Parking in the village was never an issue. The drive took place in stony silence with Dad’s grim expression inviting no conversation. There was something I needed to say before we went much further though.

“This isn’t going to do any good, Dad.” He glowered at me, but I pressed on regardless. “He was as surprised and upset as I was by the changes in my appearance – more so. He’s not going to have any idea how to reverse this. Besides, even if he does, I’m not going through with it.”

He turned his back on me an started striding towards the Magic Box. When he was in this mood, he just expected you to follow on. Mind you, if you didn’t, he tended to get upset with you, so Mum and I would generally go along with him until he calmed down.

Oh! That’s what Mr Tweedy meant by first person conjugation. It kind of made sense.

Yeah, I knew his name now, but Mr Tweedy worked better in my mind.

I hurried after Dad before he noticed I was falling behind, my shoes clattering along on the uneven paving.

I couldn’t believe how depressing the shop front looked. Blacked out windows with black surrounds and a black signboard written on in a faintly different shade of black. You could just about make out the words and the occult symbology, but I had to wonder why anyone bothered.

I pushed my way into the shop to find Mr Tweedy backed up against one of the walls with my dad very much up in his face.

Well, not quite up in his face.

You see, my dad’s not that tall and in this instance was head and shoulders shorter than his quarry, but he is super fierce when he puts his mind to it, so Mr Giles – I really ought to start calling him by his actual name – looked quite terrified, despite having a significant advantage in both height and weight. It might have been kind of funny if it hadn’t been so messed up.

“You turned my son into this,” Dad snarled, spittle flying from his mouth – some of it into Giles’s face, “so you can damn well change him back.”

“Dad! Stop!” It was pretty much a waste of breath when Dad was like this, but I had to try. “You can see he has no idea how to do what you’re asking.”

“You stay out of this, missy,” he growled at me, I’m pretty sure making a Freudian slip rather than being ironically sarcastic.

I couldn’t let him continue. He’d probably break something and get himself arrested. The thing is I’d inherited all his genes for height but none for aggression, and my recent transformation had made me shorter still, so I was half a head lower than my already little dad, and nowhere near raging like he was.

To be honest, that was probably an advantage if I was going any further with my training. The sort of rage that had my dad foaming at the mouth was more a sort of uncontrolled berserker thing that was more intimidating than dangerous. If he’d gone up against any of my earlier adversaries, he’d have had his arse handed to him. Probably quite literally.

With my oversized jeans and sweatshirt, I was decidedly not dressed for Riverdance Jujitsu, but I was considerably more lithe and athletic than I had been. I sprinted across the room and launched into a rapidly twisting somersault over my father, from which I was able to reach out and grab his shoulders and pull him spinning into a stack of books.

For myself, I managed to avoid hitting the relatively low ceiling and landed neatly in a tight space between further piles of the shop’s inventory.

Mr Giles removed his spectacles and polished them nervously, looking down at my father sprawled in an untidy mess of books.

“Thank, thank-you for the, er, the assist, Mitchel, but I’d just finished cataloguing those.”

I held out a hand to my dad and hauled him to his feet, very much aware of how much body mass and upper body strength I had apparently lost.

“Can we act like civilised human beings now please Daddy?”

“How did you do that?” he asked, rubbing at his elbow.

“Oh, that’s nothing, Daddy, you should see me dance. Only you couldn’t be bothered to watch the DVD, could you?”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“Why not? You are my dad, aren’t you, or is there something you and Mum aren’t telling me?” I stooped to help Mr Tweed Suit – Mr Giles that is – pick up his books.

“It’s just...” My intervention seemed to have knocked all the bluster out of him. He bent down to help.

“Please don’t,” Mr Giles said in a politely petulant voice. “I believe I’ve had as much help from, from you as I can afford today.”

“It looks like I’ve damaged some of your stock, Mr Giles. How much would this lot be worth?”

“These two dozen volumes, probably somewhere in the vicinity of, er, five, five thousand pounds.”

Dad whistled. “I suppose that explains how you make money out of a place like this.”

“Er, yes. It’s not so much the monetary value though. You see, a good many of these are, are very rare. This one for instance is the only known copy in existence.”

“The Manticorium,” Dad read taking it from him and opening it. “What kind of book is it anyway.”

Stuart snatched it back from him and snapped it shut. “Quite a dangerous one if, if you don’t know what you’re doing with it.” He examined the spine which had been damaged in the tumble, then put it to one side with a stack of other books looking in need of repair.

