AUTHOR’S NOTE: The following work is fiction. The characters mentioned herein are fictional as well and do not represent anyone living. Occasionally I might mention someone real, like Victor Hugo, but that is so I don’t have to create an entire pop culture in order to write this story. Some of the places are fictional as well.
The emotions are real.
I’m sure that all of us have heard the song. You know the one I’m talking about, or at least you should, since it is the title of this story.
I call it a story, but I would be lying if I called it untrue. It’s up to you to believe, especially since I gave this story to a friend to publish. I don’t know why I feel the need to publish my story, and by the end, maybe I’ll have some idea. Maybe, as well, one of you could tell me.
Right, the song. If I were a good author, I’d drag out the connection to the title. I’d make you work for it. You’d be reading along and suddenly you’d think, ‘Oh, so that’s what the title means.’
You would smile and consider yourself smart all the way through the rest of the story.
Well, I’m not a very good author. I am, however, rambling so let me get back…
It scares me. The song, I mean. No, not the song itself, but what it represents in my life, what it says about my future. That’s not even right. What I mean to say is...I am afraid this is all a dream.
I have never been one to be afraid of still being in a dream before. My dreams always have clues to the fact that they are dreams hidden within them. Like when I can jump over thirty feet into the air and I spend the entire dream leaping from place to place.
A dream imagery specialist might say that it has something to do with my desires to soar above the rest of humanity, but an underlying inability to trust in my own abilities. Personally, I just think it’s cool and that is likely why it really happens. Of course, recently I have begun to dream of flying…
I’m sorry. I have a tendency to babble when I’m nervous, and this all makes me very nervous.
I was born a girl. Not a traditional girl, maybe, but I was a girl all the same. Not what you expected, is it? I’ll get to that. You see, for the longest time everyone around me was sure I was a boy, and in fact I allowed them to shape my opinion of myself. When you spend a good time as a youth bullied by people both in the secular world and in the religious one, it isn’t too hard to begin to believe that some of what people are saying about you must be true.
When it gets to that point, the point where you believe what other people are saying about you more than what you think about yourself, then the war begins. You see, somewhere inside you is your self image. This is who your mind tells you that you are. Who you are is conventionally assumed to be somewhere between this self image and your perceived image, or what other people believe you to be.
a severe disconnect comes into play when your self image and perceived image are significantly different, or at least if you believe them to be significantly different, then you will be in for a world of mental anguish.
The more you push yourself to fit into the neat little box that the world wants to place you in, the more that it hurts to be in that box. And when you are bullied and they provide you with an image that is not only disparate but erroneous in comparison with your self image...then the pain never ends.
It is, however, a pain I thought that I would live with. The longer you are in pain, the less you realize that it is there. It’s not that it goes away, but that your mind recognizes it and then ignores it. Mental anguish is the same as physical anguish.
You only really notice pain when it changes, or so has been my own personal experience with the subject.
In my dreams, however, my life was perfect. In my dreams it was no longer my conscious mind in control. My castle on a cloud was not the child like fantasy that Cosette created for herself, but there were marked similarities.
People spoke kindly to me in my castle. They loved me for who I was, not who they wanted me to be. I wasn’t a boy or a man. I was myself as myself. Sometimes I was beautiful. Sometimes not. Always, though, I was happy. That was the castle that I developed for myself and kept locked away within, only to allow it out when I slept.
That all changed when I got sick. I didn’t dream much about anything, and when I did dream, they were delerium and nothing I would call happy or restful, impregnated as they were with the pain, new pain of course, that I felt while awake or asleep.
My muscles ached. I had a fever of 101, fahrenheit of course which is about 38 celsius. Nothing I ate would stay down and left me either back the way it entered or forcefully through the other end. I was miserable when I didn’t just pray for death.
You’ve all been there, I’m sure.
thing is, when you are sick like that for a week, you begin to worry about your liFe, and wonder if it’s not more than just a cold, or at least I did.
