Constant in All Other Things 2
Interlude II
by
Fakeminsk ([email protected])

“Friendship is constant in all other things
Save in the office and affairs of love:
Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues;
Let every eye negotiate for itself
And trust no agent.”
Much Ado About Nothing

Synopsis:
David Sanders’ stay at the Asklepios Clinic comes to an end. Will he return to masculinity, or be forced to resume Cindy’s life—that of a young, female secretary—for another six months?

What has gone before:
David Sanders saw something he shouldn't have: his boss, pharmaceutical magnate Jeremiah Steele, murdered the son of an underworld rival. Placed in witness protection, an assassination attempt forces David into the disguise of Cindy, a younger woman. For months he suffers the ignominy of living a life he despises, his torture both alleviated and acerbated once discovered by Julia, a jilted ex-girlfriend. During a return visit to the Asklepios Clinic, he discovers the secret of his transformation; confronts his handlers; explores his feelings; encounters an enemy; and plays dress-up.

Part Three: Acceptance
Scene Twelve: A Colourful Life Beckoned and Winked
On the final day of David Saunders’ manhood, he awoke in an unusually cheerful mood. He was alone. Chad had left several hours earlier. Wisps of the previous night danced hand-in-hand with exhaustion but like any dawn mist faded with the rising sun.

The morning started like most others. First, he stumbled into the bathroom for a piss. Even after several months, the incongruity of holding his cock with finely manicured fingers as he looked past the swell of breasts brought a frisson of discomfort. Passing through the living room back to the bedroom, he ignored the detritus of last night: stockings like emptied husks lying limp and high from the mirror frame; the ivory corset, rigid and unlaced, a clam shell pried open to expose the pearl within; delicate panties, a scrap of satin and lace, hanging from a doorhandle.

Instead, knowing there wouldn’t be time to hit the Clinic’s gym, David dropped to the floor and began the first set of push-ups. The heat of exertion burned away the ghosts of the evening.

Sometime later, he showered. He shaved legs and pits and washed out his mass of blonde curls—for the last time, he thought. Filled with memories of the previous days and of last night, he jerked off into the swirl of foam and water. Had he known it would be his last time bar once he may have made more of the event but tired as he was, it proved a desultory affair, perfunctory and unsatisfying,

Afterwards, lying on his bed and tucking and taping his testicles and cock back, he marvelled how something so odd, so outside of his normal life experiences only a short six months ago had become so mundane. He slid into a snug pair of panties and secured everything in place. This I won’t miss, he thought; nor this, as he strapped himself into a padded push up bra.

Then he dressed. The resentment, frustration and anxiety had faded with time, but this morning he felt especially troubled by the decision as to what to wear. Excessively girly? Something masculine or reflective of his real age; both? What image did he want to present? Comfortable or alluring? He’d quickly learned that for women, the two were often incompatible.

There was a code to female fashion, a syntax and grammar far more complex than the simple language of men. What was normally learned by instinct and unconsciously grown into by most girls in their youth—the unconscious picking up of nuance, slang and idioms—had been for him months of gruelling study. David knew he was barely literate and worried he too often misspoke—that the clothes he wore and the way he wore them broadcast a message he never intended. At what point did heel height shift from “poised” to “prostitute”? Skirt or dress length seemed to fluctuate between “feminine,” and “flirty” so easily. Not enough skin and he might come off as dowdy, boring or cold; too much and suddenly: slut. No makeup? Lazy. Too much? Frivolous, unserious.

As a man, he’d never worried about the message his grey suit, blue shirt, straight tie and loafers delivered as he strode confidently through the corridors of work.

His hand passed over the hanging clothes. So many colours, textures, from the lacy tickle fringing sleeve and collar to the heavy stiffness of boning and shapewear. Unbidden, memories fluttered to mind with touch. Distaste and anger, at the black mesh top he wore his first day here; unexpected fondness for the slinky blue dress; and the peach sundress, cleaned and ironed but still stained, to his eyes, with blood.

His hand paused over a skirt. Rubbing the fabric between thumb and forefinger, he felt the slight prick of heavy wool, the slickness of the inner lining. How his relationship with clothes—with women’s clothing—had changed! Especially in the past month it seemed, under Julia’s tutelage and Crystal’s urgings.

It occurred to him that this might be the last time: the last time slipping on skimpy underwear, rolling stockings up his legs, stepping into a skirt or pulling a tight shirt over the curve of tits. He knew this was unlikely; he hoped, with an intensity that stole his breath, that it was true.

Would he miss any of this?

A moment’s indecision and he pulled the skirt from the closet. The Clinic had done a remarkable job in filling his closet and drawers. Some had been waiting for him on arrival, and more bought or printed on demand per Crystal’s request. Everything fit impeccably, but then who better knew his body, its very dimensions, its deepest secrets? They’d created it, designed the template and engineered the flesh; written a life story into the skin and poured the essence of David Saunders into the vessel that had once been Cindy Bellamy.

With a self-deprecating snarl, he grabbed a colourful shirt and stepped away from the closet. He thought of last night, and the day to come, and shook his head. Enough with the melodramatics, he decided. Get dressed. Don’t be late.

This past week he’d learned to rely on the smart tech built into mirror and wardrobe to build his outfit for the day: the room knew its contents and made suggestions, projecting the illusion of clothes over his reflected frame in the mirror. Equally, the vanity made playful suggestions for makeup and hair, earrings and accessories. A quick search online or query with a fashion bot produced more combinations and possibilities than he could process. If an item was missing, the Clinic could swiftly create and deliver it. It was something he’s never needed in his male life, and well beyond Cindy’s meagre means, but which proved a godsend this past week.

More often than not, when faced with an overwhelming range of options he’d fall back on his male gaze, choosing an ensemble he thought was sexy, picking the illusionary girl he’d most like to ogle, have on his arm, or fuck—and rue that the girl would be him, and that others would doubtless be thinking the same way when they saw him.

This morning, however, he assembled the outfit on his own. He started with the shirt and built from there. Sheer, patterned pantyhose to present slender, shapely legs; black pleated mini skirt, detailed with shiny gold buttons; the horizontally striped t-shirt with a high neckline, three-quarter sleeves and cut out shoulders. Slim headband to hold back his hair, and knee-high boots—a first for him—heeled of course—though nothing too high, chunky with a bit of platform, a modest boost to his height. Pulling up the zip on the boots and feeling the pliable material caress his calves brought another shiver of pleasurable distress as he grudgingly acknowledged enjoying the sensation.

If there was one thing he’d miss when he abandoned the world of femininity, it might be the shoes; not the pinch or strain or discomfort, but the cultural permission—encouragement, even—to fake his height, to grab a few centimeters at the expense of a little stability. Doing the same as a man was an invitation to scorn.

The thought flashed across his mind unbidden, and he quickly suppressed the thought. You won’t miss this, he insisted. Any of it. But then standing in front of the mirror, he turned this way and that and—somewhat to his chagrin but equally to his pleasure—admired the young woman in reflection.

That woman was him; and he looked great.

Ten minutes to brush out his hair and dry it. He enjoyed the golden cascade over his shoulder, the streaks of purple and pink. Another ten minutes for makeup and accessories. He picked out dangly earrings, a pair of colourful bracelets and slid on a few sparkly rings.

Finally, with stomach rumbling he made his way to the Clinic canteen. The weather had turned with predictable swiftness over the past few days, blistering heat giving way to blustery winds and cold. Oranges and reds danced in the foliage, the trees already succumbing to the inevitability of a brief autumn and bitter winter. The first leaves fluttered and flew across the pebbled path, and David grumbled and questioned his choice of clothing and clutched his skirt as the wind’s fingers pulled and plucked at the hem.

It was with some relief he entered the canteen. God, I’m sick of this, he thought, contemplating the intersection of fashion and weather.

And then he thought, I’m sick of this, too: it was impossible to not notice the appraising glances flashed his way by both staff and other clients. The women he assumed were appraising his style, makeup, judging the way he held his hand at his side or tucked back his hair as he entered the room. The men were rating him, tits and ass, legs and lips, scoring him against some arbitrary scoreboard of their own preferences before returning to their food. A few might stare longer: picturing those glossy, full lips up close, the touch of long nails against their skin, or imagine their hands rudely grabbing the fine ass barely concealed by the short skirt, hauling her close, the press of soft breasts up against Chad’s firm body, and….

Flushing red, he scurried to the counter to collect his breakfast.

Whatever, he told himself. He’d been used to appraising and approving glances as a man. He’d been a good-looking man, after all, very much so and took the gaze of others as a given. But it was different as a woman, somehow; especially a young one.

He sat and began devouring his breakfast: eggs and toast, bacon and sausage and hash browns, a meal that belied the size of the girl eating it.

“This seat taken?”

Stifling a groan, David looked up from his breakfast at the woman standing next to the table.

She was young, though a few years older than Cindy. Not much of a looker: ruddy face and beefy arms, mousy hair cropped short, but bright-eyed and tall. The woman was plump and dressed in baggy clothes that hid any hint of curves but looked appealingly comfortable. Her only concession to femininity appeared a swipe of dark lipstick and a simple gold stud in each ear. David felt suddenly vaguely ridiculous, prim and over-dressed, and resented her for it.

“I’m Ivy,” she said, her voice inflected with the precise intonations of expensive foreign education and a vaguely European accent he couldn’t place, maybe Italian or Spanish. I bet you are, he thought, but feeling a slight warmth in his Asklepios bracelet he sighed and answered “Cindy,” and offered a distant smile.

She sat opposite and made a desultory stab at her food: a small bowl of something that looked almost like porridge, a grey-white protein-rich calorie-reduced sludge decorated with slices of apple. “I know it’s for my own good,” she said, “but I hate what this place feeds me.” Her eyes widened at the sight of David’s breakfast. “Not fair,” she moaned.

Shrugging, he cut into an egg and moped up the yolk with a slice of toast.

“I mean look at you.” Ivy waved a spoon at him. “You look fucking gorgeous,” she said. “How do you keep so slim, eating like that?”

“Good genes?”

Ivy grunted. “Not fair.”

He speared a slice of bacon. “Want it?”

Her eyes betrayed wanton desire. “You evil bitch,” she said. “Do I want it? Yeah, I want it.” She snatched the bacon with plump fingers. “Like I want to get out of this place.” She took a bite and flung the remainder back at his plate, then stuck her fingers in her mouth, sucking at dribbles of grease. “Oh God, that’s good.”

