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The day all my dreams came crashing down, I didn’t even know it–not right away, anyhow. It was just one of those things that went from bad to worse to...

Well, let’s just say there was no way I could have ever guessed where things would lead.

We were playing the Bellevue West Thunderbirds–we being the Westside Warriors. Both teams were undefeated, and the Omaha World Herald had us both listed in the top five teams in the state. Somebody had to win and somebody had to lose. This was our Super Bowl, and as the starting quarterback for the Warriors, it was my job to lead the team to victory.

Things went well for most of the game. At the end of the third quarter we were up by a touchdown and driving for another score. It looked as if all my dreams were coming true. With any luck, I’d be the touted as the hottest high school quarterback in the state by the end of the year, and that meant the Cornhusker scouts in the stands that night would be singing my praises in Lincoln. A full-ride football scholarship appeared to be most definitely in my future, after I completed this and the next season.

But that’s when the wheels came off.

It was a simple pattern. It was just a drop back pass to the right end. The ball would sail fifteen yards in the air, and if the right end caught it, he’d have just one man to beat to the end zone. The Thunderbirds were all up on the line, anticipating a running play on third and short–or so we thought.

Anticipating the snap count, the Thunderbirds blitzed, drilling two holes right through our line, as nearly as I could tell. I still thought I had time to get the pass off. The problem was that three–not two–defenders had breached our line, and the third was right behind me. The shock of impact threw me to the ground, and the ball trickled out of my hand. In the ensuing máªlée, the pains in my back were suddenly replaced by an even worse pain in my right hand as one of the defenders accidentally stomped a cleated foot right on my throwing hand. That’s when I passed out.

To make a long story short, that was the end of my quarterbacking career. We still managed to win the game, and I was one of the heroes of the game, but I was out for the rest of the season with a broken hand. I had to sit in civvies on the sidelines, while my teammates muddled through the rest of the season with an untested quarterback. The team rose to the challenge, though, and we finished the year undefeated.

As for me, I spent the off-season in therapy trying to get my throwing hand back in shape. No such luck, though. My hand remained stiff and my passes both short and inaccurate. On top of that, after half a dozen passes or so, I could barely stand the intense pain in my fingers. I vowed to continue trying through the spring off-season, though, hoping that my hand would be completely healed by the beginning of the next season. All in all, my junior year was shaping up to be the crappiest year of my life.

I supposed the best thing to come out of that school year was that in the spring of my junior year I lost my virginity. I didn’t even have to work at it very hard. An eighteen-year-old senior from Papillion La Vista High School (the school where they filmed the movie Election, by the way) latched on to me at a party. After teasing me all evening, she dragged me off to an empty bedroom at midnight and had her wanton way with me, as they say in the old novels. She told me afterwards she was celebrating her birthday right at midnight, to start the special day out with a bang, so to speak.

Anyhow, being initiated to sex with an attractive girl, certainly perked up my weekend. To be honest, having sex with an unattractive girl would have perked up my weekend, but not quite as much. Liz Allison, the girl I bonked, was certainly attractive too, in a blonde sort of way. I always had a thing for redheads–or at least brunettes with a reddish cast to their hair.

Don’t get me wrong: I wasn’t complaining. It’s just that Liz wasn’t exactly my perfect girl. Liz’s hair was light blonde and her skin so fair it looked as if she never went outdoors. That Nordic look had never done much for me. I preferred the blue-eyed brunette, with fair but not alabaster skin, a few well-placed freckles, and a sort of innocent look. Liz was none of those things–including innocent.

Of course, she did have a very nice body–particularly when she stripped off all her clothes for me. Nice full breasts, long, slim legs, and a very curvy body were points in her favor. I certainly didn’t complain about what I saw.

I had hoped to see more of her over the summer, so imagine my disappointment when one of her classmates told me that she and her family had moved back to California, where they had lived for all of Liz’s life before coming to Nebraska for a couple of years. It was probably for the best, I realized. She had just been a one-night stand for me, or considering that having sex had been her idea, I suppose I was a one-night stand for her.

Whatever.

I started spring football practice that Monday, and from the high of losing my virginity to the low of losing my football position–and all hopes of a scholarship at NU–all happened within forty-eight hours.

“I’m sorry, Ryan,” the coach told me after practice. “Your hand’s just not healing right.”

I had been expecting him to say just that. In spite of therapy all winter the injury to my hand had left me with fewer fine motor skills in the fingers. I had hoped the coach would give me the summer to recover, but no such luck. Besides, my passes had been all over the place at that afternoon practice.

“I just need to get back into rhythm,” I told the coach, but he didn’t believe me. Come to think of it, I really didn’t believe it myself. Whatever had been done to my hand would affect my passing from there on.

I stayed on the team as a safety and did pretty well–but not well enough to don the red and white of the Nebraska Cornhuskers after high school. Arch ‘The Archer’ Corbin, my backup quarterback, came into his own senior year and got the opportunity to move on to NU.

As for me?

At least I got a football scholarship, but it was playing NCAA Division II ball for the Nebraska State University Plainsmen instead of Division I at NU. I wasn’t a quarterback, of course–I was just a defensive back. Quarterbacks who wash out often become defensive backs, since they have a deep understanding of the passing game–even if they can’t throw well. And instead of living in Lincoln, I was in the small community of River Falls, Nebraska, where Nebraska State was located.

Bummer.

On the other hand, it wasn’t all bad. I knew my grandmother had gone to NSU when she was my age. According to my mother, that’s where she met my grandfather. They had many pleasant memories of the school, or so they always told me. Maybe I’d have a good time there too, I told myself. Maybe I’d even meet a wonderful girl just like when my grandfather met my grandmother.

Of course it didn’t turn out quite like that...

“O’Meara!”

I groaned.

One of the other pledges looked up at me and grinned. I suppose it took his mind off the task all of us pledges were involved in–scrubbing the sidewalk in front of the fraternity house with toothbrushes and concrete cleaner. “Sounds like somebody’s in deep shit,” he commented, obviously glad it was me and not him.

“Shut up and scrub that walk, Packard!” the active–I think his name was Randy–barked at my fellow pledge. “Come on, O’Meara. On your feet.”

I got stiffly to my feet. Football practice on that Saturday morning, followed by a Spic-n-Span session as the actives called them, back at the Theta house had taken its toll on me. At least whatever Randy wanted would keep me from irritating my right hand. All that scrubbing with a toothbrush had caused it to start aching again.

I towered over Randy–it was my six-three to his five-ten. “What do you want?”

Randy frowned. “What do you want, SIR! Got that, pledge?”

“What do you want, SIR?” I asked calmly. All this pledge shit was a waste of time, but since a good number of the campus jocks were members of Theta Zeta Xi, it was the natural place for me to be. I had to keep reminding myself that getting asked to pledge TZX was an honor, if a dubious one.

At least classes would start Monday, and between that and football practice the brothers wouldn’t have much of a chance to harass me. But unfortunately for the rest of the weekend, my ass was theirs.

As Randy walked me to the Pledge Trainer’s room, I knew whatever they had cooked up for me wouldn’t be pleasant. But as I saw Spike Norris and Don Morton braced at attention outside Sam’s door, I felt a little relief that whatever crap they had in mind for me would be shared by two of my pledge brothers. Misery really does crave company.

“Get in here!” Sam Dietrich, our Pledge Trainer, demanded. The three of us piled into his room where we relaxed. As in most fraternities, the Pledge Trainer was the one active we could act normally around.

“What’s up, Sam?” Spike asked as Sam closed the door. Spike was president of the pledge class. Like me, he was on the football team, and with his rugged good looks, lineman’s physique, and closely-cropped blonde hair, he looked like a Nazi recruiting poster. Don was a jock, too, although basketball was his sport, so he was tall and wiry. All three of us towered over Sam, who at six feet was not exactly a dwarf himself. I had heard some of the other actives chuckling that Sam was a little sensitive about his less than jock physique.

“I got a special duty for you three,” he said nonchalantly.

We three pledges looked at each other with resignation. Whenever an active talked about ‘special duty,’ we knew it meant shit detail.

Sam ignored our discomfort. “I want all three of you to report to the Omicron Pi house this afternoon to help them with some heavy lifting.”

That was both good news and bad news. Omicron Pi was a sorority that had some of the hottest girls on campus. That, of course, was the good news. The bad news was that they had the reputation of being pretty standoffish when it came to having anything to do with most of the fraternities. There were even campus rumors that they were all lesbians, although in the few days I had been around campus, I knew that some guys grumbled about that only because they hadn’t been able to make any headway with any of the sisters.

“How long’s this gonna take, Sam?” Spike wanted to know.

“Why?” Sam asked drolly. “You got a big date tonight?”

Spike grinned. “The biggest. I’m gonna be screwing Misty Capshaw tonight.”

“Cool, man!” Don commented.

I just rolled my eyes. Cindy Capshaw was a sophomore cheerleader who had a thing for screwing football players. Everybody on the team knew it, and it was becoming something of a tradition for her to make her way through the whole squad. I had gone to high school with her, where she had a similar proclivity. I had passed on doing her in high school.

And to answer the question before it’s asked, yes, I had the opportunity to screw her too, but I had passed. I considered myself a red-blooded American boy who liked girls just fine, but Cindy just wasn’t my type. Vacuous blondes who spent most of their dates on their backs just didn’t do it for me. Besides, knowing the background of some of my teammates who had screwed her, I had decided to pass, knowing where that snatch had been. And as I’ve already said, I sort of liked the ‘girl next door’ types. I had too much respect for girls to waste my time with the sluts.

“Don’t worry,” Sam assured Spike. “It won’t be a problem.”

And it wasn’t either, but not the way any of us thought just then.

“This won’t be so bad,” Don thought out loud. “I wonder if that little bitch Sandra Holland will be there.”

“She’s not interested in you, man!” Spike laughed. “I bet she only likes girls. She’s a muff diver if I ever saw one.”

Don replied laconically, “That’s all gonna change when she meets Big Don.” Just in case we missed his point, he pretended to squeeze his package.

Sam wasn’t impressed. “Don’t even think about that,” he cautioned. “You’re going over there to work. Believe me, you don’t want to piss them off.”

I looked closely at Sam. The way he’d said that was downright ominous. From the serious look on his face he meant it that way too. I didn’t question him about it, and I doubt if he would have told me the truth then. I guess I’ll never know, though.

We started out for the Opie house (as everyone called the Omicron Pi’s on campus) in Spike’s ‘Babemobile’–a two-year-old Chevy Malibu which he claimed had a big enough back seat to accommodate his sexual gymnastics. I was surprised he didn’t have notches on the upholstery to commemorate his conquests.

Don wasn’t such a bad guy, but Spike was an asshole. The only reason he got to be president of our pledge class was that he was the only one who really wanted it. He’d often tell us that the reason he wanted it was because his dad had been president of the TZX pledge class when he was at NSU. I had checked, though, and found out that was the last office he ever held in the house. I guess he was as big an asshole as Spike.

Actually, that was probably the main reason an asshole like him had been pledged–he was a ‘legacy,’ which in fraternity parlance meant the house had to pledge him because a close relative had been in the fraternity.

I suppose I’m not being entirely fair. Spike would have been pledged even if he hadn’t been a legacy, since the TZX house was a jock house. No matter what I thought about Spike personally, I knew he had been one hell of a football player in high school. He’d probably be first string by his sophomore year, I thought.

“Hey. Let’s have a little contest,” Spike said suddenly as we pulled into the Opie parking lot.

“What kind of a contest?” I asked warily.

“We each chip in twenty bucks,” Spike proposed confidently. “Then the first one of us who screws one of these Opies gets all the money.”

“I’m in,” Don called out enthusiastically from the back seat.

“How about you, O’Meara?” Spike pressed.

“Guys, we’re just here to help the girls move some heavy crap,” I reminded them. “I don’t think the actives will be very happy if we piss these girls off. Sam even warned us.”

“Jeez, O’Meara,” Spike muttered. “You’re such a pussy.”

“Then it’s just you and me,” Don said.

Spike scowled at me. “Right. We’ll let Pussy Boy here take care of moving crap for the girls, while we take care of the ‘heavy lifting’.”

If it had just been Spike and me, I might have hauled off and let him have it. He had size on me, but I knew from football practice that I was considerably faster than he was. I bet to myself that I could lay him out before he knew what hit him. But it wasn’t just Spike and me. It was the three of us, and we were there to help the girls and get right back to the TZX house. But there’d be another time, I thought darkly to myself, when it would be just Spike and me.

“Hey, babe!” Spike threw out to the first girl he saw in the lobby of the Opie house. “Who’s in charge around here?”

The girl he was addressing was obviously pissed at being called a babe, but she held her emotions in well. She really was a babe, with her long blonde hair and flashing brown eyes. She folded her arms over her ample breasts, causing her Omicron Pi t-shirt to ride up just a little, leaving a small gap of skin between the shirt and her jean shorts. “You must be the guys from TZX.”

“That’s right, babe,” Spike confirmed with a smug grin.

“Follow me and I’ll take you to our chapter room.” She turned without waiting to see if we were following and started toward the down staircase.

As we followed our guide, Don, Spike and I were practically speechless watching the girls working throughout the house. They were mostly attired like our guide–t-shirts and shorts–and several of them had been working hard enough that they were sweaty with those same t-shirts damp and clinging tightly to their skin. It was sort of like watching something late at night on Cinemax. I could feel myself getting slightly hard and noticed that Spike and Don were walking a little funny, as if they too were getting hard.

The fantasy was interrupted when we reached the chapter room. There three girls were busy repainting the walls. One of them turned and addressed out guide. “Are these the three, Felicia?” she asked.

Our guide–Felicia–nodded. “Yeah.”

The girl gave us a long, hard look. She would have been attractive with her dark blonde hair and curvaceous body wrapped in spandex shorts and a sports bra, if her eyes hadn’t betrayed her complete disdain for the three of us. I was surprised. Usually Spike had to open his mouth before people took a disliking to him, but apparently there was something about all three of us she just didn’t like. I started to wonder if the campus rumor about the Opies being man-hating lesbians didn’t have some credence.

“Okay, get them moving those boxes upstairs down to the basement storage room,” she ordered, addressing Felicia as if we weren’t even there. “And make sure they’re done by five. No men will be allowed upstairs after that.”

‘Good, that meant we’d be done in plenty of time for me to mosey over to College Town just off campus and scrounge up a date for the evening,’ I thought.

The work wasn’t too hard for three big guys like us. Mostly we just had to gather up empty suitcases and packing boxes the girls had finished with after moving in. I was surprised they hadn’t just used their houseboy. All of the sororities had some guy from school on the payroll to take care of the heavy lifting. Having the three of us toting luggage and a few packing boxes was really overkill.

Don and Spike were doing their best to make time with some of the girls, but for the most part they were getting blown off. Again, I began to wonder about the girls’ sexual orientation. To make matters tougher for the guys, we seemed to have ‘minders’–a girl assigned to each of us to see that we kept working instead of fooling around with the girls.

My minder was apparently Felicia, but her job was a little easier than the jobs for the other two girls. I pretty much kept working without stopping to impress the girls. It wasn’t that there weren’t some very attractive girls in the Opie house, but I got the idea everyone had been warned to stay away from us from the minute we entered the house.

Of course, I did try to warm up my minder. Felicia was, frankly, probably the most attractive girl in the Omicron Pi house. Although as cold to us as the rest of the girls, she seemed to be looking at me a little curiously. It was time for the direct approach.

“Is something wrong?” I asked her calmly when we were alone in the storage room where I had just stored two oversized suitcases.

She was startled by my question. “No... uh, what makes you say that?”

I leaned up against a stack of packing boxes. “I don’t know. It’s just that all of you girls have been looking at us as if we were something you found stuck to the bottom of your shoes. Is there something about us you don’t like?”

She looked toward the door to make sure no one overheard her. “I guess maybe you’re okay,” she allowed. “But those other two... they’re animals.”

It was an apt description of Don and Spike–especially Spike.

“So you think I may be human?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. But maybe you’re just a little smoother than they are,” she added with a note of suspicion.

“I like to think so,” I laughed. “I’m Ryan O’Meara, by the way.” I offered my hand but she didn’t take it.

“Felicia,” she said at last. “Felicia Kennedy.”

I smiled. “Nice to meet you.”

She seemed about to say something, but we were suddenly interrupted by the girl who had given us our assignments. By keeping my ears open, I had learned that her name was Andrea something-or-other and she was the chapter president. She gave us a pointed look of disapproval, then said, “We’re ready in the chapter room, Felicia.”

Felicia faced the other girl and began, “Andrea, I think we need to talk first...”

Andrea looked at me as if I was the reason for Felicia’s little rebellion. Maybe I was, I thought, because Felicia was looking pensively at me. “There’s no time now, Felicia.”

“But–”

“Everyone else is waiting,” Andrea hissed.

I of course had no idea what this was all about. If I had, I would probably have run out of the room and up the stairs to freedom as fast as I could. But I probably wouldn’t have made it that far, in retrospect. There were probably guards at all the exits just in case we decided to bolt.

None of us had even worked up a sweat, I noticed, as we were led into the chapter room. Still we flopped down on the couches placed around the sides of the room and gratefully accepted glasses of lemonade. Then about half a dozen girls grouped around Andrea just outside the door of the chapter room and began to whisper among themselves, taking occasional glances at the three of us sitting on the couch with our drinks.

“Shame we didn’t bring along something to put in the lemonade,” Don groused in a low tone, taking another gulp.

“Yeah!” Spike agreed, also barely above a whisper, so as not to be heard by the girls. “We could really party then. I think that babe who’s president–what’s her name?–oh yeah, Andrea. I think Andrea’s hot for me. I think I’ll see if she’s free tonight.”

“I thought you had a date tonight with Misty Capshaw,” I pointed out, taking a drink of my lemonade. It was pretty good, but a little tart for my taste.

“Misty Capshaw!” Spike snorted. “She’s a skank. I can blow her off tonight and she’ll still be hot for me tomorrow–maybe hotter!”

“Yeah,” Don agreed, “but speaking of blowing, she gives fantastic blowjobs. That’s what it’s all about.”

“Yeah,” Spike countered, “but her tits are too small.”

“Guys,” I cautioned, nodding toward the girls who were hopefully not overhearing our conversation. “Maybe we ought to tone that down a little. Remember Sam told us not to piss these girls off, and talk like that could do just that.”

To be honest, I wasn’t very comfortable with that kind of talk anyhow. I had been brought up to respect women, but these two guys acted as if women were there just for them to have something, crassly, to stick their dicks into. Of course, I didn’t come right out and say I was offended by their remarks: that would have labelled me as a real pussy. Besides I had been around football locker rooms for enough years to have heard it all before without getting too upset. But there was something about Spike and Don that was just, to put it mildly, over the top.

“What could piss us off?” a voice came from the doorway. I turned to see Andrea and Felicia standing there, inside the room now. I wondered how long they had been standing there and hoped that they had only heard my remarks. Mine might have been of some concern, but Spike and Don’s comments would have been damning.

Of course, leave it to Spike to fuck things up.

“We were just talking about tits,” Spike mouthed off, watching the girls for their reaction.

To their credit, neither girl batted an eyelash. “And what about them?” Andrea asked calmly, but I could detect a coldness in her tone.

“Well,” Spike continued to get himself in deeper, “Don here thinks that skills are more important than size, if you know what I mean.” The girls said nothing, but I could see that they got the idea. “But I think big tits are more important, don’t you? After all, a girl with big tits can learn to do better blowjobs, but a great BJ artist can’t just grow bigger tits, can she?”

‘Sam was going to kill us,’ I thought bleakly, wishing I could just disappear rather than be associated with an idiot like Spike. Of course Don, with his stupid grin, wasn’t acting very smart either. At least Don had the sense to keep his mouth shut–not that it was going to do him any good.

To my surprise, Andrea played along. “Oh yes, Spike, I agree. When it comes to breasts, the bigger the better, right?” Then she smiled a very predatory smile, completely unfazed by Spike’s gross behavior.

“Yeah... right,” Spike returned slowly. At first I thought he was just speaking slowly because he was surprised at Andrea’s answer, but then I noticed he was squeezing his eyes open and shut, as if trying to stay awake.

Come to think of it, I realized I was a little tired myself. I tried to lift my hand to rub my own eyes, but it just didn’t want to obey my commands. Slowly I turned my head just in time to see Don slide off the couch and lie still on the carpeted floor.

“What’s... wr... wr... wrong?” Spike stammered before he joined Don on the floor.

“You... drugged... us...” I managed before I too fell to the floor.

The last thing I heard before passing out completely was Andrea saying, “Get the rest of the council. They’re ready...”

I still shudder when my fragmented memories of the next few hours rise to the surface of my mind. Fortunately those memories rarely come now, and when they do, they are almost dreamlike, almost as if they were happening to someone else.

The first incident I remember from that time, I was lying on... what? I couldn’t feel the floor or anything else behind me, but I was lying in a prone position, my arms and legs stretched out away from my body. It was as if I was floating in the air, and perhaps I was. It was not really uncomfortable–at first.

There were voices all around me, chanting something unintelligible. I tried to turn my head to see who it was, but there was little light in the room, and what there was cast a deep bluish glow, which barely illuminated my surroundings. I could make out another human shape to my right, and although I couldn’t turn my head back to the left, I heard a deep groan, as if there was another body lying prone there. Around us were several shapes walking about. I couldn’t tell how many there were. It was as if they were dancing some graceful but arcane step which only they understood. They were gesturing with their hands in seemingly-meaningless patterns.

Then their voices rose as one. I felt a shudder up and down my back–not unpleasant at first, but as their voices rose, the shivering sensation turned suddenly to pain. I heard screams from either side of me, but they were soon drowned out my own shrieks of pain. My backbone felt as if it were being compressed, and the feeling quickly spread all throughout my body. Not a nerve in my body seemed to be unaffected, and as my frightened screams reached an hysterical crescendo, I passed out.

Even out cold, I was not completely relieved of the pain. My chest hurt, as if my upper torso was being pulled away from my ribcage, and I thought I felt my hipbones crack and push outward. Inside my guts were on fire, shooting shards of pain from my back to my groin. Even my hands and feet hurt, as if they were being compressed. I whimpered, although I’m not certain if it was just in my dream or real. I don’t know how long all of this went on, but it seemed as if it would never stop.

When I finally awoke again, I still felt pain, but not as intensely or as pervasively as before. The dull pain seemed centered on my chest and between my legs, where the worst of the pain had come from, while the rest of my body tingled as if the sensation of a limb being asleep had spread throughout my body. I groaned... no, it wasn’t a groan: rather, it was a whimper, and it sounded somehow... wrong–higher in pitch perhaps.

The chanting continued, but its tempo had changed. Before it had been intense and demanding, but now it was hypnotically slow and subdued. I tried to move, but it was if I had been immersed in glue. I shook my head from side to side, causing a tickling about my ears and around my forehead. I tried to take a deep breath, but it felt as if something heavy was resting on my chest.

I fought to stay awake, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open for more than a few moments, and when I did, all I could see was those damned dark shapes moving in the deep blue light, as if they were some sort of marine life drifting about in a dark, mysterious sea. My eyelids fluttered and began to close. The last thought I had before the darkness reclaimed me was: ‘Why are my eyelashes brushing against my eyelids?’

I awoke once more disoriented and confused. I felt no pain at all this time, but what I did feel was almost as disturbing. I felt... wrong. I suspect that most people aren’t exactly aware of their bodies, particularly when they awaken from a stupor. However, if someone were to awaken and find, say, his arms missing, he would probably be aware of that on some level. That was what happened to me. No, I don’t mean my arms were missing, but something certainly was.

My legs were still spread apart, but earlier I had been very aware of my male equipment that hung between them. At first, before the pain started, the tug of gravity gently pulled my testicles downward, while my penis had hung limply over them. Then the intense pain had engulfed them, making them feel as if they were being burned away in a white-hot fire. Now though...

Now, there seemed to be nothing there at all.

I tried to speak, to tell one of the chanting shapes in the bluish light that there was something terribly, terribly wrong, but I was unable to move my lips–or anything else for that matter. My muddled mind tried to calm me, to tell me that there was really nothing wrong, that my body was whole and I was just imagining things. Maybe the pain I had felt earlier between my legs had dulled my feeling there. Maybe it was like awakening to find my arm asleep, unfeeling, as if it had been removed during the night.

‘Yes, that must be it,’ my mind insisted. ‘There’s nothing really wrong,’ I tried to assure myself in my stupor, as I floated back into a troubled sleep.

I dreamed then. But the dreams were unlike any I had ever experienced in my life. I dreamed of my family, of growing up. The dreams were memories of my childhood, but they were memories subtly altered in ways I couldn’t quite grasp.

I remember seeing my grandparents, before they had died tragically in a car crash two years’ ago. In the dream, my grandmother was smiling at me, and I could sense that we were sitting together on the big, comfortable couch in their home, right in front of the TV. I remembered doing just that many times in the years before their deaths. The strange thing though, was that my grandmother was talking to me about knitting. Why would she talk to me about knitting?

As if to answer my question, I seemed to hear her say, “It calms the mind, dear, and organizes it. You’ll see... here, try it...”