“How do you ever sell anything? I mean I never see the shop open to the public.”

“Largely eBay and Facebook Market Place if you must know, but I don’t think you came here to discuss my business practices, did you?”

Dad’s mood darkened a little as he recalled the purpose of our visit. “No,” he said. “I came to ask why it is, after visiting your shop this morning, my son now looks more like my daughter, and don’t give me any rot about mystical mumbo jumbo.” He raised his finger and jabbed Mr Giles in the chest on the last phrase.

Stuart straightened his shirt. “And if you’d given me a chance to say anything when you barged in here, I’d have been happy to tell you that I have no idea. Mitchell came in to audition for me this morning. On his suggestion, we made a video, the only copy of which he took away with him. At the end of the session, we noticed some rather unexpected, er, changes to his appearance at which point he ran out of the shop wearing the er, the costume he’d put on for the trial.”

“And whose idea was it for him to put on a dress in the first place?”

“Mitchel?”

“I told you, Dad, that one’s on me.”

“So how do you explain my son’s current appearance?”

“I have nothing to offer you, at least since you don’t seem to be inclined to listen to any ‘mumbo jumbo hocus pocus’ er, rot.” This was the most extreme expression of anger I’d experienced from the reserved shop keeper. He didn’t quite go so far as to do the air quotes thing, but you could hear them in the way he spoke as much as you could hear his disdain for someone who dismissed his field of interest in such an offhand manner.

“You’re trying to tell me you think some magic you can’t explain happened while Mitch was here. That because he put on a dress to do this dancing of his, some weird hoodoo voodoo,” Dad wasn’t so restrained, waving his fingers in the air in a pseudo-spooky way, “turned him into this?”

“Perhaps you have a more convincing explanation why he is now several inches shorter, a couple of stone lighter and significantly different in pretty much every aspect of his appearance.”

“Well alright Mr Smartypants,” Apparently I wasn’t the only one with nicknames for Mr Tweedy, “why don’t we test your hypothesis and kill two birds with one stone?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Well, unless I misunderstood, you’re suggesting Mitch turned into a girl because he danced in your disturbing little shop wearing a dress, and he wants me to see him dance, so why don’t we put him in a male costume and see what happens to him? You do have some male costumes, don’t you?”

“Er, yes, but I’m not sure…”

“Fine. Let’s go then. Mitch, I imagine you know where the costumes are?”

I nodded.

“Alright, you go and get changed. Mr Giles here will show me to the studio.”

I exchanged a worried look with Stuart, who shrugged and gave a hint of a nod.

Anyway, he had found a few men’s costumes. I pulled one out and smiled. This was going to be fun.

“I’m not sure about this, Dad,” I said, stepping out of what passed for the changing room.

Both Dad’s and Stuart’s eyes bugged out for a second before they turned beet red and turned around on the spot.

“What the hell do you think you’re wearing?” Dad asked.

What the hell was I wearing? The men’s costumes consisted of a pair of leggings and a heavily sequined top that was entirely open at the front, designed to show off a well-developed six pack and pair of abs, but doing nothing to help cover or support what I had on offer. The dresses had built in support, so I hadn’t needed a bra until now. I hadn’t been able to find one, but then again, I hadn’t looked too hard.

The top was long enough on me to cover the bits I really didn’t want anyone seeing, but the leggings were made for someone with a considerably larger frame, so I definitely had a Nora Batty thing going on down around my ankles. I still had on the block heels I’d worn home because none of the men’s shoes came anywhere fitting my smaller feet.

“It’s one of the men’s costumes, Dad. They’re all like this, and I really don’t think I can perform without a bit of support for these puppies.” I cupped my breasts in my hands just as my dad glanced over his shoulder, snapping his eyes away the instant he saw what I was doing.

“Go and cover yourself up.”

“Yes Dad.” I was tempted to Daddy him, but I knew when I was pushing him too far.

“You might, er, you might want to consider the other pair of shoes while you’re at it,” Stuart added.

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. Don’t worry about anything other than your performance.”

“Alright then.” I supposed that meant he had a way to distract Dad if I ended up with anything to fight.

I picked a different dress. As I’ve said before, the design of the dresses was pretty uniform, but the one I picked out was all reds and yellows with a flame motif to it. The shoe design was pretty much as consistent as the dress design, but I was pleased and unsurprised to find a red pair that matched the dress. It didn’t take me long to change. This time I made my way directly to the studio, as Dad had referred to it.

