Chapter 1: The Practice Run

I, my good friend Paul, a couple passing acquaintances, and several other people who were complete strangers to me were convinced by various of our friends to help them run one of those interactive entertainment events. We didn’t know our friends were associated with such a thing, nor had we ever heard of this one. We were invited to a free run-through of the event so that we would know how it was supposed to work. My wife Susan was pretty accepting of my participation, despite being told that the rules that forbade anyone not invited explicitly to accompany us. I sometimes went to gaming events and the like and was away for an afternoon or sometimes a weekend, and she had no interest in these activities. I always tried to make it up to her later with some “us” time.

For the run-through, I drove to a hotel where they had booked rooms for us on Friday night, just arriving in time to check in and sleep. Paul had made it there sooner, and was in bed but not asleep yet when I got to the room we shared. We met in the hotel’s restaurant in the morning, where everybody ate breakfast first. While the wait staff was clearing the dishes away, one of the hosts, Ken, gave a brief intro that promised us a fun, magical time. Another host then led us into an icebreaker to let us have a chance to meet the people we didn’t know. Before we left, each of us was given a bundle of something, each one of us getting different things, but we were told not to worry about them now; we would use them later. Mine included a pack of purple-backed cards that had clearly been ripped apart along perforations without bothering to trim the edges. They had weird designs on the faces, maybe puzzles of a sort.

Once that was over, it was time to hit the road. We used an exit from the hotel near the restaurant, not the one I entered through, each of us carrying a small suitcase and a tote bag or large purse. A few of us, who had picked up larger items after the icebreaker, carried them in a department-store shopping bag. Our hotel stay tonight was going to be elsewhere, and we’d been instructed in advance to separate our changes of clothes and such from what we needed during the day. We loaded the bags with our clothes into an SUV which would take them ahead to tonight’s hotel. They didn’t have a bus to take us to the other locations we would go, though; the hosts drove us in several of their cars. I was glad they were driving, because I didn’t even recognize the roads we followed as we left from this side of the hotel.

After a couple other stops, with some fun, some jokes, and some revelations about the things some of us carried, we arrived at a building that seemed like it was from another era, with bright-orange decor and a motif of semicircular arches everywhere, including on the walls over the door to every room. We went into one of the rooms, which had a second room connected behind it, and we went there and sat down. I had thought this building was a hotel, but the room we went into wasn’t furnished like the kind of room you sleep in; there were couches and armchairs in the front room and rows of stackable chairs in the back room, where we all sat to watch whatever was going to happen there.

Before I really got to see the show, one of our host group told me that our next couple stops had no bathrooms, so if I didn’t want to go behind a tree, I’d better go now. I’m not sure how he knew I needed to pee, but I acknowledged that I needed to. There wasn’t a bathroom in the suite we were now in, either; it was elsewhere in the building.

I went back into the room with couches, and was surprised to find that the exit had vanished. I waved my hand across the space in front of where I thought the door should be, remembering it had been under an arch coming in, and seeing only one such arch now. Another of the host group who was sitting nearby said, “Open, sesame!” and segments of the wall started moving and the door reappeared.

That was weird, but I exited the room and was surprised to find my friend Paul waiting outside. How had he gotten there? But I ignored that and he accompanied me as we followed signs to a set of restrooms. When we got there, though, after passing a women’s restroom, we found that the men’s room at the end of the hall had a big out of order sign on it.

“No worries, Mike,” Paul told me. He handed me the bag of stuff he picked up at the start and I looked into it to find a full head mask, a dress, and a bra with fake breasts in it.

“Seriously? This is clearly a setup, but I’ll play along.”

He stood guard at the open end of the otherwise empty hallway leading to the restrooms while I stripped down to my underwear, putting on the women’s clothes and stuffing my removed clothing back into the bag. When I had the clothes on, Paul returned to help me get the mask on, and then he held up a hand mirror which had also been in the bag. I was surprised how much the mask looked like my real face, though changing it in ways that made it distinctly feminine. The mask blended with the skin at my neck perfectly and was realistic enough to fool me, staring at a mirror from a foot away, though knowing where it ended, I could locate the edge of it by feel. It was surely enough to fool other people.

Properly attired, I went into the women’s restroom. There were four stalls, with the second and fourth occupied, so I went into the first stall. Since women didn’t stand to pee and I clearly had a neighbor, I sat down to do my business, pulling down my briefs and raising the skirt of the dress. Immediately after I did so, the woman in the stall next to me started talking.

“I know you have a secret desire to be a woman, just for a little while.”

I was shocked to hear her say this, since this was a secret I believed only my wife knew. If I could have, somehow, magically changed into a woman for real for a day, I knew I’d jump at the chance, and it was why I’d been willing to go along with this skit this far.