The dream faded out, to be replaced by other fleeting images: playing with our old dog, Laddie, before he was put down, going on vacation with my parents to Disney World, elementary school, then junior high and high school. My old friends from school paraded past me in my mind, saying the oddest things that I couldn’t quite comprehend. They were treating me... differently, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly how.

I don’t know how long I dreamed. It may have been only a few minutes or several hours. I might have continued dreaming–if it hadn’t been for the scream.

The sound was muffled, seeming to come from another room, but it was piercing–high in tone and frantic in inflexion. Even given the wall, it was loud enough to bring me up out of my deep sleep. In fact, I sat up so quickly it took me just a moment to realize that something had swept about my shoulders and another something bounced uncomfortably up and down on my chest. Come to think of it, nothing felt right at all.

“What the hell...?” I yelled as I looked down my chest at two incredibly large and perfect breasts. Reflexively I grabbed at them, assuming someone had played a practical joke on me by cementing two falsies to my chest. That forlorn hope faded quickly as I yanked on the breasts, pinching the nipples as I was rewarded with a sharp pain.

“Ouch!”

I hadn’t noticed the first time I spoke, but this time I realized my voice was substantially higher. Like a...

“Oh shit!” There was that high voice again, almost drowned out by another scream next door. I threw off the sheet that covered me and looked with shock and fear below the two perfect breasts at my crotch. The only hair I still seemed to have on my lower body was gathered at the junction of my legs. My stomach and legs were as hairless as a newborn baby. Even the pubic hair that remained was lighter in shade and appeared softer and trimmed into an even vee.

Maybe it’s just hiding, I tried to convince myself, but I knew better even before I dropped a slender hand into the thatch, finding only an unpretentious slit. My hand jerked back in panic, as if I had expected it to be trapped between the delicate folds of skin I had encountered. Instead of a protrusion that should be there, there was an entrance to my body–an entrance that led to... what? Were there fallopian tubes and ovaries crammed up there? Is that what had happened to my balls? Had they migrated inside and reformed into things only a woman should have?

Was I a woman?

This wasn’t possible. Things like this just didn’t happen. Sure, I had heard of sex change surgery, but it didn’t take an expert on the subject to realize that no one had operated on me during the night, or even over several successive nights since I had no idea how long I had been asleep. There were no incision marks, no signs that any medical procedure had been performed on me, and the breasts I had yanked on moments before certainly seemed soft and natural with no telltale signs of implants.

No, this was impossible, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened.

So what exactly had happened? I asked myself as calmly as I could. Maybe this was just hypnosis: maybe someone had hypnotized me into thinking I was a girl. Was that possible? Could a top-notch hypnotist do such a thing? I thought of the stories of hypnotists who deluded unwary volunteers into scratching around the stage, flapping nonexistent wings as they buck-buck-bucked in a poor imitation of a chicken. Maybe that was what had happened. Maybe I was only imagining that I had long hair, breasts, and... and...

Or maybe, I thought fearfully, I had always been a girl and had just dreamed I was a guy. I tried to imagine that I was really a girl and always had been, but that didn’t seem right either. I remembered my male life very well, thank you, and I had no memories of being a girl–at least not yet.

The screams next door had turned to sobs, and I could hear two voices–female voices–talking frantically back and forth. Hmmm, two frantic females. There had been three of us guys at the Opie house, and I distinctly remembered passing out in the chapter room. Spike and Don had been there, too, and I remembered them starting to pass out as well. It didn’t take a team of detectives to come to the conclusion that what had happened to me had probably happened to them as well, and from the frightened screams and mournful sobbing next door, it didn’t take much to figure out who was on the other side of that wall.

There was a pink terrycloth robe lying on a nearby chair. Why did it have to be pink? I thought to myself. But it was the only clothing in sight. I managed to get up out of the bed I had found myself in and, with a little effort, found my balance. After all my body was configured very differently now with its wide hips, narrow waist, and substantial breasts. I slipped into the robe, muttering as I had to stop to get all my long hair out from under the collar. To make matters worse, I had longer fingernails as well, and they seemed to get snagged in the long tresses. Finally I gave up and opened the door to face the world as a girl.

I looked both ways in the hallway before venturing out of the room. I suddenly realized I was staring out into the hallway of one the university’s dormitories. I didn’t know which one, but it had to be one of the girls’ dorms. I ducked back into the room, half expecting coeds to start popping out of their rooms, laughing and pointing at the new girl. Eventually I realized I would probably have to be less concerned about anyone seeing me, but for the moment, I wanted to slip over to the next-door room without being noticed.

I quickly ran to the next door, trying unsuccessfully to ignore the strange feeling of my breasts bouncing and my hips swaying as I did so. The door was locked, so I rapped on it, trying to be noticed over the morose whimpering inside the room. I looked around to see if anyone else had heard the knocking and looked out to see where it was coming from, but the hallway remained deserted except for me.

After a moment I heard a high, sweet voice call out nervously, “Who is it?”

If the voice didn’t belong to Spike or Don, I was going to have some explaining to do, but I was pretty sure they were the residents of the room. “It’s Ryan!” I called back, suddenly taken aback by the sweet sound of my own voice.

“R... Ryan?” The door cracked open. Peering out at me was someone out of a porn flick. She was blonde with a pair of breasts that would have stopped traffic if bared in public. Those spectacular breasts were partially hidden by a short pink robe that appeared to be several sizes too small and way too short to hide anything except the top of her legs. At least it sort of covered the more provocative attributes. Her hair was bottle blonde–so light that it was unlikely to have appeared in nature. As for the rest of her body, she was perfection itself–if your idea of perfection pole danced for a living. But the most unsettling thing about her was her eyes. They were dazzlingly blue, but the whites were red, and was that mascara running from the edges and down her cheeks?

“Who are you?” I asked her. “Are you Spike or Don?”

Her face turned brilliant red. “I... I’m Spike.”

“Are you going to let me in?”

She said nothing, but the door slowly opened. Timidly she stepped back, so as not to be seen from the hallway.

The room I entered looked like something out of a masculine nightmare. Everything in the room seemed to be either white, pink, frilly or some combination of them. Little furry white rugs were cast over the institutional gray carpet, and on the eggshell walls posters of sexy men were everywhere.

Once Spike stepped back, I saw the other occupant of the room, sitting naked on one of the beds sobbing softly, her deep brown eyes glistening with tears. Her dark Latin skin and coal black hair were in deep contrast with the pink satin bedspread, but it didn’t take much imagination to picture her spread out on the bed with her long dark hair fanned out behind her. She sat as modestly as she could, long smooth legs pushed tightly together to protect what had to lie between her thighs.

“Don?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

The Latino girl nodded, wiping away a tear with a feminine hand tipped with long fingernails that had been painted a deep red. “Ryan?”

I nodded, wondering what I looked like after seeing these two voluptuous women who only a short time before had been my pledge brothers. Then I noticed a full-length mirror on the sidewall. ‘Well, I had to know what I had become sometime,’ I thought grimly and made my way to stand in front of the mirror.

I had expected to find myself looking like a slightly different version of Spike or Don. The only thing I knew about myself already was that I was female and had a very large pair of breasts. Given that my skin was fair, I suspected I was probably a sexy redhead with sparkling green eyes and a permanent come-hither expression. I steeled myself as my eyes focused on the image in the mirror.

What I saw wasn’t quite what I expected. Oh, I was attractive enough, that was certain. But I was attractive in a more subtle way than my two pledge brothers. My hair was mostly brown, with auburn highlights that seemed to be natural rather than dyed. I had a cute, girl next-door sort of face, sort of like Jewel Staite. My eyes were blue, framed by long lashes, and my figure, I saw as I opened the robe, was sexy and feminine, but not as exaggerated as either Spike’s or Don’s. To my relief, I reassessed my breasts and found them not quite as large as I had first expected. I guess when you look down for the first time and see breasts on your chest, they appear to be larger than they really are. Still I’d probably be a strong finisher in a wet t-shirt contest–not that I had any plans to enter one–but I doubted if I was endowed sufficiently to win.

“Wh... what happened to us?” Don asked, and for the first time, I noticed he–she–had a faint Hispanic accent.

“We’re fucking girls!” Spike muttered, sitting down on her own frilly bedspread and pounding her tiny fists fruitlessly into the satiny material.

“But how?” Don whimpered, tears starting to flow once again.

The answer to her question was as obvious as it was outlandish. Still I was the one who said it.

“Magic,” I answered simply.

Both girls looked at me as if I had just said something in Chinese. Finally Spike said, “What are you talking about? There’s no such thing as magic.”

I motioned to my own body. “Then explain this. Explain what’s happened to all of us.”

Spike frowned. “Well, there’s surgery... you know, they can make a guy look like a girl.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “but that would take months to do, and we wouldn’t look like this if we had been operated on. How tall were we? You and I, Spike, we were each about six-three. Don there was maybe six-four. Haven’t you noticed we’re a lot lower to the ground now? If I had to guess, there isn’t a one of us who would top five-seven. And we were all pretty well-muscled. Where did all that weight go?”

“But there’s no such thing as magic,” Spike repeated lamely, but the look she was giving her own substantial breasts said differently.

“Yesterday I would have agreed with you,” I said softly. “But not now.”

“What are we going to do?” Don wailed plaintively.

“I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do,” Spike told her. “Okay, so let’s say it’s magic. Those bitches over at the Opie house did this to us. That’s the only explanation. We’re going to go over there and demand that they turn us back.”

I had watched Spike on the football practice field. He had a penchant for charging into the strength of the opposition and pushing them back as far as he could. It was an admirable trait for a tackle like Spike, but his plan sounded futile and downright dangerous. Besides all of us had been large enough and strong enough to be intimidating to almost everyone we met. There was nothing intimidating about us now, and I had to make Spike realize it.

“Wait, Spike,” I cautioned. “If they’re able to change us into girls so easily, we might be walking into something worse if we go barging into their house demanding to be changed back.”

“Worse?” Her exclamation was meant to sound menacing, but it came out as a feminine shriek. “What the hell could be worse than having tits and a cunt? Look at these!” She thrust out her chest, hands propping up each breast. “If you had melons like these, you’d be leading the charge on those bitches!”

I pointed at my own breasts. “Oh yeah? And what do you call these?”

Taken aback just a little, she said, “Yeah... but they’re not as big as mine.” She sounded almost as if she was pouting. Oddly there was even a thread of misplaced pride in her response. I guess given the type of girls Spike seemed to go after, her large breasts were something of a point of pride. I certainly didn’t envy her endowments, though.

“Then what should we do?” Don asked timidly.

Okay, what should we do? I looked around, spotting a white purse on one of the desks. “I think they’ve changed more than just our appearance,” I told them, thinking about how feminine the room was. “Let’s see if there are any IDs in that purse. They may tell us how complete these changes are.”

“So you think they’ve set us up with girl lives and everything?” Spike asked, grabbing the purse. She pulled out a white women’s wallet and rifled through the cards it contained. After a moment, she nodded. “You’re right. Look at this.”

She handed me about a half dozen cards–driver’s license, student ID, and some credit cards. All were made out to a Stacey Norris–female, eighteen, and a couple of them had Spike’s new feminine visage imprinted on them.

Don had found a black purse and produced a similar display, identifying her as Donna Maria Morton. “I must be adopted,” she guessed. “I’m too... Latin to be my parents’ daughter.”

I had to agree. With her dark coloring and noticeable accent, she looked nothing like the fair-skinned, light-haired guy I had known.

“So who are you now?” Spike demanded.

“I’ll tell you later,” I promised, realizing there was undoubtedly a purse waiting for me back in my room. “Right now we have to figure out what to do. I say we don’t go over to the Opie house: that’s too dangerous. But we can call that president of theirs–Andrea something-or-other–and try to negotiate with her before showing up on their doorstep. Maybe we can get her to listen to reason.”

Both of the other girls nodded slowly. I breathed a little sigh of relief. Maybe I could talk some sense into Andrea and convince her to change us back. At least I thought I could be more diplomatic about it than the other two new girls. Don–or Donna now–would probably get hysterical on the phone, and Spike would probably threaten her futilely. Neither result would be good.

The ‘girls’ followed me into my room so I could get my cell phone. Sure, I could have used one of theirs, but I think all of us just wanted to get out of that room and its lacy pinkness. My room was feminine too, I suppose, but at least it didn’t look like Reese Witherspoon’s room in Legally Blonde. I had been in girls’ rooms before which were far more feminine than mine had become.

Waiting for someone to pick up the phone at the Opie house seemed like the longest wait of my life. There was no doubt in any of our minds that the Opies were behind all of this, and I don’t think any of us had any illusions about how eager they would be to change us back. Still we had to try.

I had decided to take my father’s advice with Andrea. He had always told me that when a woman is mad at you, just say that you’re sorry, even if you have no idea what you’re apologizing for. I had planned to do exactly that.

“Hi there,” a sexy girl’s voice answered, and I realized they must have caller ID and realized who was calling. I could almost imagine the girl’s devilish grin. She knew exactly who I was and what had been done to me. That meant she also knew why I was calling, but she wasn’t about to make it easy on me. She must have been waiting for my call.

“Could you put Andrea on, please?” I asked nervously, trying to keep my already-feminine voice from going still higher.

“Which Andrea would that be?” she asked innocently.

I sighed, thankful once more that I had made the call instead of Spike or Don. I doubt if they would have been able to stay cool. As it was, it was damned hard for me.

“I’d like to speak with your president,” I rephrased. “That Andrea.”

“Just a moment,” came the singsong reply.

I was pretty sure Andrea was already there, probably giggling with the girl who had answered the phone. They were determined to make me sweat–and they were succeeding. Let’s face it–if they decided to leave us like this, there wasn’t a whole lot we could do–especially if, as I suspected, the new IDs were a foretaste of something even more all-encompassing. Unless I missed my guess, they had changed reality around us, and to the world, we were exactly who our new IDs declared us to be as far as anyone knew.

Could I live my life as a girl if I had to? Yeah, I realized half the world did just fine being female, but I didn’t know the first thing about being a girl. And I wasn’t particularly anxious to learn, either. If there was any chance at all of changing back, I’d do just about anything to have it.

Suddenly I was off hold, and a familiar voice greeted me. “Hello, Ryan. Or I guess it’s Rebecca now.” Well, at least I knew what name was on my IDs. “I think I’ll call you Becky, though, since that’s the name everyone knows you by.”

Then I was right. When I saw the girls’ IDs, I suspected that what had been done to us had somehow manifested itself in the world around us. Apparently, I was correct. “Look, Andrea,” I began, trying to keep the anger I felt out of my tone, “whatever it is we did to offend you, we’re sorry. What do we need to do to get our lives back to normal? Just say it and we’ll do it.”

To my despair, she laughed. “But your lives are normal. You’re all normal girls. Everyone knows that–your friends, your families...”

“Please, Andrea,” I begged. “There must be something we can do to make up for... for...”

“For years of boorish behavior?” she shot back. “For all the things you did to wrong the young women in your lives? Well, you’re doing all of that right now. All those girls you and your friends wronged have a new chance now, since they never met the crappy guys you once were. Reality’s changed. None of the girls you used even remember the guys you used to be.”

What girls? What was she talking about? I couldn’t speak for Spike or Don, but what had I done to deserve this? I had only had one steady girlfriend in my life, and she had moved away to Chicago just before our junior year. We had parted friends.

“Andrea, can we at least come by and talk about this?”

“Is that what you told your victims?” she growled. “Did you just tell them you wanted to ‘talk about this’ before you... you...”

What the hell was she talking about?

“Andrea...”

“Listen to me, Becky...” There was pure hatred in her voice when she spoke my new name. “You and your friends are who you will be for the rest of your lives. Don’t even think of coming by our house, or we’ll think of something even worse for you.”

She didn’t say what she meant by worse, but it still sent a chill up my spine. At least I had been right not to go barging into the lions’ den–or rather the lionesses’ den.

“Just get used to what you are,” she continued. “At least we’ve given you a chance–which is more than you three have given to other girls.”

With that she slammed down the phone.

As I turned off my phone, Don–or I guessed now it would always be Donna–looked at me with false hope. “Well?”

“She said no, didn’t she?” Stacey asked.

I nodded.

“Well, I’m going over there and show that bitch what’s what,” she growled, starting for the door.

I grabbed her arm. “Don’t,” I cautioned, and explained the gist of our short conversation.

“Then... then we’re stuck like this?” Donna whimpered, tears forming in her pretty brown eyes as she dropped down to sit on the edge of my bed.

Stacey slowly sat next to her, saying nothing, but her face a portrait of hopelessness.

I knew how she felt. Until Andrea had hung up on me, I had thought there was a small chance that we could say or do something to get her to change us back. And what did she mean by implying that we had all mistreated women in the past? I couldn’t speak for my pledge brothers, but I could think of nothing I had ever done to deserve the punishment.

The full impact of what had been done to me hit me just then. I was a girl. I had all the girl parts: Breasts, smooth legs, a vagina... And not just a vagina. Inside my body were ovaries, filled with eggs that would cause me to bleed on a monthly timetable. My God, I could even get pregnant.

The thought of anything male being shoved into my slit seemed absolutely repulsive, and I was sure I would never allow it to happen voluntarily. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen without my consent. As a young athletic man, very few people could overpower me, but now, as a young woman, I would be vulnerable and would have to be on guard, or face potentially frightening consequences. I even got the idea that if something like that happened, Andrea would be just fine with it. I shuddered involuntarily.

At last Stacey rose with a deep sigh and headed for the door.

“Wh... where are you going?” Donna asked fearfully.

“Back to our room,” she murmured. “If I’m stuck like this, I want to find something a little more appropriate to wear. I can’t take another minute of this... this pink!”

“Wait for me!” Donna called, padding along behind her, her own skimpy robe flapping provocatively.

Suddenly I was alone. I was actually a little relieved, to be honest. Stacey’s bottled-up aggressiveness and Donna’s whining were getting to me. I wanted some me time to try to come to grips with all of this, and I didn’t want distracting company.

The first step was to take a look in my own purse, a brown one with a shoulder strap, and find out everything I could about my new self. My full name, it turned out, was Rebecca Lynn O’Meara. Not a bad name as girl’s names went, I reasoned. I could have been named Hortense or Esmeralda or something equally unappealing. I supposed I would take to calling myself Becky when it came down to it, since others remembered it as my nickname.

I wasn’t very tall–only about five-five, but I supposed that was not too far off an average height for a girl of my build. It was certainly a comedown, though–almost a full foot. Once more, I couldn’t help but think that the world appeared more menacing from my diminished height.

There was a picture of me–the new me–with my parents. I remembered when the picture had been taken, right after my high school graduation, but I certainly didn’t remember wearing a periwinkle dress and matching heels at the time. Since it was just a photo of me and my parents, I assumed I was still an only child. I felt sorry for my father at that moment. He had always seen me as a son who could follow in his footsteps–playing football, watching sports, and fathering a family. Now I was probably his ‘little princess’ or something equally depressing. Instead of bonding with him by going to University of Nebraska football games, my parents probably remembered me bonding instead with my mother on shopping excursions to Westroads Mall.

The IDs didn’t tell me a whole lot more. About the only other factoid I derived from them was that my birthday was the same as before–I was still seventeen, turning eighteen a week from Monday.

I methodically went through everything else I could find that might tell me anything about myself. There wasn’t a lot to see, though. My class schedule still showed me in the same classes as before, so I was still listed as ‘undeclared’ for a major. Of course all of the paperwork pertaining to football was gone. That also meant my athletic scholarship was gone as well. I hoped my parents didn’t gulp when they saw the tuition bill.

All my fraternity paperwork was gone too, naturally. I couldn’t exactly pass the Theta Zeta Xi physical now–except for the honorary Theta Girl club, which meant I’d have to be pinned to a Theta. No chance of that, though. I would never be some guy’s girlfriend.

Or so I thought at the time.

I wished I had never heard of the Thetas. If I hadn’t pledged the house, I never would have been sent over to the Opie house on a work detail and none of this would have ever happened to me.

Wait a minute: hold that thought.

Our Pledge Trainer, Sam Dietrich, had sent me over to the Opies along with Spike and Don. He had called for the three of us specifically. It wasn’t as if he had walked through the house looking over all of the pledges and picking three at random to send to the Opies. He had been in his room and called for the three of us specifically.

Why? Did Sam know what was going to happen to us? He had warned us not to piss off any of the Opies. Did that mean he thought something even worse might be done to us if we did?

If Angela wouldn’t answer any of our questions, maybe Sam would. I picked up my phone and prepared to call Sam, but before I entered the last digit of the number, I clicked off. Angela had not been very forthcoming, and I had a hunch that if I called Sam, he wouldn’t be either, probably denying that he knew anything at all. If I was going to confront him, it would have to be in person. Then he wouldn’t be able to weasel out on me so easily.

But that meant leaving my room and walking across campus to the Theta house–as a girl. I was not exactly enamored with that prospect. It took me ten minutes of intense pacing back and forth, looking out the window, and re-examining my new female body in the mirror before I came to the conclusion that as distasteful as displaying myself in public would be, I had no other choice. Besides the next day would mean the start of classes, and I would have to get used to being seen as a female by then.

I vowed to dress as nondescriptly as I could. I had it all planned out–a bulky sweatshirt to hide my new breasts, loose jeans to keep my wiggling derriere from attracting attention, and sneakers with athletic socks for the long walk. I had it all planned out. I even dragged all the aforementioned items out and arranged them on the spare bed, since I didn’t seem to have a roommate (thank God!).

I dressed quickly, my mind thinking about how I was going to approach Sam. But I made a few course corrections in my outfit along the way, as each of the planned items proved to be bad choices for my mission. So I suppose there was a method to my madness as I dressed, but somehow, I didn’t realize exactly what the effect would be until I had finished and turned to see the results in the mirror. Then I gasped at my image, almost as alarmed as I had been to see myself as a female to begin with.

I was dressed in what I would later learn was known by the awkward name of a crochet-trim sweater top with a scoop neck. It was white and showed off everything from my neck down to the beginning of my cleavage, the little dusting of freckles I had been given drawing the eye to my new breasts.

I was also wearing a denim skirt that seemed scandalously short, and for the first time I realized that while my breasts were very watchable, it would be my legs that attracted the most attention, especially when I was wearing the denim slide sandals that so closely matched my skirt and raised my heels up to display my smooth, hairless legs to their greatest advantage.

I was even wearing earrings and bracelets–all in thin gold circles, and my long, silky hair had been pulled back into a ponytail which, as the old song went, swayed with a wiggle when I walked.

‘Oh Jesus, I was a babe!’

But how had I gotten dressed like this? It took me a few minutes to piece my thoughts together, but I finally had the answers.

First of all, when I had donned the sweatshirt, it felt scratchy and uncomfortable. Of course being new to all of this girl stuff, I had thought that I could get by without the embarrassment of wearing a bra. Silly me. The sweatshirt was especially uncomfortable on my nipples, and I realized for the first time how truly sensitive a woman’s nipples could be. No wonder even the flat-chested ones wore bras most of the time.

So I peeled off the sweatshirt and stared into the mirror at my newly-acquired breasts. They were large, but not as large as Stacey’s or Donna’s–for which I was very grateful. Then I thought to myself that those unwanted breasts could actually work to my advantage. Unless Sam was in the public areas of the fraternity, someone would have to go find him. Which was he more likely to come down to see–a ratty girl in jeans and a sweatshirt, who looked vaguely dyke, or a chick looking her feminine best? Besides, if Sam had had anything to do with our transformations, he would never expect me to give in to my feminine side so quickly. Rather than avoiding me, he’d be curious about the looker who was looking for him.

Maybe that was nothing but rationalization, and maybe it was good reasoning: I’ll never be certain–but Rebecca Lynn was about to make her appearance either way.

Besides, getting dressed as a girl wasn’t too difficult, once I realized that my arms and hands were flexible enough to fasten a bra properly. It took me only a few minutes to select the right outfit–suitably sexy without being slutty. The top and denim skirt had a simple ‘country girl’ look–especially with the slide sandals. I had thought about pantyhose, but decided this outfit looked better with bare legs–especially since my bare legs were pretty nice, even if I do say so myself. Even selecting the right accessories didn’t seem too difficult. I was beginning to wonder smugly why girls seemed to have so much trouble deciding what to wear.

But the makeup was another matter–until I realized I had been transformed with something that could best be called body memory. Remembering how fastening the bra and selecting the right outfit had all seemed strangely natural, I willed myself to apply the makeup in the same way–with determination and confidence in my ability to manage.

The results were mixed. It wasn’t that I did a bad job: it was just that it was very disconcerting to see how good the results look, and how feminine I now appeared. My deft handiwork had created the look of sweet innocence. I knew what I had applied and where, but the results appeared very natural and competent. I knew I was wearing eyeliner, eye shadow, and lipstick, but only another (another?) woman would realize how much and where. To any male, I would appear to be a natural beauty, not needing much in the way of cosmetics to accentuate my features. Whatever had been done to me to give me such skills was downright scary.

Unfortunately, the body memory didn’t seem to extend to any other memories. I still remembered growing up as Ryan. I was intellectually still as male as I had been before the Opies had changed me. I suspected that this was all a part of their plan. After all, they wanted me to act like a girl–hence the body memory–but to be embarrassed about it. They wanted the three of us to be men trapped in women’s bodies. ‘Unfortunately,’ I thought to myself as I looked at myself in the mirror, ‘they had succeeded.’

