Chapter Three: A Red Letter Day

Showers. They’re different for girls. Now, I’m not talking about some soft-porn shower room scenario here, but outside of keeping clean there are strict limits to how far I’d explored my new body. It was at moments like this that the shock of contrast really hit me. OK, not just moments like this. I’d been post-hypnotically conditioned to be scared of spiders. I was starting to wonder if I’d also been post-hypnotically conditioned to never quite get used to my condition. I kept thinking I was getting used to things, a few hours, a day, sometimes even two would pass and then the utter contrast between what I once was and who I had become would hit me like a breaker crashing onto rocks. The trigger this time was when I realised that my breasts had become full enough that I had to lift them up and clean underneath or fall victim to sweaty boob syndrome. The curse of care and upkeep of my curves had struck. I was going to have to do this for the rest of my life.

Or maybe not. I realised. Soon, even the right to take care of my own body might be a thing of the past. A month from now I might be sharing a shower with Vincent Dacre, looking up at him as he soaped my small, soft body all over, possessively, smoothly, carefully, his big rough hands roaming freely, heating me up for, for...for something that would mean I needed another shower! I emitted a little groan.

“April, are you OK?”

I jumped and turned scarlet. Kirsty’s concerned face was peering at me.

“Uh, just easing the shoulder muscles.” I lied. I hope she believed me. I hope she hadn’t heard the moan. I wasn’t sure if that groan was fear or despair or something else. Really. Honestly.

“OK, well, be careful. If you think you’ve got a strain Mrs Davis will let you cry off the game you know. She’s not an ogre, for all that she barks at people. In fact she’s really nice underneath.”

I believed her, but right now the gym teacher was the least of my worries. What was happening to me? My first day of school as a girl was always going to be a strain but so far I’d suffered nervousness, anxiety, tears, mood swings and now inappropriate shower thoughts. I surely couldn’t go on like this. I fled the shower as soon as I’d got the last of the soap off me, towelled off vigorously, thanking heavens that at just past shoulder length my hair was still short enough that I could mousse it damp and leave it to its own devices. Then I fled down the corridor still blushing furiously. I hadn’t made it to my next class before it happened.

A painful cramp hit me, like a jab to the kidneys and I winced. Something suddenly wasn’t right in my abdomen – not exactly painful but distinctly uncomfortable. I ran the rest of the way to the bathroom, locked myself in a stall and sat down. I didn’t need to go. So what did I need, what the heck was going on? That’s when I noticed the tiny darker spots against the purple of my knickers.

I was having my first period.

I sat there a long time and let it sink in. I was having my first period. Like the Lady of Shallott, the curse had come upon me. Mother Nature was punishing me for not yet having made her Grandmother Nature. The lining of my womb was renewing itself, so that it would be ready to have a fertilised egg – my egg- settle in it to grow into a baby. I said it four or five times in different ways just trying to accept what I couldn’t possibly deny.

Yet again I’d been served up with indisputable proof that I really, truly was a girl. No, I was a woman. I could have babies. The chances were I would have babies. Vincent Dacre’s babies. A teenage boy who I didn’t even know yet was going to impregnate me as part of his insane well-meaning control freak parents’ plan to buy him the perfect life and he didn’t even know it yet. What the Hell was I going to do? I think that was the point where I realised I was crying.

I let myself cry for a little. The traumas of the last year or so had taught me that sometimes tears could be a relief and whether the reason was trauma or hormones they came easier nowadays. Then I pulled myself back together. There’s a fine line between a therapeutic weep and becoming a cry baby and I was determined not to cross it. Vincent was only a teenager and hopefully headed for University. Provided I remembered to take a few elementary precautions it would be years before the workings of my new womb became an issue for the purposes of anything other than PMS. Take that, Mother Nature!

And who knew, there might still be a way out of this. I frankly doubted it, but still. Or Vincent might not want children, or – a hundred things might save me.

And if not? Then I would scream and pray and rage and curse God and the Dacres and the Organisation and the hour that I was born and the night on which it was said, ‘There is a child conceived’ . And after that?

