Bait
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

I came to, laid out on a bed in what was clearly a dimly lit cell. I tried to think back to work out how this had happened. I was on the street. The surveillance van was around the corner. I must have been bundled into a van. It must have been quick. There was a small chemical burn on my chin. I had been drugged with ether or chloroform, was my guess. It must be him – the killer.

I momentarily excited. I had done the job. He had gone for the bait. But I quickly realised that if he had fallen into our trap, it had not closed on him. If my abduction had been observed, by now the team would have broken down the doors to this place to arrest him, and to rescue me. It was supposed to be an immediate arrest.

Without even knowing how long I had been out for, I knew that there was no reason for the team not to act instantaneously. No, now was the time to worry. They must have missed it – my abduction. They would now fear the worst. I was in his hands.

I struggled a little to shake off the panic. “I am a police officer”, I told myself. A rookie, maybe, but trained and well briefed on this operation. I had volunteered because I was young and of slim build, fitting the victim profile – Young transvestite prostitute. Of course I was neither a transvestite nor a prostitute, but again I had been briefed on performing a role. My life might depend on continuing that performance now.

I could hardly say: “I am an undercover police officer and you are under arrest.” His knife would slit my throat like the others. My best hope was to use my knowledge of his profile to survive. I
would need to be the person I was pretending to be - Wendy, transgendered, innocent, ready to sell her body to get the operation she wanted so badly.

There was no sign of him. I was not bound or tethered in any way, so I could inspect my surroundings, even in the limited light. I decided that I should check the doors and windows, just in case. There was a small high window, the only source of light. It was too small even for me to crawl through, and there was reinforced glass to be removed. I went to the door. Bang. I got an electric shock from the door knob. I could hear that it had also set off a buzzer. At the bottom of the door was a small hatch that a food plate could be passed through.

I knew that he would soon be upon me. Should I arm myself? Stand behind the door? For the first time it occurred to me that there might be more than one? I decided that I could be best served by seeing what I was up against first. Letting him enter carried risks, of course. He could just kill me. But that was not how I expected him to act.

From the profiling that had been done we expected a large mature male, probably well-educated and likely to be wealthy. The theory was that he was fascinated with transvestites or shemales and sought them for sex, but after abducting them he became disgusted with himself and killed them, after mutilating their genitals. Post-mortems had disclosed that there was time between abduction and death, sometimes up to 10 days, during which the victims appeared to have washed regularly and ate expensively. He toyed with then tortured his victims - some of genital mutilation took place well before death, possibly under anaesthetic, possibly not. It was horrific.

There was a peephole which was uncovered for a moment letting a needle of light enter the room. He was outside. Then the door opened. I went back to sit on the bed, as I would expect Wendy to do. I needed to act as she would.

He was tall, as expected, but I was surprised to see that he was athletic and handsome. He was dressed in clean and even pressed jeans, and with a smart casual long sleeved shirt. He looked like he had stepped out of the pages of a gentleman’s magazine.

“I hope you slept well, Sweetheart,” he said. The last word felt like a slap. His voice seemed to confirm that he was educated. His tone was unexpectedly friendly, but his eyes were threatening. He was a killer, there was no doubt about that.

“I wanna go home,” I said, doing my best to force out some tears. I was just not that good, but I managed to project fear and panic, probably because they were both real in the moment. In the end the tears came easily.

“Well,” he said. “I’m not ruling that out, but first we need to get to know one another. So I think you should come upstairs in an hour or so. But for now – you are a Size 6 right?”

“I guess so”, I said. The truth is that I had no idea. I was dressed for this job by a woman officer on the team assisted by Kelly, a trans-person consulting on the case. I needed to be more careful.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he said with an ironic smile. “I’ll be back with some clothes for you. In the meantime I will put the lights on. You can shower in there.”

He was pointing at a dark wall which, when he had left, opened up as the lights came on. I could now get a better view. The room I was in was clean and painted dark green. The floor was grey tiles. The only furniture was the bed, which was larger than a single and had clean white pillows and sheets, and a grey duvet. The section of wall had slid to reveal a washing area with a shower and toilet in sparkling white. There was a selection of shampoos and body washes. I recognised the perfume from the body of the last victim. She had been washed just before she had been bled to death. Was this shower to be my death sentence?

Despite the cleanliness of everything, my situation made me feel dirty. I put my wig on the stand provided beside the basin and I took the shower. I used a different body wash, perhaps to ward off bad luck.

I was towelling off when he re-entered. He put some clothes on the bed. He said: “Make sure you wear everything. And lock the shoes on with the little padlocks.”

I needed to examine what he had brought to understand what he was saying. It was all pink and white. There was a pair of panties, and what I now know is a bustier, a sort of combined corset and bra. There was a camisole, Petticoats and a frilly dress to go over them. There were white elasticated stockings with bows at the top. And there was a pair of pink stiletto heeled shoes to be strapped on, and then padlocked so I could not take them off.

The intention was to hobble me, and this would be effective. Before I first ventured out on the street I was shown the expected footwear for a prostitute and I had several hours of coaching in walking and almost running in awkward shoes, but created special problems as I would discover. I would soon learn that the entire property was soft soil and accessed by a gravel road. These shoes were as effective and cutting off a leg.

I put everything on as instructed, in the right order. I did not put on my wig, or any make up. There was nothing available anyway.