I tapped on Stacey and Donna’s door to see if they wanted to go with me. Frankly I hoped they didn’t. I hadn’t particularly liked either Spike or Don as guys, and I had a sneaky hunch I wasn’t going to like them as girls, either. Spike–or rather Stacey now, I reminded myself–was still too impulsive, and Donna was a nervous wreck. Besides I thought I’d get further with Sam if I saw him alone.

Luckily there was no response to my knock. Apparently they too had decided to venture out in their new bodies. I hoped they too hadn’t decided to go to our fraternity house, but somehow I doubted if either would have thought of it just yet. So with no little relief, I started out for the house on my own.

I hadn’t walked a quarter of the distance across campus to the TZX house though, when I began to regret going alone and dressed so sexily. With my purse slung over my shoulder, the sway in my walk seemed even more pronounced, probably because I was a little off balance and wearing a heel. I did fine when I didn’t think about it–body memory again–but faltered a little when I gave conscious thought to the fact that I was prancing across campus in high heels. That sway seemed to be attracting a lot of male eyes, and there was nothing subtle about the fantasies percolating behind those eyes: they wanted me for lunch.

Maybe it would have been better to have Stacey and Donna with me, I realized. All girls seemed to feel ‘in numbers there is strength.’ Only the bravest of guys would try to cut a girl out of the pack. And after all, both of the other new girls had bigger chests than I did, and similarly dressed, I would have been the ugly duckling of the three.

But who was I fooling? I sighed to myself. Yeah, Stacey and Donna might have looked more enticing than I did, but I still looked damned good. The strange thing was I was somehow comfortable with that thought. But I suppose if I had to be a girl, it didn’t hurt to be an attractive one. It was probably going to be a big help getting in to see Sam.

By the time I reached the fraternity house though, I was getting more than a little tired of being hit on, and thought for a time that my first idea of wearing sloppy clothes and no makeup might have not been such a bad one after all. Three guys had tried to pick me up, one had even grabbed my ass, and so many had stared at me that I had lost count. I just hoped Sam could tell me something–anything–which would help me get my male identity back.

Walking into the TZX house caused my face to flush in embarrassment. Three of my old pledge brothers were milling around, and their conversation stopped as they silently scanned me from head to toe, usually stopping somewhere in between for a longer look. ‘You lucky bastards!’ I thought to myself. ‘Why couldn’t it have one of you sent to the Opie house instead of me?’ Of course that was one of the most important questions I had for Sam: Why me?

Danny Graham, the most socially adept of the three pledges present, spotted me at the same moment each of the other two did, but unlike them he managed to pull his eyes away from my breasts and legs long enough to rise from his chair and look me in the eye. “Hi,” he said casually. “Can I help you?” He then gave me his best smile.

I smiled back. Somehow it came naturally. “Hi. Is Sam Dietrich around?”

I saw a flash of disappointment in Danny’s eyes as he reached the conclusion I wanted him to reach–namely, that Sam and I might have something going. Since Sam was the Pledge Trainer, it would get me speedy service, and I wasn’t in any mood to stand sexily in the entryway being eye candy for my former pledge brothers any longer than I had to.

“I’ll check for you,” he promised, heading upstairs to Sam’s room.

I smiled at Pat and Andy, the other two pledges. They smiled back, a little uncomfortably I noticed, and thankfully left the room shyly. I had to giggle to myself. If I had walked in the house as Ryan, all I would have gotten was a “Yo.” As an attractive girl though, I had gotten a significant reaction, and I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to find out that Pat and Andy both masturbated that night with the image of me in my little miniskirt in their dirty little minds.

Then I frowned. No matter how funny that prediction might be, it drove home what I had become, and there was nothing funny about that. But for some reason, the whole sexual scene seemed... right. I even had the terribly uncomfortable thought that Pat and Andy were kind of... cute. And Danny’s butt as he fleeted up the stairs to find Sam... well, it was sort of a nice butt...

What the hell was wrong with me?

I liked girls: I had always liked girls. I had never looked at another guy with anything resembling attraction in my life, and God knew I had had enough opportunities given all the locker room showers I had taken as an athlete.

Oh yeah, the showers... and remember Jack Reynolds, one of the tight ends on my high school team, and that big, long...

No!

Let’s see... girls... cute girls... girls that Ryan–I–would like to meet...

Hayden Panattiere... Miley Cyrus... Hillary Duff...

But he does have a nice butt...

Halley Wegryn Gross... Jessica Alba...

And Pat and Andy were sort of cute...

Kristen Bell... Megan Fox...

“Hi.”

“Huh?”

I was so busy with my mental wrestling that I hadn’t even noticed Sam had descended the stairs and was standing not ten feet from me, a puzzled look on his face as he tried to figure out who I was and why I had asked for him. But fortunately, on the walk over, I had thought of what I was going to say to him to keep him off balance until I had him someplace more private.

I turned on my smile again. “Hi, Sam, remember me?”

I had been a guy long enough to know that no male in his right mind was about to admit to a cute girl that he had no idea in the world who she was. Sam didn’t disappoint me. “Oh yeah, sure,” he faked–a bit lamely, I thought.

I gave a mock sigh. “I’m not surprised. You were pretty wasted at that party last spring.”

That wasn’t exactly a reach. Sam had a reputation of getting wasted at parties. It added credibility that he had actually met me but wouldn’t remember me.

“I can remember, you said, ‘Ashley, if you drop by the house sometime, we can go out for a cup of coffee...’” I didn’t want to tell him my name was Rebecca. If he was in any way involved in my transformation, he might know my new name.

“Oh sure... Ashley,” he said, relieved that I had helped him out. He shook his head, feigning embarrassment. “Sorry, I guess I really was wasted that night. Sure, coffee sounds good.”

I would have bet it would. He looked a little under the weather as he stood before me. Apparently he was partying the night away while I was getting transformed into a girl.

“Just let me get my car keys and we’ll head over to Starbuck’s.”

My smile was genuine this time. I had him.

Once we were in his Corvette (the lucky stiff’s father was an Omaha car dealer), I lowered the boom on him as he lowered the top.

“My name’s not really Ashley.”

“Huh?” He looked at me puzzled.

“It’s Rebecca now–Rebecca O’Meara.” My angry eyes burned into his shocked ones.

“Oh shit!” he finally said, obviously knowing who I really was. Bingo!

“I want to know why this was done to me,” I demanded.

Sam looked around desperately. “If one of them sees us together...”

I had a pretty good idea who ‘them’ was. “Then let’s make sure they don’t see us,” I told him.

“Look,” he returned, trying not to look me in the eye, “just get out of the car and forget all about this.”

“Forget?” I yelled. “How am I supposed to forget this?” I motioned to my body.

“Nothing can be done about that,” he replied through clenched teeth. “And if one of them sees us, or even if anybody on our Executive Council figures out who you are, it will go badly for both of us both of us: don’t you understand?”

So it wasn’t just Sam who was involved from the fraternity. The Executive Council was all eight officers in the house. This was bigger than I imagined.

“I don’t much care,” I shot back. “Being a girl is about as bad as it can get, don’t you think?”

He shook his head. “You have no idea how bad it can be.”

“Then find someplace private and explain it to me,” I pressed. “Otherwise I’ll make sure your precious Executive Council finds out all about this meeting. I’ll make them think you told me plenty.”

In reply he put the top back up and pulled away from the curb. “Okay. I think I know someplace where we can be alone...”

The ‘someplace’ was a little motel on the south side of town called the Shady Rest. It was old and run down–the sort of place where they needed the business so badly, they didn’t mind a couple of college kids with no luggage signing in as ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’ for the afternoon.

My face was red as Sam signed the register and handed the clerk some bills. The stare the clerk gave me as he accepted the money made me feel dirty and naked.

“You’ve done this before,” I accused as he escorted me to an isolated room.

“Jeez, quit sounding so indignant,” he muttered. “You’re starting to sound like a girl already.”

I was, wasn’t I? I had heard a couple of active members talking about the Shady Rest just a few days earlier, and at the time thought they were pretty cool to be able to talk a girl into going there with them. I had been the sort of guy who would never have dreamed of asking a girl to be an afternoon delight like that. As old-fashioned as it sounded, I had been brought up to respect girls too much to do that, but I had my dreams about it.

Once we were inside I perched on the rickety desk chair, the only chair in the room. I wasn’t about to sit on the bed. In the car I had caught Sam taking in my new body like a starving man in front of a sixteen ounce steak. With considerable effort, I balanced myself properly and crossed my legs so that Sam, from his seat on the bed, didn’t get too much of a show looking up my short skirt.

“Okay,” I said when we were settled. “So tell me what’s going on.”

Sam looked around the room, as if he expected someone to be hiding and listening. Then he sighed and began. “Look, what I’m going to tell you, you mustn’t repeat to anyone–and never let on to anyone that I told you anything. Do you understand?”

There was true fear in his eyes and in his voice. If I was ever to learn anything from him, I’d have to promise. I wasn’t sure if I could keep that promise or not, but I did intend to do my best. “All right,” I agreed. “I’ll stay mum. Now what’s going on?”

Sam relaxed a little and leaned back on the bed to begin his story.

“About thirty years ago there was this party. It was at the house, and it was pretty wild, I guess. Anyhow, one of the brothers had a date with a girl from the Opie house. He was drunk–or high: I’m not sure which. Maybe it was both. Anyhow, he expected her to put out and she wouldn’t. So he and a couple of other guys in the house decided to take what she wouldn’t give. They forced her down and took turns with her.”

“Oh shit!” I remarked. I had never had any use for guys who forced themselves on girls, but as a girl myself it actually caused an unpleasant reaction in my new female body. I found myself unconsciously squeezing my legs together, as if someone was trying to force me into having sex. I could also empathize with the girl. I too had female organs between my legs, and the thought of someone forcing themselves in there was too frightening to even contemplate.

“What we didn’t know–what nobody in our house knew–was that some of the Opies are witches...”

“Witches!” I laughed nervously. “What are you trying to pull? There’s no such thing as witches.”

“Yeah,” Sam countered dryly. “And there’s no such thing as magic either. You got that rack and that pussy because some mad scientist operated on you in the middle of the night, and now you’re all healed and just look like a girl. Right?”

He had me there. “Okay. Magic?”

He nodded. “Yeah, magic. The real stuff. It turns out they can even major in it here at NSU. Of course that isn’t the name of the major. It’s something weird, like ‘applied cultural dynamics,’ or something like that. Nobody knows except the witches on the faculty and in the student body–and people like us who found out the hard way.

“Anyhow, the Opies sent a delegation over to our house and met with the Executive Council–all the house officers, as you know.”

I nodded. That was one of the first things they taught us as pledges.

“Then the girls hauled in one of the three guys. I guess they ambushed him on campus. Then right there in front of the Council, they turned him into a girl. Then they demanded the fraternity turn over the other two guys who had been involved with the rape or they’d turn every guy in the house into a girl.”

“And the Council agreed,” I surmised.

“Hey, do you blame them?”

“No,” I admitted. If I had been on the Council then, I would have made the same decision. It was the only way for most of the brothers to keep their own balls. Besides, the rapists deserved what they got. I would have believed that even if I had still been Ryan. “But that was thirty years ago,” I noted. “What does that have to do with what happened to me, Spike and Don?”

“They weren’t happy just turning those three guys into girls,” Sam explained. “They wanted to make sure there was no repeat performance in the future, so to keep us in line they demanded that we provide them with three new victims every year.” Sam suddenly chortled, but there was an edge to his laugh. “I guess it’s sort of like all those old movies you see where the natives sacrifice virgins to the volcano god. Only it isn’t exactly virgins that get sacrificed.”

“So why me?” I practically yelled. “What, is it all random? I mean, do you just pick three pledges every year by pulling names out of a hat?”

“It happens,” he admitted. “Except usually the Opies demand that we pledge specific guys and select them. I guess it’s because all of these guys pissed them off or something. It’s always somebody like Spike, Don or you, though–somebody who’s been rough on girls.”

“I was never rough on a girl in my life!” I scoffed. “Yeah, I can see maybe Don or Spike, but I’ve always been respectful of women.”

“Somebody doesn’t think so: either that or you really pissed somebody off,” he returned. Then after staring at me for a moment, he added, “I’ve got to admit that when we pledged you, I didn’t figure you’d be one of the ones they selected. In fact, when they came over to look over our new pledge class, I thought they were going to make us take in somebody else and then select him. I guess they decided the three of you were worth taking though.”

I stood up, pacing the room, my blood pressure rising with every high-heeled step. “This is all a mistake,” I groused. “I’ve never done anything to hurt a girl. I’m nothing like Don or Spike.” I turned to Sam. “Look, you’ve got to help me. Get in touch with one of your counterparts over at the Opie house and tell them there’s been a mistake...”

Sam’s hands shot up as if he were pushing something away. “Oh no, no way. If they knew we were even talking, I’d probably be in skirts by this time tomorrow–maybe all the guys in the house would be, too. We’ve been ordered to have no contact whatsoever with their victims.

“Besides, you think they haven’t heard that shit before? I’ll bet every guy they change claims he’s never done anything to hurt a girl. What makes you think they’d believe me anyway? Take my word for it, Ryan, or I guess it’s Rebecca now, the Opies have got some real man-haters on that council of theirs, and there’s no way they’re going to believe you or me.”

“Then I’ll go to the police!” I threatened.

“And tell them what?” Sam asked. “Haven’t you figured out yet that they’ve covered all the bases? The three of you pledges know what happened to you, their officers know, and our officers know, but that’s it. Everybody else–the school, other member of the fraternity, hell, even your own family thinks you’ve always been a girl. They built up a whole girly life for you and all the others. They made you all into hot girls and they plan to keep you that way.”

I turned my back on Sam, mostly so he couldn’t see the tears of frustration welling up in my eyes. I folded my arms under my breasts, accidentally brushing the nipples since I wasn’t used to them yet. I must have looked like the classic girl having a little pout, but what the hell? I was a girl having a pout.

I was pissed, and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do to regain my manhood–at least not right away. In the morning I’d have to dress as a girl, go to class as a girl, be called “Ms. O’Meara” by my professors, and get hit upon by guys. There was no way around it. I couldn’t just sit in my room and pretend that nothing had happened.

I wondered if any of the girls from the Opie house would spy me walking across campus, with my cute little girl wiggle and my sweet little girl face. Would they laugh when they saw me? Probably not out loud, but they’d give me a knowing smile, driving home my embarrassment.

I was pulled out of my self-pity when I felt Sam’s hands on my shoulders. I turned, suddenly indignant. “What the hell are you doing?”

Sam’s hands flew up, his eyes wide. “Hey, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean anything. It’s just you looked like... like...”

He didn’t want to say it, because he probably thought it would make me angrier. He was right. I knew why as I watched him stammer. I had looked so much like a sweet young coed about to break into tears that he had done what a lot of guys might have done: try to comfort the poor girl.

To his surprise though, I didn’t explode. As much as I hated to admit it, in his shoes I might have done the same thing. “Just take me back to my dorm,” I said softly.

“Uh... yeah, sure. Okay.” He started to open the door, then turned to face me. “Look, one more thing. I’ve seen other guys go through this over the last couple of years. I think it must get easier for you after a little time. They all seemed to get more... comfortable with their bodies over a couple of weeks.”

Oh good, I thought sarcastically. Something to look forward to. Before I knew it, I’d be an expert on shades of nail polish and subscribing to Cosmopolitan.

He saw the frustrated look in my eyes and added, “Hey, you’re stuck this way. Why not just try to make the best of it?”

After the withering look I gave him for that remark, he said nothing more, meekly opening the door for me.

He didn’t take me back quite all the way to my dorm. There was a chance, he explained, that the Opies had people watching me, so he dropped me off at a secluded spot perhaps a hundred yards away from my new home and drove away as fast as he could.

At least I hadn’t had to walk back across campus again, I told myself. I had been spared that humiliation. Unfortunately I was about to be humiliated again: I just didn’t know it. It happened when a football landed with a thunk a few yards from me and dribbled up to my feet.

“Hey, doll!” a male voice called out from about twenty yards away. “Toss that ball back to me, would you?”

Instinctively I bent over, remembering only at the last second that I was wearing a very short skirt. All of my panties had seemed pretty skimpy, so I figured somebody was getting quite a show. I quickly stood upright again. This time I managed to crouch girl style, but I still heard a snicker or two from behind me.

I frowned as I picked up the ball. Doll, huh? They had no idea that I had once been a quarterback. I’d toss the ball back to the guy all right: I’d execute a tight spiral right into his arms. He’d really be impressed.

Unfortunately I hadn’t taken into account my radically changed anatomy. Having a football in my hands made me forget who I had become. I even revelled in the fact that my hand no longer bore the after-effects of my football injury: there was no pain at all as I gripped the ball.

Unfortunately the ball didn’t fit right in my hand, since instead of broad male paws, I now had slender feminine hands. To make matters worse, my arm muscles were only a fraction of the strength they had once had. The ball slipped limply out of my hands, wobbling only about two-thirds of the distance in the air before plopping down at the guy’s feet.

He grinned. I could see his thoughts: ‘Figures–she throws like a girl.’ Then the ‘girl’ part soaked in as he said, “Hey, thanks, babe. What’s your name?”

I couldn’t speak. My face was red and I was fighting back tears and practically shaking. I ran for the dorm as quickly as my little feet would carry me.

When I was safely in the dorm and had had a few minutes to regain my composure, I looked down at my watch (a tiny-faced women’s watch, of course) and realized it was nearly dinnertime. At the same moment I realized I had been so distressed that I hadn’t eaten a bite all day. My stomach was rumbling, although even that seemed more feminine than the loud grumble my male counterpart might have done. At least there’d be just girls in the dining hall, since Brandon Hall, my new dorm, had no connecting men’s dorm.

I thought I’d check in with Donna and Stacey first though and tell them what I’d learned. Although I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like them any more as girls than I did as guys, they had been my pledge brothers and had shared the same fate as I. I felt obligated to give them the information I had gleaned, although I remembered that I had pretty much promised Sam that I would say nothing to anyone about our conversation. But no matter what I had promised, Stacey and Donna deserved to hear what I had learned. I decided to compromise and keep Sam’s name out of it. I’d just tell them I found out from an Opie. Then, if the word ever got back to them, they could waste time trying to find out which of their own sorority sisters had squealed.

Imagine my surprise when I heard strange noises coming from their room–almost squeals and grunts like pigs rolling in mud. The door wasn’t locked, and fearful that something has gone wrong with their transformations I barged in, expecting to find them writhing on the floor.

Well, they were writhing all right, but not on the floor. The two of them were on Stacey’s bed, coupled together by something between their legs as they twisted and turned, squealing not in pain, but in pleasure.

Okay, I might not have been the most experienced person–male or female–when it came to sex, but like all guys my age, I had at least scanned some of the grosser magazines and web sites at one time or the other. While I had never seen a double-headed dildo (or any dildo for that matter) up close and personal, I recognized one when I saw one. Or rather when I saw one in use. Come to think of it, not a whole lot of the dildo was visible.

Stacey was on top, and she looked up at me and grinned. “Pretty cool, huh, Becky?”

Cool wasn’t the word that came to mind.

She disengaged herself from Donna, who collapsed on the bed with a satisfied moan. I swear I heard an audible “pop” when Stacey removed the dildo from Donna’s body. It seemed terribly incongruent to see a big flesh-colored artificial penis protruding from Stacey’s crotch. It was particularly disturbing to realize that an equally large phallus was still in Stacey. She removed that one with the same nonchalance that she might have shown removing a hat.

“So where did you get that?” I asked, unsure of what else to do or say.

“That little sex store just off campus–you know the one. I guess the city’s trying to shut it down, but it’s still there and doing a great business.”

I looked around the room, spying a few other sex toys. Yeah, I supposed if everybody spent as much in the store as Stacey and Donna had, they were definitely doing a great business.

“Wanna try it?” Stacey asked, holding up the flesh-colored monster which was still dripping with her juices.

“Maybe later,” I replied noncommittally. Yeah, much later, like in the next century or two. “Whatever possessed you two to... to... experiment?”

Stacey shrugged. “Don’t know. We were walking around off campus and thought we’d go into the sex store and give the guys a little thrill. Then we spotted some of this stuff and we both got kind of... you know, horny, I guess.”

I really couldn’t believe what I was seeing or hearing. That morning I had left Donna whimpering and crying over being a girl, and Stacey so pissed about her transformation that she was looking for someone to hurt. Now, just a few hours later, I had come back to find the two of them acting out a scene from a bad porn flick. What the hell had happened to them?

“Look,” I began, delving for an excuse for barging in. “I was just going to get something to eat. You two want to join me?”

“Maybe later, honey,” Stacey replied, obviously not meaning the reply any more than I had meant the invitation after what I had just witnessed. “Not hungry right now.” She looked at Donna and arched her eyebrows with a grin. Donna giggled at the sight. They were already about to leap on each other again as I shut the door behind me.

As I walked back to the dining hall, I realized I hadn’t told them anything about my exploits that day, not that I thought they would have been that interested. Their sudden acceptance of their new bodies had shocked me no end, and I had no doubt it was all part of the spell the Opies had cast on us.

But if that were so, why hadn’t it affected me, too? I certainly had no desire to parade around sex stores, buy lots of sex toys, and go back to my room thrashing around naked with a dildo shoved up my tw... pus... I mean, vagina.

Maybe whatever had affected them was just taking a little longer to affect me, I thought nervously. Would I get back from dinner hot to try out my new body, or worse yet, would I wake up in the morning with the overwhelming urge to pleasure myself?

God, I hoped not.

There were only a few diners left when I got to the dining hall. That was good too, because I’d be able to sit by myself, eat quickly, and flee back to my own room. As I filled my tray with a few of the least unappetizing items still left–mostly overcooked steamed veggies and something that looked vaguely like Beef Stroganoff–I noticed to my surprise a couple of guys getting drinks at the end of the cafeteria line.

“What are guys doing in here?” I whispered to the girl just in front of me in the line.

She looked at me oddly for a moment, as if trying to decide if I was a man-hating lesbian or something, before whispering back, “We can eat at any dining hall we want. Didn’t you know that?”

Actually I didn’t. Since I was on the football team as a male, I had been assigned to the men’s athletic dorm, and surprise, surprise, we got food that wasn’t on the regular Student Dining Plan. I hadn’t realized that regular students could eat at any regular dorm. This was going to make things a little more difficult for me, since I was pretty sure I’d have at least some of my meals disrupted by guys looking for dates. Well, there wasn’t anything I could do about it, I realized.

I only wished that I had taken a few minutes to change out of my sexy clothes. I had expected only other girls to be in the dining hall, but now I was on display for the scattering of males in all my feminine glory. If I had still been a guy and spotted the girl me sauntering through the dining hall in her short skirt and high heels, I would have been impressed enough to at least go over and introduce myself. I just hoped that none of the guys still in the hall were similarly motivated.

I thought I had picked a spot at a table distant enough from all of the males in the dining room to avoid any fraternizing them, but I was wrong. Facing me several tables away was a guy who actually looked sort of familiar, nursing the last of a glass of milk and what looked like a cookie. Since he was in my direct line of sight and I in his, it figured we’d suddenly look at each other at the same moment. I ducked my head down quickly, concentrating on my bland meal, but when I stole a glance up again, he was still staring at me.

‘Oh shit!’ I thought as he suddenly got up and headed in my direction. I considered abandoning the rest of my meal (small loss) and fleeing the room, but there was no way I could do that without looking like a scared rabbit. I’d just have to sit there and fend off any attempt he made at picking me up. I could do it, I told myself. After all girls did it to guys all the time.

Of course the problem was that I hadn’t been a girl for very long and I wasn’t quite sure how to do it. It had really never happened to me back home. Not to be immodest, but I had been a reasonably good-looking guy, and being the starting quarterback as well meant that pretty much all the girls in high school were at least civil to me, if not downright ready to flirt with me.

I could certainly blow him off with a ‘get lost’ comment, but as uncomfortable as I was, I really didn’t want to damage the poor boy’s ego unless he asked for it in spades. After all I had been male just a day earlier, and I couldn’t help but feel a little empathy for the boy who was approaching my table.

“Say,” he began as he got within speaking range, “aren’t you Becky O’Meara?”

I had been trying to look away from him, hoping that by ignoring him as he got closer, he would get cold feet and keep on walking. That would have been a no harm no foul situation. But at the sound of my new name I turned toward him and gave him a closer look. I had been right: he did look familiar. It took me a moment to realize who he was, though.

“Chad?” I said slowly. “Chad Morgan?”

His timid expression changed into a friendly grin. “It is you! God, Becky, I haven’t seen you since eighth grade. I didn’t know you were going to school here.”

Actually he had never seen me as Becky, but as Ryan. Chad and I had lived just a few houses away from each other. His family had moved to Omaha when his dad, an Air Force officer, had been transferred to SAC Headquarters when he and I were in the sixth grade. We had become fast friends, and when his dad was transferred to Colorado Springs just before we would be freshmen in high school, he moved away. I hadn’t seen or heard from him since.

