Soldier of Missfortune 6 by Angharad Copyright © 2011 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

By the time I got back to my room, I’d spent too much money and was committed to spend even more, but at least I’d be rid of the wig–which got very warm–if you’ve never tried one, try wearing a woolly hat all day and see how warm your bonce becomes–my brains were in danger of becoming fully instead of half baked.

I thought about my little world which was shrinking all the time. I needed to do this mission, and get back to my old self. Okay I needed them to remove a few pounds of flesh on my chest and turn my vocal chords back to normal–I can actually sing like a choirboy again–mind you my career in cassocks and surplices ended after the verger told me I looked like a girl in a long dress and did I want to sit on his lap? No I did not–I still wouldn’t–the dirty old git was finally arrested for gross indecency with a less fortunate chorister.

I couldn’t get my head round how unpleasant my parents had been–they had no reason to be so horrible to me, I was doing this for Q&C not some perverse self amusement–so why weren’t they supportive? I felt like sending them a snotty letter telling them where they could get off–but then outside the army, I had nowhere to go now they’d effectively disowned me. I was kinda stuck.

For some reason this mission now mattered–I suppose because I didn’t have anything else to take my energy–it was going to be a challenge on all sorts of levels, but then so was tomorrow evening.

I changed my underwear–I can’t get used to calling it lingerie–and retried the dress. I was happy that it looked as good as it would on anyone else, and with my red heels–yeah–myred heels–stills feels strange–the concept, the shoes don’t they feel fine. They do make you stand differently so my ample bum stuck out more than usual as did my precipitous chest. Looking down I can’t see my feet any more when I’m standing up that is–just these creamy coloured mounds with an inviting gap between them. My nipples twitched as I fell in lust with my own body–waste of time of course–can only get as excited as a door-nail–and they’re proverbially dead. Will these chemicals and hormones do permanent damage there? If they do will the army compensate me? I wonder. I hope someone’s got a record of all they’ve done to me–because I haven’t a clue apart from the boobs, my throat and Alex junior–I hope he recovers–I wonder if they could make it bigger when they sort it out after this mission.

I pouted and posed in front of the mirror–Sexy Lexi–yeah, I quite like that eponym. Being called Lexi rather than Alexandra does make me feel as if it’s not really me, so like a role play thing–which is how this feels–except, standing here, flashing the flesh makes me want to have someone appreciating it and showing that appreciation in a physical way–goodness my boobs want to be touched and played with.

I played with my makeup to take my mind off things, but it didn’t, it made things worse because I was creating this sex-goddess look to annoy Major Reynolds and hopefully Colonel Stone as well–I hadn’t met his wife, but she’s probably as bad as him, cooks the dinner by numbers–make the gravy two three–check the spuds two three.

The lipstick and the red beads looked good together and picked up the fleck in the material of the dress and the shawl. I resisted doing my nails until later tomorrow, in case they got damaged in between–nothing worse than chipped nails.

I sat an looked at myself in my dressing table mirror–I looked quite pretty with a voluptuous mouth and sparkling eyes–I couldn’t see any sign of Alex there anymore–I looked harder, the nose was the same small and freckled but it seemed to have been appropriated by Lexi as did my mouth and eyes. I’d not noticed my cheekbones were so noticeable especially with the right sort of shading, and my small jaw line. Alex had gone–would I be able to get him back. I felt tears form in my eyes and a little later I was crying my heart out–mourning for someone I’d lost and who I might never see again–what had I let them do to me? No wonder my parents felt estranged–I was now this exotic being exuding female sexuality–but unable to deliver–God, was I screwed up.

I had a drink of wine, cleaned myself up, pulled on my nightdress and went to bed slightly the worse for wear–again–I’d have to watch it, or I’d slip further down the slippery slope, and booze is fattening and I didn’t want t lose my reasonable waistline. Shit what was I thinking? This past couple of months has really screwed with my head.

I had uncomfortable dreams–I was actually in someone’s arms, who turned out to be male–and woke up feeling sick. What happened to all the fantasies I had about being with Cheryl Cole or Megan Fox? Had something changed in my brain because of what was being done to me or was it there all along, just waiting for the right time for the switch to be thrown?

How can they expect me to act under stress when I’m already under so much stress simply by the way I’m having to exist. I went to the loo and sat down without even thinking about it; would I still do that when I’m finished with this job? Presumably not–goodness I hoped not. Then panic seized me for a moment–what happens if they can’t undo my little weapon from its hiding place?