“Alright,” Stuart’s voice said over the PA, “let’s see what you make of this. It’s a little under five minutes. Don’t forget to cool down gently afterwards.”

“Doesn’t he have to warm up first?” Dad’s voice came over the loudspeaker.

“Not necessary. The music starts off slowly enough that it counts as a…” Stuart’s voice was muffled as though he were talking away from the microphone, then cut off in the middle.

I’d heard enough though. I had just under five minutes to dance well enough to impress my father, starting slowly, or at least slowly enough to count as a warmup. Then the interesting part would follow. I wished I had an idea how many were coming though.

I took up position four with my arms straight down.

The music started gently enough, which is to say, since it was intended for Irish dancing, it was no gentle waltz. It wasn’t particularly taxing either and I let my feet tap out their own gentle accompanying rhythm, adding a few skips and jumps as my muscles warmed up. The tempo of the music increased and my own efforts along with it. I could feel my body freeing up, becoming more supple with each move. I laughed as I abandoned myself to the dance, feeling it drawing to a close and entering my own final leap and landing to match it. As before, I was breathing without difficulty.

“I hope you see what your, er, what Mitchel and I have been trying to convey. I’ve rarely seen raw talent like. Come with me into the other room. I have a very agreeable thirty-year old single malt that begs to be drunk in company. Mitchel don’t forget your cooling down exercises. I’d have given that performance a, er, a seventeen I should think.”

Seventeen bad guys. No problem, though considering how he’d underestimated last time, chances were there’d be a few more. I settled into my rest position and let my senses roam the room.

The first charged me out of the shadows in near silence, but not silent enough. I gave my feelings control of my body and found myself leaping high, spinning with leg stretched out. The sharpened edge of the spike barely slowed as it pass through the creature’s neck. It exploded into dust.

The next attack comprised three of them attacking simultaneously, two from either side and the third from behind. I’m not sure exactly how to describe how that went, other than to say my mind and body entered a sort of instinctive flow, twisting and bending, jumping and kicking. I could feel the air moving as clawed hands swept past in vicious swipes, but somehow, I was always just out of their reach. They snagged my clothing occasionally, but never so much as touched me.

The first one disappeared in a cloud of dust when it overextended itself and came within range of one of my flying kicks. One spiked heel broke its sternum and entered its heart, the toe of the other foot pushing away from its chest just before it burst into nothingness, giving me just enough of a reaction to enter a twisting somersault and land back on my feet.

Two more vampires appeared before I had an opportunity to take out any more. The rhythm of the dance intensified, seeming to confuse or distract them just enough. Claws came sailing through the air missing my pinned arms by the narrowest margins. A twisting high kick decapitated one and I was down to three again. More were coming. I felt the presence of a new one and leapt out of the group surrounding me into a forward flip that ended up impaling both my spikes into the new arrival, just as she stepped out of the shadows.

A quick spinning attack with legs spread-eagled, in what would have been an undignified manner had there not been a pair of briefs sewn into the dress, sliced through the necks of one then two of my original attackers.

My legs came back together before I landed in what ought to have been a plum crushing manoeuvre, but oddly, I felt no discomfort.

Not a time for distractions. I launched myself sideways in a twisting backflip that left another new arrival charging into the last of my original assailants and landed in a pirouette with my right leg high enough to slice open the belly of a particularly large newcomer. He stood, momentarily dumbfounded, as he watched his intestines spill out into a putrid mess in front of him. It was revolting, but it gave me a long enough moment to leap high into the air and plant a flying sideways kick into his chest. Fortunately, his guts disappeared in the same cloud of dust that consumed him.

I’d lost count of how many I’d dispatched, but then I was a little preoccupied. I mean true, I was acting on instinct, but my instinct seemed to be making full use of my brain since I didn’t have space to think of anything else. If anything, my consciousness was adding a little to my unconscious fighting ability, as on occasions I’d notice some new threat in the corner of my vision and moments later, my body would change position or flow subtly to take it into account.

The battle went on, very much one sided with the constant flow of enemies outmatched by my movements. I took very much a back seat, buzzing with the overflow of adrenaline streaming through my system. I knew I’d pay for it soon enough, but for now… what a high! It was the weirdest feeling. On one level it felt like someone or something else was in the driving seat, but on another, I knew it was me doing all this.