Ivy, it turned out as she explained in some detail, was in line to inherit a family fortune, a ridiculous sum of assets and property and investments—conditional on her returning home a “proper young lady,” she spat. “So they sent me here, because I crashed out of the local fat farms and finishing schools. I was an ‘embarrassment,’ they said. I was bringing ‘shame on the family’ with my ‘vile debauchery,’ they said.” She gave a bark of laughter. “It’s like, the first time they’ll turn a blind eye, but after a half-dozen times with a strap on pegging some little princess in latex and suddenly you’re the antichrist or something, you know what I’m saying?”

“You know we’ve just met, right?” David said. “I don’t know you.”

“This thing says you’re okay,” she answered, tapping her Asklepios bracelet. “Not that I trust the bastards that run this place.”

“Yeah. No kidding.”

“But you seem okay,” Ivy said. “Bet they think you’d be a good influence on me.”

“Me?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Well, yeah… I mean, look at you? You’re my parents’ wet dream: slim and beautiful, prim and perfectly dressed and presented. You’re what this place is trying to make me into.”

He couldn’t help himself. David laughed out loud. “I seriously doubt it.”

They chatted over the rest of their breakfast, and he found himself warming to her. He could sympathise with her story of being made to a live a life not of her choosing; her hatred of femininity coaching, lessons on poise and fashion and behaviour, training her to instinctively present a self she’d never wanted to be. “These kinky lunatics had me in a photoshoot, can you believe it? It was totally insane. Heels and a girdle—yes, a fucking girdle, can you believe it?—and spiral bra and polka-dotted housemaker dress, like something out of a century-old postcard! And then a debutant ball, posing for some bullshit coming-out party in a poufy gown.” She snorted. “As if I need coming out.”

“I can sympathise. Been there, done that.”

“Yeah, right.” She made a show of looking him over. “Prissy little princess like you? You’re already perfect. You are the fantasy. What could you possibly act out?”

And because he resented her calling him prissy, but also liked her brash manner, he showed her the picture from the -Lumen- photoshoot, the one he never showed Chad, the photo of corseted bondage.

Ivy’s eyes widened with a satisfying combination of shock and desire. “Careful princess,” she said, “or I’ll have you face down in your eggs bent over this table for a spanking.”

David put his phone away. “You haven’t even drank your coffee yet.”

“True,” Ivy said. “Caffeine first. Spanking second. Then I’ll put you in your place.”

“My place?”

“Or mine, I’m easy.” Ivy grinned; David could see newly kindled intrigue and respect in her. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”

“You have no idea,” he said drily.

She sat quietly for a moment, idly digging into her breakfast, before asking around a mouthful of protein-rich mush: “so what’re in here for, then?”

To safeguard me from a sociopath. As a science experiment. Therapy for a therapist. A damaged woman’s revenge. Or maybe: I’m here because I want to live, live long enough so that I can revenge myself against the world.

But since David couldn’t speak his truth, he instead shared Cynthia Bellamy’s truth, or at least what he knew of it from her profile, read those many months ago and explored this past week in conversation with Crystal.

“I tried to kill myself,” he said, poking at the last bit of sausage on his plate. “Repeatedly.” And succeeded, David thought with some sadness. And now you’ve got me living the life you didn’t want.

“Jesus.” Ivy put down her spoon. “Why?”

“They called it body dysmorphia brought on by survivor’s guilt. My parents died, like, in a car crash a couple of years ago. It took me quite a bit of therapy to understand this, but they weren’t very good people, my parents. I was never good enough, you see. They loved me. I guess. In their way. Or rather, they loved a version of me that I never quite matched up to, if that makes sense.”

Ivy grimaced. “Yeah. It does.”

“Anyway. They died. Car crash. And I blamed myself, even though I wasn’t there and being there wouldn’t have made a difference. And all the doubts and fears were amplified after that. I obsessed over my appearance. Tried to become the person my parents wanted me to be. Of course, with them dead the ideal became impossible, their approval unattainable.

“We’d been well off before the crash, and all that money came to me. It’s paying for this place. Before, it paid for… well, everything else. I sought validation in other people’s opinion, men and women, and you can imagine how that went. Eventually, though, makeup and clothes weren’t enough. Turned to surgery, little corrections to flaws that didn’t exist that grew to bigger fixes that always left me feeling worse than before.”

Ivy’s hand reached across the table and took his. “Princess,” she said. “You’re beautiful.”

A sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob escaped. “And yet I still hate this body,” he said. “I hate it so much. I hate the way I look and I hate the way I dress and the way I act.”

And he could see from the bemused look on Ivy’s face that she simply couldn’t understand how someone as pretty as Cindy could hate their own flesh so deeply. Reflected in Ivy’s eyes, David glimpsed the existential horror the real Cynthia Bellamy must have felt, every day, hating what she saw in the mirror but unable to look away. It must have been a self-loathing surpassing even his own.

His bracelet suddenly vibrated and flashed the time. “Oh, look at that. I’ve got to go,” he said.

Ivy let go of his hand. “It was nice meeting you, Princess.”

“Yeah.” He took a deep breath. “Same.”

“You ever want to talk,” she said, and slipped him a card. It was a business card: her full name, contact details: Ivy Burgess, and a local address. “You ever want to catch up again, look me up.”

Thinking it unlikely that he would ever meet her again, he left the canteen. Guided by his bracelet, he quickly found his way through unfamiliar corridors to a place he’d never visited at the Clinic, the infirmary.

The infirmary was a bit of an oddity. In a facility designed for the healing and betterment of the ultra-rich or otherwise fortunate, most medical concerns were dealt with through bespoke services, with privacy during both procedures and convalescence. But not everyone at Asklepios was a client. Accidents were inevitable among the massive staff that worked the site, and those needing recovery time ended up here.

It was still one of the nicer medical facilities he’d visited, David noticed as he stepped through a door, with large open windows and subdued colours. Individual beds were given a generous space, and from the smell of it, the food was a significant step above typical hospital fair.

The long hall was mostly empty this morning as he worked his way past several beds, stepping in and out of shafts of watery sunlight. He noted his reflection in a bedside mirror, the gilt gleam of hair, the flash of red lips, and he stood a little straighter, chest out, as he approached his destination.

The man was sitting up in bed, eating breakfast, watching the news on a retractable screen. Watching him from a distance, David saw footage of the escalating conflict overseas. The report finished on an image of a burned-out husk of a tank before fading to a graphic of a viral cell. A graph showed domestic infection levels rising, the scroll along the bottom of the screen indicating government officials were considering the usual short-circuit lockdowns to break the spread. Talking heads he couldn’t hear argued, their expressions serious.

He doesn’t look that bad, David tried to convince himself as he approached, noting the care the Clinic had taken of his injuries, the healing bruises, bandages and casts. But when the man turned at the echoing sound of heels on the hard infirmary floor, the man winced with pain and his face remained bruised beneath a week’s growth of stubble.

With one lip split, and an eye still reddened by burst vessels, he watched the girl’s curiously and without fear. There was an inquisitiveness to his gaze as he fixed on David’s face.

David saw the flicker of recognition. He braced himself for the man’s inevitable anger, accusations or misogynistic slurs. Instead, he was taken aback as the man’s face split into a giant grin revealing stained and broken teeth.

“Well, Jesus!” he exclaimed. “It’s you!”

“Hello Mal.” David offered a little wave.

“Sit down, sit down!” Mal gestured with an awkward sweep of one arm, the other one broken, immobilised and healing in a cast. David stepped closer and felt the man’s gaze sweep back and forth over him, assessing him—but not in the same way as the men in the canteen. There was a keen appraisal in this man’s eyes rather than simple lust.

“Fuck a duck,” the man said and whistled. “Look at you! You’re a pretty little thing, ain’t ya?” He shook his head in disbelief and winced in pain. “And served me my ass three ways from Wednesday.”

David pulled up a chair, smoothed down the miniskirt and sat next to the bed, straight backed and knees pressed together. On the flickering screen, the news report shifted once again: images from far, far away as a ship continued its long journey to Mars. No longer trailing glittering crystals of ice, the brief update on Zhao and her crew summarised recent events: one dead; damage repaired; the potentiality of human endeavour.

He kept a wary distance from the man but offered a tentative smile. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ve felt worse,” he grunted.

“I suppose I should apologise.”

“Don’t.” Mal scowled. “I deserved it.”

“Still….” David waved his hand vaguely at the battered man. “You look awful.”

“Best I’ve felt in years,” Mal answered. “I needed a serious ass kicking. You have no idea how fucked up I was in here.” He bumped his temple with a fist. “What shit I was on. I was in a dark place, a really dark place; you know, the kinda place so dark it blinds ya to the nightmares but funny thing is, you can always see your nightmares, aye, and remember them, no matter how tightly you squeeze your eyes shut.” He winked at her. “I’m betting y’know what I’m talkin’ about, eh, little girl?”

“Me?” David gave a deliberately languid shrug. “I’m just a pretty little thing.”

He laughed, coughed, and grimaced. “Sure.” With a press of a button at his side, he raised his seat slightly and wincing, turned to face him more directly. Again, the assessing eye, sweeping across his frame but with little attention to tits and ass. Rather, Mal seemed to be searching for something.

“Anyway. You don’t go filling that pretty blonde head of yours with guilt for beating up ol’ Mal. I had it coming, and getting my ass knocked into this place’s the best thing could’ve happened to me. What’s her name, that tough-ass bitch boss woman of yours, Ms Smith?”

David blinked. “You mean Agent K—Katherine?”

“Yeah, tha’s her.” Mal smiled. “Whatta gal, right? Anyway, she’s the one got me in here. Dunno why—not like I could’ve afforded’t otherwise. She didn’t explain none, just passed by to say I was here on her expense and so long as I played nice, I could stay. So I’mma playing nice. Meanwhile, they’ve cleaned me up real good here,” he said. “Cleaner than a poop shoot after a green tea enema at a detox spa.”

That’s when David saw it, the hidden gesture, the subtle curve of the finger and twitch of the hand. David gave the expected counter-sign, with his hand held low by his thigh.

Mal gave a slow nod.

“So what’s your name, pretty girl?”

“Cynthia.” David smoothed back his hair, tucked behind one ear a few strands that had escaped the hairband. “Bellamy. But everybody calls me Cindy.”

“Well, Cindy, I owe y’a favour, and Mal don’t like being in debt.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to pay me back.”

Mal laughed, so hard he clutched his side and groaned. A machine beeped, the sound somehow anxious. With hurried and heavy steps, a nurse approached, glaring disapprovingly at David as he moved to lower Mal back into a resting position. Crystal may have pulled strings to enable the visit, but David knew he shouldn’t outstay his welcome.

