emergence of a superheroine

        Dareen struggled with the carton of milk and was halfway through drinking the glass when she decided she just had to tell her friend; not only about what happened, but the more obvious thing, the kind of thing which could not be hidden from a roommate.  She steeled herself.  This was going to be tough.  But she turned on the kitchen light and looked at Elly with a serious face, then solemnly brought the towel down and stood there as her sweatshirt bulged out to the maximum stretching point and the pants fell some inches to hang precariously around her hips.

        Elly got up and, not seeing how intensely Dareen was blushing, looked at her from head to toe.  “What happened to you?  You’re even more -- Dareen than before!”

        Dareen bit her lip.  It would sound ridiculous but it was the truth, and what could really explain such a thing?  “I got hit by lightning.”

        Elly looked up, about to laugh at this explanation but she caught herself.  “Oh God. . . You’re lucky to be alive.”  Then the two young women hugged.  “Thank God you’re O.K.  That was some unusual storm.  It was on the news.  Something about ions.”

        “Yeah, it was some storm,” Dareen said, as Elly let go and stood back to look at her again.

        “Dar, could you please, if you’re O.K. with it . . . ”

        Only with Elly would Dareen consent to exposing her modesty thus.  And it was time for truth telling.  She couldn’t hide her experience from everyone; she had to have one person she could unburden herself to.  Dareen took off her sweatshirt, kicked off the sneakers and lowered the pants, and stood in just bra and panties.

        The bra was stretched to bursting.  Her breasts, full and high, bulged out over the tops of the cups, and her erect nipples could be seen through the thick double-lined cotton, poking out between the strained seams. Below, her waist had narrowed so that it could no longer hold the pants up.  Her tummy was concave and hard.  Her butt was taut and trim, her legs hard and wiry.  Even her feet looked different, stronger.

        “Jesus,” Elly said, slowly circling the now ultra-statuesque woman.  She looked up.  “And your hair . . . ”

        Now that the lighting was good she was noticing it for the first time.  She took Dareen by the hand to the bathroom, and Dareen got a first look at her new physique.  It was gross having breasts like that.  She looked like a siliconed bimbo, some nude dancer or porn star.  And what a tiny waist!  And the hair -- her formerly black hair had taken on a kind of violet-tinged luster.  Pretty, but a little showy for her taste.  But her attention was mostly taken up by those breasts popping out of the bra. She put her arm up to hide them.

        She silently went back to put on her clothes and sat on the couch.  Elly sat across from her, not saying anything, knowing these changes were not really something to be envious of.  Something heavy and real weird was going on here.

        Now the choked up voice, the tears.  “Tonight, Elly, I was hit by lighting and -- I flew.”

        “Wow.  You were lifted off the ground.  Static electricity.”

        “No.  I mean I flew.  Just stuck my arms out and . . . into the sky.”  It seemed odd for tears to come but they did.  “And I could run faster than a car and pick it up with one hand.  I could read newspapers off the rack from two hundred feet away.  I . . . I stopped a burglary.  Or I mean I . . . I saw that store getting robbed and I chased down the guy and flew while carrying the car to a police station.  It had to be several miles.”

        Elly was being thrown for a real loop now.  Her friend was talking crazy.  “Dareen, are you  feeling all right?”

        Dareen looked at her, a tear rolling down one cheek.  She brushed it away with a quick motion of her hand which caused her breasts to jiggle ponderously.  “I-it really happened.  I got hit by lightning and my clothes burned off and I could do like a super woman.”

        “You did all this naked?”

        Dareen nodded.

        Elly looked down.  “Wow.”  What an image, she thought: Dareen flying naked through the night.  “Um, can you do that now?”

        “No.  When I got back to the store for some clothes . . . I couldn’t fly any more.”

        “Why not?”

        “I don’t know.”

        “Maybe it was just a dream.”  To Elly, Dareen just needed some rest.  Being hit by lighting scrambled her senses and probably knocked her out and would cause some bizarre dreams. She got up and pulled Dareen up by the hand.  “Go to sleep.  You had a tough night.”

        “Yeah.  Sleep.”  As the two young women went to their respective bedrooms, Dareen joked mordantly.  “This bra is killing me.”  And so, for the first time since she was twelve, she slept without one.