The Wandering Heart
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

The heart is a curious thing. I am not talking about the anatomical organ, but about the feelings that grow and subside, that sometimes burn like fire and sometimes just give us a warm glow, and sometimes go cold as ice.

But how can you fall in love with a man who has abused you? How can you fall in love with a man who has mutilated and maimed you? A man who took away your future as a man and castrated you, and modified you to be his sexual plaything – how can you love such a man?

I know about “Stockholm Syndrome”, but that is not it. That is empathy with a captor as a method of coping with the stress and danger that might become strong support for somebody undeserving, but it is not love. That syndrome may have applied at the beginning, even though I had no idea what would have driven him to do what he did to me. I assumed that it was sexual, and we all know how strong those urges can be. They were strong in me, when I was a man. They led me to do things that I now regret.

But he put an end to that. I had wronged him by having sex with his girl, so he made sure that I could never do that again. Not to any woman.

I implored him at the time. I told him that I could never seem to fight the compulsions, just like him. I thought that he would understand and spare me. But instead, he said that he would be doing the women of the world a favor by removing a threat. He unmanned me. He tied me down and used a tool used to castrate cattle.

He should have killed me then and there. God knows I called out for it. It might have been regret, or maybe he just thought that murder was a crime too great, but he did not finish me. Instead he suggested that I might be useful to him.

Without male hormones a eunuch may lose some muscle tone and some aggression, but they do not change much beyond that. To effect the change that he wanted meant introducing female hormones into my body, and that is what he did. I don’t know how he came into possession of these drugs, but it does not matter. All that matters is that while I was his prisoner I could do nothing to prevent the injections and the slow invasion of the feminizing compound into my body.

He also tore the hair from my face and parts of my body. I never thought much about body hair, but you do notice it when it is missing. You feel truly naked – like we are as babies at the breast – pink, hairless and vulnerable. It seemed that everything that he did increased his power over me.

My body started to change. It took time, but as a prisoner everything takes time. When there is nothing to do except wake every day to find yourself a little softer, a little weaker, and a little smaller in places, then you notice these things.

But for all those who might say that the female hormones do not affect the mind, let me say that they are wrong. I felt the change in me. It was not just the loss of aggression but a rising emotionality. I found myself crying and I had not done since I was a child. Before I may have shaken myself and faced up chin forward, but you cannot man up when you are no longer a man.

He asked me whether I was ready to come up from the basement and take my place as his servant, and I begged to be allowed to be that. I was dying a slow death down there. The light looked so welcoming.

Of course, I thought of escape, but he had a curious restraint method. He had me buckled into high heeled shoes with small padlocks. It does not sound like much, but given that his home was miles from anywhere and off a dirt road surrounded by rough country, I may as well have been manacled to a concrete block.

The shoes were leather and not easily escaped and seemed part of an outfit that included leather and buckles and frilly skirts. It was designed to demean me – of that there can be no doubt – but how can you belittle somebody who had become as small and insignificant as I had?

He laughed at me at first. But as I fell into my work, some nodding respect developed. He had me engaged in cleaning and general housework. The kitchen was off limits to me, probably because it held knives that might cut me free of those shoes. But he was a fine food nut and loved the kitchen. He would prepare the meals, and as there were two of us, he decided that he should prepare meals for two.

To say that he “feminized” me would not really be accurate, beyond the hormone shots that he continued to administer, and those initial demands. He was a man, and men cannot teach what they do not know. So, it would be truer to say that I feminized myself. The reasons for it might seem complicated.

I wanted to elevate myself above the position of servant, and our meals together seemed to allow for that. From that first meal I was a shaggy haired, plucked and shaved eunuch, but dressed as a female – a maid I suppose. It seemed that he had chosen the gender, lack of one, but it was open for me to improve my status.

I asked him whether he would allow me to dress for dinner and to wear something nice. He seemed amused. He agreed to get me something. It seemed like a breakthrough, but I knew that I would have to do well. I asked to be given the opportunity to do my best.

I had only observed women prepare themselves, often with impatience. But I did have a clear idea about what I expected from women in terms of appearance and demeanor. I now know that I was an awful man, but the high standards that I expected persisted, just with the added realization that these things were not easy.