Then I would love my children, never, ever let anything hurt them and never let on that the mere thought of them had once been enough to send me into hysterics. I would do everything I could to ensure they were raised in a stable, happy home. Children didn’t ask to be born. They deserve every bit of love and support and help we can give them, whatever the cost. Yes, I am aware I am both over-protective and over-emotional when it comes to parenting. I’m an orphan, it goes with the territory. Sue me.

Oh my God! They knew! They knew I’d react like this!

I suddenly realised that this had probably been a factor in the Dacres’ decision to pick me. The Organisation, whatever else could be said about them, knew everything about manipulating human psychology, so they knew that I was a deeply unlikely candidate to ever neglect or hurt a child. I started laughing, because I had to laugh or cry and I’d cried more than enough. I, the former Adam Bell, thrustingly ambitious and successful salesman, womaniser, black belt in Shi-Kon Karate was sitting with my knickers round my ankles in a girls’ bathroom because someone had looked at me and known I’d try my best to be a good mother.

With the mental conditioning the Organisation had given me, embarrassment meant I became turned on. I braced myself for a knee-trembling burst of lust – and didn’t get one.
I wasn’t ashamed, I realised. I wasn’t ashamed at all. Being a good parent was a good thing to be. Granted I’d be the father if I had my choice, but I didn’t. But male or female, being a good parent was a thing to be proud of.
Of course, first, I had to get my man! That did get my knees trembling. The whole concept still gave me the willies. Pun unintended!

I focussed on what I knew about Vincent Dacre, casting my mind back to the day his parents had taken me to their home and let me loose in his room so that I could scope out his secrets and learn everything about my target as part of the great sales campaign that he could never, ever find out was being aimed at him.....

I have never seen anyone with this big and this varied a music collection was my first thought as I stepped into Vincent Dacre’s room and nearly tripped over the guitar leaning against the bottom of the bed as if it had been hastily put down by someone who’d been strumming away up until the very final moment before they left. Even from across the room I could see the mass of shelved DVDs that lined the whole of the far wall. Vincent appeared to have everything. Rock, indie, heavy metal, thrash metal, rave, acid house, folk, country, Country and Western, Blues, pop, punk, the Clash, Fugazi, Chagall Guevara, Kate Bush, Fairport Convention, Johnny Cash, Kenny Rogers, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Muddy Waters, Nirvana, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, – the only things missing, so far as I could see were rap and trad jazz. They were probably stacked under the bed.

“I’m so sorry about the mess.” Mrs Dacre murmured from behind me. “He doesn’t like me poking about in his room, even to tidy it; you know how boys are.”

Since I used to be one, yes, I do. I thought but all I said was

“Please don’t worry about it. I’ve seen far worse.”
“I’ll leave you to it then. And please don’t let the mess put you off. I’m sure you’ll be a civilising influence.”

I certainly hope so I thought, as the door closed behind me Since I’m going to be responsible for clearing up after him, and something tells me you’re going to be the sort of mother-in-law who’s more house proud about your son’s place than about your own. Argh! OK, that’s a later problem. Focus!

The walls that weren’t devoted to music had bookshelves flanking a little computer table, but the books seemed to have bred on the shelves; they overflowed into teetering piles scattered everywhere like the spoor of some giant beast that crapped literature. A look at the titles revealed, at first, absolutely no discernible theme. History, Shakespeare, Dickens, fantasy, science fiction, historical literature, legends, thrillers, politics, mingled indiscriminately.
I was going to have to widen my circle of interests. Either that or perfect a wide-eyed “You’re so clever, tell me more” look.

The second was probably easier, but life would be more fun if I genuinely made an effort to take an interest in his interests. Of course, I could still use the second method to learn. Would he be pleased or not if I took notes when he was talking? Ok, that was completely over the top! Maybe I was getting a little light headed what with all I’d been through.

I looked under the mattress. No porn mags. Hey, maybe he really was classy! Or maybe his imagination did better things than a photographer could. Or maybe, not growing up in an orphanage – oh, I’m sorry ‘Childrens’ Home’ – he had unsupervised internet access and didn’t need to shell out for magazines the way a lot of the lads in the Home had done.