“Sorry,” he said to the nurse.

“You’ve got five minutes,” the nurse answered, brow furrowed with concentration as he checked his patient’s vitals. “He gets tired easily.”

“’Cuz you won’t let me get the fuck outta bed!” Mal shouted.

The nurse fixed him with a steely glare and his patient grumbled and subsided. “Five minutes,” he repeated to David, before retreating.

“Goddamn pissant tyrants!” Mal mumbled under his breath, then gave a little grin and wink. “I jus’ love to wind ‘em up. Best doctors I’ve ever had, and I’ve known a few.”

“I bet you have.” David answered. He knew he shouldn’t and that it was none of his business; and he knew that anything said openly here would be picked up by Katherine and the others; but curiosity and the memories of an old comrade compelled him to ask, in his little girl voice, “after Blackwater?”

Mal eyes darkened and he looked away.

“Sorry,” David said.

“How’s a cute girl like you know about a terrible thing like that?”

“Maybe I’m not as cute as I seem,” David said. “Maybe there’s a lot about me that isn’t as it seems.”

They spoke for a few more minutes. Mal asked about the girl he’d been with at the café—Alia, he said, his ward, a sort of adopted daughter, the child of a friend of his. When David told him he’d hit Alia and thrown her to the ground, his eyes darkened and he withdrew into himself, into a terrible, self-loathing silence that David recognized all too well.

“I’m sorry, Mal.” David said, and for the first time reached out and lay his hand over the other man’s. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

With surprising speed, the man grabbed David’s hand. He held him in an iron grip. Mal yanked David close, out of his chair. David felt the man’s breath on his face and saw the madness still lurking behind Mal’s eyes.

“You better know what the fuck you’re doing, little girl.” Mal’s voice was a low hiss, and David realised the man’s grip was tight around the armband at his wrist—blocking any audio pickup from the device. “It’s a nasty fucking favour you’re calling in.”

David met his glare levelly and after a moment grazed the man’s cheek with a kiss. “I know,” he said. “And thank you.”.

Mal rubbed at the faint imprint of lipstick left behind, grinned and gave a lewd wink in reply.

Leaving the infirmary, David checked the time and saw he still had a half-hour to go before the meeting. He felt at a loss. What to do? There wasn’t time to hit the gym; he wasn’t hungry enough, yet; and as nice as the staff were, he hoped to never visit the salon—any salon—again unless it was to get these damned acrylic nails removed or long hair hacked down to size.

Walking without direction, he checked his phone. Nothing from Julia over the past few days. Her last message warned him something was up at work. Things were super busy, but she looked forward to his return, needed a good, solid fuck and had some darling outfits she couldn’t wait for him to try on. Nothing from Dan, either: the last message was nearly a week ago, a few cheeky exchanges following the dick and boob pics, sexy promises, dirty late-night vulgarities and some saccharine words, then nothing.

Probably caught up at work with his promotion, David thought.

He could visit Chad, maybe?

The thought brought a tingle to his tummy, a pleasant flush that caught him entirely by surprise. A memory of last night flashed across his mind before he could still it: strong male hands at his waist delineating his corseted form before effortlessly twirling him around, reaching for the laces behind; the near ecstasy of the undergarment being loosened, unclasped, and pried away; then the breath of cool air against his skin as he shimmied out of the light cotton tank top. Standing there nearly naked and smiling shyly up at Chad and taking his hand in his….

Fucking hormones, David thought, suddenly hot. Still flushed with these phantom feelings of femininity, he remembered his promise of a final gift to Chad. He brought up the ‘special’ pictures Jasmine took of him, her little reward during the photoshoot for being a ‘good girl’.

He gazed at them for some time, caught somewhere between queasy and a pleasant, tingly warmth. They were gorgeous shots, and he felt proud of how they’d turned out. They were unabashedly sexy, and he felt sickened that it was him in those poses.

His phone bleeped confirmation, and he realised he’d just passed them on to Chad. Blushing, he thrust his phone back into his handbag.

Further wandering brought him to a little nook, one of many dotted around the Clinic, little oases of calm where clients and staff could retreat, relax and reflect. It was unusual to find them unused, but then David was wandering in unfamiliar locations outside of his usual times. This little alcove contained a semi-circular divan set before an expansive curved window looking out over a little garden, Japanese Zen-style of combed pebbles and perfectly placed features constrained within a narrow bamboo enclosure.

He stood there unmoving for a moment, a short-skirted silhouette against the daylight. The silence of solitude beckoned him, with only the muffled sound of his steps intruding in this secluded retreat. He smoothed down his skirt as he sat, and then grimaced, wondering why he bothered with the performance when he was alone. With legs crossed at the thigh, hands resting in his lap, David stared into the garden.

Minimalist features drew his gaze to the lines in the gravel and he followed the pattern as they curved and swirled around larger stones, a few modest shrubs, the tiny pond. In focusing on the simplicity of the arrangement he found himself suddenly mindful of his isolation. An unexpected ache of loneliness seized him. He quelled an instinct to reach for his phone and contact—someone; anyone.

Instead, he took a deep breath. He felt the constriction of the bra at his chest and the slight movement of air against his bare arms and breathed out slowly and again breathed in and again breathed out and felt a welcome calm settle. In his calm he felt hyperaware of his situation and appearance, the gentle grip of boots at his calves and the slight arch to his feet; the tickle of earrings at his cheek and the weight of long hair; the straps over his shoulder and the weight of breasts; the dull ache of his testicles; caress of pantyhose and the annoyance of a rolled waistband cutting across his belly; even the mostly insubstantial presence of makeup on lips, cheek and eyes.

He felt all this and breathed and felt the anger and frustration and breathed and tried to let it go. And not for the first time but louder and more distinct than before, it seemed as though two voices spoke within him:

This is the last day, one said.

You’re fooling yourself, the other answered.

I don’t need you.

I’m not going anywhere.

I can’t take this any longer.

Yes, said the softer voice. We can.

Opening eyes he hadn’t consciously squeezed shut, David followed the maze-like pattern outside to where they converged at the base of a small pear tree. Its leaves danced in the turbulent winds beyond the window and the riot of oranges and yellows contrasted vividly with the placid restraint of the garden. David watched the tree for a moment, the way some of its branches reached upwards as though to escape the confines of the space created for it.

And it seemed to him that he could see his own life branching out before him in the boughs of the tree outside. The arms of the tree seemed to extend from the faint image he reflected in the curved glass. Each split in the tree led to a different branch that dipped and swayed in the wind, winking in the dappled light, grown fruit hanging heavily.

His eyes traced branches on the far side of the tree, the side that curved back into the garden. Sheltered a little from the autumnal blast they held more colour, more leaves and lent their brilliance back to the communal space. He saw in these branches the continuance of Cindy’s life and even as his mind balked at the possibility, for the first time David directly confronted a female future.

His fingernails dug deeply and painfully into his palms as hands curled into clenched fists. He looked down. Such beautiful fingernails, glossy and shaped and softly pink, a testament to the artistry of the Clinic’s salon and his own developing skills. His breathing became laboured and something churned deep within his belly and he looked up.

From the tip of every branch, like a plump and juicy pear, a colourful life beckoned and winked. One pear was a young girl dancing, sequins and sparking heels in the strobing light, and another was a secretary, pencil skirt and fitted top, sitting attentively by the side of the boardroom, and another was coffee shop chic, and another lounged in the brilliant glare of sun and beach, sunglasses and bikini, and another twirled in platforms and tassels around a pole under lurid lights, and another knelt naked, leashed and in bondage and yet another stood demure in bridal ivory, veiled and beautiful. The next melted into the arms of her lover, and another was a girlfriend, always pretty and attentive and taken care off.

And there were other pears beyond those, swaying in the shadows just out of sight, hints of a life he couldn’t quite make out, but always a life that shimmered and glowed so long as youthful vibrancy endured, dancing and partying in defiance of irrelevancy, work days flirting with male colleagues and nights, endless nights filled with daring outfits and even more daring heels, moist lips and eager curves, pressing up against the hardness of men and the constant games of predator and prey until, finally—it ended, with age, with faded beauty, with the once-sought, once-resented gaze of others turned elsewhere.

Other bare branches struck him as more sombre, lonelier paths of frustration and resentment, seeking to reclaim lost authority in a world reluctant to take her seriously no matter how she hard she worked. In this future what she wore or how cleverly or knowledgeably she spoke seemed irrelevant. Pantsuits and power heels, subdued makeup, impassioned speeches, further studies, ignored opportunities, denied pleasures, focus and intense effort, anger, manicured fingers curled into tight fists pounding endlessly against an unbreakable glass wall in a fruitless effort to regain what had once so effortlessly been his.

The far side of the tree reached upwards and outwards and therefore suffered the full brunt of autumnal winds. Buffeted by the weather, this side bore no fruit and the branches were nearly bare. David imagined his lost male life in the twisting branches. He saw surprisingly little. The few branches grew out of the life he’d known six months ago. Dark suits and crisp shirts, heavy shoes and standing bored at the head of a corporate meeting whilst lines jumped and fell on the screen behind him. He saw the long counter of a bar under dim lights and him standing there, with some shallow little bitch at his side drinking at his expense. He saw a man sitting alone in a heavy chair with a tumbler of single malt whisky, staring out over the cold, uncaring, unblinking lights of the city from the high perch of an expensive condo.

He saw no branches beyond that, no fruit to pick; and could not imagine a life beyond the one from which he’d been torn. His gaze flitted between the two sides of the tree, tracing and retracing potentiality. And with each branch he followed he felt a spark that grew to a flame to an inferno within, a rage that suffused his being until he realised that what he really wanted was none of these things, he wanted to tear the tree down, set it afire and burn the whole fucking garden to ash.

The bracelet at his wrist vibrated.

It was only a short walk to the building where he’d been meeting regularly with Crystal over the past two weeks, and he arrived in good time for his appointment. The door was locked, a subtle red light indicating they weren’t yet ready for him. He took a seat and waited. On the other side of that door, he knew, his three… keepers, he supposed, was the correct word; beyond that threshold, Crystal, Jonathon and K would determine his future.

This was the end of Cindy’s story. He plucked nervously at the woolen outer of the skirt, and his other hand tightened around a nylon-covered knee. What purpose could there be in forcing him to live her life any longer? In the moment and fleetingly, he felt his return to masculinity as a physical reality defined by absence: the weight gone from his chest, feet no longer pinched and poised in an arch, his scalp unburdened, a face free of makeup, his frame no longer constrained by restrictive clothing.