The floor was becoming slippery with all the dust building up on the floor, and I had to control my breathing to keep from inhaling the filth still hanging in the air, but eventually the constant onslaught petered out and I was able to take a pause. I didn’t know how long I’d been at it, but I was breathing a little harder than usual at the end. I could feel my heart hammering in my chest and my breasts rising and lowering as I sucked in much needed oxygen. An absence between my thighs meant that my habitual position four felt more comfortable than usual. That might have bothered me a little, only at that point I felt more than heard a deep rumbling growl, right down at the limit of human hearing.

I pivoted on the balls of my feet to face something new.

It stood with a slight crouch, its bald skull just about brushing the tall ceiling. If there had been clearance, it would have stood twelve feet tall with its broad, muscled chest spanning three quarters of that. You’ve heard people described as having arms as thick as most people’s thighs? This guy’s were thicker than most people’s waists, and that’s taking into account the current obesity epidemic in the western world. Thighs like tree trunks only worked if you had in mind a veteran oak. The only thing he was missing was the green skin.

I could feel the fear rising inside me and fought to control it. “You have this,” I told my inner self. “It’ll take a bit longer than the others and you’ll have to slow him down a little, but he’s just meat and bones.”

My inner self seemed to respond and the squirt of emergency adrenaline turned into a thrill of heightened awareness just as vampire hulk charged, and just as well, because he was fast!

I dived to the side, rolling under his outstretch fist as he charged past. The build-up of dust on the floor worked in my favour as the immense creature skidded past and slammed into the wall with a resounding crash. That was going to alert Dad to something, I realised, but not much to do about it right now. My own spiked heels dug into the wood of the floor, acting like studs on a wet football field, and I was up and leaping at him. If I was lucky, I had a brief opening here.

I was. He was still shaking some sense into his dense brain when I landed on his back and sliced one blade spike through the back of his neck. I pushed away, and not a moment too soon as he swung around with unnatural speed and ferocity, lashing at me as I somersaulted out of his reach.

By rights he should have turned into a boneless heap on the floor. Surely my kick had severed his spinal cord. How was he communicating with his limbs right now? Still, not human. Note the unnatural speed, the less than human appearance. Don’t make assumptions. Didn’t some dinosaurs have a second brain of sorts at the base of their spines? Maybe something worth exploring when I had the chance, but we had the measure of each other now. This creature showed some degree of feral intelligence in its eyes and I doubted it would underestimate me again in a hurry.

“Mitchel, are, are you alright?” Stuart’s voice came over the Tannoy.

“A little preoccupied at the moment,” I called out.

“Yes, yes I can see that, but…”

“Where’s my dad?”

“Still, still in the other room. I told him I’d check.”

“Then go and tell him I’m alright. Make up some excuse. Tell him I was trying some high kicks and knocked something heavy off a shelf or something.”

“That’s… alright. Are you sure you’re okay though?”

“What would you do if I said no?”

“Erm. Yes, I suppose. Well, don’t die.”

“Grateful for the advice. Any idea what this thing is?”

“Er, no. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Then go back to my dad and stop distracting me.”

“Erm… yes, alright.” The public address switched off.

Mr Growly gave me an evil grin, designed to intimidate. I returned it with a bright one of my own, all sparkly eyes and gleaming teeth, complete with little girly wave.

He didn’t like that much. His smile turned to a snarl and he ground his feet into the dusty remains of his companions.

Still, that was good, wasn’t it? Scared and angry opponents made mistakes.

He came at me in a slow lumbering run, surprisingly light on his feet and stooped low onto his fists to avoid hitting the ceiling. I dropped into a gentle dance rhythm which did little to intimidate him. He slowed a little, but that was it. It built up my confidence though, as well as the confidence of my unconscious self. It looked like there would be just enough clearance…

He lunged at me. In the same moment I dived over his head, half twisting and bending my knees to bring my bladed heels cutting deeply into his back. He howled in pain and rage, arching his back to escape me. As I reached the base of his spine, I arched as well, stabbing the full length of the spikes into a small bulge just above his arse crack, before the momentum of my rotation brought my blades clear and flipped me round to land on my feet.

A glance up at his neck, at the first wound I’d inflicted, where the flesh was knitting together almost before my eyes.

He spun on me and lunged again, reaching out with those mammoth fists of his. I desperately wanted to bring my own up to block him, to counter his attack, but an image of what would happen to me if he caught hold of my arms flashed across my mind’s eye and I managed to keep them pinned to my side. Instead I fell back, bending into a slightly seated position and pulling my knees up tight as I landed on altogether too much padding and rolled in a backward somersault to come to my feet out of his reach, but altogether too close to the wall.