No, not me. I’d always worried about how a girl would feel if she saw me with them. Having subsequently been the subject of some very dubious photos for The Organisation’s sales brochure had only confirmed my opinion. Nothing else was under the bed either except more books, a lost plectrum and a sock that had obviously gone there to die.

I moved a mingled mass of old books and suppurating clothes from a chair and stood on it to access the top cupboard. Too tall for me or his mother to reach unaided, surely this was where he would keep the incriminating secrets that would tell me the way into his affections. A mass of odds and ends nearly fell on me and an exercise book bounced off my head as I frantically crammed things back into place, none of them, as far as I could see, of any interest to me. Stepping down from the chair – a chair, I realised, that Vincent wouldn’t have needed to reach the cupboard You really are going to be the little woman a voice whispered in my head – I picked up the exercise book.

Paydirt. Or at least, a start. It was full of poems – some of which were song lyrics really, judging from the repetition and non sequiturs – interspersed with musings on various topics obviously written by Vince himself. And those topics, as you’d expect, included women! Now, all I had to do was find Vincent’s ideal woman, mould myself into her and I was all sorted. There is something so profoundly wrong with this idea that the mind boggles. But then it wasn’t my stupid idea in the first place, I’m just doing as I’m told. Which I hope isn’t part of being Vincent’s ideal woman.

A few poems later, I wasn’t entirely sure. The lyrics or verses or whatever were ambiguous, but there were plenty of references to sweepings off of feet, passionate ravishing, ties of love etc to make two things certain.

Firstly, he liked brunettes. Hurrah! At least I wasn’t going to have to go blonde.

Secondly, unless he lived entirely in imaginings that he didn’t dare put into practice – and if he did it was my job to overcome that – then the first girl to truly inspire Vincent Dacre was going to be subjected to a level of burning, passionate, possessive desire that would leave her –me! - not only breathless, but sitting down carefully for months.

On the other hand better to be a young man’s darling than an old man’s slave. Or is that the other way round? Wait, slave, oh no!

Dropping to my knees I burrowed under the bed again. I must have subconsciously noticed the first time round and blanked it because now I knew what these books under the bed were.
“Oh no! Why me?!”

Copies had circulated round the Home, usually worn half to pieces and inclined to fall open at certain passages. They were a series of fantasy novels written by a teeth-grindingly bad writer whose butchering of the English language could only be justified by the fact that apparently in real life he was a professor of German philosophy who spoke English as a second language. It didn’t matter, no one read his books because they thought he was a good writer, it was purely and entirely because of the plot – and with a few minor alterations in detail it was the same plot in book after book.

On a pre-technological world a beautiful woman, either one from that world or brought from Earth by aliens for their own purposes, it made no difference which, was enslaved. She would be locked into a metal collar with her name and that of her new owner engraved on it. Usually her name would be changed just to make it clear to her that she was just an animal now. She would be branded, literally, with a red hot iron. Then she would be stripped, or given a very brief, translucent piece of cloth as her only clothing, then whipped, then...well, you get the general idea.

Invariably, usually in identical, pedantically precise, unnaturally stiff, dull terms, the girl would be raving about how much she loved all this by the end of her first good orgasm. That wasn’t even the worst of it. The worst of it was what dull lives the girls seemed to lead after this point, rarely saying anything other than “Yes Master” or “No Master”.

So, did Vincent read these because they were around and they were books about sex, a topic in which any healthy adolescent has an unhealthy interest, or did he want to...had I just discovered the real reason why none of his relationships lasted? Was I doomed to be just a plaything? Submissive, humiliated, displayed, docile, obedient? The whole idea was just so...so.. Embarrassing.
“Oh no!”

I was vulnerable to any kinky desires Vincent had in the worst possible way. Firstly, I didn’t dare run or resist. Secondly, and far, far worse, the Organisation’s brainwashers had tied my sexual desires to my sense of embarrassment. Every time I got embarrassed, I got turned on. I’d thought nothing could be more embarrassing than being a girl. What about being a slave girl?

