shoulder.

"Sarah?"

"Er, yes, yes. I'm Sarah, are you Kate?"

"Yeah, ***** said you'd be here. He was supposed to meet me before but hasn't shown up yet. I recognised you from the pictures he has."

"He has pictures of me? Bizarre. Didn't have any out when we were together."

The next five minutes were probably the nicest five minutes Sarah had lived through in last five years. Kate was impossible to dislike and even that trait didn't annoy Sarah. In this very brief time and despite her IQ crippling state of post booze blues Sarah learned that Kate felt very much in her shadow, was a graduate from the same university and was the first person she had met in ages who liked decent music. She started to wonder what this girl was doing putting up with he who shall remain nameless. This thought made it apparent that he still hadn't turned up for the meeting he arranged.

"Where the hell is the lazy oik?" Sarah said trying to purvey her irritation at his tardiness without insulting him in front Kate too much.

"I'll ring him again but he hasn't picked up so far. Do you think he's ok?"

An enormous amount of snide and sarcastic comments whizzed through Sarah's head before she said, "I'm sure he's fine Kate. Probably just left his phone somewhere out of earshot." Kate was just too nice to be venomous to. When he didn't answer the phone for the third time Sarah suggested that they convene to a pub. Her body had mustered up enough strength for a drink by now and there was no reason to not take advantage of this impressive feat.

They walked past three pubs before they found one that was open. In which they found a harassed Landlady manically jumping from job to job.

"A pint of Guinness please and…" Sarah looked to Kate

"Guinness is fine thanks."

"Two pints of Guinness please."

"Just bear with me love," the Landlady replied, "three off sick today and I'm trying to do everything on me todd."

After getting their drinks Sarah and Kate went and sat near the window looking out at the street. The first sip of her pint made Sarah all the more comfortable. The day wasn't going to be as bad as she thought after all. Kate seemed like good company and it was probably a good thing that her boyfriend hadn't turned up yet.

"Don't you think it's a bit weird?" Kate said breaking Sarah's musings.

"What's weird?"

"Well, look outside. Watch for a bit and tell me what you think."

Sarah gazed out the window. Town was certainly quieter than a usual Saturday but people still passed by going about things as they would.

"I can't see anything that jumps out. What are you looking at?"

"See if you can count how many men walk past in two minutes." Kate suggested starting a timer on her phone.

Sarah look on. She waited. And waited. Then the buzzer went.

"None."

"Exactly," replied Kate, "where do you think they all are? Is there something on that we don't know about?"

"Who's to say? Maybe there’s something on the news about it."

She walked over to the bar and after a word with the still harassed Landlady got a remote for the TV above the table they were sat at. It tuned straight into BBC News 24 and a still screen with a caption reading

"There will be an important broadcast from the Prime Minister in.."

The counter following it was 30 seconds away from zero. Sarah and Kate sat silently waiting for it to finish. When it did a female announcer came on.

"We now take you over to a live press conference with the PM outside 10 Downing Street."

They watched on as the message faded to a shot of the front of Downing Street. The door was closed and there were several microphones waiting in front of the house. Slowly the door opened and the PM accompanied by a female aide stepped out. He went to turn straight back around but was firmly led to the microphones by his chaperone. As he got closer the aide made some quick adjustments to his jacket and centred him to the camera.

"He looks shifty. And odd. More odd than usual." Kate muttered.

"People of Britain as I'm sure you are aware something happened last night that has caused a startling effect across the country." The Prime Minister shuffled edgily while he spoke. "We do not yet know the cause of this problem and just how badly it will hit our businesses and industries. But you can be assured we are doing everything in our power to find the cause and solution to what seems to be a nationwide situation. Our current estimates do suggest that it has effected the entire male population. After this broadcast a programme will follow explaining in more depth what the current state of the problem is and how everyone watching this can help the country continue as the great nation it is."

The PM stops and leans over to the aide whispering something to her. She sternly replies to him out of range of the microphones. Then Sarah and Kate are stunned by possibly the single strangest thing that either girl would ever see in their lives. They would continue to be friends for many years, long after what's-his-name disappeared from their lives, long after this today’s events go down in the annuls of history. But not a single moment would ever be close to topping the surprise they were about to get.

After the aide's terse words the PM pushed her away. Sarah could make out him saying, "I don't care, I quit." He then shrugged off his jacket and it became obvious from the figure hugging shirt underneath that he had two pert, perfectly formed breasts. He paused briefly to touch and caress them in the way a lover would to their partner. Infatuated by this new part of his anatomy he slowly started to walk back to No. 10 before the camera cut the picture off and the screen reverted back nothing.

"That was not what I expected." A spellbound Kate said slowly. Sarah didn't reply. She just sat there wondering how shallow she probably is. Here she was having witnessed a world altering moment, something that would be remembered for generations and all that was going over and over in her head was, "Typical, even the Prime Minister has better tits than me."

Within a week everything was back to normal. As normal as things can be when the entire male populace suddenly developed breasts. No one ever discovered what caused the phenomenon and why the manifestations disappeared a few days later as quickly as they had appeared. In the immediate months there was a massive increase in the number of men applying for gender realignment surgery. But this along with a few other odd societal trends resulting from the incident soon faded away. Over the years men would suggest they hid away during breast outbreak out of embarrassment at their appearance. They were almost all lying. The simple fascination and opportunity to play with their own pair of breasts had of course been the real reason almost the entire male populous vanished for two days.

The PM apologised for his behaviour but didn't get re-elected. Women didn't like his bizarre public display at the press announcement. Men, all of whom were using the, "I was embarrassed." lie, wanted to distance themselves from his blatant self-groping. He ended up making a small fortune doing the talk show tour of US television networks. He now goes by the name of Yolanda.

Sarah managed to survive her hangover and ended up creating another for the Sunday morning. It was worse than the previous one had been. At 11:30am it caused her to throw a pebble at a pigeon. She missed.