“Well, Mr. Carson, it looks like you’ve lost close to fifty pounds since your last checkup.” The doctor said overly cheerfully. I just glared at him.
“I see here that you have a temperature at 101. How long has that been going on?”
“Since Thursday...”
“Usually a fever is only…”
“Of last week,” I concluded with another glare. This wasn’t my usual GP, and I had to say that I really didn’t like this guy.
“Oh...well...what other symptoms do you have?”
“Vomiting, diarrhea, significant weight loss…”
“You’ve lost this weight in the past week?” He was getting a little shocked now. I smiled weakly at him and nodded.
“Ok, well, get changed into this gown and let’s have a look at you.”
He left me in the room and I changed into the gown. I call it a gown, but it is actually a device of torture, especially when you’re over six feet tall with a long torso. Or it had been before I tried it on that time. Where the gown normally only fell to around mid thigh, it went almost to my knees.
“This is weird,” I said just as the doctor re-entered the room.
“What is?”
“Did you get longer gowns?”
“What do you mean?”
“Normally they’re shorter than this.” This seems to be about 3 or 4 inches longer than usual.”
“Spend a lot of time in hospital gowns?”
“Well, I got my gallbladder out not too long ago, and there was the time in the ER before that for gallstones...so I’ve been in them a fair amount over the past few years.”
“Well, as far as I know these are standard issue.”
“Out of curriosity, how tall does it say I am in there?”
“Six three.”
I grumble a bit. I’ve never gotten an accurate measurement, with it fluctuating from six one to six four. I am as tall as people who are 6’5”, so I have to assume that the fluctuation has a lot to do with the fact that I have a bad back. Mainly, it has to do with the fact that one of my legs is two inches longer than the other, which skews my hips. So, even when I stand up straight, I’m never standing up straight.
“How about we measure that?” I said.
We walk out to hallway and I get back up on the scale again. I stand up straight, and I don’t have to really push myself to keep things straight.
“This can’t be right,” the doctor said after a moment. He adjusted my feet a bit and then checked my back. He measured again. He looked through the notes and then called out, “Nurse Plinket? Could you come here for a moment?”
They conversed quietly for a moment and then measured me again.
“Is there a problem?”
“We must have made a mistake before,” the nurse said.
“Yes, you did. I’m six five.”
They both looked a little embarrassed. “We show you as six foot even.”
“Look, I know that I measure differently. The left side of my body is bigger than the right. See…” I put my hands together to do my normal measure trick. They were the same size.
“That’s not right,” and then I tried it again.
“Excuse me for a moment…”
I rush back to the room and lift the gown to check out...things. I screamed.
“What in the hell?” I yelled.
“Mr. Carson?”
“My...they’re…”
I couldn’t bring myself to say it, but they were small. When I say that the entire left side of my body was bigger than the right, I mean the whole thing. My left testicle was normal sized but my right was significantly undersized, or at least that is how it was before that moment.
Both of them were the same small size as my right used to be, or I should say still was.
“This can’t be happening,” I said, “None of this can possibly be real.”
It’s not really that I was attached to the appendage, but it’s more like I was used to it. I explained things to the doctor, whose name I still didn’t know, proceeded to poke and prod me. He listened to my breathing and heart. Checked my blood pressure and did a lot of humming and hawing. The only comment I remembered during this whole thing was, “You seem to have lost more weight around your abdomen that anywhere else.”
After he was done examining me he sat down to write down his notes, “You didn’t mention your hair loss.”
I blushed, “I shave my body.”
“That would leave stubble, even after a few hours. I couldn’t detect any stubble, and in fact there were no visible follicles that I could see.”
Everything he said was filtered through a daze. He mentioned trying a different diet to try and reduce the weight loss and in general suggested things that I had already been trying over the past week. He gave me a couple of prescriptions, which I filled, and then I went home to go back to sleep.