Surely they wouldn’t do something to me they couldn’t undo, would they? Then I thought about the way the British government had treated servicemen in the past, using them as experiments with nuclear explosions at Christmas Island, and nerve gas tests at Porton Down. That was in the fifties and sixties, surely things have changed since then–haven’t they?

Or have they? The feeling of sickness had passed so I crept back to my bed and lay there. Suddenly all my doubts had resurfaced. I keep having to prove myself–not as capable of the technical aspects of my job–although Reynolds wants me to prove I can use the equipment–but that I’m woman enough to get there in the first place.

Why couldn’t they just train up a female operative? I’d have thought that would have been easier than training me to be female. I mean, it’s not as if men and women’s brains are different–the old chestnut that women can’t read maps and men can’t read faces–is total nonsense. Isn’t it?

’Course it is–I can’t read maps–okay I can do plans, like blueprints and circuit diagrams–but good ol’ Ordnance Survey, 1:50,000–I get lost working out which way up the map goes. Alright, I’m joking, the writing tells you which way is up but that’s about all I can do–I get confused about which is right and left when I’m actually walking the territory.

I got lost on a training exercise. We had to orientate in groups of three to find a target and return to where we started. To make it interesting, it was at night. I was designated map-reader–yeah, me the one with least skills. We got hopelessly lost and blundered into our target by accident from the wrong direction.

The defenders were all looking the wrong way, so we captured them and by a bit of guile, made them lead us back to where we should have been. So we were able to pretend we used an alternative strategy to achieve our objective–we all knew I’d cocked up, but I was forgiven because it turned out well in the end.

So how come I can read a diagram, which is a sort of map after all? I don’t know, maybe because I understand it, yet I can’t relate blobs on a map to bits of ground. My spatial awareness is useless too–can’t park a car to save my life–but that might be because I don’t drive very often–and I doubt doing it in heels is going to be any easier–plus it marks all the shoes. Why am I worrying about that for–I won’t be wearing them long enough for it to matter–and when it the job is over–they’ll all be going to Oxfam anyway.

I felt disconsolate with life. How had I got into this position–because I’m small, pretty and know a thing or two about weapon systems. Maybe I should leave the army and become a female impersonator–nah, they deride women and having spent a while living as one, I couldn’t do that to my ‘sisters’.

Hark at me–Alex the feminist, I’ll be demanding the right to fight on the front line next–not. I don’t want to do that as a bloke let alone a woman, and I think anyone who does must be bonkers. Life is for living, so unless the enemy come up my street I don’t see myself engaging with them at gun point or otherwise.

So how do I explain this mission? Duh–a momentary aberration, forgot I’m a conscientious coward, got tricked into it–yeah, that’s more like it. I yawned and fell asleep to have more troubling dreams.

In one of my dreams I was being pursued by both Stone and Reynolds–I wasn’t sure what they wanted, but neither was I hanging around to find out. That one ended as my alarm went off. I was quite pleased in some ways–although I awoke all sweaty and tangled up in my bedclothes.
The morning I spent showering and making sure there were no hairs anywhere there shouldn’t be, I did my armpits and checked my legs–there weren’t many there anyway. I polished the red shoes–well, wiped them over with a cloth–they were quite shiny anyway.

I had a small breakfast, I wasn’t very hungry, and the girdle thing is now loose on the previous markings, and I seem to have lost at least an inch from my waist. I did the online course–it was a doddle–least I hope it was, or I’ve got everything I thought was fact wrong. Mind you I got off to a bad start. I tried to log in on my name–Alexander Montgomery with my number. It wouldn’t log on. I tried half a dozen times, then thought–they haven’t have they?–tried with Alexandra–and they had. I wasn’t sure what to think about that. I tried to speak with Stone but he wasn’t in his office and Sylvia didn’t think he’d be in tonight.

At lunchtime, I went into town and found in a charity shop a wide leather belt in shiny red–pretty good match to my shoes–I then went to the hair salon. I’ve never been in one before–actually that’s not quite true–when I was about four my mother took me with her and they all thought I was her little girl. It amused her so she played along. I was so embarrassed I never went there again until now–I feel embarrassed already. I told myself to just relax and act like I came here every week.

Actually, it was quite nice, being pampered: the extensions cost and arm and a leg plus VAT, which is equivalent to most of your fingers. They coloured them to match my hair–which is strawberry blonde–if you remember they did it the first day I was up and about after the bits of medical changes they made.