He lunged again, but his legs weren’t obeying him properly. He overbalanced and fell forward leaving me an opening to launch off the wall behind me, tuck into a somersault and land with all the force my small body could muster between his shoulder blades, one spiked heel digging in either side of his spine.

Would it be deep enough? His chest cavity was massive. Would my heels be long enough to reach in as far as his heart? I crouched and pushed hard enough to tug my spikes free. The thrust compressed his chest just a fraction more and he exploded into dust just as I jumped clear. I didn’t quite achieve the launch speed I was looking for, so I had to tuck into a tight roll in order to land properly, but land I did.

The dust cloud filled the room; there was no escaping it. I held my breath and kept my feet tapping constantly as it settled slowly around me. It took it’s time, so after a moment, I held one of the loose sleeves of my dress up to my nose and mouth and breathed through the material until my vision cleared. No tingle from my spidy sense, no subsonic growling to loosen my bowels, no movement, no nothing. I brought the tapping to a gradual stop. That would count as my cool down period. I needed to get back to Dad and the Mr Tweedle-Dee.

The red dress wasn’t in a great state. If red was supposed to be lucky, as believe the Chinese, this particular choice hadn’t been particularly lucky for the dress. More claws than I could count had caught the loose material of the skirt and sleeves tearing miniature shreds into them. I stripped it off, along with the tights – which had avoided snags – and reached for my boxers. Dad would be expecting me back in guy mode, except they wouldn’t fit. I could pull them up as far as my hips, but then the elastic was stretched to its limit and would go no further. I picked up my jeans and offered them up to my lower body. There was no way they would fit now. I dropped everything to the floor and turned to examine myself in the mirror.

Now that was different.

#

“Dad? I know what you’re going to say, but my clothes don’t fit any more.” Dad held a cut glass tumbler with a very generous amount of amber liquid. It was halfway to his mouth. “How many of those have you had?”

“I don’t see how that’s any business of yours, young lady.” His words tripped over themselves as they emerged from his mouth. Mind you, he’d already had a few before we came here.

“Keys,” I said, holding out a hand and planted the other on a seriously cocked hip.

“You can’t drive,” Dad slurred. “You’re not old enough.”

“You can’t drive either, you're not sober enough. Hand them over.”

“Where’s Mitchel? Where’s my son?”

“You don’t have a son, Dad.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Well, you know how you thought this prancing about in a dress had made me look like a girl, and I didn’t really argue with you?”

He stared at me, his eyes swimming in and out of focus.

“Well now I’d have to argue with you.”

“Whatever are you drivelling about?”

“I could show you, but if your reaction to when I did that last time is anything to go by, you really won’t like it.” Memories of the considerably larger nipples surrounded by considerably larger darker areas – what were they called? – perched on the top of a pair of considerably larger boobs. Well that much was evident from the way the front of my dress stood out now. Then there had been what was between my legs, as well as what wasn’t. I’d felt around it with my fingers, but only for a fleeting moment. The whole sensation had been too strange.

“Mitchel? You’re not Mitchel. Mitchel isn’t as pretty as you, and his hair’s darker.”

“Sorry Dad, it’s me, and I’m going to need a new wardrobe.”

“What’s wrong with the one you’ve got? Okay, it’s only a flatpack thing, but it does the job.”

I sighed and walked up to him. He generally kept his car keys in his right-hand pocket. I reached in.

“Hey! What are you doing?” He tried squirming out of the way, but that would have risked spilling the contents of his glass, so I managed to dip in quickly enough to grab the keys and withdraw. I also came into momentary contact with something large and swollen moving about independently of its owner’s control.

Ew!

Mind you, until very recently, I been in possession of one of those, and I knew they had a life of their own.

Even so, Dad! Ew!

“Come back with those keys Mitch. Mitch, I’m warning you.”

“What are you going to do, Dad? Fall on your face at me? You wouldn’t want to risk spilling your drink, would you?”

I fished in my sweatshirt pocket and pulled out my phone. It wasn’t pink. I wanted it to be pink. I looked at Mr Giles who was sitting in another chair with his own glass of amber nectar, very wisely staying out of the family squabble. He gave me what I imagine he thought of as a meaningful look, but there wasn’t much meaning too it that I could make out. We did need to have a long conversation in our near future, but it would have to wait till he was sober. I hit a speed dial.

“Hi Mum, could you come down to the arcade? Yeah, to the weird black shop. It’s called the Magic Box, not that you can tell from looking at it. No, the owner kind of offered Dad a drink, or maybe five, which on top of the three he already had before we came out… Yeah, I know I sound odd. Can it wait till you get here? Okay, thanks Mum. Love you.”