“You’ve really changed,” I blurted out, and he had too. When I knew him, he was a real string bean, with his reddish blond hair his most prominent feature. He still had the hair, but he had filled out as well. He wasn’t anywhere near as big as I had been as Ryan, but at pretty close to six feet in height, he was well built–one might almost say handsome.

My newly-acquired female brain was taking my thoughts in directions I didn’t want to go, I suddenly realized. I had never really thought of any man as being ‘handsome’ in my life before then. It was very disquieting to realize that I was sizing him up just as Ryan would have sized up a girl.

He smiled. Apparently he knew he looked a lot better than he had when we had both been boys together. But come to think of it, he didn’t remember me as a boy, did he? I was probably ‘That cute girl down the block’ in his memory. So we had never shot hoops together, or checked out girls over at Westroads Mall, or talked about sports and cars as we had as boys. What had our relationship been in his mind?

“So what are you doing here?” I asked, just to get some idea of where he was coming from.

He shrugged, sitting down across from me. “Going to school,” he replied. “Dad got transferred back to SAC for his final tour, and then he plans to retire in Omaha. I qualified for in-state tuition, so here I am. You still live in Omaha?”

Oh boy, we could ride home together. How nice. Yuck. The last thing I wanted right then was to develop a personal relationship with Chad. That might lead to other things–at least in his mind. Still I had to answer him. “Yeah, same place and same street.”

“You’re not still going out with Jake Reynolds, are you?”

Jake Reynolds? Jake had played football with me in high school. We were friends, fellow athletes, had even taken team showers together. I had seen him naked and knew that he had a dick the envy of half the team. He had been dating–and sleeping with–Dana Porter, the head cheerleader, for the last two years before going on to the University of Nebraska. I nearly shuddered at what dating Jake would have meant. Had I dated him?

“Eighth grade was a long time ago,” I said carefully. “Jake and I never dated in high school.” Then I had to add, to my chagrin, “I really didn’t date anybody seriously in high school.”

His expression brightened. Damn! I knew what that look meant. Why hadn’t I just lied and told him I was going steady with some guy from high school? That would have stopped him from going where I was sure he was about to go next.

“Then maybe you and I can get together this week...” He quickly added, “I mean get together for coffee or something.”

“Yeah, sure,” I found myself saying. The funny thing was, I didn’t want to think about going out on a date with him, but I remembered him as an old friend from my days as Ryan, and right now I needed a friend. I’d keep it all innocent, I promised myself. Besides, Chad didn’t look too dangerous, and there was a lot of dangerous guys out there. If I was to, say, meet Chad for coffee and maybe even lunch, other guys would get the idea that we were dating and leave me alone. And that would be fine with me.

“Great!” he exclaimed. “By the way, I live in Carson right next door to Brandon. I’m in 223 if you want to call me.”

“I’m in 251 here in Brandon,” I volunteered before I could think about it. He might just take that as an invitation to come by someday.

“Well, gotta go now,” he said, rising from the table. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“You bet.”

‘What was wrong with me?’ I wondered as Chad walked away. Sure, I told myself I was just re-establishing contact with an old friend, but I had felt funny inside as I talked with him. And as he walked away, I found myself gazing at his masculine butt much as Ryan would have been staring at a nice female ass.

And that was another thing. I was starting to refer to Ryan almost as if he were an entirely different person. He wasn’t: I was Ryan–or at least I used to be. But I was also Rebecca, and every waking hour seemed to emphasize that to my mind.

Of course I knew it was all the spell. It was making me act this way, just as I was certain it was making Stacey and Donna open to a little girl-on-girl action. I supposed I should be grateful I wasn’t in their room gyrating on the bed with them, but I was certainly starting to act more and more girly.

But why were they acting so slutty while I was acting demure? Was my reaction to be the same as theirs, only to be delayed for some reason? I hoped not. Even being Chad’s sweet little girlfriend would be preferable to becoming like Stacey or Donna.

My alarm went off Monday morning and I woke with a start, hoping Sunday had just been some sort of weird anxiety dream. No such luck though I realized, as long hair flopped over my shoulders and my breasts settled in their downward slant. Sighing with resignation, I crawled out of bed and prepared to get ready for the first day of classes.

No, I hadn’t given up on trying to escape my new feminine identity, but I knew that the rest of the world, with just a few exceptions, knew me as Rebecca Lynn O’Meara, and she was expected to be in her classes that day. Like it or not, I was about to embark on my college career as a coed.

Since I had had some practice in appearing in public as a girl the day before, I was able to get ready in a reasonable amount of time. There would be no short skirt for me on the first day of classes, but unfortunately September in southeast Nebraska can get pretty warm, so I didn’t want to wear jeans either. I settled on a pair of khaki shorts and a white and green NSU t-shirt, sandals with just a small heel, and no jewelry, except my watch and the little hoop earrings that had been there since I woke up in a girl’s body. I hadn’t bothered to take them out the night before since I just hadn’t wanted to fool with them.

I gathered my hair into a long ponytail and applied a minimum of makeup–just a little lipstick. I knew it wouldn’t always be this easy to get ready: girls had so much more to do than guys, but hopefully I’d find a way to get changed back before I had to get really dressed up with the right hair and makeup.

I looked myself over in the mirror. Even with the minimum of effort, I still looked pretty good, if I did say so myself. At least I was able to look in the mirror now without cringing as I had the day before. In fact my appearance now seemed almost natural, in a perverse sort of way. That was both good and bad, I told myself as I walked off to my first class. It was good because I was managing to cope in this new body and new environment, which would allow me to concentrate on other things, like my classes and figuring out a way to get back to normal. It was bad though, because the more natural I began to feel in this female body, the less urgent my need to change back might be.

If I couldn’t find a way to get back to my male identity, did that mean I’d eventually get used to being a girl–or worse yet, come to actual revel in my new femininity? It didn’t seem possible, but then again, a couple of days before, magic would have seemed impossible, too.

So there I was, off to my first class saddled with dozens of conflicting emotions and not sure exactly what to do about them. I didn’t want to be a girl, but if I had to be one, I wanted to be a cute one. After all who wanted to be an ugly girl? So one moment as I walked to class, I practically cringed, not wanting to be noticed by any of the males I passed. But somewhere inside me was a little voice telling me I looked hot and I ought to let the guys know I liked being hot.

Strangely neither emotion was entirely accurate. Yesterday’s excursion had given me the confidence that I could pull off this girl business if I put my mind to it. Being watched by guys was just part of the curse of being female and attractive. And the little voice inside my head telling me I looked hot was right–to a point. I was certainly attractive: there was no denying that. But hot? Well, maybe not quite, which was fine with me. I’d settle for attractive since I was a little less likely to attract too much attention.

I took an empty seat in my first class–Western Civ–and wasn’t surprised to see several boys picking seats nearby. I thought of mentally making book with myself as to how long it would be before one of those hound dogs tried to ask me out on a date. Of course if they did, they were going to be very disappointed. I had no intention of dating boys.

In spite of that, I found I was surreptitiously checking out some of the guys around me. It wasn’t conscious, but as I would look up and around, my eyes would unwillingly slow down when they lined up on one of the, uh... cute guys. The secret was not to let them catch me looking. Of course, as a former guy, I was used to sneaking glances at girls without being spotted. Doing it the other way around wasn’t much harder.

Classes actually went pretty smoothly that first day. I wasn’t surprised to see that Rebecca O’Meara was registered for each of the classes while Ryan O’Meara was not. I knew that Stacey was supposed to be in at least two of my classes, because Spike and I had compared schedules the week before, but there was no sign of her.

My last class of the day was English Comp, and to my unexpected delight Chad slid into the seat next to me. Why was I delighted? Had I suddenly decided that I was into boys and wanted Chad near me at all times?

Please...

No, I wanted Chad near me because yes, I liked him as a friend, and also because he could be the faithful sheepdog protecting me from all the wolves.

“How’s the first day?” he leaned over and asked me.

I turned to him, noticing two other guys looking a little upset that someone seemed to be making time with me before they had a chance to select nearby seats. Of course that was exactly what I had been hoping would happen. Nice sheepdog, Chad. “Good,” I replied. “How about you?”

“Good.”

Okay, it wasn’t much of a conversation, but it definitely kept the wolves at bay. I suddenly found myself wishing that Chad had been in all my classes–just to keep the other guys from hitting on me, mind you.

“You want to meet for dinner tonight?” he asked as class was dismissed.

I considered his question for a moment. I liked Chad–I always had, but I didn’t want to think of this as some kind of a boy-girl date. I studied his expression carefully, ascertaining that there was nothing in his question that denoted a date per se. If I had still been Ryan, I told myself, I certainly wouldn’t think Chad was gay and hitting on me just because he wanted to join me at the dorm for dinner, and as nearly as I could tell, he wasn’t hitting on me now.

“Sure,” I finally replied. “Say six?”

“Done,” he grinned, angling off to head for his own dorm. I only hoped the spring to his step was because classes were over for the day and not because I had agreed to have dinner with him. ‘Come to think of it,’ I realized, ‘I might not consider dinner in the dorm a date, but what did Chad consider it?’

At least that would give me two hours to get a little studying in. I might be stuck as a girl–perhaps forever–but I wasn’t going to screw up and flunk out just because of it. I had never had any allusions of having a professional sports career after college–especially after my injury, so male or female, I was motivated to do well in school.

I got a surprise when I got back to my room, though. It appeared I was going to get a roommate, since there were packing boxes and luggage clustered around the empty bed. That would be a little bit of a problem, I told myself. I had seen my room as a place where I could unwind and not have to act all girly, but with a roommate, I’d have to put on the femme act twenty-four/seven. I only hoped whoever she was, she wouldn’t be all let’s be sisters and try each other’s nail polish. Oh well, there was nothing I could do about it even if she was.

There was a knock on my door as soon as I put my books down on my desk. I thought at first it might be my new roommate, but as I opened the door, I saw Stacey standing there with a big grin.

“Getting a new roomie, huh?” she said, looking around to make sure I was alone.

“Looks like it,” I replied. “Hey, where were you today? I thought you were going to be in Western Civ and Sociology with me.”

She shrugged, entering the room casually. She sat down on the bed, crossing her legs carelessly, allowing a glance up her very, very short skirt. “The only reason I came to school was to play football,” she said. “I guess I can’t do that now, can I?”

“We may still find a way to become male again,” I reminded her.

She laughed. “I doubt that. The bitches over at the Opie house aren’t gonna help us, and we can’t exactly go to the Yellow Pages to find a wizard to change us back. I figure we’re stuck this way.”

“Maybe,” I allowed, “but you don’t seem too upset about it?”

Her eyes glowed. “That’s because Donna and I found out how great sex is as a girl.”

“Uh... do you really want to talk about what you guys were up to last night?”

She grinned. “Why not? It just sort of happened. We started playing with ourselves just a little–to see what it felt like, you know? Anyhow, it felt pretty good. And then Donna found that dildo in her night stand and we decided to give it a try.” She closed her eyes and gave a contented sigh as she stretched sexily and pushed her long hair back over her shoulders. If I had still be male, I would have had a raging hard on by then. “It felt, like, really good, you know? You wanna try it?”

“No... thanks.” What the hell was wrong with her anyway? A day ago she had been ready to go over to the Opie house and kick serious butt, but now she was acting like a little slut.

“We’re gonna try it with a couple of guys tonight,” she revealed, shocking me even more.

“Guys?”

“Yeah! We think that’s probably even cooler than the dildo. You wanna come with us?”

“Uh... no thanks.”

She got up and grinned at me as she headed for the door. “We’re leaving about six. Let us know if you change your mind.”

As she left I plopped down on my bed, completely dumbfounded. Other than those cheap near-porn movies on satellite, I’d never seen or heard anything like Stacey’s little performance. I had always thought things like that were some erotic writer’s masturbation fantasies rather than the way real girls talked. What was happening to them?

And as a more disturbing thought, was it going to happen to me?

Dinner with Chad was actually very pleasant. For the first time since being seen in public after my transformation I felt safe. Oh, it wasn’t as if I was in danger, and big, strong Chad was there to protect me. It’s just that I had discovered that a number of guys liked to eat in the cafeterias of the girls’ dorms just to meet the residents. I would have been a prime target had it not been for Chad’s presence. In fact, even with Chad there, a couple of guys looked as if they were thinking about joining us anyway. I solved that problem by appearing to be very interested in Chad.

The strange thing was that in a way, that was true. While I remembered being male and liking girls, something–undoubtedly the spell–was making me look at the members of my former sex with more than passing interest. I was beginning to think of Chad as an... attractive guy. There, I said it. Chad was attractive. I don’t mean that he was exactly Brad Pitt, but there was something about him that made me feel a little funny inside.

Again I began to worry that I would find myself sexually aroused and, like Stacey and Donna, lusting to try out all my new plumbing. To my relief though, it wasn’t like that. Instead, rather than lust, it was basically appreciation. Chad’s complexion was fair like mine, but instead of brown hair with a slightly reddish sheen, Chad was sort of a dirty blond, with hair just a little on the long side. He was well-built, too–not like a jock, but like someone who was used to physical exercise. His eyes were pale blue, behind glasses that gave him sort of a Harry Potter look. In short, he was nice looking without being truly handsome, and it was a look I found myself appreciating.

Also, he treated me as an equal. That was the way I had always treated girls, and I was glad to see that he did as well. As we talked about everything from the warm weather to what the chances were for the Cornhuskers to win a national football championship, I began to remember why we had gotten along so well together as boys–we had so many common interests.

I almost blew it though, with all the talk about sports. After practically reciting the game summary of every contest last fall–games Chad had missed since he hadn’t moved back to Nebraska yet–he looked at me strangely.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him.

“Oh! Nothing,” he replied quickly. “I just didn’t remember you as being all that interested in football when we lived down the street from each other. When did you develop such an interest in sports?”

Shit! I wanted to stay in character for Chad. Was he suspicious of me? Of course not: that was just silly. How could he be suspicious that an old male friend of his had been turned into a girl? But I knew from past experience that even girls who liked football could seldom call up statistics and details like I had been doing. Those of us who had actually played the game were usually the ones who were statistics freaks. I certainly didn’t want to look like I wasn’t a normal girl. Having Chad think of me as a normal girl seemed strangely important to me.

So it was time to bluff. I decided to answer a question with a question. I looked at him coolly. “So what’s wrong with being interested in sports?”

He gave me a hangdog expression. He was really off balance. As I had figured, he wanted to look good in my eyes. Making it sound as if he had just somehow insulted me with his question had been the right thing to do. So it was true: guys really were easy to manipulate.

“I’m sorry, Becky. I didn’t mean there was anything wrong with you being interested in sports. I think it’s cool, really. I’ve just never been able to talk sports with a girl without boring her to tears.”

The crisis over, I decided to let up on him a little. “That’s okay,” I assured him with a slightly dazzling smile. “It’s just that most guys assume I don’t really know anything about sports.” I had actually heard girls complain about that before, so it sounded real.

“You really do know a lot about sports,” he assured me with a self-deprecating smile. “Maybe... we could go to a game here sometime this fall.”

Was he asking me out on a date? It sure sounded like it. But why not go to a game with him? The home season didn’t start until the weekend after the next one, so I would have a little more time to get used to all of this girl junk. And if I found a way before then to get back to my male self, it wouldn’t matter anyway. Besides Chad had proven himself to be an avid football fan in his own right, and it was always fun to see the game with someone who appreciated its nuances. “Sure,” I said with a shrug. “Why not?”

We chatted for about half an hour more before adjourning to our respective dorm rooms to study. We were both serious about our educations as well, so there was another thing we had in common. We sort of shyly said good night to each other, promising to talk again after a common class in the morning.

I was starting to appreciate Chad’s company, and I was not just referring to the way he kept me safe from other guys. I was starting to remember how close we had been as friends back in middle school, and why. I even rationalized that even if I couldn’t change back into my male self, I would be able to find a way to stay friends with Chad without it developing into something more than friendship–at least on his side. There was certainly no danger of it being anything more than friendship on my side, was there now?

When I got back to my room, my new roommate was busily tacking up a poster of Christian Bale on the wall behind her bed. “Hi!” she called out cheerily over her shoulder.

“Hi,” I echoed, watching her stretch to level the poster. I had only been female for a couple of days, so I hadn’t completely gotten over appreciating the look of a sexy girl from behind. My new roommate was about five-five, and I suddenly realized that would make us about the same height. The resemblance ended there, though. She was slimmer than I, and as she turned, I noted enviously that her breasts were substantially smaller than mine. Since my bras were 34Ds (I had been embarrassed to discover), I estimated hers as about B cup and a tad smaller–maybe a 32 if I was a 34.

Her hair was long and black, and as she turned I realized she was Oriental–a real beauty too, in her short shorts and t-top. “I’m Cindy Ling,” she said as she leaped off the bed and offered a petite hand.

“I’m Rebecca O’Meara,” I replied, grasping her hand in my only slightly larger one.

“You go by Becky?”

I fought the urge to say, “I guess so,” and merely nodded.

“What do you think?” she asked, motioning at the poster.

“Uh... it’s good.”

“Good?” she laughed. “It’s great! Isn’t he a hunk?”

“Yeah, sure...”

She looked at me funny. “You... uh... do like guys, don’t you?”

“Oh, sure,” I answered quickly. I didn’t–or at least I didn’t think I did–but I didn’t want her to think I was a lesbian or anything. Strangely enough, in that moment I realized I wasn’t a lesbian and that I really was starting to like guys.

I inwardly cringed. I knew as my first day of classes progressed that I was starting to look at guys in a sexual way, but every time I would look at a guy and think, ‘Nice butt,’ or something, I’d quickly suppress the thought. Now though chatting with Cindy, I came to the sudden conclusion that I really was attracted to boys and looking at Cindy as more of a contemporary. As much as I tried to suppress the idea, it seemed to wash over me with the force of a tidal wave.

“So is he a hunk or isn’t he?” Cindy pressed.

I looked at the poster again. There was something almost hypnotic about his eyes, I thought. “Yeah, he’s really a hunk.” I felt my nipples tingling as I said it. This could be bad, I realized.

“Hey, you wanna go get a beer?” she asked.

“Uh... I’m not twenty one,” I told her. And I wasn’t. Although my sex had changed, my birthday had not. I wouldn’t even turn eighteen until the following Monday, making me one of the youngest incoming freshman, it seemed.

“No prob,” she giggled. “I know the guy checking IDs at the Hexagon. He’ll let us in, as long as we don’t get snocked.”

The school year was young, and I had to admit, a beer would taste good. Like most high school guys I had done my share of partying and knew my way around a beer keg. I was naturally a little concerned about walking into a bar as a girl, but a beer sounded unusually good to me.

“Sure, why not?” was my reply. I had planned to stay in the room and study, but Cindy seemed hard to resist. Besides, just one beer wouldn’t hurt, would it?

The Hexagon was just a couple of blocks off campus, and according to my former fraternity brothers, it was a popular hangout for NSU students. Since I was not even quite eighteen and without a phony ID, there had been no way as Ryan that I would have been able to get in. Even with a phony ID, my chances would have been limited. Now though, as a girl it appeared that things were as I had often suspected: to get more girl customers as bait to attract more guys, some bars stretched the rules a bit to allow cute but underage coeds to slip through the ID check. Apparently The Hexagon was one of those bars.

As we walked together, I gave Cindy some spur-of-the-moment ‘facts’ about my life and she reciprocated. It turned out she had had to register late for the semester and had just arrived on campus that very day. She was from Kansas City–about as far to the south as I was from home to the north.

She was a couple of years older than me, explaining that she had kicked around Europe for a while before coming back to school. I didn’t pry, but I got the impression her family had money, so I doubted if she was staying at youth hostels during her little grand tour.

I found myself liking her very much. She seemed bright, cheerful–even to the point of being carefree–and a good conversationalist. I had found another reason to regret the loss of my sex it seemed, for as Ryan I would have loved to go out with Cindy.

Since it was Monday night, The Hexagon was pretty tame for a college bar. A jukebox was playing country-western tunes while a couple of guys paced around one of the three pool tables, completely engrossed in their game. About a third of the barstools were occupied and conversations were subdued. There were a couple of other girls in the place as well, and they were looking bored with the slim pickings. Thank God we had just come for a beer and not to pick up guys, because there weren’t many prospects around–not that I would have been interested anyway, of course.

“Jeez, it’s really dead in here,” Cindy commented after we had seated ourselves in a booth and ordered our beers.

“You sound as if you’ve been here before,” I said. Then I realized that of course she had, since she knew the guy checking IDs at the door.

She seemed to read my mind. “You mean because I knew Luke at the door?” she asked with a smile. “I knew him in high school. We ran into each other in class today and he told me he’d let me in without an ID. Actually, this is my first time here. I’m not twenty-one either.”

I nodded. A lot of the student body came from surrounding cities, Kansas City being one of the biggest sources. It wasn’t unusual for some friendships to spill over from high school into college. I knew a few people from high school who were attending NSU, but fortunately I hadn’t been terribly close to any of them. That was okay, since I was having enough trouble dealing with Chad’s younger memories of me. People I went to high school with would have much clearer and more recent memories of a female me–and those would be harder to deal with.

“Wanna play some pool?” she asked, slipping out of the booth and heading for the tables before I had a chance to respond.

As a guy I had played my share of pool, but I found with my reduced size my shots were not nearly as smooth or accurate. Cindy blew me away in the first game without any trouble.

By the second game the two guys who had been playing at another table when we came in took a break to watch us. “You wanna play a game for drinks?” one of them asked as Cindy finished me off for the second time.

I looked at him, as if for the first time. Both of the guys appeared to be students, in their jeans and NSU t-shirts. Both were fairly clean-cut and nice looking too, I realized. Damn, this boy watching was getting annoying. I was actually starting to size them up as a girl would.

“Sure,” Cindy replied for both of us.

“Hey, I’ve already had two beers,” I told her. With my reduced size I was actually starting to feel a little buzz from them too. Why had I let Cindy talk me into a second beer? She seemed unusually persuasive...

“We’ll just play for one round,” she promised. “Boys versus girls.”

So much for her promises, though. Cindy proved to be a remarkably good pool player, and even with my diminished playing skills we managed to beat the two guys. And being guys they demanded a rematch, given that they obviously were a little abashed at being beaten by a couple of coeds. They bought us a couple of beers in the meantime. Then they won the second round–and then Cindy suggested we play the tie-breaker for double or nothing on another round.

I grabbed her arm. “Hey, Cindy, I... I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

She gave me a devilish grin. “Why not? Aren’t you having fun?”

Actually I wasn’t. Every time I stretched for a shot–a common occurrence now that I was so much shorter–I could feel two pairs of male eyes drilling in on my butt. Besides, another round would mean four beers in me, and while in my former male body four beers would have been no real problem, my new smaller female body was starting to seriously feel the effects of the alcohol.

“Let’s just go, huh?” I pleaded.

“Just one more game,” Cindy argued.

I shook my head, both in the negative and to clear it a little. “No, not tonight.” I looked at the two obviously disappointed boys. Having been male scant days before, I knew what they were thinking–two girls plus four beers equals one night of potential sex. “Sorry, guys,” I said, “I gotta go.”

After another round of “don’t gos” and similar repartee, I managed to flee the bar and begin my walk back to the dorm.

I hadn’t really thought about the potential risk I was taking until I had set foot back on campus. The neighborhood around The Hexagon was populated with well-lit businesses, open at night to cater to the students’ needs. Campus was considerably darker and more deserted. Oh sure, the pathways were lit, and there were even special phones strategically placed along the path so anyone who was threatened could put in a direct emergency call to the Campus Police, but the numerous shrubs and trees landscaping the lawns cast dark shadows that seemed to move ominously in the late summer evening breeze.

I made it back to the dorm safely, but my heart was beating heavily as I scampered up the stairs at the well-lit entryway. Walking through the evening gloom brought home to me that I was no longer a powerful, athletic male. Now I was small weak and very female–a dangerous combination to be walking alone at night on a warm evening. Every sound and every shadow along the way had seemed to spell danger. Maybe I should have stayed in the bar. At least then I wouldn’t have been walking home alone... in the dark.

I was nearly in tears as I got back to my room, thinking about how I now had one more thing to hate about being a girl. I suddenly realized that taking away my sex had taken away my freedom. I was no longer able to take care of myself in potentially dangerous situations–especially when my judgment was impaired by more alcohol than I could handle. I made a mental note to myself to sign up for a women’s self-defence class if I could find no way to regain my masculinity. But I vowed to redouble my efforts to do just that the very next day, no matter what the risk. I didn’t want to stay a girl any longer.

In spite of Andrea’s threats, I vowed to go over to the Opie house and beg, plead, debase myself, or do whatever it took to get them to turn me back into Ryan. I couldn’t live like this, I thought to myself as I got ready for bed, fighting off the fog and depression the beer had thrust upon me. Maybe Andrea would make good her threats: maybe she’d even kill me. Even that would be better than being stuck in this weak female body.

I felt a little better in the morning, with an emphasis on ‘little.’ Cindy hadn’t come home before I went to sleep, and by the time I woke up she was already gone. ‘Or maybe she had stayed with the boys we met playing pool,’ I thought to myself. I glanced at her bed: it appeared to be undisturbed, so I guessed she had scored with one of them–or maybe both of them.