I discussed what the most appropriate style would be with Sharon, who was really nice and put me at my ease very quickly. The sad thing is they only last a few weeks because the hair they’re attached to grows.

In two hours, I went from bewigged to extended, and it looked so much better. She did a shortish style because she suggested my own hair would grow into it in about a month. That also reduced the cost of the extensions.

They persuaded me to have my nails done and to my amazement transformed them into talons in less than half an hour–bright red talons. Quite how I was supposed to use my fingers, I wasn’t sure, but they made my fingers look very long and thin and unmilitary, but then so did my eyelashes, which were also extended. Looking in the mirror, I think my eyeballs and teeth were the only bits of me not altered.

I got back to my room and after a little wash, did my makeup–the object being to appear as natural as possible, at the same time sexy. I used a pale blusher to highlight my cheekbones, make my nose look smaller and thinner, and soften my jaw.

I already looked feminine, now I looked super fem, and with a touch of mascara and very fine eyeliner, the major attention focused on my red lips, my eyes framed by the extra thick lashes and delicate makeup.

I drank a glass of wine as I finished my transformative session, pulled the girdle tighter and then donned my new lingerie, finally pulling on the ten denier tights, which had me worried about ladders given my long nails.

Then the dress and belt, the shoes, beads my watch and gold bracelet–the only one I had. I spritzed myself with perfume in all the recommended places. Why wrists and knees–blood vessels come close to the surface there and cause it to evaporate so giving you a nice pong as you walk about.

I was dressed to kill by seven o’clock and waiting outside a little later, trying to avoid being picked up by passing soldiers. The colonel and his wife appeared a short time later and he seemed suitably impressed. His wife was a very beautiful lady who had a personality to match, so quite what she saw in him–I’ll never know.

She and I sat together in the back of his car and by the time we got to the Reynolds’ place, we were like old friends. She complimented me on my hair, so I took to her very quickly.

Thankfully she was wearing a grey silk trouser suit, so we didn’t clash on colours.
The Reynolds’ place was a detached house, probably four bedrooms, with a large sitting room and a separate dining room, a study for the self-important, pompous, malevolent Major and a sewing room for his wife. His elder daughter Clare showed us round while Mrs Reynolds, Philippa, completed the meal.

Clare was a delightful girl, and very beautiful–then at nineteen most are, the second daughter, Joy, was seventeen and going through a rebellious stage. She refused to wear a skirt or dress and turned up in jeans which her father was angry about–but she wasn’t going to change and he could hardly threaten to dock her allowance in front of guests–though I’ll bet he made her life a misery after we left.

The food was certainly better than our canteen at work. Homemade pate to start with thin cut toast, a main course of poached sea bream with new potatoes and French beans and tiny sliced mushrooms baked in butter. Pudding, crá¨me caramel and coffee and port afterwards.

Oh did I mention, the other officer–I don’t think I did. He was a Captain Pearce, Todd Pearce and he kept giving me the eye all through the meal, which amused Joy no end. We did a traditional split of the women going off with coffee and wine while the boys drank brandy and smoked cigars.

We decamped to the sitting room and of course there were loads of questions. I’d been given a brief to use to explain my background. I told them I was a technician and operated computers. Once this was out in the open, Joy and Clare grabbed me and asked me to come and see if I could sort their computer.

I don’t know if I felt relieved or terrified to be under the scrutiny of two teenage girls–however, I sorted their problem–a software clash between the driver for the video card and...you don’t want to hear about that, do you?

So I impressed two young women, one of whom I could quite happily fallen in love with–Clare, she was really very beautiful–ash blonde, quite tall like her dad, but with cheekbones to die for and the most amazing dark blue eyes. I’ve never seen any as dark as that before and they lit up when she smiled.

The two elder matriarchs spent half the time telling the rest of us how stupid their respective husbands were, which pleased me greatly, although I was on stickier ground when they asked if I had a current boyfriend–I told them not at present.

“Oh great, Todd seemed to take quite a shine to you, I’ll let him know he’s in with a shout, if you like,” offered Joy. I declined suggesting officers and NCOs mixing could cause problems on the base.

The two older women looked aghast–“That only applies to women officers and male NCOs–and half of them are shagging their corporals,” she said showing the wine beginning to take effect on the Colonel’s wife.