I had played dress-up, in private, since college. Then, as the student in charge of the co-op dorm’s lost-and-found area, I had snatched some women’s clothes I thought would fit me from the pile that had been there too long and I assumed would not be missed. Later I shopped for myself, in the guise of shopping for a girlfriend, carrying a list labeled “Julie’s sizes” as part of that cover. Some years later I had one labeled “Susan’s sizes,” in both cases using the name of my actual girlfriend at the time, so I could claim I was shopping for her on the off chance I ran into her in the store. Of course, the list actually had the sizes that I had learned, in part from those garments from college, actually did fit me.

When my now wife, then girlfriend, and I were sharing secrets, I spilled this one to her, all of it, and she was understanding. She later actually helped me in such shopping, and the dress-up became one of our options in the bedroom. But I had made it clear to her that this secret didn’t go beyond our bedroom. My body was far too masculine to make really look like a woman without serious, permanent changes, changes I wasn’t willing to undergo because I didn’t want to be a woman to the world. This was part of the reason I was amazed how well the mask had worked.

After I didn’t respond, the woman continued, “You can make your current appearance real. Just say the word, and you’ll really be the woman you look like now, for as long as you want. You can get your original body back just by willing the effect to end.”

I didn’t believe her, but she had already been in there, and knew who I was, and knew a secret I didn’t think anybody here knew, so this was clearly more of the setup, part of the event, somehow. So I said, “OK, make it real.”

A strange feeling came over me, and when I put my hands to my breasts, I found they were real, as much a part of me as my hands. The bra I was wearing was now a normal one, not a container for breast forms. Nor could I feel the edge of the mask around my neck. Down below I was really a woman, too, so instead of sitting just to fit in here, I was now sitting out of necessity, and got started peeing, relieved (in more ways than one) to find that the same instinctive action to release the flow that worked when I was a man also worked in this woman’s body, though part of the feeling was definitely different.

As I peed, the woman spoke again. “Everyone else will now remember you as Michelle, or Shelly to friends, until the effect ends, and nobody will know you were Mike, nor remember you were Michelle after it is over, unless you tell them. And you can reactivate it later if you like.”

“Thank you,” I told my unknown helper, as I cleaned up. As I went to pull up my briefs, I realized they had changed into women’s panties, so my costume, such as it was, was complete. Once I got my clothing reassembled, I also noticed the tote bag I was carrying had turned into a large woman’s purse, the kind Susan called a bucket bag. Still a little wary of what was going on, I grabbed the bag, washed my hands, and checked myself in the mirror, seeing only a somewhat large but not fat woman staring back at me. I wasn’t going to win any beauty pageant prizes, but nobody would have looked at me and seen a man in drag. I looked like a woman. I didn’t understand how it was possible, but the woman in the other stall was right. I wanted this, and I was going to stick with it, and not just turn it off immediately.

I exited the restroom, and Paul was still standing outside with the bag containing my other clothes, which he handed to me, saying, “Let’s get back before we miss any more, Shelly.” He didn’t suggest having me change back, as if he had forgotten what we just did. I had no way to know whether he had been coached or if it was real that one of my best friends now only remembered me as a woman. Nor did I have any idea what he now remembered about our actions just minutes ago. I was afraid to ask him, afraid I’d break the magic, because I knew the change was real.

I walked with Paul back to where the room had been, only to find the door missing again. I was pretty sure where it was supposed to be, based on the pattern of other doors in some of the arch shapes along the wall and the location of a sign pointing toward the restrooms. I stepped up to that arch and said “Open, sesame.” As I had hoped, the door reappeared in the wall in front of me, with our group inside.

Paul and I went in, and we’d missed whatever happened in that room, but we got back just as it was ending. I went with the group to two other locations within this maybe-a-hotel before we got back into the various cars we came in and our hosts drove us to another site. As much as I had felt that whole thing I’d just been through had been set up, I felt it doubly so when the next site was in a park with a building for public restrooms. Half the group was going in to use them before we started our activity. The whole “no restrooms ahead” thing had been a complete lie designed to get me to that particular restroom where the men’s room probably hadn’t really been out of order, but was just marked so in order to get me into the women’s.

Chapter 2: My Puzzle

After a couple other stops, I ended up in a car with only three of the hosts. The man who shared the back seat with me asked me to pull out those purple puzzle cards I had received at the start.

“Take a look at the card on top of the deck. It has a small number 1 at the bottom, and it has a pattern of lines.”

While I looked at the card, he continued for a bit, explaining how the pattern translated into the word WHAT.

“Each of the other cards has a number and a pattern like this that translates into a word. You’re going to lead the next session, giving each other member of your group one of these cards at random, but keeping card number 1 for yourself and demonstrating how it works for the group. Do you think you can do that?”

I practiced by explaining the WHAT card back to him. When he was satisfied with my explanation, he said, “Now stick that number 1 card in your pocket while you shuffle the rest of the cards real good, and then put number 1 back on top.”