I think I woke up a couple of times in the middle of the night to expel more, and I remember marvelling that after a week of eating basically nothing that I still had something to throw up. I wobbled back to bed each time, barely aware of my surroundings and stumbled into bed.
For the first time I can remember I had no dreams, or at least no dreams I can remember. My alarm went off at 6:30 in the morning, like it usually does. Even if I was asking for time off work, that doesn’t mean I would turn off my alarm. I was giving my boss an update on a daily basis, letting him know I wasn’t dead...yet.
The first thing I noticed that morning was that I felt light. No, not light headed, but light. Before all this mess started I had a tendency to over-eat. It was a coping method for depression that I learned from my mom. I had capped out at a massive 320 pounds. I moved a lot easier than I had in as long as I could remember.
“How are you feeling, honey,” my wife said from the other side of the bed.
“I’m feeling a lot better,” I replied. There was something off about my voice. She rolled over and looked at me, her eyes widened and she screamed.
“What is it?” I said getting worried.
“Who are you and what are you doing in my room,”
“Sam, it’s me Bill.”
“You’re not my husband.”
“Of course I am.” It registered that my voice was higher pitched than I was used to, and...softer? I’m not sure how to describe it, but that wasn’t exactly correct.
“Ok, so if I’m not your husband, how did I get him out of here in the middle of the night without help?”
“Maybe he went willingly,” she said looking me up and down.
“I am Bill Carson.”
“I just don’t believe you.”
“I always believed that I was a girl inside, and I told you about it when we lived in our first apartment.”
“Bill..?” she said in a little bit of wonder and then began laughing. “I must be dreaming.”
“What is wrong with how I look?”
Still laughing she turned on the light and pointed to the mirror in our headboard. My hair was a mess and reached at least to the middle of my back. It was always something I checked first and usually with more than a note of disappointment.
My intake of breath was audible, because the changes didn’t end there. I could still see myself in my face in the curve of my eyebrows, my blue eyes with the familiar flecks, and the moles and other imperfections in my skin.
The skeletal structure underneath was different. It’s not that my skin sagged either. My lips were just a bit fuller and my cheekbones were just a touch higher. My jaw wasn’t as square and my nose was...cute.
My heart began to race as I started to realize what I was seeing. I was used to being able to see my chest, but that was normal with how big I’d been. Looking at myself in the mirror, I couldn’t help but notice that I had a waist. I put my hands to my sides and pulled in the top I was wearing. It made other things much more prominent and I had to tear off my shirt to get a better look.
I was used to the fat rolls, and these were definitely not fat rolls.
I put my hands to the flesh extending from my chest and I could feel it from both sides, both the feel of it in my hands and the feel of my hands on my...breasts
“I have breasts,” I said in awe. “If this is a dream, then it is one for both of us.”
“I never said it was a dream, just that I had to be dreaming. This is a nightmare.”
“Sam…”
“How could you do this to me?”
“Do what? I got sick. It’s a weird side effect…”
“You look and sound like a woman. What sort of illness causes that?”
I opened my mouth to reply, but then I shut it again. I had no answer for her, and even worse, I had no answer for myself. On the web, there are stories about this sort of thing happening to people. Oh, I know, they’re all just that, stories. They answer the tough questions by either making only the one who was changed aware of it, or they gloss over all of the details that really screw with you.
Legally, I no longer existed. Well, I should say that Bill Carson no longer existed. I might have grown up male, but who would believe me if I said it. I had a thought which a quick look into my boxers resolved.
I was, or all intents and purposes female.
“This could be a good thing,” I said quietly.
“How is this good? I wanted to have more children.”
Sam was crying and I wrapped her in my arms. It was a new experience hugging someone and having my breasts pancaked between us. Sam noticed as well and pulled away.
“We’ll get through this,” I said even though the words sounded hollow even to me.
“How? Do you even still have a job?”
“I don’t know, but I need to get ready.”