But, for that first dinner together I surprised myself. I was able to take my seat across from him looking like a fairly attractive woman, and to speak as one, and move my hands with a feminine grace, and to compliment him on the food he had prepared.

We talked too, as people do over good food. I learned a little more about him, but only a little. He was a man similar to what I had been – with strongly held fixed views, but inclined to act impetuously. But he loved things that gave him pleasure, including music and food, and intelligent conversation.

Music can be a solitary thing, and food can be too, but both are better when shared. Conversation requires company, and despite his isolated position he needed that. He could do his work miles from civilization, but then once that was done, he needed somebody, although it was hard for him to admit that.

We resolved that we would have at least one “date night” each week when we would dine together as if we were a man and a woman, but then it became two nights a week, and ultimately seven. I would just try harder on some nights, and otherwise it was enough for me to wear a simple dress and tie back my hair with just a little makeup.

He was careful in allowing me access to the internet as I could use that to call for help, but he knew that I needed to learn more feminine skills from what was available online.

Ultimately, I could have used my time on his PC to send out a distress call, but what would I say? Somehow that seemed less important to me. It seemed instead that I was slowly winning his trust to the point that he would release me.

But then somewhere along the line, I resolved that I did not want to be released.

By that point our relationship had become physical. The first time was one of those special evenings when I was dressed in something I had chosen myself online. It was a cocktail dress that showed off the effects of a couple of years of hormones had played upon my chest. I had put my hair up following one TikTok tutorial and patterned my makeup from another. We drank a bottle of wine and then after dinner he introduced me to a fine Jerez brandy. We were both a little drunk, but I was a whole lot desirous.

I am sure that I intended it. It was not so much that I was attracted to him, but that I needed to be attractive to him. To dress as I did required purpose, and that purpose was to have him desire me. But the truth is that I was attracted to him as well. I am not sure whether hormones can alter a person’s sexual orientation, but it seems that mine had shifted over.

It was a little clumsy at first, as for two drunk persons, but it began with a kiss and ended with him buried deep in my butthole, and then awakening in his bed.

I think we both knew that things had gone too far that night, but within a week we both wanted to repeat it. It was only a matter of time before my tiny servant’s bed was abandoned and I moved into his bed.

My locked shoes were set aside, although not discarded as perhaps they should have been. In fact we left our home and traveled together.

It seemed like a victory for both of us. He had taken a clump of male clay and fashioned it into a work of art that he could parade. I had secured my freedom, but instead found myself a slave to love.

I adored him. I still do. I thought our life was perfect. All I needed to do was to have a vagina constructed and then I could be all that he wanted. He paid. I bore the pain with joy. I was somebody new, and a better person.

I pictured us growing old together. Tell me if that is not love?

But love also blinds you to see the heart of your man wandering. He was never one to declare his love for me, but I knew it was there all the time, until it was gone. That was when I found that he had a young man imprisoned in the basement, freshly castrated.

I was horrified. He told me that he needed my help to turn her into a woman like me. He added that “she” might never be as perfect as me, but that he needed for it to happen. As I said, he can be stubborn and there was always the chance that he would act with impetuousness.

But I could not be a part of it. You can love a person but not their deeds, and this I could not live with. I packed up some stuff and told him that I was leaving.

He begged me to stay. He told me that I was part of him, that he had watched me grow and helped to make me somebody truly beautiful and good. He was right, but this was the very reason why I could not stay. I told him that I would keep his secret, although that weighed heavily on me, but I could not be a part of it. I told him that I was leaving and that was that.

I was no longer a young person. We had been together for years. But as I soon learned, my age was good for a woman like myself, who could never bear children. I have found a life for myself in the world.

But I have never stopped loving him. My heart has never wandered.

The heart is a curious thing.

The End

© Maryanne Peters 2022

Erin’s seed: Despite being forcibly feminized, he falls for his abuser, perhaps it is Stockholm Syndrome? I do like the idea of the pretty converted boy becoming an attractive older woman and daddy looking elsewhere. It would be like looking back at how she got there and talking of him drifting away because he gets off on the conversion. But she still loves him, Stockholm or not, and wants to keep him
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