I’m leaving here a man, the voice in his head said.

Wanting it doesn’t make it true, the other voice answered.

He checked his armband. The appointment should have started by now. Nervousness bubbled inside of him—what could be taking so long?—and he rummaged around inside his handbag and pulled out a little sparkly case. Gazing into his mobile, he began to touch up his makeup. The soft sweep of the brush at his cheek, the attentive line of a pencil at his eye, and the smooth touch of lipstick brought with it a reflexive calm. He even smiled at his reflection, at the beauty he saw there and enjoyed the simple pleasure and peace brought by preening —until David suddenly felt outside himself, watching this frivolous little princess primping in public, and was seized by disgust.

You’d miss this, the second voice said. You’d miss me.

Would he? Sitting there, he considered what he’d miss from the past six months. Six months! Since that fateful night at the top of the Neopharm tower, he’d gone from—

From what? the second voice whispered, the girl voice.

Director, David thought. Global brand. Top job. Suit and tie, brogues and a heavy watch at my wrist.

That was never you, the voice said.

From being a man, then, he returned. From bending Jeremiah Steele’s personal assistant over her desk and fucking that bitch senseless from behind, gripping her by the tits and burying myself up to the hilt in her tight, wet cunt.

We enjoyed strong hands on our tits last night, didn’t we? the voice murmured, tinkling with laughter.

From being in control, he said. From being in charge.

From being lonely, the girl in his head returned. From chasing anything in a skirt in the hopes of recapturing something you lost long ago.

No! David squeezed his eyes shut.

You’ve never had it so good. With Julia, the voice said. And with Chad, the voice said.

Chad; again, the little flutter in his stomach, a bubble of happiness at the memory of their meetings over the past ten days. And last night, leading him by the hand to his—to her apartment, walking the lamp-lit pebbled paths of the Clinic under the half-moon, shivering a little in the rising wind and cold air until he pulled her closer. Nestling in the crook of his arm as they passed through the many gardens resplendent in their autumn colours. Pausing, under the swaying branches of sheltering trees, an eruption of yellows and reds and feeling a man’s hands at her waist, at her shoulders, behind her neck and gently pulling her into a—kiss.

The wristband vibrated. David stood. He took a deep breath and tweaked his bra into a more comfortable position, tugged at the hem of his skirt, and smoothed down his front. He slid his handbag over his shoulder.

At his approach, the door opened. David stepped over the threshold.

It was an intimately familiar space to him after his many sessions with Crystal Dawn. Crystal was joined by the other two on the far side of the table: Jonathon Bridges, pale and bleary-eyed, lips downturned in a scowl, hands buried deep in the pockets of a stained lab coat; and Agent K, impassive and stern. There were papers and forms, tablets and glasses of water on the table, neatly placed or stacked in front of the women, a jumbled mess in front of Jonathon.

David scanned Crystal’s face—for a hint, for any indication of what was to come, and found her closed to him; it felt like a betrayal.

“Mr Saunders.” Agent K’s voice gave nothing away. “Please sit.”

He sat, knees together, and waited their judgment. With the memory of a kiss still warm on his lips, David felt off-kilter confronted by the three sitting opposite him. Both women were dressed seriously, professionally, barely-there makeup and serious shoes presenting an appearance in marked contrast to his own.

Under their appraising gaze he felt acutely aware of the shortness of his skirt, the gleam of his lips and the slender fit of his boots, and the way the bra thrust out his tits, high and proud on his chest. Cursing his choice of clothes, he supressed the instinct to fuss, to tug at a hem or twist the rings at his fingers. What did his appearance say to them? What did they read in his clothes—what if they decided he wanted to dress this way, enjoyed it even?

“You look good today.” Did K’s lips curve ever so slightly in a smile?

He didn’t answer.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Crystal said.

David shrugged.

Agent K looked to each of her partners; Crystal kept her eyes fixed on David, and Jonathon grunted. The doctor was sullen and silent and to David’s experienced eye, he appeared very, very hungover. Were they drinking last night, celebrating?

“Before we begin,” Crystal continued, “Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”

His anxiety nearly bubbled over into a nervous giggle; nothing new, then. How many times had Crystal started their sessions this way? The familiarity of her voice did nothing to ease his fear. What questions remained to be asked other than the single question that mattered?

“How are you feeling today?”

David waited, and Crystal’s face softened a little, and with a smile she added, “David?”

Releasing a breath he hadn’t realised he’d kept in, he returned a glossy, expansive smile of his own. “Fine, I think,” he said, the same answer he always gave. “A bit tired.”

“Bad dreams again?”

Hardly, the voice in his head trilled with pleasure. He kept them at bay; and David felt the phantom of fleeting kisses across his bare shoulders, along his neck; the strong hand that pulled him close and the memory of lips and tongue, of breath hot against skin. He felt the pleasure of fingers pressing into yielding tits and ass and the small gasps of pleasure that followed; and his own fingers, fumbling with a belt buckle and tugging trousers down even as he sank to his knees….

“No,” he said.

“You look good today.”

“That wasn’t a question,” he answered, retreating from the memories of last night into reflexive answers that came unbidden, and suddenly he realised they were back where they’d started two weeks ago.

“No, I suppose it wasn’t,” she said. “Could you walk me through the steps you followed in selecting your outfit today?”

Raising an eyebrow, he wondered where she was going with this. “I don’t follow.”

“Before leaving your room this morning, you were free to dress any way you wanted. This is the outfit you chose.” With a wave of the hand, she indicated the short skirt, the slim top, boots and accessories. “Can you to walk me though the process that led to you wearing this?”

Was she testing him, and if so, to what end?

“I started with the skirt,” he said. “Because….”

It was there, one voice in his head finished.

Because it’s short, the girl in his head said. It’s sexy. You like feeling sexy. You liked the way he looked at you last night, in that little pleated skirt, the way his eyes kept checking out your legs, ‘nice ass’, he said, and you liked it when he said that.

“I liked the pattern and the colour,” David said. “I thought I could pair it with these tights and it’d look good. The boots were something new but I figured, you know….”

“Go on,” Crystal said.

“It’s my last day, right?” David said. “At the Clinic, and as…,” he trailed off, waiting, and then spoke to fill the silence. “So I guess I thought, why not? I might never get to try something like this again.” Nervous fingers drummed against his thigh. “The rest just kinda followed naturally, you know, the makeup and everything. Didn’t really think it through, just sort of went with what looked good. Instinct, I guess you could say, it wasn’t really a conscious thing.” He offered up a tentative smile. “How do I look?”

“Very pretty,” Crystal said and though she smiled, to his eyes it seemed strained—a little sad, even. “Very feminine.”

Should’ve worn jeans and a t-shirt and flats, said one voice in despair.

Never, said the other voice, bubbly and pleased. Skirts and dresses, always.

“It is indeed your final day at the Clinic, Mr Saunders.” Before Agent K spoke she glanced aside at Crystal, brow slightly pinched with disapproval. There was tension between the two, David noticed, something unresolved. “I hope you have enjoyed your stay.”

“Sure. I guess.”

K’s smile was thin and failed to reach her eyes. “Had you been paying for your stay you might feel more appreciative.” With a flick of a finger, she sent a file from her tablet to a large screen on the wall. “You have made good use of the sports centre here,” she said. “Daily, it seems, including massages, the weight room, cardio and aerobics sessions….” She touched at the list of activities. “And an impressive calorie intake, Mr Saunders. So much food and drink.” She scrolled further down. “Photo sessions. Clothing. Accommodation.” His every movement, every activity, itemised and tracked. Agent K raised an eyebrow. “You never took advantage of the swimming facilities.”

“Didn’t feel like it,” he said.

Didn’t feel like being on display in a bikini, thank you very much, said one voice.

We’d look great in that teeny red one, burbled the other. Really show off our boobs.

“An expensive stay,” Agent K added.

“I didn’t ask for any of this,” he said. “You brought me here.”

“Indeed. And now, we must determine our next step.”

Finally, he thought.

Dr Jonathon Bridges, silent until now, stirred. When he spoke, his voice was gravelly and grudging. “Uh, yeah,” he grunted. “Guess it’s my turn.”

David faced him. The doctor really did look terrible—more so than usual. His clothes looked slept in and behind his beard his face was waxen and grey. Deep weariness coupled with resentment smoldered in his eyes. The doctor lay his hands on the table, fingers spread wide and still, and he stared at his hands as he spoke as though unable to meet David’s gaze.

“So. The tests.” He paused. “Thank you.” He glanced up at David before dropping his eyes back to the table. “I know there were a lot of them over the past two weeks. Daily blood samples. Scans. Whatever she says—” and he jerked his head in Katherine’s direction— “I consider your bill settled by your contributions. We’ve learned a lot.”

“I’m happy for you,” David answered.

Jonathon looked up and grimaced. “You still don’t get it, do you? This is bigger than you, bigger than any of us. What we’ve done here—it’s going to change the world.” His fingers twitched, once. “You were dead. Dead, David! Lying in a pool of your own blood. Broken. Your heart stopped!” Red spots arose across an already blotchy face in his excitement as he spoke. “And now look at you, sitting there—”

“In a skirt. With tits,” David said.

And aren’t they just wonderful, the voice gushed. You certainly enjoyed them last night.

“Yes—yes!” Jonathon leaned forward. “And even that—can you not see beyond your own fragile ego for just one moment and appreciate the miracle—the genius—the sheer wonder that a nearly forty year old man in such a short time can be so convincingly transformed into—” he waved his hand at David—“into you?”

“Fine. Great,” David said. “I’m a goddam living miracle. So thank you, thank you very, very much for all this. For saving my life. For keeping me safe. For months of mincing about in heels—”

—we look great in them, though, don’t we?—

“and skirts—”

—he loved our legs, he said that, didn’t he?—

“and makeup—”

—and our lips—

He winced and tried to block out the chattering voice. “It’s been an experience, it really has. Okay? I’ll be a better man for it or something. But I’ve done my bit. I did the right thing and snitched on an evil man who did a bad thing. I did the right thing and now you’ve got all your really exciting data.

“So… yay.

“And maybe you think I ought to be more appreciative of the time I’ve spent here,” he continued, turning on Agent K. “Fine. It’s been a great holiday – a break from the life you forced on me. Let’s just ignore the fact you took it all away from me, my condo and my work, my investments and income and everything I’d built up over the past decade, and instead you gave me… what? A shitty little apartment in a shitty neighbourhood, and a shitty job to go with it.”

From director to secretary, grated a voice in his head.