Where had that come from? I mean I do love my mum but telling her was something reserved for birthdays and Christmas.

I supposed Christmas was near enough and my birthday due to follow shortly after.

I perched on a chair opposite Dad and well out of his reach, my legs naturally together, and put my phone and Dad’s keys down on the table next to me.

“So, did we make friends yet?” I asked. “I mean, I can see you made friends with that bottle of scotch, but with each other I mean.” That was more I means than the sentence deserved, but whatever.

“Your father was quite impressed with your performance. Less so with your costume, but the dancing itself was, how did you put it?”

“Excesseptionalal.”

“Exactly. We were discussing whether or not your parents would permit me to train you. Your father says He’s alright with it in principle, but he really isn’t comfortable with your dressing as a, er, as a girl.”

Apparently Stuart could hold his booze a little better than Dad. That being said, Dad did have quite a head start on him.

“Well, he’s going to have to come to terms with it. It’s not as if I have much of a choice anymore.”

“What?”

“You’re whatting again?”

“You’re not making a great deal of sense again.”

“Well, you know how my appearance changed last time I was here?”

“Yes, I can see. You’re a little smaller again. A little prettier. A little, erm…” He waved his hands in a vague yet expressive manner.

“Better endowed?”

“Erm, yes.”

“It’s not just cosmetic this time.”

What?”

“I don’t know how to put it without being blunt, or is that what I need to be? I am no longer male, at least not in any way that I can see. I no longer have my meat and two veg – which in case you’re still being dense is a euphemism for penis and testicles. In their place I have a sizeable pair of mammary glands up here, complete with aureolae," – aureolae, that's what they were called –, "the size of an Oreo and nipples the size of peanuts. I also have labia, though I haven’t quite found the courage to explore that part of the new me just yet.”

That silenced him. He stared at me until I began to worry I might have broken something. I adjusted my position slightly.

“Good Lord.”

“Do you think he was involved?” Almost a genuine question, but my automatic go to mode when things get rough is smart Alec, or maybe that should be smart Alexa. Assuming a certain international tax dodging mega-corporation hasn’t trademarked the name yet.

“So yeah. Questions for later when we don’t have an audience.” Dad’s head was wobbling. He’d be asleep soon, but hopefully not before Mum and I could get him home and into bed.

“Yes, of course. In the meantime, I’ll do some research. See if I can pre-empt a few of them, shall I?”

“I’d appreciate that, yeah.”

“Otherwise, no problems?”

“I think you need to work on your predictive algorithm.”

“What?”

“Seventeen was a little under the mark, again. And it would have been nice to have a bit of a heads up about the special.”

“That last one?”

“Yeah.”

“I think I have an idea on that front. More on that later.”

“Sure. Do you know anyone who can fix clothes?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Distinct improvement on what.

“The red dress needs a little attention, if it’s not beyond hope.”

“I’ll, I’ll see what I can do. Do you have any idea on when your mother will get here?”

“She’ll probably take the bus. I mean I walked home earlier and it took me like forty minutes or something. Mum kinda walks slower, and I don’t think her shoes are so comfortable over long distances.”

“Please don’t start talking blonde. I don’t think I could bear it.”

I offered up a mischievous smile. “The buses near our place leave at five minutes past and every fifteen minutes after that. If Mum hustled, she might have caught the thirty-five minute passed, which takes ten to twelve minutes to get here, depending on traffic. So earliest she could get her would be about…”

The shop bell rang. I hadn’t even realised it had a bell. I looked up.

“Now. Hi Mum.”

“Mitchel?”

“Surprise?”

“I thought you were coming here to reverse these changes.”

“That’s what Dad wanted. Like I said earlier, I’m kind of cool with this new look. Besides, whatever changed me in the first place seems to agree with me. Dad had this crazy idea that if I went and did a bit more dancing but wearing a guys costume, I’d change back.”

“And that didn’t work.”

“The guys costumes were all open at the front down to the navel.”

“Oh.”

“Dad took one look at me and told me to go cover up, so I put on a different dress. Then by the time I’d finished the dance routine, I… Well, I’d rather show you, but maybe we should get Dad home first.” I handed her the keys. “The car’s just outside in the arcade carpark. Mr Giles, do you think you could help us carry him outside?”

“Oh, oh, yes of course.”