I took a quick shower and then washed my hair. I wasn’t used to having this much hair yet and unfortunately I didn’t think about how much longer it would take to wash and rinse it. I was just getting out of the shower and drying off my hair with a towel, as I was used to doing, when Sam came in with some bits of cloth in her hand.
“What’s this?”
“You need some support.” she said and walked out. It was one of her sport’s bras and I slipped it on. She was narrower in the chest than I was, but the garment fit. You could still tell that I had breasts, but they were definitely minimized.
I slipped on a clean pair of boxers and then got one of my shirts and a pair of my shorts. At the time I wore sandals, so I just made the strap tighter and they remained in place, mostly. I grabbed my lanyard and ran out the door to where my wife already had the engine running on the car.
We drove to work in silence and my nervousness only increased. Just before I got out she wordlessly handed me a scrunchie. I put my hair up in a high ponytail as I walked.
One of the things I’ve noticed in the past is that as long as you look and act like you belong, no one will question you. I slipped into my seat at my desk and logged into my computer. I had everything pulled up and I was signed into the phones before my supervisor walked up behind me.
“Welcome back,” he said from behind me.
“Thanks,” I grumbled.
“Not fully over it. I guess?”
“I’m a bit hoarse, I think,” I said.
“What’s with the hair?” he asked.
Of all the times that I really just wanted him to walk on, he had to stay here behind me.
“Um...I’m going through transition.”
“What?”
I turn around and look at him in the eye, “I’m transgendered. I’m going to start coming to work dressed as the woman I feel I am.”
“Ok, just make sure it doesn’t interfere with your work.”
That was it. He walked back over to his desk and I began working. The phone system was turned on shortly after that and I began taking phone calls, like I normally do. My job was fun, or at least I thought it was. Of course I got a lot of really weird, or I should say understandable, responses to my name.
“Thanks for calling BigWeb, my name is Bill. How can I help you?”
“Did you say Jill?”
“Sure. How can I help you?”
Apparently my voice sounded feminine. So much so that they supplied a name that, to them, fit. Since I was feminine, now at least, I accepted it and moved on. This seemed to happen on call after call, and my confidence grew as the day progressed.
“Bill, could you put your phone in meeting mode and meet me in HR.”
“Is something wrong?”
My supervisor just looked at me and I followed him to the back of the call center where the offices were.
“You’re not in trouble, I just wanted you to know that.”
“Doesn’t feel like I’m not in trouble,” I said with a smile.
He looked at me and then did a double take.
“If I hadn’t been listening to you all day…”
“What?” I said worried.
“You look really different.”
“I lost about a hundred pounds, I think, with that illness.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“It just made me re-evaluate some things in my life. This is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, and I figured that there was no time like the present.”
“Well, I have to say that if I didn’t know, and I just met you on the street, that I would never be able to tell that you weren’t a normal female.”
I scowled at him, even though inside I was bouncing around in a happy dance.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. You’re the first person like you I’ve ever met.”
“Are you sure?” I asked with a smirk.
“Well, no, I can’t be sure,” he said after a moment or two looking me up and down.
We got to HR and he held the door for me. I walked in and smiled at the strict looking woman behind the desk. My supervisor walked in behind me. “What’s going on here, Troy?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I wanted you to bring that tranny-freak in here so I could go over the corporate policy with him.”
I began to scowl at the woman, shooting dagger at her with my eyes. Troy just began to laugh.
“This isn’t a joke, Troy. We take this policy very seriously here.”
“Oh, I imagine you do...Sylvia” I said after a quick glance at the name plaque on her desk. My words dripped with saccharine sweetness.
“And you are?” she said turning to me.
“Why, I’m the tranny-freak,” I said with a little smile on my face, “and I’d love to hear about the equal opportunity policy that you want to share with me.” My smile was genuine now and I watched as her face went grey.
“I didn’t mean…”
“So, what is this policy where you can berate me behind my back?” I said, my smile faded and I was glaring at the woman now.
“I’m sorry Mr. Carson…”
“Mrs,” I say and there is liquid nitrogen in my voice now.