“So a two week break from the hell you dropped me into has been great, really great, and you know, I have enjoyed the food and drink and luxury without having to rely on some guy to foot the bill for me.”

But you didn’t mind when Chad paid, did you? said the girl’s voice. And you didn’t mind paying him back last night.

“And fine, okay, talking through shit has helped, maybe.” He jerked his head at Crystal. “Bringing up shit I’d buried long ago and maybe that’s good, I don’t know, but getting the past few months of my chest—you know, this fucking c-cup pair of joy you’ve given me—fine, sure, it’s been good, great for my mental health or whatever.

“But we’re done here, okay? For months now I’ve done the right thing, the good thing: I’ve been Cindy and kept my head down and… and it’s enough, it’s more than enough, I can’t do this anymore.

“So now it’s your turn. You do the right thing, do the good thing and give me my life back, for fuck’s sake make me a man again!”

He was standing and not sure when he’d found his feet, leaning over the wide table towards the other three, heart pounding in his chest and fingers curled into the hard wood beneath his palms, all but panting with the exertion of both speaking and drowning out the voices crowding his mind.

“Mr Saunders, sit down,” Agent K said.

He glared at her. “Or what?”

The Asklepios armband grew very slightly warm, and emitted a warning beep, the first time it had done so. He stared at the armband for a long moment, assessing his chances. How strong of a dose could such a slender band contain? And of what? How quickly might it affect him? For a moment he seriously considered launching himself across the table, visualised his trajectory and the satisfying impact of foot against bone, and smiled at the thought of his fist connecting with Scooter’s skull.

Do it, whispered a voice in his head. Be a man.

Be good, whispered the other, be a good girl.

He saw, in Jonathon’s eyes, a glimmer of fear and took pleasure in that. He saw, in Crystal’s eyes, disappointment, and it saddened him. But in Agent K’s eyes he saw nothing.

David dropped back into his seat. Crossing legs at the thigh, he tossed back his hair, sneered at Jonathon and waited.

“Um… yes,” he said, and to David’s surprise he saw… something that chased the fear. Excitement, maybe, or even lust—a momentary widening of the eyes and flushing of the cheeks. Jonathon licked his lips and his fingers curled into fists and uncurled to lay flat once more. “Those tests. The blood samples, we’ve taken and tested them daily since your arrival. Checking for the levels of the compound that made all this possible.”

Taking a deep breath, he continued. “What we’ve seen over the past two weeks is a downward trend indicating a reduction in compound levels within your body. This… decay is matched by similar lowering of the compound in other tissues we’ve sampled: soft and hard tissue produce similar results.”

With giddy joy, David clapped his hands and gave a little hoot of relief. “That’s good, right?”

The doctor didn’t immediately answer. He glanced askance at Agent K before returning his gaze to the table. “However, where we expected a linear rate of compound degradation, what we’ve found is that the decline appears to be tapering off. Levels remain well above what we predicted and cellular suffusion remains unexpectedly high.”

Jonathon stopped. David felt a tightening around his chest and momentarily struggled for breath. There was a prickling at the base of his neck and he heard as though from far away a low, delighted giggle.

“What—what does that mean?” he asked.

Finally, the doctor looked up and he grimaced before speaking. “I means we can’t risk using anything connected to the regenerative process here to masculinize you,” Jonathon said. “We can’t even risk traditional surgical methods. Compound levels are just too high. You’ve seen the possible outcome… downstairs. Any changes we made—”

“No—”

“Might kick the regeneration into overdrive—”

“No….”

“Revert back to the original female template—”

“No!”

Yes, crowed a voice in his head. He’s lying, seethed the other, why is he lying? The prickling warmth at the base of his neck spread and unfurled tendrils of heat that coiled around chest and head—he couldn’t breathe—penetrating his skull and his brain burned—he couldn’t breathe!—and the gleeful girl’s laugh was suddenly closer and louder and everywhere.

He felt the doctor’s words like a kick to stomach and he wrapped his arms around himself and curled around the pain, doubling over.

He felt sick. He gagged. Turning to Crystal he saw pity in her eyes, but he didn’t want pity, pity told him she knew what his future held and how difficult—impossible—it would be for him.

“Then leave me like this,” he gasped, turning to K. “I can hide the tits. Cut the hair. Wear baggy clothes. Live as a man, somewhere—you can find me a new life—anywhere. Somewhere; anyone. I don’t care so long as I go back to a male life.”

Her eyes betrayed nothing: no satisfaction in his predicament, nor pity at his pain. Instead, she shook her head, once. “No,” she said, voice level. “I can not simply summon a new life for you out of nowhere, Mr Saunders. Furthermore, Cindy’s sudden disappearance, more than anything, would betray you to Steele. Your presence here is known, a matter of open record.”

“You can’t—”

“Have you not said yourself that you saw this agent of Steele’s, this… Jeff pursuing Cindy recently?”

David rocked in his chair, holding himself tight. He stared at her and the voice said, she’s also lying, why are they lying? Meanwhile, the other voice, dainty and playful—but more than a voice now, a presence growing in strength and stature—laughed with glee and cried out ‘yes’ and wound itself around the other voice—now diminished, despairing, and wild —and their whirling dance filled his head with a noise become a roar that he felt as a physical pressure, a force threatening to crack him open, rupture and spill out as a torrent of bile and rage and despair.

“Please, K,” he pleaded. “Don’t do this to me.”

“Six more months,” she said.

“I can’t,” he said.

“You must,” she said.

“You can,” said Crystal. “You’re strong, David. And so is Cindy.”

“I’m not—”

“But you can be,” she said. “Accept her; be that part of your self.”

“It’s too hard.”

“But it doesn’t have to be.”

“You don’t understand—”

“Look at me, David.” Unexpectedly strong and firm, her voice demanded his attention. “You told me living Cindy’s life was torture. Like an iron maiden whose spikes were bleeding you dry. But the torture is of your making, David, and always has been. Spikes of your own mind.”

“You’re wrong,” he said.

“‘You could be bounded in a nutshell and count yourself a king of infinite space’ – isn’t that how the quote goes?”

Were it not that I have bad dreams, he finished, but said nothing.

“Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so—did I get that right?”

“I’m not—”

“You’re being forced to play a part you hate. Your safety depends on how well you convince others of the role you play.”

David felt the allure of the character: in a court full of enemies, he moved with impunity. Filled with doubt, a disguise of madness allowed him to seek out truth. Sent to his death, he survived. And in survival: vengeance. Vengeance, against no less than a King himself.

But what happens when the disguise stops being an act? What happens when mad in craft becomes mad in essence?

You’re not mad, whispered the lilting voice in his head.

“You say that this performance is torture,” Crystal continued. “That the realities of Cindy’s life feel like spikes driven into your self. But if you take those spikes away, what are you left with?

“Armour. Not just a beautiful shell, David, or a painted husk, but armour, subtle and strong—strong, like you—a shield against the world. You told me that the thing you miss most from your male life is your strength – your muscles—the years of effort and discipline that Jonathon’s process stripped away from you. You derived confidence and conviction in your masculinity from your physical strength. You called it your armour.”

With his arms wrapped defensively around his pain, David was acutely aware of what he’d lost: felt the slender weakness of his limbs, the pliant and supple flesh beneath his folded arms, and knew he was the smallest person in the room. It seemed almost impossible to imagine that bulk now, the simple pleasure of flexing an arm and sensing the restrained power—the firmness of chest and abdomen—the satisfaction of exertion and the joy of manipulating the physical world around him with ease. Only in others could he sense that strength, now, and yearn for the unconscious affirmation it brought them and perhaps share in it by being close to them.

You enjoyed being close to Chad last night, didn’t you? Enjoyed his firmness?.

“But Cindy can be your armour,” Crystal continued. “Her softness, your strength. She can—how to put it?—‘bear the whips and scorns’ of the next six months. Let her absorb the blows. And at the end of all this, when it’s safe to do so, you crack open the armour, step out of it and what’s left? You—the real you—unharmed, untouched by everything that’s happened.”

He shuddered and dropped his eyes and hid behind the fall of his hair.

She seemed to genuinely believe her own words. There was a painful sincerity in what she said and how she said it. Curled in on himself and from behind the safety of blonde curtains streaked with purple and pink, David glanced from Jonathon to Katherine to Crystal and saw no escape from the future they mapped out for him. They were lying. If they chose to do so, he knew they could return him to a male life. They chose not to. Why?

Now, the room itself felt threatening. If he refused: what then?

Unbidden, he felt again the terrible fear experienced in bondage during the photoshoot, arms and legs straining behind his back, harnessed and leashed—and at the far end of that that leash he saw the shadowy figure of Jeremiah Steele.

No; never. David squeezed his eyes shut. Then he recalled the monster downstairs, its fleshy protrusions and misshapen form, locked and sealed away, on display behind transparent walls, and shuddered.

The Clinic was not the ally he had hoped, and it seemed clear to David that Jonathon and Katherine could no longer be trusted—were perhaps even his enemies.

Crystal Dawn?

She seemed honest, hopeful that he would accept her words—she offered an escape, he realised, a way out of this room and this facility. After, in solitude and safety—if such a thing even existed—he could determine what the hell was happening: why these people he once saw as allies had turned against him. Then, he could find a way out of this life.

My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth, one voice murmured, muffled and distant but still very much present.

David looked up. “But it’s so hard,” he pleaded, and in rushed the reality of what he was on the cusp of accepting. A torrent of images, projecting the previous months forward into the tedium of daily life to come, crashed down on him. Days and weeks of skirts and dresses and thin blouses and bared shoulders or midriff or arms or thighs; the frivolous indulgence of hair and makeup and nails; the pinch and poise of heels, sacrificing stability in favour of unsteady steps and mincing gait; and everything else, God, daily strapping himself into a bra, rolling stockings up legs, clip of suspenders—and shaving, keeping arms and legs silky and smooth—always on display, Cindy appropriately presented to the world, day after day after….

So easy, said the girl voice in his mind. And fun, we’ve been doing this for ages.

“It’s too much.” The bus ride to work from his cramped apartment into the city: the sweat of passengers, the ogling stares, whispers and whistles and stray hands brushing across tits and ass he had to pretend to not notice. Swapping shoes over, sneakers for stilettos and the daily morning primp in the women’s toilet, then sitting at his desk, pretty and prim, scurrying about for others, delivering coffee, taking notes, quiet. Six more months of being looked down at by women with jealousy or scorn; of being appraised by men, dismissively or in lust; and desperately chasing the approbation of both.

