Brenda Armstrong looked out at the throngs of "normal" people wandering about the food court of the mall. Although few actually paid any attention at all to her, she felt like she stuck out like a sore thumb.

Brenda was not tall, nor was she short; she was five foot seven, and light of frame. Nor could she be considered as ugly. Sure she was no beauty queen but, like so many girls, she longed to have that sort of look. The thing was, Brenda was not born female.

She was closing in upon her 27th birthday, which was also her 9th anniversary of her transitioning to womanhood. Brenda, born as Brendan was a male to female transgendered person.

She had lived all her life in various locations in Southern Ontario, Canada but she mostly kept to the Windsor-Detroit region.

She had fared rather well in her timing, having started the process very early in life, beginning upon her 18th birthday, the earliest legal age she could begin the process. A few years later she had legally changed her name from Brandon Lee Armstrong to Brenda Lee Armstrong, keeping it as close to her birth name as possible to ease the transition for her family and friends around her.

As such she was spared the facial hair nightmares and the roughness that would settle in upon the average male by the time he was finished the last vestiges of his puberty – which is about 25 years old.

She maintained her androgyny throughout her teenage years and after a mere 4 months of transition, she actually saw some results. Sure they were slow and almost imperceptible but she kept an old photo of herself from before taking hormones so she could keep a running comparison like she learned that so many other transgenders were doing.

By the time she hit her 27th birthday, it had been years since any stranger referred to her as anything but a young woman. She sure had the looks too. Her face was soft and her facial skin tones effeminate and her bust had filled out to a rather healthy 34C which was not an unusual size for any girl in her family line.

But like all trans-women, she lacked in the hips and ass department. Yeah she could use padding like so many others did or she could actually employ the rules of fashion that she had learned over the years to enhance what you did, or didn't have. She knew much of it was how she dressed herself.

She, in fact, passed very well but she was still aware that she still had "it" down there hiding beneath her clothes and was constantly aware of how it would influence the public if they were privy to what "evil" lay beneath the folds of her clothes.

In truth though, no one but Brenda were actually aware of what evil lurked within her shadows.

Brenda stood up, draped her purse strap over her shoulder, sighing wantonly as she watched a few girls of her age group nearby chatting and giggling with each other.

She could have easily been a happy girl but like many transgendered women, she was convinced that she was less than everyone else.

Brenda left the mall parking lot and walked the two blocks home to her small basement apartment where she lived alone with her cat, Maestro who came and went as he pleased through a hidden cat door she had installed by the laundry room window.

She sat down on the couch, idly flipping through channels on the television cursing to herself at the flood electoral advertisements that seemed to be on every channel, invading the homes of anyone that had a television.

"All those candidates and not a single sane person within the lot," she spoke aloud in her highly practised effeminate voice, "this election is going to the dogs very quickly"

Then a wave of nausea hit her like a wall. She tried to fight the feeling off but eventually she had to give in to the wave.

In the background just as she felt reality slip away she heard something on a television emergency broadcast. It mentioned something about an unknown blast somewhere in New Mexico...