I got up and felt a slight twinge in my head, the remains of a mild headache that had troubled me throughout the night. No more beer for me for a while–at least not in this body. I staggered off to the shower room and let the warm water wash over my still-unfamiliar body until I felt mildly human again.

There was a deep voice coming from Stacey and Donna’s room as I padded back to my room. Curious I leaned against their door. Sure enough, it was a male voice, supplemented by giggling from the two new girls. Apparently Cindy hadn’t been the only one to score.

Were all girls like my two former pledge brothers and Cindy? I wished I had known that when I was still Ryan. I’d still be a virgin at seventeen if it hadn’t been for that one unexpected escapade with Liz Allison in high school. The problem was that I had been raised by parents who had taught me to respect girls and not just see them as sex objects.

No, I thought to myself as I dressed for class, that hadn’t been a problem. As Ryan I really had respected girls and I had known that eventually I would find the right one, settle down with her and raise a family. I guess that made me something of a square, but that was the way I felt. And I knew that if I played it cool and bided my time, I’d find the right girl and I would have had a much more rewarding life than people like Spike and Don. I would have been looking at a long-term, loving marriage with a wife I respected and together, we would have watched our children grow up.

Of course all of that was moot now. I’d never have that opportunity to find the right girl and even if I developed lesbian tendencies in this new body of mine, I certainly wouldn’t be fathering any children.

Of course, if I remained stuck like this, I could always find the right boy, settle down with him and be the mother of his children...

I shook my head. No, I wasn’t ready for that either–and might never be.

The next day was a repeat of the previous day, until right after my first class following lunch. I had gone to my classes, had coffee with Chad mid-morning and eaten a very, very quick lunch, so as not to give the boys on the prowl in the Student Union cafeteria the opportunity to zero in on me.

After my first afternoon class ended I made a restroom call, grumbling to myself about how the entire break between classes didn’t seem to be long enough for a girl to relieve herself. By the time I found an empty stall, managed to pull my skin-tight jeans down over my ample hips, wiped off the toilet seat where the previous user had been a little careless, peed and remembered to wipe myself, most of the break was over. I really missed the ability to pee standing up: unzip, pee, zip. What could be simpler?

When I got out of the stall I was alone in the restroom–or so I thought. After I had washed up and was preparing to leave, a voice called out to me from one of the stalls.

“Rebecca!”

I froze. Who could be calling me? The voice was familiar, but it wasn’t either of my former pledge brothers, nor was it my roommate. Besides, why would they be calling me furtively from one of the stalls?

The stall door opened slowly, as if its occupant was checking around to make certain no one but me was there. I recognized the girl immediately, although I had only met her once. The cute blonde from Omicron Pi... Felicia was her name if I remembered right... was looking at me critically. “Damn!” she swore. “You turned out great.”

Great? That just about propelled me over the edge. “You did this to me!” I erupted, barely holding myself back from pouncing on her.

“We can talk about that later,” she cut me off. “Right now you’re in danger. You need to do exactly what I tell you or you’ll live to regret it.”

She was the enemy, my mind screamed. This cute little blonde in her denim miniskirt and white top was one of the evil witches who had turned me into a girl. I wanted to knock her into the next county, but something held me back. I think it was the urgency in her voice. There was no gloating, as there had been over the phone with her sorority sister. And I could see from the look in her eyes as she cast nervous glances toward the door that she was genuinely afraid of having our little meeting be discovered.

“What–?”

“Not now,” she hissed, thrusting something into my hand. I looked down at what looked like a primitive bracelet, consisting of a rough string of something which may have been hemp and several small dull purple stones, which had been drilled through to allow them to be strung on the bracelet. “Put this on–now!”

I obeyed, not sure of what else to do. Then I looked down at the bracelet, but to my surprise it wasn’t there–or at least I couldn’t see it, even though I could feel in on my wrist. “What is it?” I asked, confused.

“It’s magic of course,” was her terse reply. “Now get out of here before someone comes in looking for you. And whatever you do, don’t take that bracelet off for any reason. That bracelet is designed to protect you from any further spells.”

“Further spells?”

She nodded quickly. “Andrea and her pals aren’t finished with you yet. Unless you want to be turned into a raging slut, you’d better keep that bracelet on.”

“Why should I trust you?” I asked suspiciously.

Her eyes were downcast. “I can’t think of a single reason, but believe me Rebecca, I want to help you.”

“Then we need to talk,” I pressed.

“We will,” she promised, retreating to the stall, “but not now. Now hurry up and get out of here!”

Not sure of what else to do I left the restroom, ready to head for my next class. That was when I noticed that I was being watched. Two girls were chatting across the hall and to any casual observer, they would have appeared completely natural. For some reason though I realized they were watching me out of the corner of their eyes. Had they been there when I went into the restroom? I couldn’t remember for sure.

I started off for my next class and out of the corner of my own eye I saw that they were following me at a discrete distance. Had they been following me all day? If so, why hadn’t I realized it?

Then I thought about the invisible bracelet–I could feel it even if I couldn’t see it and come to think of it, I had noticed the two girls following me right after I had donned it. Could it be that they had been following me before, somehow magically cloaked? And was the bracelet somehow defeating their magic? And why were they following me? Felicia had said I was in danger–was it from these two girls?

Felicia was right: I had no reason to trust her, but she at least hadn’t gloated when she saw me. When she told me I looked great, it had actually seemed to be a compliment. I reasoned that I had no recourse but to trust her for now–at least until I had a chance to talk with her.

Maybe I was just being paranoid, I thought to myself as I sat in my next class. The two girls had walked on past my classroom and Chad had sat next to me, making me feel just a little safer. It was possible the two girls were just travelling to class in the same direction I had been. Maybe their glance at me was just to check my hair or my outfit. Girls did that sort of thing. I had even caught myself doing it once or twice since my transformation. It could just be my imagination.

But as a famous statesman once said, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t following you–or something to that effect. In any case, if the two girls were following me, they must have sensed that I was on to them, for I didn’t see them the rest of the afternoon.

The rest of the day plodded onward and the evening was uneventful. Cindy had invited me to go party with her, but I declined. She had been a little disappointed, but shrugged it off and wished me a good evening before she left.

I was hoping I’d see Chad at dinner, but the only people I saw that I knew were Stacey and Donna, who were laughing it up with a couple of guys in the cafeteria. I avoided them easily, since they were too wrapped up with the two boys to even notice me. They left with the boys before I finished, and when I passed their room on the way back to my own, I could hear the all too familiar sounds of them rutting with presumably the guys they had left with.

Again I was in bed before Cindy got back and she was gone before I got up–assuming that she came in at all. Her bed seemed undisturbed. At least she was proving to be an unobtrusive roommate. I was starting to wonder if she was majoring in partying, since she didn’t seem to study much.

I looked around a couple of times on my way to class to see if I was being followed. It was sort of hard to tell, though, since a number of coeds made their way from Brandon Hall to classes every morning, taking exactly the same route I did. As I sat in my first class, I started to wonder if anyone in the class was spying on me. I was so deep in thought, I barely answered Chad’s greeting as he sat beside me just as class began.

“Is everything okay?” Chad asked suddenly.

“Huh?” I looked around and realized the class had ended while I had been lost in my own thoughts.

“I said, is everything okay?”

“Oh! Yes. Sure. Everything’s fine.”

I don’t think he believed me, but he had sense enough not to pursue his line of questioning. We headed over to the Union for lunch and as we walked, I got Chad to give me the condensed version of the lecture I had just been woolgathering through. It sounded as if it was nothing I couldn’t catch up on by reviewing the text that evening.

We had just settled down for lunch when a female voice behind me said, “Hi, Becky! Do you mind if I join you?”

I turned to see Cindy standing there with a tray balanced in her hands. Considering the fact that she had stayed out later than me and gotten up and left before I was up, she looked very chipper. “Oh... sure, join us, Cindy.”

I introduced her to Chad and she gave him a bright smile. Suddenly I became just a little... jealous, I’m embarrassed to say. It was as if I was suddenly seeing Chad as my possession and Cindy as someone zeroing in to steal him. I kicked myself mentally, thinking how ludicrous that really was. So what if Cindy and Chad really did hit it off? I certainly had no interest in Chad–except as a friend, of course.

Or so I told myself.

Chad excused himself, as he had a professor he needed to meet with before his next class, leaving Cindy and I alone.

“He’s cute,” Cindy said, watching him walk away.

“Uh...yeah,” I agreed, for some perverse reason.

“So he’s your boyfriend, huh?” Cindy went on nonchalantly. “I guess that explains why you weren’t interested in Paul the other night.”

“Paul?”

She grinned. “The hunk that was interested in you the other night–you know, one of the guys we were playing pool with.”

“Oh, yeah.” It suddenly struck me that his name hadn’t even registered with me.

“You must work fast,” Cindy speculated, “having a boyfriend this quick in your freshman year. Or were you guys an item in high school?”

“Uh, no,” I was quick to answer. I told her about knowing Chad several years earlier, leaving out the fact that I had been a boy then of course.

“Well, you did okay, roommate,” she commented. “I’ll bet you can hardly wait to get him in the sack.”

I had been sort of drifting with the tide after lunch, but what Cindy just said brought me up short, as if I had just come out of a trance. “No! I mean, I’m not... I haven’t... Uh... not with anybody...”

“Haven’t done it yet?” she giggled. “Oh, that’s rich! I didn’t know there were any eighteen-year-old virgins left.”

The way she said it made it seem almost embarrassing. I had thought girls revelled in their virginity and it was only boys who were disgraced at the thought of being virgins by the time they graduated from high school. Hell, I had actually felt a little inadequate having had sex with a girl only once, since some of my high school friends had acted as if they got laid every other night.

Cindy put her hand on mine. “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I guess lots of girls wait until the right guy comes along before they give away their cherry.” The way she said it was as if she really didn’t believe that, though.

Cindy and I said our goodbyes and the rest of the afternoon went on pretty routinely–or as routinely as it could go given my change of sex. In fact the next couple of days proceeded about the same way–classes, lunch and dinner with Chad, late evening talks with Cindy and a load of studying. I was actually grateful for the studying, since it took my mind off what had been done to me.

Cindy actually stayed in the room on those nights as well, apparently catching up on studying she had neglected in favor of partying. She was unobtrusive, but her attraction to boys seemed to occupy most of our break conversations. And she wasn’t shy discussing sex she had experienced.

“Making love is the greatest feeling in the world,” she told me during one of those breaks, closing her eyes and sighing erotically.

I have to admit, she did have an effect on me. As a soon-to-be eighteen-year-old boy I sometimes had found myself getting turned on just by graphic discussions about sex. To my chagrin I found that soon-to-be eighteen year old girls could experience related sensations. Cindy’s sexual descriptions caused me to feel an odd tingling in my new breasts, the nipples becoming particularly sensitive. As for between my legs... Of course there was nothing there to get harder and the experience of getting somehow softer and damper was completely alien to me.

Some of those feelings even carried over into my dreams. It seemed that every night I had a sexual dream in which my legs were spread and something familiar and yet alien was entering my cleft. I would even wake up from these dreams, gasping, my body damp and aroused. Fortunately when I awoke Cindy remained undisturbed. I certainly didn’t want to explain to her that I was practically getting off in my dreams.

There was no further contact with Felicia and I didn’t notice the two girls following me anymore. By Thursday evening I had been in the body of a girl for five days and in a strange way, it had become almost normal to me.

And why shouldn’t it seem so? Everyone addressed me as a girl–even my parents when I talked to them on the phone. As my eighteenth birthday approached, each of them recounted their memories of my birth at the US Air Force hospital in Ankara, Turkey.

“I can still remember how pleased I was when they came out and told me I was the father of a little girl,” Dad told me wistfully. Of course I remembered him on previous occasions saying how proud he was when he found out he was the father of a baby boy.

Mom would recall memories of my toddler years–my first dresses, the little boy down the block I used to play house with when I was five, my first real heels when I was in junior high–all the girly memories of a life that never had been. In some ways I almost wished that I could have shared those memories. I didn’t want to lose the memories of the boy I had been, but it was difficult to keep up with discussions of a childhood that had really never been.

The only two people I came into nearly daily contact who knew who I had been were Stacey and Donna and they were too wrapped up in their own lives to worry about me. For that matter, even they were beginning to act as if the three of us had always been girls. They actually began to tease me for being a “good girl.”

I continued to be concerned that like them I would become more slutty, for they seemed to be revelling in their new lives, as they flirted with guys and regularly took them back to their room, but I seemed about the same as I had been that first day after our transformation.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t starting to notice boys. I was–and in particular, I was staring to notice Chad. I suppose it was bound to happen. My body had been designed to be interested in guys, as most girls’ bodies are. I was even starting to wonder what sex with a boy might be like and at night in bed, if Cindy hadn’t made it back to the room until quite late, I even experimented a little with my finger in my new vagina. I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit it felt sort of good. I even managed to bring myself off in a little minor orgasm that unfortunately left me wanting more.

When on Thursday Chad asked me out for dinner and movie the next evening, I was actually pleased in spite of myself. I realized, as all girls must have realized for generations, that there would be a certain amount of hand-holding and even kissing during the date, but as alien as that seemed, it also made my body tingle just a little.

I think if what happened Friday at lunch had not happened, I might have settled into the role I had been transformed into–a cute little girl-next-door coed with a nice boyfriend, who might someday be my husband and the father of the children I bore. In time I might have even forgotten about what had been done to me, until my life as a male became nothing more than a time-distant dream, as everyone’s adolescent years must eventually become.

I think it would actually have been a very short time before I decided to give myself to Chad. After all I was a girl and he was a boy. And I could tell he liked me a lot, just as I was starting to become attracted to him.

But that all changed on Friday.

I was eating lunch at the Student Union–alone for once, since Chad had a meeting with a group on a class project in one of his business classes. Uninvited a girl sat down across from me. She was dark–Hispanic as nearly as I could tell, with her long nearly black hair and her pretty brown face. But while her appearance was not familiar, her voice was. “Just act as if we’re talking about inconsequential things,” she said softly.

Equally softly I asked back, “Felicia?”

“Shh! Don’t use that name. Call me Maria, if you have to call me anything, okay?”

“How are you doing this?” I asked, nearly incredulous that she had actually turned herself into a Latin beauty.

“It’s called a glamour,” she explained quickly. “Think of it as a magical costume. Everybody sees ‘Maria’ instead of me. But it only lasts for an hour or two, so hold the questions for a few, okay?”

I nodded. This magic stuff just got stranger by the minute. I was starting to feel like a field mouse on a soccer field. I could just be minding my own business one minute and be trampled by a herd of players or hit by a ball falling from the sky without warning. I was becoming sorry that I had ever heard of Nebraska State University, let alone gone there.

“You still have your bracelet on, don’t you?”

I nodded again. Or at least I had never taken it off. The fact of the matter was that I had forgotten all about it, since I could neither see it or feel it.

“Good,” she said relieved. “I assume you got Sam Dietrich to tell you why this was done to you?”

“You know Sam told me?”

“Of course. Somebody from our house has been watching you every time you step out in public. You were followed to the TZX house on Sunday and seen leaving with Sam.”

So it hadn’t been my imagination when I spotted those two girls as I was coming out of the restroom. The question was: how many of the girls had I missed? Lots apparently, since I had been followed since I had awakened to my transformation. “Then Sam’s in trouble?” I asked slowly, remembering how he said he might end up in skirts if he was spotted talking to me.

“He got off lucky,” she told me. “For the next month the only time he’ll get hard is around his fraternity brothers, but then he’ll be back to normal and nobody will be any the wiser.” Then she showed a faint smile. “Unless of course he showers with one of the brothers.”

It sounded awful, but at least at the end of the month he’d be back to normal and I’d still have breasts and a vagina. I would have gladly traded with him.

“The object of all of this was to isolate you,” she explained. “It would let your new female instincts take over. Going back to the fraternity house for an explanation would connect you to your old life. Frankly I guess very few girls in your position ever bothered to go back to the fraternity house. For the most part their natural instincts take over, like with Stacey and Donna.”

“You call those natural instincts?” I nearly yelled.

“No,” she admitted, “but they do.”

She studied my puzzled expression for a moment before continuing, “You see, Spike and Don have become their images of the perfect girl–flashy, stacked and hungry for sex with any guy they think can satisfy them.”

A light went off in my head. “So that’s why they’re so... so...”

“Slutty?”

“Yeah, slutty. They’ve become what they think all girls should be...” I stopped for a moment, then asked, “So why didn’t I come out like that?”

“Do you think all girls should be slutty?” she asked coyly.

“Of course not!”

“Then what’s your idea of the perfect girl?”

I thought for a moment. That wasn’t a question I had never really been asked. Sure, as a guy I had given my opinions on what I liked in a girl and I remembered most of them–brunette (I had never had a big thing for blondes), well-built (but not voluptuous), smart, talented, athletic...

Felicia smiled as she saw the light go on in my head. “Do you think a girl like you should be a slut?” she repeated.

“Certainly not!” I shot back. “I mean, sure, girls should like sex and all, but that doesn’t mean they have to put out for every guy they meet. They should only do it if... if...”

“If they care for someone?” she prompted.

“Well, yeah, I guess that’s it.” I had been raised that way, I realized. My parents had inculcated in me a respect for women, both by what they taught me and the example they lived by. Sure, like all normal guys I wanted to find a girl and make mad passionate love to her, but only if it was the right girl. The one time I had had sex with a girl had been fun, I had to admit, but I hadn’t been the one to start things. If I had thought for a minute that Liz had been my ideal girl, I wouldn’t have been so quick to have sex with her.

Felicia looked at me, her dark Latin eyes (or at least so the glamour made them appear) boring into mine. “Ryan,” she said, purposefully using my male name, “did you ever rape a girl?”

“Rape?” I hadn’t meant to say it quite that loud, but looking around I realized no one had heard me. “Rape?” I said again, softer this time. “What are you talking about? I never raped anyone.”

She was silent for a few moments, quietly gazing into my eyes–no, beyond my eyes and into my mind. I could almost feel her prying around in there. She couldn’t really read minds, could she? Of course, so what if she could? All she’d find was the truth–that I had never forced a girl to kiss me, let alone rape her.

“I believe you,” she said at last. There was sadness in her voice, as if what she believed wouldn’t make any difference.

“So that’s was this is all about?” I asked her. “You and your sorority sisters think I raped a girl?”

She nodded. “Something’s gone wrong,” she murmured. “Something’s gone terribly wrong.”

“How... why was I chosen?” I pressed.

And she told me.

First she told me a little about Omicron Pi. As Sam had told me, it was a sorority that pledged witches. Oh, some of the girls didn’t have magical talents, or even know that magic existed. They were kept discretely out of the power structure though. They were the camouflage that kept the presence of witches and magic a secret.

“But how do your members know who’s a potential witch and who isn’t?” I asked.

“Girls with magical powers are legacies,” she explained. “They’re referred by their families, so we know they have the ability before they ever pledge.”

“So mothers who were Opies recommend their daughters for membership?” I surmised.

She shook her head. “Not mothers–grandmothers. Magical power always skips a generation and resides in one or more of the female grandchildren. Otherwise there’d be way too many witches over time. Nobody knows why. It may just be some sort of weird genetic quirk completely unrelated to magic. Or maybe it was done by magic to make sure there weren’t too many people with magical abilities.”

I nodded. I could see how a world where a substantial percentage of the population could perform magic might be pretty chaotic.

“Okay, so back to my question,” I said. “Why was I chosen?”

Sam’s information proved to be pretty accurate. It seemed the Opies had their ways of finding out who the bad guys were in the TZX pledge class every year. Like the TZX house, only the Officers’ Circle–the Opie equivalent of the Executive Council at TZX–knew about the forced transformations. The only difference was that when TZX members who knew about the transformations graduated, they did their best to forget about them, but when the Opies who knew graduated, they often remained involved in the whole selection process and even attended the transformation rites occasionally. Both active members of the Officers’ Circle and alums could suggest victims.

“Okay, so who selected me?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I can’t tell you for certain. It’s all done with a blind nomination–sort of names thrown in the hat. Then the house president–Andrea–meets with the seniors in the Officer’s Circle and decides who’ll be transformed. I’m just a junior, so I wasn’t part of the decision.”

“But you could find out for certain how I was chosen and who nominated me, couldn’t you?” I pressed. “And I suspect you have at least a theory on who nominated me.”

“A theory, yes,” she admitted, “but it’s only a theory. I just know there’s one of our alums who seems awfully interested in this case, but that’s not proof that she was the one.”

“Can you find out for sure?”

“Maybe,” she allowed. “I know Andrea won’t tell me, but one of the other girls might. I’ll try, but it won’t matter if you’re thinking of convincing them to change you back. It can’t be done. Male essence can only be concentrated in a male body. Once it’s allowed to dissipate during the transformation ritual, it can’t be retrieved. I’m sorry, but you’ll be Rebecca for the rest of your life.”

The way she said it, I now knew how a prisoner being condemned to life in prison must feel as the judge pronounces the sentence. I had realized it was unlikely that I could ever find a way back to being male, but Felicia had taken away my last thread of hope. Like a condemned man I was to be imprisoned in feminine flesh for the rest of my life.

She reached across the table and started to put her hand on mine, stopping at the last moment, probably out of fear that we were being watched. “I’m sorry, Rebecca... I really am. If there was anything I could do...”

I stifled a half-laugh, half-sob and said, “I guess you’d better start calling me Becky then.”

“All right... Becky. I’m running out of time though. I need to explain to you why I gave you the bracelet.”

“You said something about my being in danger?”

“I overheard Andrea and two of the other senior girls in the Officers’ Circle talking about you Sunday night,” she explained. “They weren’t happy with the way you were resisting the psychological part of the spell.”

“You mean the part that would make me think like a slut–like my pledge brothers?”

“Exactly. Apparently one of the alums–probably the one who I suspect submitted your name for transformation–was pretty upset that you weren’t acting like the others. Andrea and her allies were discussing ways to get close to you–to make you into a good little slut.”

“What?” I hissed. “They aren’t happy changing me into this? They have to make it worse?”

She ignored my outburst and asked, “Has anybody–any girl, that is–tried to get close to you and be your friend in the last couple of days?”

“Well, yeah,” I replied. “There’s Cindy Ling, my new roommate...”

“Oh shit!” Felicia exclaimed. “Look Becky, Cindy is one of my sorority sisters. She’s one of the senior girls Andrea was conspiring with. Whatever you do, don’t let her lead you astray.”

“She’s already tried,” I sighed. “She’s invited me to go party with her just about every night this week. I went with her Monday.”

“What happened?” There was dread in her voice, as if she was very afraid of what my answer would be.

“Nothing happened. I had a couple of beers, played some pool and came home.”

She looked puzzled. “She didn’t try to get you to meet any guys?”

“Oh, we met a couple of guys and played pool with them. Cindy hooked up with one of them, but I excused myself and went back to the dorm. Why? What’s wrong?”

“Cindy is a very powerful magic user and without that bracelet I gave you, she should have been able to get you to be more sexually compliant. I wonder why she let you go...”

“Well, if Cindy’s the only danger I have to be aware of, I probably won’t need your bracelet,” I said, reaching to slip it off.

“No! Don’t do that. Wait until I’ve had a chance to check things out. Maybe she got smug and thought she could turn you into a slut without magic. Cindy is pretty sold on herself. But the bracelet is good insurance. While you’re wearing that, no spell will affect you. It was my grandmother’s bracelet and she swore by it for years until she gave it to me.”

I treasured the few things I had from my grandmothers, so I knew what Felicia had done for me was a very special gesture. I had been prepared to hate Felicia along with the rest of the girls in the Opie house for what had been done to me, but I found my opinion of her softening.

“I’ll get back to you later,” she assured me, standing. “In the mean time stay cool. I’ll do what I can to help you.”

She started to leave, but I called out before she could and nodded for her to sit back down. When she had done so I asked, “Who is this alum who wanted me transformed? Why won’t you tell me who she is?”

“Becky, if it’s who I think it is, she’s a very, very powerful user. I’m hoping I’m wrong, because if I’m right she could make things a lot worse for you. I don’t want you to do anything stupid.”

“I won’t,” I promised, “but if I know who she is, maybe I can figure out what she has against me–why she accused me of rape. That’s what happened, wasn’t it? I was accused of rape?”

Felicia thought about that for a moment before nodding. “Yes, you were accused of rape. A boy has to be accused of rape before the Council will agree to transform him.”

I noticed she said, “accused.” But that didn’t mean ‘convicted’ of rape. The Opies were a bunch of sexual vigilantes, deciding for themselves who was innocent and who was guilty. I had the uncomfortable feeling that I wasn’t the only innocent boy who found himself sitting to pee.

“And I suppose you’re right. Maybe you should at least know who we may be up against,” she added. “Does the name Darlene Sawyer mean anything to you?”

The name was familiar. Then I realized where I had seen it before. It was printed under the stern visage in the information book I had gotten about NSU after I had been accepted. She was an attractive woman, as I remembered, about my parents’ age or a little older, but I had noticed a coldness in her eyes that had struck me enough that I remembered who she was. “You don’t mean the NSU Director of Admissions?” Come to think of it, she had signed my admissions letter as well.

“One and the same,” Felicia confirmed rising. “But I’m not sure it was her.”

I shook my head. “But I don’t even know her–I’ve never met her in my life. What could she possibly have against me?”