And it wouldn’t be possible, not for six more months, to avoid the advances of others. There would be women, in changing rooms and corridors, offices and in open public spaces, watching and judging and finding him wanting, finding him strange, curious, suspicious. There would be men—men like Dan but also like Chad—and where there were men there was flirting, pick-up lines and innuendo and ‘accidental’ touches as they passed by his desk or crowded in the elevator or sat without invitation as he tried to relax, eat his lunch, take a break, escape the attention of others even if only for five minutes. Flirting would lead to dates, to kisses, to touches and caresses and ultimately to—

Last night: his slender fingers, fingernails vivid in the dim light, reaching into a man’s trousers and curling around a hard cock.

“I can’t do it,” he whispered. “Not for six months.”

Of course we can, echoed the other voice. And for even longer.

He looked up through a veil of hair. “I’ll give myself away.” Months of tucking and taping, of shoving his balls back up inside and concealing his sex, the discomfort and pain, and the terrible fear of being caught. “It’s too hard, I can’t do it, someone will catch me out.”

To which Crystal gave a little smile and said, “we can help with that.”

What came next remained a blur as everything came crashing down on him. A cacophony of noise, a roaring voice and gleeful trill of joy, a rising swell of despair and rage that filled him to the brim. He vaguely remembered a long, drawn-out moan, pain in his chest and being sick. Accusatory voices raised in conflict: “I told you this would happen,” “get the nurse in here,” “it’s too much,” “Jesus, she’s stronger than she looks.” It seemed to him that the room went dark. The voices in his head went silent. At some point he nodded—“six more months”—and gave himself over to the Clinic. A prick in his arm; everything went dark.

And in that darkness, David dreamed.

And it was the old dream, the same dream, the nightmare that had haunted him for years in all its permutations and sick twists. One night of relief cradled in another man’s arms, otherwise night after night it had him thrashing in his bed, lashing out in his sleep, waking and bolting upright, chest heaving, bathed in sweat, grasping for something lost long ago.

It was always the same room. Sickly yellow light seeped into the far corners of the dirty little backroom, flickering as the bared light bulb swayed as the end of its frayed cable. A shoddy table stood next to a rusty, steel-frame bed. An old round clock ticked persistently, its shadow stretching and twisting as the light above danced. The clock sat on the table next to a worn, dog-eared book. Tattered wallpaper peeled and curled from the walls. Bugs crawled from cracks between the floorboards.

The room reeked of sweat and mould and stale booze. There was no window and two doors on opposing walls were the only way in and out. The mattress was filthy and stained. The deep thrum of rhythmic music rose through the floor from the club below.

A gasp; a cry and moan: and she was once again splayed across the filthy mattress, and her beauty made a mockery of the squalor. Beautiful but tainted: the ivory basque should have gleamed but was tarnished and stained, and her stockings were torn and the skin beneath red and raw. Heavy makeup, smudged and cracked, did more to conceal her natural beauty than enhance it. One leg hung over the edge of the bed and her arms lay limply at her side.

She seemed unconscious or perhaps dead—but for her eyes—which were as he remembered them: open and blazing with love and anger.

“Sephy?”

Always, he called to her. Always, she turned to him.

Then the creak of hinges, the door opening onto impenetrable darkness, a slash across a naked canvas.

Who would it be this time? Ever since their fatal fight and especially since visiting the transformed agent beneath the Clinic, Fosters was a frequent guest star, a grinning, raving villain, protean and terrible. Julia, more than once, had featured; Agent K too; and also Jonathon, the doctor sliding through the door, fingers twitching, each nimble digit ending in gleaming scalpel blades. Before that they were often faceless, a shadowy figure whose face collapsed into a vacant, ragged hole. Sometimes, they were only seen from behind, a hulking brute whose frame filled the space as they stalked inexorably across the room.

He blinked, and the figure glided past him, the figure was in the room and he could see them only from behind as they advanced on the bed. Persephone lay there insensate, unmoving and vulnerable.

“No,” he called out, and reached to stop the intruder; or tried to, for suddenly his words were muffled by the slender metal bar drawn tightly across his mouth, and his arms were tied behind his back, and for all his struggle all he managed was to make his pendulous tits shake uselessly. He was back in the bondage from the photoshoot and tied and leashed and gagged as he was, all he could do was quiver and moan and watch.

The figure paused and looked back over its shoulder. Somehow its face remained hidden in darkness, yet from the darkness gleamed its slow smile, sharp-toothed and vicious.

And David felt afraid, a return of the deep, devouring fear he’d felt during the photoshoot, the sense of utter helplessness brought on by being tied so securely and unable to free himself. Vulnerable, weak, stripped of agency: bound and gagged, he’d never felt fear as he had in that moment.

Normally, he tried to prevent what happened next by physically attacking the figure. Always, he failed. This time, he could only watch and squirm as the figure turned back to the helpless woman lying on the mattress. He moaned in fury and despair around the bit that parted his lips. The figure took Sephy by the neck and squeezed.

How many times had he seen the woman he loved killed in his nightmares, and in how many ways?

Suddenly, she was fiercely, brilliantly alive. Now she struggled. She battered his side and arms, her fingernails dug deep into his flesh, flaying it from his frame, and yet as ribbons of blood and gore curled to the floor the figure continued to strangle her. Her legs beat the mattress like a drum and her body writhed upon the bed and her eyes bulged. With a final twitch, she went still.

The figure then turned and advanced. David pulled at his restraints in terror, breathless in the crushing corset, achieving nothing more than to jiggle and sway uselessly. Pulled back by the tightly braid hair laced to his arm restraints, his neck was exposed and vulnerable as the intruder reached for him. In the final moment before its fingers curled around his neck, David saw the nails were like his, beautifully manicured and painted; and the face was his own face, his male face, and the hungry grin twisted into a snarl of betrayed rage.

Darkness; the nightmare faded; he slept.

Many hours later, recovering in his room that evening, he lay alone on his bed in the dark and stared at the ceiling. He knew that he wasn’t really alone. The armband at his wrist continued to monitor and transmit his location and vital signs—any erratic action and he’d be instantly tranquilised. Hidden cameras watched him as well and followed every movement of his naked body. Perverts, he thought, but the hazy remnants of the drugs in his system slowed his thoughts and quenched the fire of his anger.

Robbed of strength, he lay there languidly and felt the tingle at the tips of his body as the anaesthetic slowly faded from his system. It felt as though his entire body was abuzz, a pleasurable but distant humming of the skin as the cool air of the room breathed over him. Fingertip and toes prickled, the tip of his nose, a borderline erotic tightening in every extremity. He felt it most strongly in now-erect nipples, tight little buds demanding touch, and it made him think of Chad.

Too tired and weak from the drugs to suppress remembering any longer, David groaned. He sighed and drew one limp arms across his eyes and gave himself over to the memory of last night.

He took the man by the hand and led him into the apartment. Chad grabbed him from behind—“nice ass,” he said—and an irrepressible giggle escape David as he was spun about and then—kissing, Chad’s roaming hands delineating femininity, fingers tracing every curve and drawing sensuously over shoulders and sides, face and thigh. A sinuous wiggle, and the little pleated skirt slid over his hips and pooled at his feet. With a smooth movement and flick of the arms he sent his top flying across the room. He struck a pose, resplendent in the bridal brilliance of ivory corset and bra and suspender belt and stockings, teetering only slightly in the lace-up heels from the day’s earlier photoshoot.

With an appreciative whistle, Chad drew him closer. With the thumb of both hands touching, the man stretched his fingers wide, a butterfly lattice stretching around David’s narrowed waist, and something thrilled inside at how dainty he felt, small and delightfully powerless beneath this masculine touch. Effortlessly Chad twirled him around and untied the laces at the back and loosened them. The spin and initial rush of air was exhilarating, and again when Chad’s strong fingers unclasped the metal fastening at the busk and the overbust corset opened and fell away. The simple cotton tank top soon joined the corset on the floor.

He stood there, then, in nothing but gilt ivory lingerie glimmering in the dim light, a delicate flower in need of the most tender touch, small and yielding to the man’s robust size and strength. The man’s eyes widened appreciatively at the sight of his breasts, pale teardrops rising towards him. “God, you’re gorgeous,” he said, and something inside David melted at his words and gaze, so that when Chad seized him, David gave himself over to his touch with ease, over to his kisses, over to the passionate hands exploring his tits and ass and to his surprise he felt the first stirrings of his own passion as a dull ache from where his cock and balls remained tucked.

His own reaction confused him deeply. Six months ago, he couldn’t have even contemplated kissing another man. Now, he eagerly invited it, for even as Chad’s hands roamed his body David returned the attention with equal passion. When Chad’s hand kneaded his tits, he leaned into the man’s grasp; when he kissed his neck, David whimpered; and when the man pulled away, he followed him with hungry kisses of his own, almost whining into the man’s open mouth as he demanded more.

And it wasn’t drunkenness or the threat of an enemy that drove him into the man’s arms. Rather, it was the simple realisation that it felt—good; that Chad made him feel good; and that there was no way to stop what he’d started.

More importantly, he didn’t want to. For the first time he wished for his own release, to receive pleasure rather than simply give it. But that hadn’t been the plan for the night, this night was about rewarding the man who had helped him so much during these past two weeks, and in doing so reaffirming his own identity.

As the man’s fingers strayed dangerous close to somewhere they couldn’t go, David realised he couldn’t delay any longer.

He remembered the photographer’s words, Jasmines advice, as he fumbled with the man’s belt. Painted lips curved into a wide smile as he hooked manicured nails into the waistband. The trousers went down and he followed. He knelt before this man, on his knees level with his crotch, sober and committed to what he was doing. Chad looked down at him, standing strong and drinking him in with eyes filled with lust and admiration and with something more powerful, something that made David feel small and wanted.

‘Look at him,’ Jasmine advised. ‘Talk to him. He likes that.”

And so, even as David’s smile felt increasingly strained, he maintained eye contact. “Your eyes on me makes me… mmm, tingle,” he said, and then moaned. “And wet.” He reached his hand into the man’s boxers. “I’m so damn horny right now,” he said, and licked his lips, and touched for only the second time in his life another man’s penis. “I want to feel your cock. In my mouth.” He hesitated then, feeling the hard, hot flesh; but only for a moment before drawing it out. “I want to taste your cum.”

And lying there on the bed in the present, he remembered staring at it, staring at Chad’s cock, willing himself to do this thing. You can do this, he thought. It’s just… a blow job. Women do this all the time. It’s not like it’s a big deal. It’s not gross or perverted or weird, it’s just—a thing women do. And right now, you’re a woman, or at least he thinks you are, and you’ve got to do this, got to prove to yourself how meaningless this act is, that Cindy can thank this guy like a good girl and you can wake up in the morning unchanged, unaffected, and still be—yourself, and go back to being a man and living a man’s life.