I searched myself and realized the dress I was now wearing now didn’t have any pockets. He looked embarrassed not to have realized I might not have pockets, but didn’t try to correct his instruction. I had plenty of other ways to set that card aside, including handing it to him, but I remembered something I’d seen women do before, and slid it between my breast and my bra. With that card secure, I shuffled the other cards, and he finished giving me my instructions for the group. I returned the number 1 card to the top of the deck and slid the entire deck back in the small envelope they originally came in as we arrived at the next location.

There was another room set up for us with rows of stackable chairs, and once most of the people were seated, I started handing out cards, flipping the deck over so that the number 1 card was on the bottom of the deck. There were exactly enough cards, so number 1 was the one left over at the end. While I was doing this, the man who had instructed me in the car said, “I’m the Puzzler, and I have made a puzzle for you to solve, but Michelle, who is now handing out one card to each of you, is going to show you how to solve it.”

I returned to the front of the room, where they had a white board on wheels set up in front of the group, copied the design from my card onto the board, and explained how the puzzle worked.

“Most letters of the alphabet can be written with a kind of symmetry. That could be a left-right, top-bottom, diagonal, or rotational symmetry. Half of each letter is missing and needs to be reflected across such an axis of symmetry, but to make it tricky, you may be given parts from both sides of the axis. For instance, these two left-leaning slashes are reflected over this line to make a W. When you do this for the other shapes shown here, you get an H, an A, and a T, spelling WHAT. Is there anybody who needs more explanation how this works?”

A couple did, and I drew in both the axes of symmetry and the reflections for the other three letters. They confirmed they understood.

“Now begin. Each of you solve your own card, keeping the answers to yourself for now.”

While they worked, I wrote the numbers starting from 1 in four rows on the other side of the two-sided whiteboard. When I was done, I asked for a show of hands who still hadn’t solved their cards. There were only a few.

“OK, those of you still working can ask a neighbor who’s done with their card for help. Keep a hand up until you’ve solved the card.”

Once all the hands went down, as the Puzzler helped me turn the board around, I continued, “Each of your cards has a small number at the bottom. I have card number 1 and I want everyone to call our their words in order so I can write them all up here under their corresponding numbers.”

I moved to position number one and said and wrote “WHAT.” The others cooperated and read out their words. There were a couple pauses to get correct spellings, and one moment where someone had clearly solved their card incorrectly and gotten a word which didn’t fit in the context of the riddle the words were spelling out. His neighbors helped him quickly get the correct word, and we continued. When it was finished, I asked anyone who could solve the riddle to shout out the answer, and after less than a minute, one woman did.

The Puzzler then congratulated the woman who had solved it, said she was going to be our new Seeress, and took her aside while another host told jokes for a bit.

Chapter 3: Overnight

And so it went on through several more locations. We stopped for the night at a hotel, neither the orange building with the arches nor the one where the event started. A set of two-bed rooms had been reserved for us, our overnight bags waiting there already in the rooms. This time I was paired with Jan, one of the members of the group who I’d met before, but I didn’t realize it until she introduced herself as trans during the icebreaker, because I’d known her as Jake. Jan wasn’t the first trans-woman I’d met, but was the only one I knew of at this event. It seemed ironic that I’d been given the gift of being able to live for a while as a woman, when there was someone here who wanted to be a woman forever. She would have appreciated this gift much more; why didn’t she get it?

After we were in our room, I told her, “Jan, I have to confess something to you. I didn’t start today as a woman.”

“Say what?”

“Jan, remember that they’re giving each of us a gift, supposedly in return for helping them run this show?”

Jan commented, “Supposedly, right. I have gotten the feeling that this is the show, and we’re the participants.”

“You’ll only feel more that way when I explain my gift.”

“Go ahead, then.”

“My gift was these clothes and mask.”

“That’s a mask, really? It looks like I remember you, Shelly.”

“I haven’t always been Shelly. When I met you as Jake, I was Mike, even if you don’t remember it that way now. Even at the start of the event I was Mike. This outfit is magical, though even without the magic it did a better job than I thought possible of making me look like a woman. When I activated it, it actually changed me, through and through, into a woman, and it’s making you think I’ve always been a woman. I can make the effect end just by willing it, at which point it should turn back into only a very good costume. And while I enjoyed being a woman today, I don’t really want to live my life as a woman and it seemed unfair that I got this gift while you got whatever.”

I could see Jan was confused. She probably remembered something of Mike at this point but my presence as Michelle was making it hard for her to understand.

I took off the dress to show her my breasts were real in my bra. Then I willed the effect to end, and felt the same strange feeling as I once again became a man wearing fake breasts.

“Wow!” Jan exclaimed.

“You can see these are fake breasts now, right?”