“What?”
“I’m a married woman. By definition that makes me Mrs.”
Her mouth is open and she closes it with a snap. “but…”
“My wife is listed as a dependant on my accounts.”
“So you’re a lesbian as well? This day just keeps getting better.”
“Actually, I’m presentationally heterosexual.”
“Excuse me?”
“No, I won’t sorry. Bigotry like yours has no excuse.”
“Bill, I don’t think…”
“No, no, let him speak,” she said with a gleam in her eyes now.
“Do you have a boss, Sylvia?”
“You know it’s Frank.”
“Would you mind calling him in here?”
She glared at me again and I smiled and leaned against the wall and waited. She uttered a few terse phrases into the phone and then we waited in a buzzing silence for Frank Harrison to come join us.
“Hey Troy, Bill, Sylvia. What’s up?”
“Hello, Frank,” I said with a warm smile. He did a double take and then a broad grin appeared on his face. “It’s about time. Come and give me a hug, girl!”
Frank was like that. He was about eighty, and still came in to work because he just loved his work. He sort of acted like a father/grandfather to everyone and anytime there were layoffs he handled them personally. No one ever had to be escorted out by security. People felt more sorry for him having to tell them they were fired than for being fired.
“I knew there was something special about you, girl. For the longest time I thought you were gay, but then I met your wife, and you never struck me as the bi-sexual type.”
“Presentationally Heterosexual all the way, Frank.”
“Better not keep hugging you or you might get ideas,” he said with a smirk. Did I say grandfather? I think I meant dirty uncle.
He was joking, though, and I knew it. Sylvia was glaring at me the whole time.
“Frank, I wanted you here as a witness. Apparently Sylvia feels that it is fine to be bigoted at work.”
I have never seen Frank look so pissed off, and I was glad that he didn’t turn his glare at me. “Is what she’s saying true?”
“You’re taking this out of context. He came in here, looking like that, and heard me say something to Troy. I didn’t know it was him and told troy that it wasn’t funny not to bring the transvestite in with him when I needed to go over policy.”
Frank turned to me, “First, I think it’s a little weird to keep calling you ‘Bill’ when you look like this. Do you have a different name?”
“Cosette,” I said in a small voice.
“You are no small thing, no matter what your name is,” he said with a big smile.
“So, Cosette, is that what she said that prompted you to call her bigoted?”
“Actually, Frank, she called Cosette a ‘tranny-freak’.” Troy said.
“You WHAT!” Frank said, turning on Sylvia so fast that I took a step back.
“Do you have any idea what your comments could mean for this company? Talking about her using male pronouns was bad enough, but to use a pejorative term like that?” He turned and put a forced smile on his face, “Cosette, I’ll talk to you later. Troy.”
We walked out the door and he shut it behind us. He then put down the blinds. We heard him lay into her and quickly beat a retreat. We began to laugh as soon as we were out of earshot. It was more the relIef that we survived than that we found anything about the situation funny. “So, if what I understood is the case, you’re interested in guys when you look like a girl?”
“Basically, yes.”
“You sound like Bill, word choice and all, but it’s as if a girl were speaking the words.”
“Troy, I am a girl, woman, you know what I mean.”
“I do, and I’m glad, about the whole liking guys thing. Would have been a shame if you were a lesbian.” He walked off as soon as he finished, leaving me with quite a few unanswered questions. Unfortunately by this point he was out on the call floor, and I almost felt as if I couldn’t broach the subject with him out there.
I was never this indecisive when I was pretending to be a guy.
“Troy, you know you’re married, right?”
“Sure, but so are you. It makes you sort of safe.”
“Troy, I’m not safe at all. I’m married to a woman who is decidedly heterosexual.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It means that I’m likely not going to remain married, and while I might not be bothered by your attentions, I’m sure your wife would have a problem with it.”
Troy laughed and walked back to his desk. I was just sitting down when I noticed an email in my inbox asking me to come back and talk to Sylvia and Frank again.