Stuart wasn’t particularly strong as men go, and for all his short stature, Dad was largely a slab of muscle, so it needed two of us to manhandle him out to the car. I didn’t really think I’d be a lot of help, but I could probably have carried him out to the car by myself. Except that would have turned quite a few heads. Dainty little girl in block heel – yeah, I didn’t mention before. After I had a good look at my new body in the mirror, I picked out a green dress with cream sleeves and put it on. I couldn’t find any underwear, but the dress incorporated support for my larger upper body assets as well as a sewn in pair of briefs. It wasn’t the most hygienic thing in the world, wearing clothes without underwear, but I didn’t have any better options available. I also switched back to the block heels I’d worn home since my spike heels would probably have classed as lethal weapons in the real world and ended up with me being arrested. That would have been a whole bunch of fun, explaining to the pedestrian minds of law enforcement officers how I was Mitchel Geller, that up until recently I’d been a boy, but now…

Sorry, getting side tracked. Anyway, the sight of a dainty little girl in mini dress and block heels carrying a man twice her weight would have turned a few heads, especially in the sleepy little back of beyond we inhabited. Seeing my dad so drunk he couldn’t walk in the middle of a Saturday afternoon was sensational enough, and Dad had a few days of cringeworthy embarrassment ahead of him.

What am I saying? He’d be lucky if he lived this down by Christmas.

So Mr Giles carried the larger part of the load with me doing my best to look ineffectual but offering real help the once or twice it looked like Stuart was about to drop my dad. We managed to get him into the car before too many eyes turned our way. Chances weren’t great that we’d avoided the gaze of one of the neighbourhood’s resident gossips though, but that was Dad’s problem. I hadn’t done much to help him cope with all this, but in the end, he was the adult and he really should have known his limits.

“So, what did you want to show me, dear?” Mum asked as we pulled out into the light traffic. Yeah, mid-afternoon Saturday, and the traffic was almost non-existent. What does that tell you about Summervale? Okay Christmas approaching and better shopping options in the city, but…

“It involves taking clothes off, Mum. Can we wait a few?”

“Of course. How did everything go between your father and Mr Giles? He seems a nice enough man.”

“He is. At least I think he is. I really only met him today. He’s a bit odd, but he seems genuine enough.”

“In what way odd?”

“Well, you heard the way he speaks.”

“I found him very well spoken, and polite.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not really used to that.”

“So tell me what happened. You mentioned what your father said and what the men’s costumes were like.”

So I took her through the story and had her laughing by the time we pulled up onto our drive. There was no avoiding the twitching curtains. All we could do was minimise exposure, so Mum went to unlock the front door while I hauled a gently snoring dad out of the back seat. I managed to hold him upright and make it seem like he was walking under his own steam, at least I think I did. I mean, it’s not as if little old me could have held him up by myself, is it? If only I’d managed to keep his head from lolling about like that.

Mum locked up the car while I sat him in his chair in front of the TV with an unopened can of beer and a glass of water on the table beside him. Random sports rubbish showing on the big screen. If anyone should come to the door, all they’d see was business as usual in the Geller household.

Mum followed me upstairs and into… I picked their room. It would be neater than mine as well as larger. She looked on curiously while I unbuckled the shoes then unzipped the dress. Her eyes opened wide as I revealed her remodelled child.

“How on Earth…”

“I don’t know Mum.”

“But you’re a…”

“I know Mum.”

“This is…”

“Impossible? Apparently not.”

“But you’re a…”

“Not any more Mum.”

Sometimes you have to be patient with grownups. It’s like they lose the capacity to imagine the world as anything different from what they’ve always known. Einstein had a couple of quotes that kind of work here. In the first he said, ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.’ In the second he said, ‘A person who has not made his great contribution to the field of science before the age of thirty will never do so.’ I suspect he was older than thirty when he made the second comment, because it shows a limit to his imagination that he couldn’t envisage an old person capable of imagining something new.

I answered several more half statements from my mother before inviting her to examine me more fully. I mean, she was my mother after all. She’d seen me naked before now, bathed me changed me, all those sorts of things, so I had no issues with her putting her hands on me, and I couldn't think of many things that might convince her more than offering her that sort of intimate contact.

She made her examination with a gynaecologist’s pragmatic and dispassionate approach, albeit with shaking hands. It didn’t take her long to convince herself. She sat down heavily on the bed while I stepped back into my dress.

“I’d offer to get you a drink, Mum, but I’m in rather desperate need of clothes. Underclothes especially. Do you think we could go shopping?”