“I don’t know,” Felicia admitted. “Now remember your promise. You won’t do anything stupid, will you?”

I shook my head. “No. I don’t know what I could do anyhow. I wish I knew why she did this to me–if she did this to me– but if what you said is true, I certainly don’t want to see her. If Andrea and some of the others are right, I think she might have something very unpleasant planned for me.”

“Smart girl,” Felicia said as she departed.

When I got back to my room Cindy was there studying, looking as innocent as could be. “Hi,” she said sweetly, looking up from her textbook.

“Hi,” I replied as nonchalantly as I could. Damn it, I was really starting to like Cindy. She partied too much, but had seemed like a nice girl. Now I knew the truth though. She was putting on an act–to get me to party with her and make a mistake, to start down the road that Stacey and Donna were already on.

“Got anything planned tonight?” she asked innocently. Odds were that she had a party lined up for me, where she’d introduce me to some pussy hound who would be all over me before the end of the evening. And although I had Felicia’s protective bracelet, I doubted if it would protect me against the sheer physicality of the guy she had selected. It wouldn’t take a magic spell to get me date raped.

“Yeah,” I replied innocently. “I’ve got a date in about an hour.”

“With Chad?” There was that devilish grin again. Obviously she was hoping that Chad and I were close to doing the deed. That would save her a lot of time and effort.

“Uh... yeah.”

Cindy jumped up. “Hey, we’re about the same size. I’ve got a really sexy dress if you want to try it on...”

She never gave up: did she?

“It’s just pizza and a movie,” I told her. “I’m just going to wear jeans and a light sweater.”

Cindy couldn’t hide her disappointment. She decided to make one last try. “Well I’ve got some perfume he’ll really like...”

Sure she did. I had a hunch the perfume had a little magic spell attached which would have us lusting for each other in no time.

“I’ll try it next time,” I promised as I purposefully started pulling out something to wear.

Foiled again Cindy finally shrugged and gathered her books as she stood up. “Well, I’m gonna be gone for the weekend, so have fun.”

I suspected she was going back to the Opie house for the weekend. That would allow her to catch up on her real life as well as signalling that our dorm room was free, should I decide to bring Chad back for a little action.

Yeah, right. Like I was going to do that!

I nearly chickened out on my date (and let’s face it–it was a date) with Chad. When I had accepted, he had caught me at a weak moment, when I was starting to realize I would probably be stuck as a girl forever and wondering if I was going to be able to act like one for the rest of my life. Also, like it or not, this female body of mine was starting to get interested in boys. Granted, there was nothing to get hard like when I was a boy and got attracted to a good-looking girl, but there was the little ‘something’ I was starting to feel when a good-looking guy walked by.

But my moods swung back and forth. Strangely it was Felicia telling me that I would never be male again that actually almost caused me to blow off the date. I was downright afraid I might be becoming too girly too fast and all that handholding and innocent kissing I had rationalized before suddenly seemed like hard-core porn to my troubled mind. Besides, if I was really stuck in a female body forever, there’d be plenty of time for dating later, right?

It was Cindy who was responsible for my final decision to go out with Chad. No, I don’t mean her wicked magic had caused me to want to go out with Chad. Actually it was in a way, I suppose. If I hadn’t had the date already set up, I was pretty sure Cindy would have tried extra hard to lure me into the nefarious clutches of slutdom, or whatever she thought of it to be. The date with Chad made that effort moot. Besides she could always hope that somehow the evening out would cause me to naturally surrender my virginity and start down the path she and her sorority sisters had chosen for me.

But standing there on display in the dorm lobby waiting for Chad almost made me second-guess myself again. I felt so exposed, obviously waiting for a boy who would take me out. Other waiting girls smiled knowingly and more than a couple of boys picking up their dates gave me an approving glance when their girlfriends weren’t looking.

If Chad had been five minutes late instead of five minutes early, I think I would have fled back to my room. But that was out when I saw him walk in the door. He was dressed casually, as was I, but he looked... different. In his Dockers and polo shirt, he looked like the All-American boy and I suddenly felt that weird little something that told me I liked what I saw.

“You look great!” Chad said as he eyed me approvingly.

I smiled. “Thanks.” Actually I did look great, but I still was mentally kicking myself for selecting a little khaki mini and white top instead of jeans and a sweater as I had told Cindy I would be wearing. I had told myself it was because it was still pretty warm outside and this outfit, along with the heeled sandals, would be a lot cooler. But for some reason I had just wondered what I would look like in the outfit and had tried it on. It looked too good to take off.

Now the two of us looked like sweet little preppies. I suppose that’s actually what we were–the children of Midwestern, middle-class parents who would probably take our rightful place someday in the suburbs of some Mid-American city. I almost cringed though, when I realized that if we ever did, our roles were bound to be far different from what I had ever anticipated, given my new sex.

“I thought we’d get a pizza at Val’s and see whatever movie you’d like,” he offered as we headed out of the dorm.

When I told him the film I’d like to see, he looked a little surprised.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No... not at all. I’m just surprised you want to see that one. I thought you’d pick a chick flick instead of an action picture.”

“I like action films,” I told him truthfully. Give me plenty of car chases and explosions, I always said, and I’ll nominate the picture for an Oscar. I might have been changed into a girl, but that didn’t mean I wanted to waste my time watching tear-jerkers and romantic comedies.

At least not yet, I reminded myself grimly. At the rate I was becoming all girly, that would probably be next.

So we set off for College Town–on foot. Although I found out Chad had a car, the dorm was only about four blocks from College Town where most of the movie screens were located. We walked slowly, in deference to my heels. I was beginning to think wearing them was a mistake if we were going to be walking, but they did make my legs look good...

The conversation had been light as we walked toward College Town. Mostly we talked about classes–both those we shared and those we didn’t. We kept the reminiscing to a minimum, for which I was truly grateful, since obviously our memories of knowing each other as children were very different.

Some things were the same though. Although he didn’t remember me as exactly a tomboy, he did recall that we had been friends and run in the same crowd. It allowed me to help him catch up on what had happened to our mutual friends, since I doubted if much had changed regarding them. Just to be sure, I kept the information pretty general.

We got one of the last tables at Valentino’s and after we ordered Chad asked, “You were telling me about Josh Melrose: did you ever end up dating him?”

I blinked, startled. That was something I hadn’t considered as a possibility. In this new and twisted reality the boys I was telling him about could have been potential boyfriends for me. I had no idea if Rebecca had supposedly dated someone like Josh or not. Fortunately Josh had gone to the University of Colorado, so odds were he and Chad wouldn’t meet. “Uh... what makes you ask that?”

Chad shrugged. “I don’t know. He just always seemed to have a crush on you–and I sort of thought you liked him too.”

I wondered if Josh out there in Boulder remembered dating me. I knew from my phone conversations with my parents over the last few days that everyone back home in Omaha remembered me as always being a girl, but I had no idea what exactly they remembered. Next time I was home I’d have to go through some of my high school memorabilia and learn all I could of Rebecca’s life.

“No,” I finally replied. “We’re still just... friends.”

Actually Josh had dated Ashley Martin most of the way through high school. But that was just my memory of their relationship. For all I knew Josh and I were an item and Ashley was my best friend. Going home for the holidays was going to be tricky. I really, really needed to go through all of my old high school stuff.

We managed to get through dinner without any serious gaffs on my part. Of course chomping down a good Valentino’s pizza did cut down on the conversation. I found I was enjoying being with Chad on a purely social basis–a date if you will.

It’s difficult to describe though the conflicts that were going on inside me as that date progressed. Part of me saw Chad as an old friend–someone I could use as an anchor to my past, even though our memories of that past were significantly different. But even when Chad would dredge up one of those altered memories, it gave me the opportunity to remember what had really happened back when I was a boy. I wanted to retain my old memories and not lose Ryan forever.

Also Chad was comfortable to be around. He didn’t treat me like a sex object and there were times when I could almost imagine that we were both guys, just bumming around together on a Friday night. We even talked about guy things–football (Chad was still amazed how much I knew about the NSU team), movies, cars, you name it.

But there was another part of me that was rising unbidden from the depths of my new mind and body. Like it or not–and I most certainly didn’t like it when I stopped to think about it–I was a girl with all the normal girl wants and needs. When I let myself go for a minute, I found myself concentrating on Chad’s warm smile, or his sparkling blue eyes, or even wondering what it might be like to be held by him. When I overcame my woolgathering, I tried to tell myself that such thoughts were gay and disgusting...

But try telling that to my body.

Actually I did let him put his arm around me in the theater. Granted, part of the reason was that the air conditioner was cranked down so low that I was shivering a little. But I had to admit, his touch felt not only warm–it felt good.

The movie wasn’t as interesting as I had hoped it would be and when it ended Chad looked at me, his arm still around me and said, “Thanks.”

“For what?” I asked, puzzled.

“For seeing this movie with me. I get the idea you were sort of bored with it, so I figured you suggested it just because you thought I’d like it.”

“No,” I sighed. “I really did want to see it. It just wasn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be.” Frankly I had had a hard time getting into the movie. It was difficult to lose myself in the role of the action hero, now that I no longer was male. And as for the female lead, she was pretty plastic–there only to play the damsel in distress. Her biggest lines seemed to be “be careful” and frightened screams.

Without warning he leaned over and kissed me. It wasn’t much of a kiss, really, just a chaste little one. “Well, thanks anyway. I enjoyed it.”

As we got up I realized we were the only two people still in the theater, even though the end credits were still running in the darkened auditorium. I realized something else too: no matter what the residual male part of me thought, I had actually enjoyed that kiss.

We walked home slowly, holding hands in the warm late-summer evening. I remembered doing this exact same thing with a girl back when I was a boy and I recalled the thoughts running through my mind. I had never asked a girl to have sex with me as we walked along hand-in-hand, but that was only because I was shy and not because I wasn’t needy. Often I’d have trouble walking as my hard-on rose in anticipation along the stroll. I could tell from the way he walked that Chad was having a similar problem.

And what of the girls I had walked with? Had they felt, as I was now feeling, the strange sense of warmness and mild twitching of anticipation as they walked with me? Would they have said yes if I had asked them to go to bed with me, or would they have been horrified? Did some of them go home and fondle themselves to try to lessen the need I was feeling now? For that matter, would I?

My mind was very clear: I did not want to have sex with Chad. If I was, as Felicia had warned me, stuck as a girl for the rest of my life, I would have to come to terms with my growing attraction for men. Someday I’d probably give in and spread my legs for a man–perhaps it would even be Chad–but that wasn’t going to happen yet–no way, no how.

My body was another matter. Without the intelligence to resist, it was preparing itself for sex as I felt a dampness between my legs and a tingle in my nipples. In fact my whole body seemed to be quivering in anticipation. I only hoped Chad didn’t notice. My body wanted him in the worst way and I knew as we neared the dorm that I would quickly be rushing to my room, peeling off my clothes and racing to the showers where–assuming they were deserted–I would do my best to manually give my body enough stimulation to dampen the desire.

I thought for a moment about Stacey and Donna and how quickly they had given in to the carnal desires of their new female bodies. I would not be like them, I vowed, for fear that if I gave in even once, I’d be bedding every guy who was willing–just as they were probably doing right now.

“I had a great time tonight,” Chad said, smiling as we reached the dorm.

“So did I,” I replied, admitting it more to myself than telling him.

“How about tomorrow?”

I wasn’t sure I could resist two nights in a row. “I... I’ve got to study.”

“Then how about a study date starting with dinner at your dorm? Say, six?”

“Okay...”

Why had I said that? Worse yet, why were my lips moving toward his? Why were we kissing? Why was I wrapping my arms around him, pressing my breasts into his chest?

Why? Why? Why?

Damn! Damn! Damn!

I could actually smell my own sex as I stripped off my clothes back in my dorm room. I wasn’t going to bother with a shower. Even though it was Friday night, I didn’t want to meet anyone on the way to the showers smelling like a horny little coed (which was precisely what I was); I settled for falling down onto my bed and fingering myself until I erupted in feminine gasps of pleasure.

I didn’t need the operator’s manual to inform me that this new body of mine had just experienced its first real female orgasm. My little experimenting a few days earlier had been nothing compared to this. Lying there in a pool of my own sweat, completely spent, I vacillated between being ashamed of myself for doing it and wondering if I could do it again. I understood women didn’t have to recover after an orgasm the way men did, so revving the motor again wouldn’t be a problem. I decided against it, though. I was afraid another one so quickly might kill me.

Besides, I was delighted to find the female orgasm supplied me with pleasant little aftershocks coursing through my body. I tried to compare the experience to a male orgasm, but it was like comparing apples and oranges–both were good, but very, very different. I also recalled that my one experience with a girl had been far more pleasurable than plain old masturbation, so I found myself wondering if the same was true as a girl: Was having an orgasm with a boy better than getting off with my hand?

It was a sobering question. Even more sobering was the fact that I started thinking that if I was really stuck as a girl, the sex just might be worth it.

As the afterglow receded I cleaned up and went to bed, but that wasn’t the end of my evening, it seemed. Even my dreams were different. Until now and since my transformation, I had been seeing myself as a girl, but the men in my dream had been indistinct. Now though my dreams seemed less focused on me and more on my sexual partner. I could recognize him and, of course, he was Chad. He smiled down on me in my dream, coming closer to my naked, reclining body and soon we were... we were...

A sudden thump somewhere nearby woke me up. I realized it had come from Stacey and Donna’s room next door. I jumped up, throwing a short robe over my flimsy nightie and hurried next door to see what the ruckus was. I was actually afraid that one of the new girls had been struck by one of the men they kept sneaking into their room. The thump could have been one of them falling to the floor, or hitting their heads on the furniture. Each day they had gotten sluttier and sluttier and the men they seemed to be clinging to were becoming more and more Neanderthal.

I found Stacey wrestling with a big brown suitcase. She was having a difficult time pulling it off the bed so it could join another large case that I suspected had been responsible for the initial thump. She looked so weak and feminine as she struggled with it that it was hard to remember that only a week ago she would have been Spike and able to deftly handle the suitcase with one large hand.

She was dressed in a skirt and top so revealing that every time she struggled with the suitcase, a breast threatened to pop right out of her top and her skirt hiked up so far I could see she was wearing a pink thong.

“What are you doing?” I asked her.

“Getting out of here,” she told me with a grunt as the suitcase finally joined the other one on the floor. When she saw my blank look, she elaborated, “I’m quitting school. It’s not for me.”

“But what are you going to do?” I asked plaintively. Although we had seen little of each other in the past few days since she and Donna had become... sexually active, I still felt a bond to them, since we had all been transformed together. We were all men under the skin, weren’t we?

She looked at me, as if she was studying me like some sort of lab specimen. “You don’t know? It hasn’t affected you?”

I sat down on her bed. “If you mean have I been acting more girly, sure. I guess it’s part of the spell.” I didn’t want to tell her what Felicia had told me, but I think we had all figured out that our transformations had been more than physical. “But that doesn’t explain why you’re quitting school.”

Stacey sat down next to me and put a slender hand on my arm. “You mean you are still... smart?”

When I nodded, she explained, “When I was a guy, I was pretty smart. Oh sure, I came here on an athletic scholarship, but so did you and you were a pretty smart guy, right?”

I nodded again.

Stacey looked down at the floor, embarrassed. “Well, I’m not smart now. I tried going to a few classes, but it’s like they were being taught in a foreign language, you know? When I read the texts, I couldn’t understand even the first chapter. It was like I wasn’t interested in what they said. I think they did more than turn me into a blonde–I think they turned me into a dumb blonde.”

I thought again about what Felicia had told me–about the three of us being turned into our ideal girls. We had theorized that Stacey had been turned into a slutty girl, but apparently in addition to her sexual appetites she had been made into precisely what Stacey had just said–a dumb blonde. It was all becoming clear to me. Spike had had a thing for spacey stacked blondes, who were only good for one thing: being obedient little sex dolls. Now he had been hoisted by his own petard. He was everything he had ever wanted in a girl.

To make matters worse, I could see in her eyes that Stacey might not be intellectually talented, but she was smart enough to know what had been done to her and realized that there was no way of avoiding the results.

“So what will you do?” I asked gently.

“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I think I’ll just go home to St Louis and get a job–maybe go to trade school. Maybe I could be something like a cosmetologist. That doesn’t sound too hard.”

I could tell she was only trying to put a happy face on a miserable situation. I suspected she wasn’t even bright enough to go to trade school. She’d probably end up as some guy’s little sexual playmate until he tired of her. Then, eventually, she’d gravitate to stripping–or maybe even prostitution. The best future imaginable for her was to find some guy who was well-off enough to be looking for a chirpy little trophy wife and who’d take care of her for a few years. It wasn’t much of a future and the look on Stacey’s face told me she was well aware of it.

“Is Donna staying in school?” I asked.

Stacey laughed. “Sort of. At least she’s not officially dropping out. But don’t expect to see much of her. She’s shacked up with some guy in town and she thinks she loves him. Can you figure that?”

Don’s perfect girl, in addition to being Hispanic, must have been the kind that was gullible enough to fall for every guy who gave her a good line and a hard cock. Crass? Sure, but that was what Andrea and her ilk had been doing to young men for years. I thought, not for the first time, about all the lives that those bitches and their predecessors had ruined. Maybe some of them deserved to be punished, but not by a bunch of man-hating vigilantes.

“How about you, Becky? You don’t seem to be affected like we were,” she asked, curious.

“I’m still smart enough,” I sighed. “As to the rest, I’m afraid it’s just coming on me a little slower is all.”

Of course that was an exaggeration. I might be starting to think and act like a girl, but I had come to realize I wouldn’t be like Stacey or Donna, simply because I didn’t see girls the same way they had.

“Yeah, I saw you with that guy–Chad? He’s cute.” She made an effort at a smile. “I hope it all works out for you.” Poor thing, she was sincere in her wish for me. That made me feel perfectly awful.

“You, too.” I felt the sting of tears in my eyes and saw some in Stacey’s as well. Then, as one, we leaned into each other and hugged. Yes, that’s right–we hugged, as if we had been girls all our lives.

I rose, trying to hide my tears and smiled. “Stay well–and let me know when you’re settled.”

“I will,” she promised, but we both knew that was probably a lie. Stacey wouldn’t want me to know when she fell.

The morning dragged on. I mostly just stayed around the room trying to study, but Stacey’s leaving weighed on my mind. In spite of what Felicia had told me, I was still worried that like Stacey and Donna, I would eventually lose interest in school and be more and more absorbed with the idea of sex. Oh, I wouldn’t become a slut, but I might be more interested in settling down with some nice boy instead of finishing my education. After all my perfect girl would be a loving wife and a nurturing mother, but academics had never been the biggest part of the equation. At least as a boy, I had liked bright girls. Maybe that would be enough to keep me in school. I certainly hoped so.

I thought seriously about calling off my date with Chad that night, only because I was afraid that I’d get even hotter than I had been the night before. But I didn’t. I had to learn how to control my feminine impulses eventually and at least I knew I was safe with Chad. I had to learn how to be a girl around boys and Chad was a perfect lesson for me. Besides, it was just a study date. What could go wrong?

I got a little bit of a break when my parents called midmorning. I had talked to them a couple of times since my transformation and to them everything about my being a girl seemed perfectly normal, as if they had always had a daughter instead of a son.

They called to wish me a happy birthday, even though my birthday was still two days away. They were getting ready to leave on a Caribbean cruise for ten days, so they would miss my birthday. Frankly I was glad they’d miss it. From the way they treated me on the phone, I wasn’t sure I was quite ready to act like their sweet little daughter in person just yet. Besides I wouldn’t be a good enough actor to ooh and aah over frilly little feminine gifts from the parents who the previous year had given me mostly sports equipment.

As if to confirm this, my mother told me she would be shopping for a knockoff of “that expensive Hermes purse you’ve been drooling over.” Of course I had no idea what a Hermes purse was, but since ‘purse’ was part of the description, I was pretty sure I hadn’t been drooling over it–especially since I had been carrying a purse for a week now and didn’t especially like doing so. The only purse I would like would be one I could shove into my back jeans pocket like a man’s wallet –assuming I could do so with my expanded girly butt.

“Have a good birthday, my little Turk,” Mom and Dad said together as they hung up. At least that hadn’t changed. It was a family joke, since I had been born in Turkey while my father was in the Air Force. Since my birth date hadn’t changed, that meant I was still their ‘little Turk.’

I studied for the rest of the day, breaking only for a light lunch. Frankly, by the time six o’clock came and I was due to meet Chad in the dining room for the start of our study date, I was pretty well studied out. Still I was determined to carry through with the study date since I really didn’t want to be tempted by Chad in a more date-like situation.

“Is this seat taken?” Chad joked as he sat his tray down across from mine.

“It is now,” I returned, smiling. He was wearing cut-offs and a white NSU t-shirt and he looked pretty nice in them. In some ways it was worse than the polo and khakis he had worn the night before, since I could see more of his body. It was so odd that a manly body that would have gotten no reaction from me a week earlier was now something that made my heart beat just a little faster.

Chad was looking at me too and since I was similarly attired, he grinned and observed, “We match.”

“On the outside anyway,” I replied, regretting the saucy comment almost as soon as I made it.

“I reserved one of the study rooms over at the library,” he told me. “I thought we could study for a while and then maybe take a walk and get an ice cream.”

“Works for me,” I told him.

We did the small talk thing through dinner. I told him about my boring day, not mentioning anything about Stacey. Strangely, I realized that I was doing most of the talking while he was acting just a little zoned out. And the longer we sat there, the more spacey he seemed to get. I hoped he wasn’t coming down with something.

“How about you?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“Did you do anything exciting today?” I clarified.

“Oh, uh, not really,” he said. His brow wrinkled, almost as if he was trying to remember what he had done that day. I sympathized. I had had days like that before I was transformed.

“Did you just study?” I pressed.

“Yeah,” he said slowly, adding strangely, “I guess I must have...”

The room he reserved for us in the library was quiet, away from most of the other study rooms. Of course on a Saturday night it would have probably been quiet no matter where it was located, since few students were in evidence. Saturday night was party night on campus and only the most committed of students studied that night.

Of course Chad and I weren’t exactly committed, but I let him think I was–just to avoid another traditional date like the one we had on Friday. I was very concerned that I might end up going farther with Chad unless we cooled the relationship with things like study dates. I could tell Chad liked me a lot, but I had the impression he wouldn’t try anything funny unless I let him. Frankly I just wasn’t ready for that just yet.

I pulled out my Western Civ text and ploughed into a boring description and analysis of the Persian Wars. Believe me, it wasn’t quite as interesting as watching ‘300,’ but I’m sure it was significantly more accurate. Still I had always liked history and had even thought of majoring in it, so I did my best to concentrate on it.

I had been afraid to even look up at Chad–afraid that I’d start admiring his body like some love-struck little girl. As it was, even being near him was having an effect on my body, so I tried to concentrate even harder. That’s probably why I didn’t notice that something was going horribly wrong.

When I finally chanced a glance at Chad, he seemed to be engrossed in a math book, but after a few minutes I noticed he hadn’t even turned the page. He looked as if he was a million miles away. We had only been studying–or at least I had been–for about an hour. It usually took me at least two hours of studying to get that look.

“Is something wrong?” I asked him.

My question got no response, so I repeated it. “Chad, is something wrong?”

I could hear him breathing, but other than the rise and fall of his chest, he seemed completely oblivious to my presence. “Chad!” I called out louder, frightened that something was seriously wrong with him. “Chad!” I tried to keep the hysteria out of my voice. I was practically screaming now.

At last he looked up, but after slowly making eye contact, he fought to look away. It was as if he was afraid to look directly at me. But something was forcing him to lock onto my eyes and when he did, his face began to contort into something I couldn’t quite understand.

“Beck... Becky... get... away...” he mumbled, the fear rising in his voice. He strained to utter every word.

“Get away?” I was... Confused? Terrified? In shock? Yes, I suppose it was a little of all three. Now it was I who was frozen in place, as Chad began to stir, his motions jerky and unnatural.

“Run!” he practically screamed.

I jumped in shock, then realized something was, indeed, terribly wrong. Now I understood what his contorted expressions were conveying. His face was twisted as if two expressions were trying to appear on it at once. The first was panic–eyes wide and mouth open in pain and shock–but as for the second expression...

I hadn’t been a girl for very long, but the second expression was too obvious to misconstrue.

It was lust.

“Run!” he repeated, rising awkwardly from his chair and shambling toward me like something out of a cheap zombie movie.

I was suddenly on my feet as well and I’m sure Chad could see the fear in my eyes. I watched in disbelief as his hands fumbled for his zipper. After three unsuccessful tries, he managed to pull his pants down far enough to expose an engorged penis. He stumbled toward me, carelessly massaging his stiffened organ.

I fought the urge to scream, even though I knew it would probably bring would-be rescuers. Chad’s intent was obvious, but it was so unlike him that I knew his actions weren’t his idea–he was under the influence of a magical spell. My own experience with magic made me realize that whatever his body wanted to do, his mind was fighting to avoid. This wasn’t the Chad I had come to like very much. This was a Chad influenced by something as nefarious in its own way as the spells placed on me. And that meant the damned Opies had to have done this to him.