“Not just that. Your panties turned into men’s briefs. You have body hair where you didn’t before. And I remember you now as Mike. You introduced yourself that way at the icebreaker and I knew you as Mike back when I was Jake. When you first told me you were Mike, I had a faint glimmer of that, but your presence here as Michelle was making me doubt that. Now I understand.”

“Yes. You see how powerful this gift is. Not only did it make me really a woman, it made everyone who knew me before think they’d always known me as a woman.”

I turned it on again, and confirmed that Jan now remembered that I was both Mike and Michelle, and then turned it off again.

“I haven’t actually received my gift yet,” Jan commented.

“Well take this,” I said, handing her the dress.

“Hmm, I don’t know if I want to be that much a woman,” Jan said.

After I took off the bra and mask and added those on top of the dress in her hands, Jan added, “On second thought, although it would make some things weird, it would actually fix a lot of stuff. I accept.”

Jan removed her dress right in front of me, and then took off her bra, revealing that she actually had small breasts, maybe A cup, probably due to starting hormone treatments to make them grow. She’d seemed to have larger ones while clothed, probably due to a padded bra. Those breasts didn’t get in the way, though, when she put on the bra I’d given her with its fake breasts. She was smaller than me, but the bra band had several positions for different sizes, more than I had ever remembered seeing on a bra, and she was able to fit it snugly around her torso. Then she put the dress I had just given her over it.

“Should I put on the mask, too? I wouldn’t want to be confused for Michelle.”

“Nobody else will remember Michelle. Though Michelle did look a bit like me and they might think you’re my sister.”

I helped Jan put on the mask. When it was on, I realized how much magic was in the mask alone. Not only did she not look like Michelle, she looked mostly like the same old Jan, except with some details in her face changed so that she looked more naturally feminine, rather than the way she had done up her face to try and make it look feminine.

“Go look at yourself in the mirror. You don’t look like Michelle at all.”

“Wow! I still look like me, only better. The way Jan should have looked without Jake’s face under it all.”

She took off the dress, and put on the dress she had worn earlier in the day, and looked at herself in the mirror that way.

“Look at me now!”

“Better.”

“Your dress is actually too large for me. You can see this one fits better.”

“It makes sense. My frame is larger than yours. This dress was sized for me. The magic didn’t change my size any; it just made the fake things real and changed my organs.”

“Speaking of which, I’m still fake over here. How do you turn it on?”

“Just will it. Say you want it.”

“Oh, I want to be a real woman!”

And I could tell it happened. Nothing really looked different; Jan still looked like Jan, the slightly more womanly Jan that she became after putting on the mask, but I saw her reaction. She had just felt what I did when I turned it on earlier today. She felt her breasts, even reaching inside her bra to touch them directly. She reached up under the skirt of her dress, and while I couldn’t see the details, clearly she was feeling her changed organs.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, Mike! You have given me the most wonderful gift anyone ever could.”

She came up and kissed and hugged me, which she immediately realized was awkward because I was still standing in only my briefs, so she pulled away and instead did a little dance around the room. She eventually settled down and sat on the edge of the bed, and I sat on the edge of the other bed facing her. She seemed speechless, so I filled the void.

“And that, Jan, is why I gave it to you. For me, it was ‘hey, thanks, this is nice’ and for you it was what you just did. You can turn it off the same way, if you ever want to.”

“I can’t imagine why I would. Everything works, right? You ate, drank, and went to the bathroom as Michelle, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And I clearly don’t need the dress, since I wasn’t wearing it. Do you want it back?”

“No, you keep it. I don’t really do this crossdressing in public thing myself, except today. To the extent I do it at all, it’s in the privacy of my home and my wife is the only one who knows.”

“OK. I do like the dress, except that it’s a size or two too large. I have someone who helps me with some of my clothes who could tailor this down to my size.”

“We do need to get to sleep. We have more of whatever this is tomorrow.”

I climbed right into bed, and Jan grabbed a nightgown from her overnight bag. She started to go into the bathroom to change, then decided I’d seen enough of her already that it didn’t really matter, and just turned her back to me as she removed her dress, then the bra (which was just a regular bra now, of course), put on her nightgown over it, and got into her own bed.

When we were dressing in the morning, Jan commented how odd it was that they had put us together.

I replied, “No, not really. They put the trans-woman together with the person who had this gift that let them be male or female. Both of the gender-confused people together meant the least amount of gender awkwardness.”

“That makes sense... if they knew about this when making the room arrangements,” Jan said.

“Of course they did,” I responded. “They knew everything about us. Heck, I would have had trouble staying as Michelle a second day since I didn’t bring along a change of female clothes. Unless my stored clothes changed while I was female. But no, don’t give it back to me to let me look; it’s not important enough to know.”

We rejoined the group for breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant. Everybody recognized me as Mike again, forgetting I’d been Michelle, save for Jan, of course, but including Paul.