“Cup of tea please, dear.”

“Mum?”

“Tea first. Something to calm my nerves a little, then we can go shopping.”

“Alright. No sugar, right?”

“Maybe one today sweetheart. This is quite a shock.”

“I know, Mum. You and Dad are taking it amazingly well. Let me put the kettle on.”

She joined me downstairs in the kitchen before I had everything sorted. Dad was still snoring gently in the front room and I had most of the necessary gubbins for the English Tea Ritual out and ready. Milk in the jug, teapot at the ready for when the kettle was hot enough to warm it, tea caddy with tea leaves, strainer, bone china cups and saucers, and a plate of jammy dodgers.

“I thought the biscuits might do better than spooning the pure, white and deadly directly into the cup.”

“Perhaps you’re right.” She picked up a biscuit and started nibbling at it. “I thought you believed that a tea bag in a mug was good enough.”

“Good enough for Mitchel maybe, but not good enough for my mum.”

“You know we’re going to have to do something about that name now. I don’t suppose there’s any going back to the way things were, is there?”

“If there is, I don’t have the first idea how, and even if I did, I wouldn’t want to.”

“Tell me that after your first period, dear.”

I added water to the teapot and swirled it about, then transferred a couple of spoons of tea leaves into the pot while the kettle finished boiling.

“Is that what I’m going to get from you now, Mum? Unvarnished, in your face, honest to God brutal truths.”

“Well, you say you feel happier as a woman, but it’s not all sunshine and roses you know? Could you add another spoonful of tea? I could do with something a little stronger than usual.”

I did as directed then poured in the boiling water, putting on the teapot lid and tea cosy, glancing at the kitchen clock to start a mental timer.

“This is where I get my first lecture on glass ceilings, lower pay grades for women, the need to be careful around young men because they all have their faults and I’m the one at risk of getting pregnant.”

“Oh my, where did all that come from?”

“I’m not sure. The land of make believe maybe?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Kind of one of those things you do when you’re me, I guess. No way of having what I want in the real world so explore it in my imagination. There was a time I tried to convince myself I was better off by doing a pros and cons analysis. You know that’s when you make lists…”

“I know what a pros and cons analysis is, sweetheart. You have the wrong equipment to be mansplaining to me, you know.”

“Sorry Mum. Anyway, even after I’d come up with everything I could think of on the cons side, and it was a lot longer than the list I just gave you, including the monthly grots, I put just one thing in the pros column and the whole balance shifted.”

“What was that, dear?”

“To feel like I belonged in my body.”

“Oh, darling!” She had her arms around me and my eyes were leaking like I’d burst a grommet.

The moment didn’t last long. It could have and I really wanted it to, but the clock showed the tea had been brewing for four and a half minutes. I needed to do something with it before the tannins started coming out.

“Would you pour the milk, please?” I asked as I retrieved the teapot from under the cosy.

She did so and I poured out a couple of cups of deep golden nectar.

Mum took a sip of hers while I picked a Jamie dodger off the plate.

“That’s another thing you’re going to have to watch.”

“I think I’ve burned enough calories today, Mum, and yes, that was on my cons list too. I may be new to actually being a girl, but I’m no stranger to imagining what life would be like if I actually was one.”

“Alright, no more lectures, at least for the time being. I reserve the right to revisit any and all related topics at any time in the future.”

The tea did taste good. So much better than tea bag in a mug. Maybe there was something in this after all, and all I’d needed was finer sensibilities.

“I don’t want to be Michelle,” I said. It was a bit left field, but Mum was their ready to catch it.

“God no. I mean, I suppose it would make things less complicated, but no. How do you feel about Sarah? It’s what I had in mind if you’d been born a girl.”

I rolled it around in my mind for a few seconds. It had the bonus of being a gift rather than a grab. I smiled.

“I like it.”

“Very well Sarah, I’m going to pop to the loo. When you’ve finished your tea, I suggest you do too, then we have a little shopping to do.” She snatched up the plate of biscuits and emptied it into a tin which then went away in one of the cupboards.

‘Out of sight, out of mind,’ Gran always used to say. It wasn’t a bad way of overcoming temptation, and it was only old habits telling me I really wanted another. I took my time over my tea, savouring the new depth of flavour, the added experience from the texture of the fine china, even the delicate colours of the patterns on the cup and saucer. All senses seemed to be involved in the experience, and I didn’t want to miss any of it.

“Come on slowpoke. The shops won’t stay open forever.”