I got up and went back to the office. The door was open again and I walked in.
“Have a seat, Colette.”
I sat down and looked at the two other people in the room. Sylvia refused to meet my gaze.
“First off, just to let you know, you need to be under the care of a registered therapist of some sort,” Frank began.
“Um...I don’t have a therapist.”
“That’s what I was a bit afraid of. The company wants to protect itself from frivolous action, but it wants to also provide a safe environment for everyone, no matter their background or beliefs.”
“So, what do I do?”
“The company will put you on unpaid leave for the next week. If you can bring in documentation that you’re under a doctor’s care in that time frame, then we can work with you.”
“What if I can’t?”
“Then you give up this foolishness and stop pretending to be something you’re not,” Sylvia said with a sneer.
There was something that was certain. If I wasn’t able to bring the company what it needed in the next week, I would be personally suing Sylvia. If it were left to Frank, I felt there might be a chance of him giving me some leniency, but with her there…
“I believe that mental health is covered under our insurance?”
“It is, actually,” Frank said with a smile.
“I’ll need a list of the therapists in network and I’ll get working on getting this resolved.” I grabbed my phone from my desk, logged out of the systems and called my wife to pick me up. It was only while I was waiting there for her to arrive that something occurred to me: I was going to have to convince a therapist that I was a man transitioning into a woman when I was actually a man who had somehow spontaneously transformed into a woman.
“Now what am I going to do?” I said to myself quietly.
Comments
very interesting beginning.
thank you for sharing this!
Castle on a cloud
Actually I've never heard of it, sorry.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
I Hadn't Either...
Wikipedia says it's from Les Misérables.
Eric
I'm too low-brow
For that stuff, I guess.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
Hi Faeriemage!
I just started reading this one, and I'm just wondering? Is this a new strain of flu? And where can one come in contact with it? (LOL). Happy for Bill / Cosette, sad for his wife Samantha though. She may have known about his inner girl, about certainly would never have expected such a sudden transformation. Still interested so on to the next chapter I go! (Hugs) Taarpa
Ah the Usual suspects
The Bigot in HR never would have seen that coming, Well actually probably more frequent than we know.
There is an Anime 'Castle in the Sky' that you seemed to be talking about at the beginning or maybe it is just that we watched it in the last week that made me put that and your story together.
Both leave me breathless, but so many things do that these day just 6 more weeks till the birth of these children. At least they seem to be kicking a bit nicer not quite so hard. Of course I just may be getting used to it .
Thanks for the wonderful entertainment.
Goddess Bless you
Love Desiree
Awkward!
That's probably the most suitable adjective for most of the scenes in this chapter: Bill's initial feelings, the illness, the doctor's appointment, the realisation, the calls at work, the HR meeting, and now the realisation that as if spontaneously turning into a woman wasn't impossible enough, finding a therapist who a convincing cover story can be spun to...
It also highlights a problem with spontaneous magical transformations: if the transformative agent doesn't take care of the transformee's legal identity as well, it's likely to cause problems...
Meanwhile, for those unfamiliar with Les Mis, here's the song in question (from last year's movie version). Essentially, young Cosette has been adopted by the Thénardiers (very corrupt innkeepers) and basically treated like a slave (victimised, abused, starved, dressed in rags - you get the idea) - hence her dreaming of living in a castle where she doesn't have to sweep floors and a lady in white looks after her.
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
Awkward?
To me, the tone of this piece says “author at play.” It is a very interesting feel, in light of it following a blog announcement that there would be no more TG fiction from Faeriemage, and that the already existing TG fiction would soon be pulled off. I sense a spirit of rebellion in this, and it makes me smile. :D
I agree with Des, Breathless is a good word for this.
It's just the start of this story and already I'm enjoying it. I love the stream of consciousness style you'e doing here and it readily reminds me of some of my fave writers here.
Very entertaining, I'll definitely try and read more.
*Great Big Hugs*
Bailey Summers