If he hadn’t fought the spell they had obviously put on him so vigorously, I would have had no choice but to scream for help. If I had been a girl all my life, I would probably have done so anyway. But I didn’t want Chad to end up in jail for attempted rape. Maybe it was foolishness on my part, but I thought I could avoid him without any help from outside.

I was nearly wrong.

The study room was small, but at least there was a table in the center of the room, which created a barrier between Chad and me. By dodging back and forth behind the table, I was able to keep him off balance, but to my horror, I could tell that the Chad intent on raping me was gradually gaining the upper hand, as his movements became smoother. In a few more seconds Rapist-Chad would be in control and I knew he would be faster and stronger than me.

It was now or never, I realized. I had to get away before the spell overwhelmed him. I dashed for the door, intending to throw it open and flee from the room. I nearly made it, but before I could rush through the door I had just opened, he caught me by the arm.

As a girl I was far weaker than I had been as a male, but several years of experience playing high school football had taught me some moves few girls would know. More than once I had been nearly stopped by some big beefy lineman a third again my size who had grabbed me by the arm and more than once I had used his strength against him, causing his momentum to bring him down at my feet. Even though I was now a girl, Chad, about a third again my size, could be brought down the same way.

It was all over in a matter of seconds. I pulled away as Chad fell forward, cracking his head with a sickening thud on the edge of the table. I just stood there in shock as he crumpled to the floor and before I knew it, a trickle of blood was staining the beige carpet of the study room.

What had happened was not Chad’s fault: I realized that. So before I could call for help, I managed with considerable effort to turn his body over far enough to slip his penis back into his pants and get him zipped up. It felt strange–almost alien–to hold another man’s penis in my hand, but in a perverse sort of way, it felt stimulating as well, much as I would have probably felt if I had been holding a girl’s breast while I was male.

Then I let him roll back over on his face and screamed, “Help! Someone help me! There’s been an accident!”

They let me ride in the back of the ambulance with Chad. I told them I was his fiancée so they would let me do it, even though that too was against the rules. I suppose I looked pretty convincing as the frightened girlfriend, in fear that her soon-to-be husband might never wake up again. Come to think of it, I really was frightened, but not just about Chad’s injury.

Up until now I had been concerned that I would slowly become a bimbo like Stacey or Donna, but now I had something else to worry about–something more likely, it appeared. I had watched Chad become a veritable zombie before my eyes, intent on sexually assaulting me and maybe worse, killing me. My transformation had changed from unwarranted and life-changing to being potentially lethal. If someone like Chad could be made to turn on me like that, who might be next–one of my professors, or my own father? Every male had just become my potential enemy.

I had followed Felicia’s advice so far, trying to fit in with my new sex while she tried to mitigate my punishment, but that time was nearly over. As soon as I was sure Chad was out of danger, I intended to confront Andrea and Darlene Sawyer and anyone else who might have done this to me.

The ride to the hospital seemed to take hours, but in a town the size of River Falls I knew it had only taken ten minutes or so. In that time Chad had not only remained unconscious–he had also not moved at all and the expression on the faces of the paramedics did little to encourage me that his condition might not be serious.

I tried to stay with him as the doctor examined him, but this time my pleas went unanswered as a couple of nurses gently but firmly ushered me into the emergency waiting room. At least I had no time to brood, as they kept me busy peppering me with questions about Chad’s medical history, potential allergies and where they might notify his next-of-kin. Understandably my answers were vague, but if they had begun to question my relationship with him might not be as close as I had intimated, they said nothing. I suppose they chalked it up to my frantic concern for him, because after all wasn’t I just being an hysterical woman?

When the nurses left at last, I was alone with my thoughts in the small austere emergency waiting room. I imagined the worst: I saw in my mind Chad’s dead body–another victim of the Opies’ revenge. They had to be stopped, but how? No one would believe what had been done to me, so I couldn’t call the police or notify the university officials. If I did, I’d be in a padded suite at the Happytime Hilton.

I had to confront them myself, but how? What was I going to do–buy a gun and blow them all away? No, that wouldn’t work. Even if I had a gun, I wasn’t a violent person, male or female.

Could I get them to listen to reason? There were some Opies who were good. Felicia was one of them and I got the impression she wasn’t the only one. Could I convince many of the girls to rebel against their leadership and their alums?

Before I could think on the problem any further, I heard muffled voices coming from the direction of the operating room they had wheeled Chad into. My heart began to pound faster as I sat on the edge of my chair, waiting for some word.

Then a doctor came out, obviously to explain things to me. He looked tired with his mask hanging limply below his chin. “I’m Dr. Henshaw,” he began as I shook his hand and mumbled my own introduction. “I won’t lie to you: it’s serious,” he told me. “We’ve done some tests and there’s some internal bleeding in his skull. We’re going to go in and relieve the pressure on his brain where he’s experienced a hemorrhage and try to stop the bleeding.”

“But he’ll be all right, won’t he?” I asked as the sting of tears prickled my eyes.

“We’ll do everything we can,” he replied, not really answering my question.

As he walked slowly back to the operating room, I slumped down in the chair again. All thoughts of the Opies fled my mind as I thought only about Chad and how much I missed him that very moment. My head dropped and I began to sob.

“Becky?”

I looked up to see a young candy-striper standing over me. Her nametag declared her to be Stephanie. She was a beautiful African-American girl who I recognized as one of the girls I had noticed at the Opie house.

“You did this,” I murmured, sniffing as I rubbed my tired eyes. “You did this to Chad and now he might be dying...”

I had been brooding in the waiting room for several hours. The surgery had taken an hour, but the doctor told me after it was done that it might take several hours before we knew anything about his recovery–if there was even to be a recovery. But at least they had stopped the bleeding. I had vowed to stay there and keep watch, at least until Chad’s parents got there from Omaha–about a two-hour drive. But according to one of the staffers, Chad’s parents hadn’t been home when they called and it was taking some time to track them down.

“He’s not dying,” she assured me. “We got to him in time–my sorority sisters, I mean. We’re Felicia’s friends. She broke the rules and told us about you, even though we’re not officers. We sneaked into the recovery room and did some healing. The doctors will just think it was the result of the operation, so no one will suspect. He would have died if we hadn’t intervened.”

“So magic got him into this mess and now magic has saved him,” I mused, savoring the irony of the situation.

“Pretty much,” she agreed. “You need to go home and get some rest.”

“I need to go find that bitch of a president of yours and the others who did this to me–and to Chad,” I countered.

“There’s nothing you can do,” Stephanie replied. “If you confront them, they’ll win. They’re too powerful for you to deal with. Trust us, Becky. Felicia and some of the other girls are banding together right now. That’s the only way we can stop this before it gets completely out of hand.”

“It’s already out of hand!” I reminded her viciously as I jumped up. “You all changed me into this... this girl. You did the same to others, turning them into–what–strippers, prostitutes, bimbos and whatever else, just because one of your members was raped thirty years ago? What kind of monsters are you anyway?”

Before she could answer a very distraught man and woman entered the room. I recognized them as Chad’s parents, although I hadn’t seen them in several years. I couldn’t help but think that Chad looked a lot like both of them, but he was built like his father.

“Oh Becky!” Chad’s mother cried out, rushing to embrace me.

Surprised I returned the embrace. It felt strangely good to hold the older woman as our breasts squeezed against each other’s. I had never been much of a ‘touchy-feely’ type as a male, but as a female I couldn’t help but feel comforted by the embrace.

Then I surprised myself. I gave a hug to Chad’s father on my own initiative. He felt big and strong, causing me to close my eyes and sigh softly.

“How... how is Chad?” his mother asked cautiously, as if afraid of what the answer might be. As I turned to look at her, I could see the pain in her eyes. Then I realized that they would have no way of knowing that Stephanie and her sorority sisters had performed their little miracle.

“He’s going to be all right,” I assured her quickly. Although the doctors hadn’t told me that, I knew firsthand the power of magic Stephanie and her sorority sisters wielded. If Stephanie said he was going to be all right, then that’s the way it would be. Standing there, talking with Chad’s parents, I began to regret my outburst at Stephanie. Unlike Andrea and her ilk, Stephanie, Felicia and their friends were at least trying to help.

“Oh, thank God!” she cried, collapsing on an uncomfortable waiting room couch. Her husband rushed to her side to keep her from falling over.

Chad’s father held his sobbing wife while he spoke to me. “I’m sorry it took us so long to get here. We were in Iowa at Chad’s grandparents’ house. When the authorities finally reached us, we came right away. Becky, how long have you been here?”

I shrugged. “I’ve been here since they brought him in. I was with him when he had his... accident.”

“Oh God, Becky, you must be exhausted. You should go home and get some sleep. We’ll call you if anything happens.”

“Thank... thank you, Becky, for staying here,” his mother managed to say. “Chad’s everything to us.”

I nodded, remembering that Chad, like me, was an only child–another thing we had had in common.

It was then that I got really, really mad. How could Andrea and her cohorts do this to somebody? Certainly, way back thirty years ago Andrea’s predecessors had turned a couple of deserving sexual predators into women, setting them on a course to be strippers or whores or whatever. But what about after that? How many of the young men they had transformed had been innocent like me? How many lives had they ruined in their vindictive quest? How many parents like Chad’s cried over lost or misguided children? It had to stop and stop now. Somehow, I had to make sure that I was the last man they ever transformed into a woman.

But how?

I couldn’t exactly go to the police and tell them that there was a vicious band of sorority girls turning boys into wanton girls now, could I?

But as I thought about it, I realized I did have allies. Stephanie had said Felicia was trying to rally some of the girls in the Opie house against Andrea and her gang. What if I tried to help her? I knew I would be taking a chance, but I felt if I could storm into the Opie house and tell as many girls as possible how Andrea had tried to make an innocent guy into a rapist–the very thing they had sworn to punish–it might rally support for Felicia’s forces.

I knew it wasn’t the best of plans, but I saw no benefit in waiting for a better one.

I shuddered a little when I stood in front of the Opie house. Had it really only been a little over a week when I had last entered the house, my manhood still intact? The house was large–large enough to house eighty or ninety girls, I suspected. How many of them were there now and how many would side with Andrea? More importantly, how many would side with Felicia?

I had left Chad’s parents at the hospital once they had been told that Chad was showing signs of waking up. I had promised them I’d be back a little later and have dinner with them, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to act on that promise. It was already mid-afternoon, so even if everything went as planned (a dubious ‘if’), I might not be able to make that dinner date.

I had gone back to the dorm and taken a quick shower and changed clothes–just another pair of shorts and a white tee, but they felt great on my soft skin. As a guy I might have stayed in my worn clothes, but as a girl, I had noticed I felt the need to stay cleaner and fresher. I had thought about getting a little rest, but decided if I went to sleep, I’d be out for hours. I wanted to confront the Opies while I was still really pissed.

Well, I told myself at last, there was no sense in waiting anymore. I was Daniel–or maybe Danielle–about to enter the lion’s den. I didn’t have much of a plan when it came right down to it. What I expected to do was to confront Andrea with news of Chad’s injury and hope that Felicia had convinced enough of the other girls in the house to curb Andrea and her minions.

In retrospect I admit that I wasn’t thinking straight. Worse yet–I was thinking like a guy. If I had been my old male self, this was how I would have handled things–barging in, fists clinched, demanding, “Okay, who wants a piece of me?” Then, I’d let my fists do the rest of my talking.

Stupid?

Of course it was: it was every bit as stupid as Stacey’s first impulse a week before right after we had been transformed. But I was angrier than I had ever been in my life–angrier even than when I had been transformed, if that was possible. They had done something to my best friend to impel him to rape me.

My best friend...

Yeah, that’s what Chad had become. He was the only one my age from my old life that I seemed to be still in serious contact with. And now, when he was awake, he would remember trying to rape me. He probably wouldn’t know why he had wanted to rape me, but the knowledge that he had tried would be with him forever. Andrea and her little pack of witches–or bitches, if you will–had ruined one more life.

I was fired up again. My fear was–perhaps foolishly–shunted to the back of my mind once more as I stormed into the Opie house.

Since it was a beautiful Sunday afternoon there weren’t many girls around the house. Most were probably out enjoying the gorgeous day, but there were a few milling about in the living room. I remembered Felicia’s admission that many of the girls in the Opie house knew nothing of the magic the sorority harbored and I hoped that the girls milling about were among those and would not cause me any trouble.

“Where’s Andrea?” I demanded, trying to keep my voice level.

None of the girls looked very comfortable with the question, but one finally answered, “She’s in the chapter room.”

I barged past her as she made a feeble attempt to stop me. “Never mind: I know where it is.” I should know. After all that was where I had been transformed into a girl.

“Wait!” one of the other girls began. “You can’t go in there!”

But it was too late. I threw open the door to the chapter room and there was Andrea, standing as she talked with an older woman with hair mostly gray with a little black pulled into a tight bun. She was dressed in a dark blue women’s suit of a conservative cut. I recognized the woman as Darlene Sawyer. The two looked at me, surprised at first, but then each broke into a very unnerving smile.

“Rebecca!” Darlene Sawyer exclaimed in a polished voice. “How good of you to join us. We were just discussing how we were going to get you to come to us.”

As if to emphasize the point, the chapter room door slammed shut. I looked around to see who had done it, but there was no one there. It was just the three of us in the room. To paraphrase Princess Leia, I had a bad feeling about this.

“What did you do to Chad?” I asked, looking right at Andrea, trying to appear more in control of the situation than I was.

“A simple spell,” she replied calmly. “I didn’t even need any assistance. So many spells require several of us to perform–your transformation, for example–but getting your boyfriend to get worked up enough to rape you? That was easy. I suspect deep down he’s wanted to jump you ever since he met you here. Boys are so easy to manipulate. Besides, their natural instincts are to take whatever they want–by force if necessary.”

Andrea had confirmed my suspicions. She was a grade one-A man hater. Even her calm reply couldn’t hide her disgust for all the members of my former sex.

“Thank you for coming to us,” Ms. Sawyer said formally. “We were afraid we were going to have to break into your room tonight and physically abduct you. You’ve saved us the trouble.”

“There were several girls in the living room,” I pointed out. “They know I’m here. At least one of them will–”

“Will tell Felicia?” Ms. Sawyer broke in. “No, I don’t think so. You see, Felicia and her supporters have already confronted us, the troublesome little bitches. But there weren’t enough of them to overpower us. Andrea’s girls took care of them almost at once. As for the girls still wandering around the house today, they’re just... girls. They have no powers, nor do they know that we do. They probably wouldn’t believe you if you told them.”

“But they do know who’s in charge,” Andrea added with an evil grin.

“What have you done with Felicia?” I demanded.

“Oh, she’s quite safe,” Ms. Sawyer assured me. “She and her little band of followers are out at my farm, just a few miles from here near Salem. Salem–appropriate, don’t you think?”

When I didn’t answer, she continued. “Some of Andrea’s girls are watching them now, keeping them under control. As soon as we’ve finished with you, we’ll make a few changes to them, to make them a bit more amenable to our leadership, as we have with the rest of the girls in the house.”

“And why all the concern about me?” I asked.

“I’ll explain all of that to you as we drive out to my farm,” she replied, her hand suddenly motioning at me. To my shock I lost all control of myself. I turned without intending to and faced the door. Ms. Sawyer crooned, “Shall we go?”

I had made a really stupid move, I realized. I had thought that with Felicia’s help I could stop Andrea and her girls from whatever it was they had planned for me. I had thought that Felicia had more support in the house, but maybe she didn’t. Or maybe Andrea and her girls, along with Ms. Sawyer, were just too powerful to be overcome by anyone. Why hadn’t I realized that the deck was completely stacked in their favor? Now, Felicia and her followers had been rounded up and I was alone and completely helpless against them.

As much as I hated to admit it, the bitches had won.

Andrea pushed me roughly into the front passenger seat of a nondescript green Ford sedan with NSU plates. Then she started to get into the back seat.

“No, dear,” Ms. Sawyer told her. “I need to talk to our little troublemaker alone. Follow us in your own car.”

While I couldn’t turn my head much due to whatever spell Ms. Sawyer had foisted on me, I could see Andrea’s face in the side mirror as she got out. She appeared both angry and puzzled at not being asked to ride with her apparent mentor. That pleased me. From what I had seen of Andrea, anything that made her unhappy was fine with me.

“It won’t take us long to get there, Rebecca,” Ms. Sawyer told me once she had gotten behind the wheel and started the car. “So there are a few things I want you to know. I know you won’t believe this, but I’m actually sorry this needs to be done to you, but I don’t really have a choice.”

“What are you going to do to me?” I asked. It was difficult to talk, but I managed, in spite of the fact that even the slightest movement–like talking–seemed to take all of my willpower.

“We’re going to... reinforce your womanhood,” she began. “I have a big strapping lad out at the farm who will introduce you to the joys of heterosexual sex.” The way she said that gave me cause to believe it was not her preferred form of sex, as I suspected Andrea had a similar proclivity.

“I had thought the usual spell we put on you and the other former boys would be sufficient to get you to spread your legs, but apparently you actually do have such respect for women that your ideal girl isn’t a slut.”

“I’ve been trying to tell you that,” I managed to say. “I never raped a girl.”

“Oh, I know you didn’t,” she told me with a sinister smile.

“You know?”

“I’m the one who nominated you for girlhood,” she admitted. “I just never expected you to be so resistant to the spell. Usually within a day or two, our transformed girls can’t wait to spread their legs for the boys. Of course that was before I learned who you were.”

‘What did who I had been have to do with it?’ I wondered.

“Do you remember the girl you had sex with at a party while you were in high school?” She didn’t wait for my answer. “Well, you see, she’s my niece–grandniece, actually. Silly girl... she thought she had met all the conditions for the Sisterhood, but she forgot one thing.”

“What Sisterhood? What are you talking about?”

“Patience, dear. I’ll explain. You see, for a girl to be trained in witchcraft–the Sisterhood, if you will– certain basic conditions must be met. First, she must be the granddaughter of a witch. Elizabeth met that condition, as her grandmother is my sister. The other important condition is that she must be eighteen. Sadly, she did not meet that condition.”

“But Liz was eighteen,” I corrected her. “It was midnight–her birthday.”

Ms. Sawyer rolled her eyes. “Please, I abhor the name ‘Liz.’ She is ‘Elizabeth.’

“As for your defense of the time, yes, it was midnight, but it didn’t count. You see, the rules are very specific. It must be the date of her birthday in the place where she was born. Since Elizabeth was born in California, she had sex with you nearly two hours before her birthday officially began, due to the two-hour time difference between here and California. As a result, when she attempted to enter San Alfredo State College chapter of Omicron Pi–that, by the way, has a program for young witches such as the one we have here–it was determined that she had no magical ability.”

So that was it. I was the cause of her grandniece being denied an opportunity to join the Sisterhood. This was nothing but revenge. Or was it? Ms. Sawyer seemed to have more to say.

“But there was a way to rectify the situation,” she continued. “The spell we use on rapists and molesters not only changes the guilty parties: it also changes reality. So, for example, when your friends Spike and Don became Stacey and Donna, the girls they raped were restored to virginity–or if they weren’t virgins, at least the rape was removed from reality.”

Now I really understood why I had been changed into a girl. With my transformation, reality had been shifted. There had never been a Ryan O’Meara to have sex with Liz Allison that night. I suppose she might have found someone else to have sex with, but maybe it didn’t happen right away, so she might have gotten lucky and lost her cherry after the clock turned midnight back in California. Ms. Sawyer then confirmed my thoughts.

“I see you understand,” she said. “That’s right. Elizabeth is now a member of Omicron Pi at San Alfredo State, completely unaware of how she nearly botched her induction into the Sisterhood. That is why you had to be transformed. Elizabeth is as close as I will ever get to having a daughter and I didn’t want to see her life ruined just because some dirty boy couldn’t keep his penis in his pants.”

The way she said it made it sound as if it was all my fault. But I didn’t bother trying to tell her that it had been Liz who had jumped me. Granted, I hadn’t exactly objected. I had been as hard as a rock that night and the idea of stumbling upon a girl hot to introduce me to sex so easily seemed to be a dream come true. Frankly though, it wouldn’t have mattered if I had told her. She had already made up her mind that I was the only one responsible for it.

There was just one thing gnawing at my mind now...

“But why are you trying to... to...”

“To get you to have sex?” she prompted.

I tried to nod, but it was too difficult to move my head, so I settled on a muffled, “Uh-huh.”

We had left the state highway and were travelling on a gravelled farm road now. Her farm couldn’t be more than a few minutes away now.

“Well,” she mused, “I suppose you won’t be able to tell anyone, so I might as well tell you the truth. Haven’t you wondered how our plots to take your virginity have failed so badly?”

Yes, I had wondered that. I didn’t bother to answer, though, so Ms Sawyer continued, “I wondered, too. At first, when Andrea decided to hurry along your mental punishment by having your new roommate lead you into a sexual situation, I didn’t pay much attention. After all, I had achieved my objective: my grandniece had had her own virginity restored. I honestly didn’t care what happened to you, but Andrea, of course, thought you were a rapist who deserved to be raped in turn.

“When her attempts failed, I became suspicious. You see, your roommate was applying magical influence to get you to have sex with a boy, but it didn’t work. It was almost as if you were being protected by someone or something with magical ability. At first we suspected Felicia, but our investigation showed that while she is sympathetic to you, she did not use magic to protect you–except for that pitiful little bracelet she gave you that wouldn’t have been effective against our combined magical power.

“As for the ‘something’, it could only be your own magical talent, but that meant someone in your direct lineage–your grandmother, to be exact–must have been a witch.”

It was all starting to make sense to me now. My grandmother–my mother’s mother–had died in a tragic car accident along with my grandfather two years earlier. If I had actually been born a girl, she would have probably told me I had magic powers before she had died, but since the shift in reality had not changed my own memories, I had been completely clueless about my potential heritage. If she had lived, by now I would have probably talked with her and learned that I too was now a potential witch.

It was ironic. By trying to make one new potential witch, Ms. Sawyer had inadvertently made two. Her problem was that if I were to be discovered and invited to join the Opies, her plot to further her grandniece’s place in the Sisterhood would undoubtedly be discovered. Certainly once I knew what was going on, I would have blown the whistle on her. Her only option was to make certain that I never discovered my potential magical abilities–by making certain that I didn’t celebrate my eighteenth birthday as a virgin.

We were pulling into the gravel driveway of a modest farmhouse now. Ms. Sawyer smiled at me. “Ah, I see you’ve figured it out. Unfortunately we had no way of knowing who your grandmother was, since of course your last names were not the same. It took a while: valuable time was wasted, but we finally discovered her identity.

“I actually remember your grandmother, Rebecca. She was one of the more powerful witches I’ve ever known. Her talents were legendary. Her death was a tragedy for us all. Had you actually been born a girl and had the guidance of your grandmother, I’m sure we would have been friends. It’s such a pity...”

The car came to a stop. I looked apprehensively at the little farmhouse and realized that inside a man was probably already waiting for me. It would be his job, either willingly or unwillingly, to rob me of my virginity... and my magical heritage.

‘But there was one thing Ms. Sawyer didn’t know,’ I realized, or she wouldn’t have been so lackadaisical about getting me to the farmhouse. I looked at the clock. It was twenty minutes until four. I had to stall her.

Ms. Sawyer unbuckled her seatbelt and leaned over to undo mine.

“Wait!” I pleaded. “If what you say is true, we could still be friends. Why not let me get my talent and work with you?”

She seemed to be considering that for a moment, but then she shook her head. “I would really like to do that, Rebecca,” she told me, “but I’m afraid I could never trust you. Since you were changed against your will, you would always remember we were responsible for it and we’d constantly have to watch our backs. And as long as there are girls out their like Felicia and her friends who don’t really understand what it means to be a true witch, you might even find allies.”

I looked at the clock. The minutes were passing, but slowly. What had it been? Two minutes? Certainly no more than three minutes. And how long would it take them to have me raped–five minutes? Ten minutes? Maybe less–after all, I could hardly expect leisurely foreplay.

“What’s going to happen to Felicia and her followers?” I asked–anything to stall.

“They will have their own magical powers suppressed,” she told me, “and their memories will be altered so that they are just mundane members of Omicron Pi. Don’t worry: they won’t be physically harmed.”

‘No,’ I thought, ‘only their talents and their potential futures would be removed.’ I wondered what Ms. Sawyer would think if someone were to suppress her talents. For that matter, what would their families be told? Surely some of them had relatives who were in the Sisterhood. Wouldn’t those relatives be up in arms about what had been done.

Then I realized that they probably wouldn’t. The suppression would probably be another change in reality–like the ones Stacey, Donna and I had experienced. Their relatives would probably assume that Felicia and her friends had never inherited magical talents to begin with.

I looked at the clock. No more than another minute had passed. This was going to be close. At least Ms. Sawyer didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry. I was pretty sure she didn’t understand the urgency of her own situation.

She got out of the car and came around to help me out. I was still unable to move well, but by using all of my effort, I managed to slide across the car seat far enough to make it difficult for her to pull me out.

“Rebecca,” she sighed as she opened the car door. “You really aren’t accomplishing anything here. Let me get you out of the car. I promise you this will be relatively quick and painless if you cooperate.”

I didn’t move. Frankly, it would have been difficult for me to move even if I’d wanted to, but I had to spend more time...