But when he licked his lips, it was with nervousness, not eagerness. And the roiling in his belly wasn’t from alcohol because he hadn’t touched a drop all day. Any further words died unspoken on his tongue. Try as he might, he couldn’t bridge the gap—such a small gap, a few easy centimeters—between his wet, pink lips and the man’s cockhead, shiny with pre-cum and bobbing in anticipation.

A hand at his head ran fingers through his long hair—lovingly, urging him to look up rather than down. Chad was smiling at him, eyes still filled with that intimidating deepness that signalled something far more profound than simple lust. A gentle touch at David’s chin refocused his attention upwards.

“You don’t have to do this,” Chad said.

“I want to.”

“Have you ever before?”

David shook his head.

Chad slowly lowered himself to David’s level and squatted back on his haunches. With the back of his hand, he tenderly brushed his cheek, and his fingers cupped his chin and drew him in for a kiss. Eagerly, David fell into the kiss, a reprieve from the act he thought he was ready for but clearly couldn’t yet bring himself to do. And lost in the depth of their embrace, he noticed too late the man’s drifting hands—hands that moved from his shoulders, down his side, slid beneath the waistband of lace panties and tickled their way along his bum and—

Chad’s fingers draw across the taped length of David’s cock and he gasped into the other man’s mouth, around the eager tongue dancing with his own.

Pulling back, fearful fingers curled instinctively into fists—he tottered in his too-tall platform heels—and fell unceremoniously back on his ass, legs splayed wide.

Chad laughed.

Flushed red with anger and embarrassment and fear, David scrambled away from the other man. “It’s not—”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Chad said, standing.

David gaped up at him. “Did you—know?”

Chad reached down and pulled the feminised man to his feet, where he wobbled briefly and held the other man’s arm for support. “I suspected,” he said.

“How?”

“For one, I knew you weren’t really Cindy.” Chad stepped over to the sofa and sat and motioned for David to join him. After a moment’s hesitation he followed, and when Chad took his hand and guided him onto his lap, he settled without protest. Sitting there fully aware of the other man’s hardon pressing into his bum, he felt painfully aware of his appearance in a way he’d never quite experienced before—a deep humiliation rooted in what he wore and what he was doing in the presence of another man who apparently knew him to actually be a man.

Playing at Cindy for Julia was one thing; making out with Dan another; but perching on Chad’s knees in sexy women’s underwear when the guy knew he was also male was something new. Suddenly, it felt—gay—homosexual in a way it hadn’t before. Before he was a girl—albeit a pretend one—pleasuring a man. Now they were two men in the room—admittedly, one in insubstantial lingerie, the other naked from the waist down—and Chad’s hard cock was poking into his thigh, and it made David feel queasy.

“I knew Cindy Bellamy,” Chad said. “She was a client here, remember? Somebody must’ve slipped up, not updated the client database or something, because the Clinic armband invited me in to talk to you the same as it did with her. I got to her know her a little when she was here. Took me a few days to remember; this was half a year ago.”

“Did you sleep with her?” David asked.

“Yes.” Sadness tainted his voice. “There was something very—tragic—about her. Sad and beautiful and so very angry. I’ve only met a few people who clearly hated themselves that deeply.” His gaze burned into David. “But she was such a kind soul, a lovely person, but one who couldn’t see that loveliness in herself. She was so eager to please, to find validation in others.” He shook his head. “I guess she never found it.”

In the present, lying on his bed, David remembered how they talked, if only briefly, about the young woman whose life he’d usurped, even if unwillingly. Chad never asked how he’d come to take her name or her life; presumably, he knew better than to ask such questions of clients of the Clinic. Rather, he simply held him in his arms, on his lap, as his cock slowly shrank. Finally, he gave a single kiss to David’s forehead and easily lifted the smaller man from his lap and positioned him on the sofa.

Grinning, Chad then slid off the sofa cushion to his knees between the feminised man’s legs.

“What are you doing?” David cried out.

“Giving you something you need a hell of a lot more than I do.” With one strong hand holding David’s thigh, he used the other to gently push him back into the sofa. “Just… relax.”

“But—” David struggled to articulate his confusion. “We’re both guys.”

“If you say so,” Chad said, smiling up from between a pair of lithe legs, sleek in ivory stockings, with knees thrust high by the arch of stiletto heels. “But from where I’m at, all I’m seeing is a gorgeous woman lying back with a handsome stud between her legs.” He pulled at the flimsy white panties, down one leg and then the other, and flung them across the room. Dextrous fingers then felt for the tape holding David’s cock and carefully peeled it back, layer by layer. “Wow, you really strapped yourself down, didn’t you?”

“But—”

“Just shut up,” Chad said.

And when he felt the man’s first confident touch on his penis, the first time any man had ever touched him there, David didn’t think he could go through with it. He remained limp and unwilling and he felt a powerful wrongness deep in his belly at the thought of a man touching him so intimately. But then Chad kissed him, every so gently, first on one thigh and then the other and the kiss was almost feminine in its tenderness. His lips were soft and his touch delicate. The hands stroking his skin were soft, flicked at suspenders, skimmed along his sides, and paddled at his boobs, and when those swift, nimble fingers grazed his nipples he moaned—

And in the present, David moaned too—

And in memory, he hissed in pleasurable pain as the man pinched his nipple between forefinger and thumb and chuckled wickedly at David’s reaction. For the reaction was all too visible: under Chad’s skilled ministration, his cock stiffened and rose. Chad firmly gripped the engorged cock and without hesitation took it in his mouth.

The man’s sensual touch threatened to overwhelm David. He felt lips and tongue running up and down his cock, the warmth and the pressure as Chad’s head bobbed up and down his length, and in David’s mind it was all mixed up with the past, with the many girls he’d known, flashes of anonymous, pretty faces, a cavalcade of glistening lips and eager tongues; and at some point the smiling lips that flashed through his mind were his own, carefully painted and shiny and keen to please. And all this became mixed up with the other sensations he submitted to, Chad kneading his tits, fingers digging into fleshy thighs and ass, coming up on occasion to nip at an ear or trail kisses down his abdomen or lick cat-like at a erect nipple.

And in the present, he felt the phantom touch of the previous night, and one hand crept to his breast and found pleasure there, and the other crept lower—

And in memory he felt it too, and the sensations were at first focused around his cock, and he nearly wilted then as he returned to the thought of another man going down on him, the implied homosexuality of it—he wasn’t gay, he was a man—but it felt so good, he hadn’t been on the receiving end of a blow job in ages, it wasn’t Jules’s thing but dear God, it felt great. And there was a woman in the room—yes, oh God, yes, don’t stop—her moans filled the room, her keening cry, her desperate need—and her slut sounds made him ferociously hard again, and so what if that woman’s voice was his own?

His perception shifted, and he felt the feminine presence in the room, he was that woman but then that woman was also pleasuring him, he found his own tits and groping himself and moaned in pleasure—felt the scratch of long nails—a woman’s hand on his woman’s tit—but also the yielding flesh beneath his hand—and then the feminine presence shifted to the eager cock-sucking lips pleasuring him; and the moans he heard were a girl’s moans; they were his own rhythmic exclamations of desire; and he was subsumed within the whirling sensations, the whisper of long hair, the silkiness of stockings beneath his palm; tug of straps and tickle of lace; toes curling in the constraint of heels; but a man’s strong hand pinning him to the sofa; and his hips bucked and he arced his back, pushing his boobs further into whoever’s hand mauled them, and when he finally came it was with a deep, ball-emptying cry, fiercely grabbing the head between his legs with both hands and pulling it closer and burying himself deep, fucking the face that pleasured him and then falling back with a groan, spent and confused.

“Jesus, you’re strong,” Chad said afterwards. He grinned, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. “Ouch.”

David drew in a ragged breath.

“I hadn’t planned on swallowing.”

He winced. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Chad grinned. “You should try it sometime. It’s really not so bad, you know, once you get past the taste.”

In post-coital torpor, David slid from the sofa into Dan’s arms. He felt contented in this man’s embrace. He felt a powerful and confusing desire to cuddle, and his fingers played idly with Chad’s chest hairs, curling the coarse hairs around his slender fingertips. Fingertips slid across the man’s strong chest and traced the lines of his abdomen—Chad had kept the athletic physique of his skiing days, and David felt an overwhelming envy that manifested as a profound attraction to the man.

They held that pose for some time, in the silence of the early evening, David in delicate lingerie cradled in the arms of the larger man. They both sat on the floor, together. He knew he should be… disgusted, by all this, and terribly angry. Instead, he felt wonderfully relaxed with Chad’s arms around him, at peace in a way he couldn’t fully comprehend but was loathe to give up.

“I should probably go,” Chad said.

“Don’t,” David said.

He knew what would happen if Chad left, then. David would cast aside the last of the day’s dressing-up, the stockings and the belt and the shoes, and then the guilt would come, the recrimination and self-loathing. He’d shower in blistering hot water and scrub every last vestige of the makeup away and stand in front of the mirror and despise what he saw there. Crawling eventually into bed, he’d toss and turn for hours. Sleep would come—and with it, the inevitable nightmare. No; not tonight.

He noticed only then that the fingers of one hand had come to rest casually on the other man’s penis. Under their gentle presence, he felt it stir and grow once more. “Please. Stay.”

Chad looked at him in silence for a long moment. “You don’t have to….”

“Now you shut up,” he answered, taking the man’s cock into his hand.

His second ever hand job felt very different than his effort two weeks previously with Dan. For one, he was sober. But most importantly he felt—close—an intimacy with this man that confused him. Though the buzz of orgasmic release had largely faded, he still felt wonderfully content, a little detached, as though in the last stages of a pleasant dream.

He took his time in pleasuring Chad. First, he found some hand cream and warmed it in the palm of his hand. Then, they kissed passionately before Chad returned to the sofa and David settled comfortably between his legs on the floor. Sitting with his legs to one side—still laced into those towering shoes—David gazed adoringly up at Chad with wide, green eyes. He smiled as he pumped the other man’s cock, attentive to his every reaction, adapting his speed and rhythm, keeping a firm but gentle grip. “Do you like that?” he cooed, “how’s this?” and he languorously and carefully drew one long fingernail along the man’s ballsack.

With his head thrown back and eyes closed, Chad sighed and seemed lost in the pleasures of the beautiful man stroking his cock. He moved slightly with each upstroke along his shaft.

