The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3082 by Angharad Copyright© 2016 Angharad

---

This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
*****

The worms continued to crawl in and about my brain materialising as annoying or worrying thoughts about the children mainly. They really are my Achilles’ heel, in pretty well everything else I’m fireproof. I have enough money to survive on if I had to stop working, and Simon has enough for most of Portsmouth to do the same. However, I do fear that the children could be removed, though I’m not aware I or we have done anything illegal.

It’s true that Trish had surgery much younger than the guidelines usually suggest but she’d already castrated herself and when Stella slashed at her during her fight with me, I’m sure she didn’t mean to hurt her. If I thought she had, my sister in law would have been in prison, life support or passed on—I’d probably have killed her on the spot.

Julie and Sammi went through the normal procedures of assessment and so forth while I accept that Danielle did not. She was living as a girl, supporting her friend, or should that be fiend, Pia. Unbeknownst to me or any of the other adults, she had been discussing performing a castration either by herself like Trish did, or getting Pia to do it. Don’t ask me why, I was horrified when I discovered it but I guess it was because she felt left out by being a girl with something extra compared to the others. She told me when she recovered about these conversations with Pia but she didn’t think they were serious. Pia obviously thought different or misunderstood her friend and decided to move ahead unilaterally.

Where she got the chloroform from, I have no idea. We use it occasionally in the labs but it’s kept locked away, it’s dangerous and can cause kidney damage which is why they don’t use it for anaesthesia these days. Most things we have to kill we do with carbon dioxide or barbiturate injection, though I don’t get too involved in that other than by checking that the system is adhered to by staff and students.

My second concern was how Pia knew what to remove to prevent repair to the penis or testes but left enough to facilitate grafting into a vagina, labia and clitoris and to do it in minutes. An experienced urologist can take an hour or more to dissect out the meatus for removal and protect the bits they wish to transform into the new arrangement. Plus somehow, Danni didn’t bleed to death or develop an infection for butchery that was done in a garage, not the cleanest of places.

I’ve done dissections and used scalpels and other instruments but I could never do what she did, technically let alone ethically. She is one strange young woman—assuming she’s still identifying as one. I was tempted to wonder what she was doing now, but it’s not important. What is, is my continuing to rear and educate these kids until they are independent and can decide what they want to do themselves and if that meant abandoning us as parents, I’d be heartbroken but would accept it, providing it was their decision.

Only Cate and Lizzie are unaware of their adoptions because they’re too young to remember anything before Simon and me. I’ve tried telling Cate that her mother was a lovely lady who died but asked me to look after her and become her mother. She looks at me as if I’m crazy and just says, “You my mummy.”

I have made a scrapbook of pictures I found in the house so when she’s ready, I’ll show her them and try to get her to understand. I’m hoping if she grows up with the idea that she’s adopted she’ll integrate it and it will be less of a problem when she’s an adolescent. Going through puberty is bad enough with your body changing and all your peers being as sociopathic as you are, but to have to deal with the shock of discovery that you’re adopted must be mind-blowing and could quite easily destroy fragile egos or parent-child relationships.

Danielle is quite firmly intent on maintain her status quo, that is, she is the adopted daughter of Simon and me, having taken the option of changing her surname to ours, it shows a clear intention to stay here. Given the reasons she ended up in the home and the abuse that caused them, I didn’t think it would ever be an issue. That she is now female and leading a promising life with a potentially exciting future as a soccer international has also got to be in our favour and unless her birth mother could prove some heinous crime against her in this house, I really can’t believe a court would support her. She doesn’t even know that Dan is now Danielle which speaks volumes about contact between them. Having said that there was a case in America where the estranged mother was apparently trying to sue her ‘daughter’ for being transsexual and commencing therapy to feminise her body. To my mind the woman should be locked up in a funny farm but the US courts can do some strange things, as can our own legal system but it is less politicised than America.

At two o’clock I gave up and went down for a cuppa and to do some marking. I have some post-grad students who hope to get master’s or doctoral degrees, but given the standard of work I’ve seen, they could be disappointed unless they mend their ways. I don’t care how nice they are, if they don’t put in the effort they don’t pass.

Three o’clock arrived and I yawned as I went back up to bed passing Daddy as he popped out of his bedroom to go for a wee. “Whit’re ye daein’ up at this time o’ nicht?”

“Couldn’t sleep so did some marking why?”

“Merkin’? Ye’re s’posed tae be a super professor no a school teacher, let thae ithers dae that ye set policies and manage them. Noo eff t’ yer bed, I’ll tell Diane ye’ll be in late in thae morn.”

Just what I needed, a chastisement from my father. I’m too tired to deal with him tonight, but tomorrow I shall remind him we are an educational establishment and that means teaching our fee-paying students how to pass a degree and hopefully also how they can use their newfound skills to find a decent job. Sadly, it doesn’t always work and I get requests from previous graduates or alumni for references for jobs well below their skill set and, I thought, ambitions. I know it’s a cruel world out there and getting worse by the day, no wonder I worry about my children.

I slipped into bed and Simon draped his arm over me and I eventually went to sleep until I awoke from a horrid dream about being taken to court by my own children for letting them down, not explaining it was a man’s world and not encouraging them to remain as boys or become boys if they began life as girls. It was really dreadful.