Sure enough, I could feel, even without slipping a finger inside those oh, so embarrassing frilly lace knickers I wore, that I was wet. Wet and ready for whatever my new lord and literal Master, whether he knew it or not, wanted to do to me. I was going to be a cook in the kitchen, a lady in the drawing room and a –
“I am not a whore!” I admonished myself, ignoring the warm throbbing that seemed to have crept into a vital part of my anatomy and the twinge in my stomach.

“I am a good person. That means I will do the only good thing open to me in my situation and try to make this poor boy, whose parents are helping a complete stranger to manipulate him by letting me in here, happy. And if I have to be passionate, abandoned and –and-and- spanked, to do it, so be it!”

And the fact that you are actually trembling a little with emotion at the thought has nothing to do with that decision whispered my inner voice.
“Well, of course not. That tremble is mostly fear.” I murmured aloud
Sure. .
I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that my inner voice was a meanie.

Abandoning the memory and focusing on the here and now, trapped in a girl’s bathroom , I decided I was probably worrying unnecessarily. Vincent might not be into this kind of thing on any scale to worry about. After all, I’d read a couple of the same books and I wasn’t. In any case, it didn’t matter, what I had to work out was how to get close to him. Unless any bright ideas or handy encounters came up I would have to start with either books or music. I was going to have to find out when his next gig was and in the meantime get cracking on reading some of the books I’d seen in his bedroom - when I wasn’t stalking him through the corridors waiting for a chance to do a smile and a hair flip at him without looking like a stalker.

Or I could just go up to him and say something submissive, if I really wanted him to think I was crazy.
“Yes Master, no Master, three bags full Master.” I murmured derisively.

“April?”

“Ahhh!” I shrieked and nearly jumped out of my skin, flushing a fiery crimson. Someone else was in the bathroom!

“Who’s that?!”

“It’s me, Maddy. I got worried when you didn’t meet me in the library. Are you all right?”

Oh Lord, please, please don’t let her have heard me! How loud did I say that? What possessed me to say it at all?

“I – I’m alright, I’m just stuck. I’m sorry, I did mean to meet you.”

“It’s OK, really. I was just a bit worried about you. Shall I fetch the nurse? Are you ill?”

“Not exactly. My, my period started and I haven’t got...anything” I finished lamely.

“Don’t worry. I have.” I heard the sound of Maddy rummaging in her capacious ethnic bag and the inevitable clatter of items falling to the floor. Thank goodness this was a girls’ bathroom; if it had been a boys one then she really wouldn’t have wanted to pick any of them up again.

“Are pads OK?”

“Yes! Oh thank you Maddy, you are a life saver. I feel like such an idiot, I just wasn’t expecting this.” A moment’s awkward fumbling and I could emerge, safe in the knowledge that I wasn’t going to leak through my knickers and leave a bloody trail everywhere I went. Periods are proof positive that God is a man!

I was still almost purple with embarrassment. I just prayed to the God I now considered a sexist brute that Maddy hadn’t heard what I’d said just before she spoke. If she had though, I would have expected her to be as purple as I was. She looked a little pink but gave me her familiar, helpful, slightly worried smile.

“Feeling any better?”

“Infinitely better. You are such a lifesaver.” Maddy went a little pinker, but beamed. She was so nice and yet the way she reacted to compliments suggested she wasn’t used to them. I would worry about Maddy, except that she was coping with life far better than I was today so it would have been patronising.

Of course, she had a lot more practice being a girl.

“Have I missed class?”

“No such luck I’m afraid, we’ve got about ten minutes to get to Domestic Science. If you’re feeling up to it, that is. I can still take you to the nurse’s office if not.”

“Thanks Maddy, but I feel a lot better knowing why I’ve been so tense. I’m sorry I’ve been so flaky with you today.”

“Don’t be silly. You got a period and a first day of school and a close encounter with teenage perverts all together. In your shoes I’d have gone completely mental. All you did was get upset when you were groped. Come on, let’s get there early and grab some decent seats.”