It didn’t take very long. The intensity of his breathing deepened, and suddenly Chad groaned. He gripped David by the shoulder to steady himself, and David knew that he was near. “You gonna cum for me?” he whispered, and the thought suddenly flashed through his mind—I could do this now—and he imagined, vividly, lowering himself onto the other man’s cock, taking his penis into his mouth and sealing plump lips around the slick shaft and mewing with pleasure as his man came and emptied his seed down his willing throat.

“God—Cindy…. I’m—!”

Chad’s hips thrust, and ready for it, David pointed the cock at his naked chest. It spasmed once, twice: the man’s cum spatted across his tits. It was unexpectedly warm, and a little dribbled into his cleavage.

There’s a man’s jizz on my chest, he thought. On my tits.

David kept his smile and never broke eye contact as Chad slowly returned to himself. He felt some of it on his hand. He looked at his palm and it glistened with cum.

And for the first time in his life, he wondered, I wonder what it tastes like?

Suddenly hot in the face, he reached for a tissue and wiped his hand clean and made a go at sopping up the cooling goo from his chest. “Like that?”

Rather than answer, Chad drew David from the floor into an embrace and buried his face in his hair and shuddered. “Thank you,” he said, and when he drew back his cheeks were wet with tears. “Whoever you are. Cindy”

“Chad—”

He silenced her with another kiss. Afterwards, they withdrew to the bedroom and lay together in silence, the larger man curling around the smaller. David had never shared a bed with another man before, not like this—both naked, intimate and comfortable in each other’s arms—Chad hand resting easily across his boob, and on occasion he felt the man’s dick stir and press into his thigh.

At one point—though he may have dreamed it, as they both faded in and out of shallow sleep—Chad’s arms tightened into a firm embrace. “Don’t make the same mistake she did,” he said, his voice a hot whisper on his neck. “You’re… special, and beautiful and wonderful.”

“But I’m a man,” David insisted.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Chad answered.

They lay like that until early morning, at which point Chad left without a word.

And in the present, David found himself finally strong enough to stand. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and after a moment’s rest struggled to his feet. He turned to the full-sized mirror.

There was no denying what he saw. While not special and wonderful as Chad insisted, the woman in the mirror was certainly beautiful. Cindy was beautiful; and wasn’t he Cindy, now? Framed in flowing coils of golden hair streaked with purple and pink, falling nearly to the pert curve of her ass, the naked body he saw reflected in the dark of the room seemed radiant in its beauty. Her breasts were round and full and sat high on her chest, smooth white skin topped by pink nibs erect in the cool air. Narrow hips led to slender, well-formed legs. Feet and toes were cute, nails painted a glossy pink, the same as her hands, though both hands and feet were a little ungainly, maybe larger than expected on a girl of her stature. Shoulders, too, were a little too square, possibly, considering her willowy frame. Wide, green eyes scanned across her image in reflection, drawn inexorably towards—

The space between her thighs.

The prosthetic vagina the Clinic attached to him several hours ago remained pallid and grey, the colour of a slug’s underbelly. The anonymous nurse who’d assisted in the procedure assured David that over the next twenty-four hours the synthetic flesh would slowly change to match his own skin tone, bio-synthetic chromatophores activating and adapting to perfect the illusion of real skin. The same with sensations and responsiveness; what currently felt heavy and dead and cold, like a wet plaster cast over his crotch, would gradually warm and begin to transmit sensations.

“As close to the real thing as you can get without surgery,” the nurse assured him, and smiled comfortingly as the anaesthetic wore off
and David returned to wakefulness. Asleep for the procedure, he avoided the blistering pain he remembered from the previous prosthetic that Agent K had attached to him. That one had lasted mere weeks, and the hurried application had nearly knocked him out with its sensation of fiery pins and needles thrusting into his groin. No pain, this time. “It should last for several months,” the nurse said. “But we’ll need to have you back in about three and decide then whether to replace it with another or move on to a surgical alternative.

“Best of all,” the nurse continued, “it allows for intercourse. You’ll probably find clitoral stimulation easiest, but the prosthetic allows for a full ten centimeters of penetration.”

Average female depth, the nurse explained, and just under average male length; enough for a finger or penis, so long as you’re both careful and he’s not too generously hung. The angle is slightly off that of a biological female, directing the penetrating object towards the abdomen, and passing close to where your own male genitals are kept—unlikely to be noticed in the heat of the moment.

Holding David’s hand, the nurse seemed mystified that these explanations weren’t particularly reassuring for the patient. “You’re really lucky—this is absolutely cutting edge, the latest in biomechanical prosthetic technology.”

The nurse went on to explain that once the neural interfacing was complete, the outer skin would respond as expected: it would sweat and self-heal and self-lubricate, too, where and when necessary. Within days, the lightest of touches should be perceptible; a breath of air tickling across the synthetic skin would raise goose bumps; and as for a kiss….

The nurse smiled. Sex—and here the nurse couldn’t suppress a little smirk—while maybe not quite as good as the real thing it ought to provide an entirely satisfactory experience. More than satisfactory, the nurse assured him—authentic. A biochemical release system integrated within the prosthetic was designed to release synthetic hormones associated with the general ebb and flow of ordinary life—that is, ordinary life with a vagina, of course, the nurse added—but also with the specific intensity of sexual arousal. You’ll be flooded with happy little chemicals, the nurse said, or sad ones; either way, you’ll feel it here—the nurse tapped the space over David’s heart—and here—and tapped his temple. And as for orgasm—the nurse’s smile grew to a wide grin—well, it ought to be suitably intense.

And you can rest assured, the nurse finished, easing him back in his bed, that your male equipment is perfectly safe and secure beneath it all, the prosthetic secreting a mild anaesthetic keeping everything comfortably numb and quiet.

Quiet and numb.

A buzz at his wrist reminded him it was nearly time to leave.

Standing in front of the wardrobe, he considered what to wear for his farewell and for the long ride home. Nothing, he thought. He didn’t want to wear anything. To pull on panties and a bra was to accept his fate for the next six months. The artificial intelligence within the wardrove must have senses his uncertainty, for it reached out with a tentative beep.

What would you like to wear this evening? it asked, the words scrolling along the top of the mirror.

David stared blankly at it.

What would you like to wear this evening? the wardrobe prompted.

It waited a moment longer before trying a different question: what are you going to do?

I don’t know, David thought.

He knew that somewhere within the associative links of its millions of parameters, the artificial intelligence lurking inside the wardrobe was searching for a way to stimulate its user to action. It had been taught that fashion was one way of expressing identity—and its user had presented a wide range of identities these past two weeks. What did its deep learning algorithms make of him, David wondered, of the shoes and underwear, skirts and dresses and tracksuits he’d worn these past two weeks, the cosmetics and accessories? What narrow category did he neatly slot into; what real-world example did he most conveniently match?

After a moment, the wardrobe rephrased the question once more.

Who would you like to be? the AI asked.

Scene Thirteen: “The Truth about David Saunders”

Who are you, Mr Saunders? With that question lingering at the back of her mind, Katherine Smith watched the taillights of the car disappear into the night. A final red flare as it passed behind some trees, turned a corner, and then it was gone.

The departure of Mr Saunders—or rather, Cindy Bellamy—came as a relief. Her relief was lessened by the thought of the long road that remained ahead. Some small residual guilt, perhaps, also undermined her relief at her ward’s departure. He would be safe for the next six months. It was not the life he desired; but then, in her experience, very few were privileged to live the life they wanted. Mr Saunders would survive: he was strong, he would endure; perhaps he might even learn to enjoy Cindy’s life, though she pitied him for what was to come.

Meanwhile, she had other duties. She had already made her farewells to Jonathon and Crystal. All the remained was to collect her few possessions. A car was waiting to carry her to the nearest airport.

She remained distracted as she cut across the Clinic grounds, passing through falling circles of light that cut pale swaths in the night. The air was cool but oppressive, the earlier winds giving way to an almost unnatural, heavy stillness that hinted at a waiting storm. Too much remained unknown. Most concerning was her ward’s own past. Despite two weeks of sessions with Crystal, they’d learned very little about who Mr Saunders had been before taking on that identity; nor where and when he’d learned to fight with sufficient skill to survive an encounter with hardened mercenaries like Fosters and Mal.

Fosters: the presence of that monstrosity in the underbelly of the Clinic concerned her.

Mal: what whispered conversation had he exchanged with Mr Saunders?

The door to her small apartment at the Clinic opened silently for her. Preoccupied with these thoughts, she felt the presence in her small apartment too late.

She spun towards the figure in the dark corner, thinking – Steele; how, why? And why hadn’t Clinic’s security stopped them?

A woman stepped from the shadows, short and slender like a whip. Her age was indeterminate—she could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty—and of some Asian decent, possibly Japanese. Her long ebony hair, streaked with grey, fell in a tight braid down to her waist.

“Ms Smith,” the woman said, and raised a single hand in a placating motion. “My name is Sakura.”

Katherine, hand already reaching for the weapon concealed in her jacket, arrested the motion. “I have heard of you.”

The woman nodded. “I have been watching you with some interest. You have come into possession of one of my… charges, shall we say.” She stepped closer and in her every motion Katherine saw threat: the promise of violence, restrained. “Shall we talk? It is time you learned the truth about ‘David Saunders’.”

To be continued…

Author’s Notes:
At 72,000 words, the Interlude is nearly as long as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’s 77k word count. I hope its length goes some way to explain how long it took to get it done! Originally planned as a short collection of brief scenes from points of view external to the main character’s, it quickly expanded into… well, what you’re reading. I hope you enjoy it! And please let leave a comment if you do, critical or otherwise. It’s always encouraging to know people are actually reading this stuff.

Once again, I’d like to thank those who’ve supported me on Patreon – I honestly doubt I’d still be at it without their encouragement. (https://www.patreon.com/fakeminsk) Come and join the conversation! Also starting to try my hand at some commissioned work.

Onwards to chapter six! Only five more to go.

Credit given where due:
The “pear tree” scene was inspired by the plum-tree scene from Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.

The Blackwater Phoenix special ops backstory was inspired by Operation Screaming Fist in William Gibson’s Neuromancer.

I was listening to the audiobook of High Heel (Object Lesson) by Summer Brennan while writing this – an easy recommend, and I’m pretty sure it indirectly influenced a couple of scenes.

I’m not quite sure where the scene with Ivy came from, and she just sort of popped in unexpectedly, but I’m fairly sure she’s inspired by Pam from the Archer animated series.