At that moment Cindy, Andrea and a couple of girls I had noticed following me in the days before spilled out of the house, apparently wondering what was wrong.

“Get her out of the car!” Ms. Sawyer ordered gruffly. “And don’t bother being too gentle about it!”

They followed her orders explicitly. They dragged me out of the car, taking special attention to hit my breasts. One of the girls, I think it was Cindy, even copped a quick feel. As they carried me toward the house, I had spent so much of my diminished capacity of movement that I hadn’t noticed the time on the car clock. I did manage to steal a look at Cindy’s watch, though. It was ten minutes until four. I only hoped her watch wasn’t running fast.

“Hey, girly-girl,” Cindy teased. “You all ready to give up your cherry?”

“You’ll have fun,” one of the other girls taunted. “We made the biggest stud we could for you. When he’s done with you, you’ll be begging for more.”

“I don’t know why you didn’t become a good little slut like your friends,” Andrea chimed in, “but when our boy is finished with you, we’ve got a great little spell all cooked up for you. It’ll drop your IQ about thirty points and make you a nice little bimbo. You’ll be pole dancing and giving lap dances before you know it!”

Things just got worse and worse.

They carried me into a bedroom where all the covers had been stripped away from the double bed with only a single white sheet to cover the mattress. Standing at attention around the room were Felicia and about a dozen other girls. Although it was hard to see as I was being jostled so severely, it appeared that they were completely frozen in place, their eyes made to focus in on the bed where I was unceremoniously dumped.

There were about ten of Andrea’s girls swirling about the room–including the four carrying me. They were all having a grand time at my expense, taunting and poking me as they laughed gaily.

Ms. Sawyer had entered the room as well, a smug look on her face. She nodded in approval at Andrea and her friends. “Remove her clothing now.”

“Aw!” Cindy pouted. “Why not let her lover rip them off her?”

“I don’t want to waste any more time,” Ms. Sawyer replied. “Get them off her now.”

“Just a minute,” one of the other girls called out, fishing around in a big bag sitting beside her. After a few moments, she produced a video camera to the cheers and laughter of the other girls. “Maybe we can even show the video of today’s events to the boys we change next year.”

“But we’re graduating this year,” one of the other girls pointed out.

The girl with the camera shrugged. “Hey, I’d come back for next year’s ceremony just to see the looks on those boys’ faces!”

The girls all cheered–except of course for Felicia and the girls I assumed were her supporters.

In a moment of introspection as the girls gleefully ripped–and I do mean ripped–the clothing from my body, I realized just how sick these young women were. Once upon a time, thirty years before, their predecessors had taken their vengeance with considerable justification, but now the only real justification was to provide them with entertainment. They didn’t even bother to determine guilt or innocence. Spike, Don and I were guilty of being male. Any other perceived crime was incidental. Before many more years of this went on, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see them ratchet up the number of males they transformed, not even bothering with justifying their actions as punishment for crimes.

I had no idea how much time had passed, but I knew it couldn’t have been much. As the girls joyfully positioned my weakened limbs in a spread-eagled position and just to be sure I didn’t move, tied them to the frame of the bed, I had begun to give up hope, even though I knew something they did not.

Once I was in position, the bedroom door opened and my assailant was revealed.

In a word, he was huge–huge everywhere.

I had been around football players most of my life and I know huge when I see it. He was dressed in an NSU t-shirt and jeans shorts, but they did nothing to hide the bulging muscles underneath. He would have dwarfed most football linemen I had known. His hair was short and blond, and his skin was the color of polished bronze. He looked vaguely familiar, at least through the eyes and I began to wonder if the girls had done something magically to him to make him look like that. After all, put a tight uniform and a cape on him and he could have been something right out of a Marvel comic book.

The girls laughed as they saw my eyes drop to the behemoth’s crotch. Sure, he was wearing shorts, but the front of the denim material was actually stretched out so far from his apparent erection that I had no doubt he would split me in half with his first thrust.

“Oh look!” Andrea called out. “Our little Becky is all excited now.”

I wasn’t excited: I was downright frightened. There I was, nearly frozen into a spread-eagled position, completely defenceless and about to be publicly raped and humiliated.

Strangely enough, I was in those moments also more sympathetic with the plight of women. While I had never sexually abused a girl, my experiences of the last couple of days had given me some insight into why some women vehemently hated men. After all I hated this monster man, even though I had never seen him before in my life. I hated him because he looked at me with an expression of anticipation. He wasn’t under some spell, as Chad had been. No, this beast really wanted to rape me. To him it wasn’t sex–it was power. His triumphant look was an expression of power.

The girls hooted and yelled as he wordlessly removed his t-shirt, his eyes never leaving mine. Then he threw it aside and flexed his enormous muscles. I tried to feign interest in his little show: anything to extend the time. I gazed at his almost superhuman physique as dramatically as I could with my limited movement. I didn’t know what time it was yet, but I knew I needed more time–assuming I was right.

My luck held, though. Maybe it wasn’t all luck. Since that day I’ve learned that even girls who haven’t reached the moment of their eighteenth birthday have a small reservoir of magical power which can come to their aid. If so, the power had given me a small amount of what I needed most–time.

Rather than pouncing on me as I had expected, my would-be rapist took a few moments to turn to the other girls, flexing his muscles as if he were competing for the Mr. Universe pageant. The girls were enjoying the show too and I could see from the expressions on their faces that not all of them were man-haters like Andrea.

What time was it? I was going nearly mad from not knowing. And my assailant’s little floorshow was bound to end soon. Then he would be on to the main event–me.

As if on cue he turned back towards me. From his leering expression I expected him to fall on me without ceremony, slamming his sex into me and ripping the tender tissues of my vaginal walls. He had already pulled off his t-shirt in the little show he had put on for the girls and now, he was slipping out of his shorts and...

Oh my God!

He was huge! I had spent many an hour in the locker room after football practice and had seen many men’s packages. And while I had not exactly gazed at and judged those packages, I knew some guys were better endowed than others. But this guy... he was the biggest I had ever seen. His penis looked to be as big around as my arm. Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration, but not by much. I was trembling at the sight of it. And no, my trembling was not due to excitement–it was due to sheer, unadulterated fear.

But my luck held for a few moments more, as his gaze fell to my breasts and his huge hands came up to hold them. “Nice!” he rumbled as he squeezed each of them. I had hefted my breasts experimentally in the shower and tried feather-touching my nipples as well. The feeling was not unpleasant and I suppose my mind had idly wondered what it would be like to have a lover caress them, but this was no lover and the hold he had on my breasts was no caress. Instead it was a painful awkward grope from a creature that was more animal than man to my way of thinking. I couldn’t help but think of the irony–there I was, transformed into a girl for a sexual crime I never committed, about to be raped by a creature who I strongly suspected needed to be given a vagina of his very own.

My breasts suddenly tingled as the girls in Andrea’s little klatch cheered on, but the feeling wasn’t sexual–somewhat pleasurable, yes, but not sexual. But it wasn’t because of the ham-handed bruising they were taking. Instead it was something... deeper.

The sensation sent out tendrils to the rest of my body. It was as if my entire body was riddled with tiny muscle spasms that were producing internal heat. I knew instinctively what had happened–it was time...

It was time.

“Hey, look,” the big dumb ox roared out. “She’s getting all turned on!”

“Yeah!” Cindy yelled out as a couple of the other girls whistled and clapped, obviously ready to enjoy my painful deflowering.

My would-be assailant had turned his head to crow to the girls, so he didn’t see the expression on my face change, but Ms. Sawyer did. Her eyes got wide as mine narrowed and fear suddenly appeared on her face as my mouth twisted into a confident smile. “It... it can’t be!” she blurted out–more to herself than to anyone around her.

The crowd of girls stopped cheering and looked at their mentor, then back to me. “What... what’s happening?” Andrea asked.

The mountain of manhood who had been performing for the girls suddenly looked back at me to see what he was missing. Unlike the girls, he was too ignorant–or too stupid–to understand what was going on. All he knew was that he was no longer the focus of attention–and that pissed him off. So by the time he turned back to face me, he was toast.

I can’t say that what happened was exactly conscious. Rather it was as if my eyes would see a threat and my body would act upon it without any rational input from me. Well, maybe there was a little rational input–no one died that day and I think it was because as angry as I was, I still didn’t want to kill anyone.

Whatever had built up inside me saw my muscle-bound assailant as the primary threat. One instant he was staring at me, not sure quite what was going on–and the next moment he was smacking against the wall, the lathe and plaster disintegrating behind him. Unconscious he slid down the wall into a comatose heap on the wooden floor.

Someone screamed: I think it was Andrea, but I wasn’t looking at her. I was looking instead at the ropes that held me in place, concentrating on them as they literally unravelled and fell to the floor, freeing me from the bed. I was no longer paralyzed either. In fact, I had never felt so strong and powerful in my entire life–even when I had been playing football. I jumped to my feet, unconcerned that I was still naked–after all we were all girls, weren’t we?

Andrea and her followers fell back, some of them bumping into Felicia and her girls who remained immobile behind them. I concentrated on the frozen girls and felt something flow from my body. Then suddenly Felicia and her followers could move. They outnumbered Andrea’s girls and in less than a minute the tormentors who had been laughing moments before were on the floor moaning as Felicia’s girls took care of them none too gently. I didn’t see any magic being used, but a couple of the punches Felicia’s followers threw would have made a prize fighter proud.

Ms. Sawyer was making a hasty exit and I pushed my way through the girls to follow her. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to catch her though, for she was making a beeline for her car and whatever power had come over me suddenly slipped back to wherever it came from. I could feel the sharp gravel of the driveway on my bare feet and the pain from the multiple bruises I had had inflicted upon me. I just wasn’t fast enough to catch her either.

She had left before she knew how I had defeated her. Good. I had a feeling I’d confront her again someday and I wanted her to be afraid of what I might be able to do. Besides I was sure she would drive herself nuts trying to figure out why her plan had failed.

The answer to what I had done was really simple. She had given it to me herself, but had been too blind to realize why she had failed.

Someone slipped a blanket over my shoulders. I turned to see it was Felicia, smiling at me. “Are you okay?” she asked concerned.

“She got away,” I mumbled, nodding to Ms. Sawyer’s car as it went tearing down the gravel farm road, spewing a cloud of dust made golden by the setting sun.

Felicia put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry. By tomorrow morning she’ll be an outcast in every coven in the country.”

“Maybe,” I allowed, ‘but I wasn’t counting on it.’

“How... how did you do that?” she asked.

I turned to face her, glancing for a moment as the girls led a frightened looking, very wimpy young man out of the house. I realized suddenly that this shrimp was all that was left of the big ape who had been about to rape me. Apparently he had been given his impressive physique for the sole purpose of doing a first-class job on my virgin body. But I wasn’t entirely right, I realized as I looked into his eyes.

“Sam?” I blurted out.

Sam Dietrich–or what was left of him–looked up, frightened. Not only had he lost the muscle-bound physique, but he was smaller and thinner than the Sam I had known and frankly looked downright delicate. “Please... change me back to the way I was,” he pleaded. “I... I didn’t want to do this to you, but she... Ms. Sawyer... said she’d take away my curse and make me a real stud if I helped her out. I can’t go back to the house looking like this.”

I bit back what I had been about to say. I was about to yell out that it was somebody like Sam who deserved to be changed into a girl–not someone like me. But I stopped at the last moment. After all, did anyone really deserve that? If I thought so, I would be no better than Andrea and her followers.

“I don’t know how to change you back,” I said simply. It was true, but I suspected–rightly as it turned out later–that Sam’s fraternity brothers would not notice anything unusual about him, although I’m sure a few of the brothers would always wonder why they had ever allowed such a wimp into their house. I’m not sure, but I think it was the force of my own magic that took away Sam’s more masculine body. Andrea and her followers had merely made him get aroused around his fraternity brothers, but what had been done to him now was far worse. All I had wanted to do was get him away from me, but the magical forces I had wielded appeared to have made the physical changes as well.

Sam’s shoulders slumped and he allowed himself to be taken away to an awaiting car. I found myself almost feeling sorry for him.

Almost.

“You really don’t know what you did or how to change him?” Felicia asked.

“Haven’t the foggiest,” I admitted. “Whatever I did in there was... spontaneous.”

“It was wild,” she corrected me, but I grinned thinking she was just giving me a compliment. She shook her head. “No, I don’t mean that sort of wild. I meant wild magic–sheer magical force without any control sparked by self-preservation. There are examples of it in our lore, but I’ve never actually seen it before. Where did you get that much power? Your birthday isn’t until tomorrow.”

I laughed. “That’s where you’re wrong. My birthday is today and no, you guys didn’t just get the wrong date. I guess Ms. Sawyer is as bad about figuring time zones as her grandniece.”

I quickly explained to her what Ms. Sawyer had told me about her grandniece and why she had nominated me to be transformed. Then I continued, “After she told me her grandniece had been careless in not taking the time zones into account, she told me I was the grandson–well granddaughter now–of a witch and had to remain a virgin until the stroke of midnight on my eighteenth birthday.

“She just assumed I had been born somewhere in this country, so she thought she had at least an eight hour margin. But my dad was stationed in Turkey when I was born. Mom had me in an Air Force hospital there, so midnight for my powers happened eight hours ago.”

“Then... you’re one of us,” Felicia realized suddenly, her face brightening.

I shook my head. “No, I’m not one of you. In fact I hate everything the Opie house stands for.”

Felicia looked confused. “But we–I mean, my friends and I–we don’t believe in what was done to you and your friends. In fact, most of the girls in the house don’t even know about the magic. We’re not like that.”

“You aren’t,” I agreed, “and your friends aren’t, but what about Andrea and her friends? She managed to get elected president of your house–remember?”

Felicia didn’t reply, so I just turned away. “I want to go home.”

They got me some clothes and took me back to my dorm room. No one said very much around me. They all knew what had happened–how I had been unfairly changed into a girl, my life turned upside down and then nearly raped at the instigation of the very people who self-righteously condemned other of rape and ruined their lives dramatically.

How many strippers, prostitutes and porn stars had they created over nearly the last four decades? Since I doubted if many–or any–of the transformed victims were able to overcome their tormentors’ conditioning, the number was over a hundred.

The bitches.

Damn them all to hell.

They say time heals all wounds. I don’t know about that, but over the next month some things happened that changed my thinking a little. No, I take that back–my thinking changed quite a lot.

Chad got out of the hospital and thankfully he didn’t remember a thing from our disastrous night at the library. I don’t know if that was Stephanie’s doing, or if the trauma had caused plain old ordinary amnesia. Either way, he was the same Chad I was coming to know and... well, love. In the time after the excitement had died down and before he was released from the hospital, I found myself missing him–even daydreaming about him. Chad was still my friend: I could hardly blame him for what those bitches had done to him.

By the time he was released from the hospital, I found that I was so happy to see him that I impulsively ran up to him, hugged him so tightly that my breasts were practically flattened against him and gave him a big, sloppy kiss.

And you know what? It felt good–so good I did it twice while his parents looked on. And after he got over the initial surprise, he gave me a big hug and kiss right back and that felt even better.

He was completely healed within a few days. The doctors said it was practically a miracle that he had healed so quickly, but the smug smile on Stephanie’s face as the candy-striper wheeled Chad out to his parents’ waiting car convinced me that she and her Opie sisters had had something to do with how quickly he had healed.

Before I knew it Chad and I were seeing each other again and after a couple of weeks we saw a lot more of each other back in my room. I had had limited experience with sex as a boy, but it didn’t take long for me to decide that sex as a girl was a whole lot better. It was a good thing I hadn’t realized right after my transformation how wonderful sex for a girl could be. If I had, Ms. Sawyer and Andrea wouldn’t have had to try to force me to experience it.

In that month I also visited my parents. It was weird to see how my male existence had disappeared so completely. My parents of course thought I had always been a girl and all of the family pictures around the house verified that. As for my room... well, let’s just say it was pretty obvious it belonged to a girl and leave it at that.

I spent part of that weekend visit examining the memorabilia in my changed room. It was odd to look at old photos and see myself growing up as a girl. My high school yearbook was another oddity, revealing that I had been a cheerleader and a runner-up for Homecoming Queen. From the signatures and little notes from people I knew, I had apparently been a very popular girl in high school.

I also found a cache of old letters, mostly from older relatives since most of my contemporaries–like me–never bothered to write letters in the age of e-mail and texting. The most important ones and the ones which in the long run changed my mind about things the most, were from my grandmother.

While my grandmother and I had been very close, we had seldom written each other. Like most boys I hated to write letters and since my grandmother lived in the same city we did, she sent me only a few. It would seem though, that as Rebecca she had sent me quite a number–many of them private and telling me about the Omicron Pi’s and how someday she’d be pleased to call me a sorority sister as well as a granddaughter.

The letters brought tears to my eyes–especially this part:

“Rebecca (I got the feeling she didn’t like to call me “Becky”), you will have great magical powers. I can tell, because you positively glow with potential power. By the time you reach eighteen, I’m certain you will be potentially one of the most powerful practitioners of magic I have ever seen.

“And well you should be! My grandmother was one of the most powerful practitioners of her age and at the risk of bragging, I was no slouch myself.

“I look forward to the day that I can introduce you to the sorority and if the good Lord is willing, I hope to someday be in the chapter room when you are formally made an active member of Omicron Pi. I have no doubt that it will be one of the proudest moments of my life.”

Of course my grandmother was an Omicron Pi before the incident that provoked the Opies into changing suspected sex offenders into slutty girls. I don’t think she would have approved of their activities. She might have even worked through the alumni to end the distasteful practice if she hadn’t died in the accident.

While I was home I even went through all of her NSU yearbooks, looking at her picture smiling at me from back in the late sixties. I realized, both sadly and proudly, that I now looked a lot like her.

So as the leaves around campus turned to the golds and reds of autumn, I had pretty much reconciled myself to being a girl for the rest of my life. I had survived my first period and was nearly ready for my second. I could actually make a baby inside me, I realized with a surprisingly tranquil feeling. Not, of course, that I planned on doing that for some time to come.

As I breezed through the lobby of Brandon Hall after my last class of the day, I cheerily waved to a couple of girl friends who waved back with smiles and purposefully ignored a couple of guys who were giving me appreciative stares. To show how much of a girl I had become, I even smiled to myself at their attention and gave my ass a little extra swivel as I walked to my room.

After I had put my class notes on my desk for later review, I even took a few moments to look myself over in the full-length mirror. I was wearing jeans and a pink tee, but knew I’d probably have to change into a sweatshirt for my study date with Chad. It would be chilly as the fall evening wore on and my tee would be a bit light. No problem, though. I knew I looked pretty good in a sweatshirt as well–or at least Chad thought so and that was all that counted.

Before I could change though, there was a knock at my door. I wasn’t expecting anyone: Chad and I were going meet for dinner in the cafeteria as usual, so I had no idea who it could be. As I opened the door though, I wasn’t really surprised to see Felicia, flanked by two other girls. One was Stephanie, who I barely recognized since she, like the other girls, was dressed about like me. I was so used to seeing her in her candy-striper’s uniform that I nearly did a double-take. She smiled at me, knowing what I must be thinking.

The other girl was an African-American girl, whom Felicia introduced as Terri. Felicia then asked a little hesitantly, “Can we come in?”

I had no concerns about the three of them. Felicia had tried to help me and I recognized Terri as one of the girls who had been frozen in place as an unwilling witness to my near rape. And Stephanie was really on my good side for helping heal Chad.

“Yeah, sure,” I said blithely, tossing my head as my long hair swished around my ears. I was going to have to get it cut someday, but I knew I wouldn’t cut it much–Chad liked it long.

Since I didn’t have a roommate anymore, I sat in my desk chair while the other girls sat on the spare bed. They all looked a little uncomfortable and I thought I knew why. From my grandmother’s letters I was pretty sure they had come with an offer. I was pretty sure how I would respond, but I just played dumb and waited for them to begin.

Felicia started the conversation carefully. “We thought you’d like to know... Andrea and her allies are gone–at least the ones who were with her at the farm. They’ve all been thrown out of Omicron Pi and their magical powers have been suppressed.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Suppressed?”

Terri nodded and replied, “Once you have the gift of magic, it can never be completely taken away.”

I had suspected as much. Ms. Sawyer had remarked that this was the fate she had in mind for Felicia and her followers, so I had no sympathy for Andrea and her allies. Unlike the plans Ms. Sawyer and Andrea had for Felicia and her followers though, I suspected that the girls’ grandmothers knew very well why their granddaughters’ powers had been suppressed. Terri’s next comment seemed to confirm that.

“A new group of alumni are overseeing our operations now,” she went on. “They removed Andrea and her accomplices and put them under a spell. For the next three years they’ll be unable to use magic and at that time their conduct will be reviewed. If the alumni aren’t convinced that they’ve learned their lesson, the ban on magic will be extended.”

I just nodded noncommittally. While of course I would have loved to see their punishment more severe, I knew instinctively that the loss of magic would be like losing one of the five senses, so it was as serious as it could be. “What about Ms. Sawyer?”

Felicia shook her head. “She got away, but the Alumni Council has put out a warrant on her. None of the other Omicron Pi chapters–or any of the covens, for that matter–will have anything to do with her upon pain of serious punishment.”

“How many chapters are there?” I asked.

“Only four,” Felicia told me. “There’s the one here, the one in California Ms. Sawyer’s grandniece attends, and two more–one in Vermont and the other in Georgia. So you see, it will be easy to enforce the warrant.”

“And her grandniece?” I asked. “Was she punished too?”

“No,” Felicia said flatly. “She knew nothing about what Ms. Sawyer did. She didn’t even remember having sex before she was eighteen. Since the boy who had sex with her technically no longer exists, she was a legitimate virgin at eighteen.”

Felicia watched my face for some reaction. Again, I tried hard not to give her one. In truth I didn’t really want Ms. Sawyer’s grandniece punished. She had made a stupid mistake having sex with me and had paid for it, although she didn’t remember the year she had been denied magical training. As for Ms. Sawyer, I would have felt much more comfortable knowing she was restrained somewhere, but I wasn’t surprised to find that she had gotten away.

“And what about the practice of turning boys into girls at your house?” I asked. I couldn’t keep the vehemence out of my voice as I asked the question.

“That practice has ended,” Felicia assured me. “As you probably figured, a lot of our alumni knew about the practice since it was going on when they were in college. We’ve... purged our alumni of all those who condoned the practice. There are other alums in charge now.”

I wondered what she meant by ‘purged.’ I was sure she didn’t mean killed, since the sudden deaths of such a presumably large number of women associated with the Omicron Pi chapter would surely have been noticed by the media. Were their powers taken from them as they had been with Andrea and her pals? I suspected that was the case. What was the word Felicia had used? Oh, yes–”suppressed.” I was actually impressed that such sweeping action had been taken. Felicia and her supporters must have had plenty to do with the decision and I decided to lighten up on her just a little.

“I’m glad to hear that,” I told the girls. But I wasn’t entirely ready to kiss and make up just yet. “But what about the victims?”

Terri answered before Felicia could. “Becky, please, let’s remember that most of those ‘victims’ had raped or at least physically abused girls. You haven’t been a girl very long, so you may not fully appreciate the danger girls face...”

Her voice trailed off as she saw the hard look in my eyes. I knew all too well what dangers girls faced. “If you’ll recall,” I told her coldly, “I was nearly raped myself–and it was a woman who tried to make it happen.”

Terri shook her head and looked down. “I know: I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“In any case,” Felicia broke in, “what was done to them wasn’t right. As we learned in your case, Becky, it’s not a very good idea to punish someone without giving them a fair hearing.”

I nodded in agreement. Since my own unwarranted transformation, I had often wondered how many innocent men had been transformed over the years in the name of justice. Sure, there were some who probably deserved what they got–and more. But without due process the innocent were bound to be grouped with the guilty.

Stephanie chimed in, “We’re doing our best to find all of the victims and do something to make amends–to re-educate them and remove the compulsions to be...”

“Strippers and whores?” I finished for her since she had been reluctant to say it.

“Yes,” she agreed, barely able to look me in the eye. “Some of them... well, we’re salvaging who we can.”

She didn’t have to elaborate. Whores and strippers don’t as a rule have happy productive lives to look forward to. Some of them would be middle-aged by now–if they were still alive. At least, I thought to myself, Stacey and Donna would be easy to rescue, since they hadn’t been transformed all that long.

“We’ve changed,” Felicia summed up for me. “We wanted you to know that before we told you the real reason we were here...”

Of course I already knew what the real reason was.

“Your grandmother was one of us,” she continued, telling me what I already knew. “That makes you a legacy. But even if you weren’t a legacy, we’d love to call you our sister. Will you please join Omicron Pi?”

In spite of myself I could feel a mist of tears forming in my eyes. What was unthinkable only a short time ago had become, in my mind, necessary if I was to honor my grandmother and grow to my full potential. Besides, I remembered what I had unintentionally done to Sam. I couldn’t take the chance that wild, unconscious spells issued by someone as powerful as me might do untold damage on innocent people. I needed the training and guidance Omicron Pi could give me.

I reached out and silently grasped Felicia’s hand, gazing into her surprised eyes.

“Yes,” was what I said. “I’ll be happy to join you.”

And we all smiled at each other. We were all about to embark on a magical journey...

Together.

The End