We he entered for a third time I pointed at the wig, but he said: “We can do better.” He took me by the hand to lead me upstairs. His grip was gentle but firm. I was being guided rather than led, but I was not about to be released.

The high heeled shoes were locked on as instructed. I was able to move freely on the tiled floors as I clicked along. On carpet they were already a little unsteady. “Toe first” I told myself.

The house was old and enormous, with high ceilings and timber panels. It was clearly some kind of mansion – a house of horrors. I could see immediately that I was well out of the city. Out of each window I could see trees or lawns, and there were hills nearby, but no recognizable landmarks. I was walked past an entrance hall. I was on the look-out for a telephone or a PC, some means of communication, but nothing was obvious here. We entered a large dining area. An ornate table was set for two, to be dining together at one end. The setting appeared to be for a meal of several courses and with wine glasses at the ready.

“You can freshen up in here,” he said. There a small dressing room with a toilet just off the entrance to the dining area. There was a dressing table with a wig and some make up. The wig was not like my blonde prostitute’s wig, it was honey brown and styled ornately with curls pinned up.

The makeup had me at a loss. Before each night out Kelly would do my makeup in a suitable fashion. All I was taught to do was freshen my lipstick and mascara. So that is all I did. I spent the rest of the time getting the wig on just right – pushing my shaggy hair into a cap and then pull the wig over and checking the edges. I needed to continue to be Wendy.

He held the chair for me, so I sat. He lingered behind me for a minute and I confess that I wondered whether he was going to cut my throat then and there. I could feel his breath on the back of my naked neck. I may have shuddered. He came around to sit in front of me.

“You’re not at all like the others,” he said. That was a good thing, right? He said: “You are not at all slutty. You’re brave I think, but scared. It makes you look very pretty.”

I looked in his eyes and I could see it. This guy was crazy. Crazy enough to kill me. But he was not going to kill me just yet. Whatever I was doing, it was the right thing. My decision was that to survive I needed to stay on this track. Keep my eyes open. Try and find out where I was. Find a means of communication. Get a message out. Until then, survive.

There was a serving dish with a heavy lid on the table, and from it he served soup. I confess that I do not know high end food at all, but he told me it was lobster bisque, and it was delicious. His victims had been fed well, as I was told. At the Medical Examiners I had seen the stomach contents in a bowl. I concealed my gagging at the thought.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Wendy.”

“No. I don’t mean you whore name,” he said. “What is your real name?”

I had think fast. I had a handbag which I had obviously lost when I was picked up. Just as well – it had my real ID in there, plus my phone (a burner with only my lieutenant’s special number on it), a lightweight pistol and a can of mace. My undercover name was just “Wendy”. I was bait only. No back-story needed. I needed to build one from scratch just now. I could not use my real name. He might check on me. My disappearance might be in the news.

I said: “John Tessier”. Mother’s maiden name was Tessier. Her father’s name was John.

“I don’t like Wendy,” he said. “I will call you Joanna. Your name will be Joanna Tessier.”

“Whatever you like,” I sighed. “You’re in charge here.”

“I am,” he confirmed. “You live at my pleasure. And I don’t think that I want you to die. So please do not give me a reason to kill you.”

That gave me a sickening feeling that lasted for several minutes of silence – a atmosphere of threat that I needed to end. So I asked: “So what should I call you?”

“You should call me Master,” he said.

“OK,” I said. “But I would prefer to call you by name.”

“No yet,” he said. “I don’t know you. I don’t trust you. Maybe later.”

I had been put in my place again, so I waited before I asked what was really on my mind: “What do you want from me?”

“I want you to finish your wine while I get the main course.”

He brought out another dish on plates. Again, high class food, meat in pastry - delicious. He said: “Forgive me that I am going to and fro like this, but getting staff who are as discrete as I need them to be, has proved impossible. I have to serve both of us.”

“Does anyone visit you here?” I asked. “It seems like such a big house and you are all alone. You obviously enjoy entertaining.”

“I do,” he said, clearly happy to be engaged in conversation. “But it will be clear to you by now, that I have some issues. I like to say that I am easily misunderstood, but it is much more complex than that. In truth, my life is a little lonely. My brother visits now and again.”

“I have a lonely life too,” I lied. “I needed to leave home and try to live as the woman I should be, but it meant giving up family and friends.” I was building a story for him. I wanted him to see me as a person – somebody with feelings – rather than an animal fit for slaughter.

“So, you left to be a whore, selling yourself on the street?” He was getting angry. It was not a good thing. “How many men have ass fucked you?”

“None,” I answered. “I just need the money. I thought I would try it. I just don’t think I can do it.”

“Are you telling me you are not a whore?” he sneered. “That you are an anal virgin.”

“I am an anal virgin, and you put it,” I said. “And I don’t want to be a whore. I was prepared to be one, for the money. But I have turned everybody away so far. I guess I am just too scared to do it.”

He leaned forward and asked: “Are you telling me that if I checked your asshole I would find you still unstretched?”

I nodded. I was true after all. I said: “I guess I hoped I could just do a hand job.”

“Or a blow job?” he asked.

“I have never done one,” was my honest response.

But if I wanted one you would have to give me one, right?”

“How much?” I asked. Again, the wrong words just seemed to spill out of me.

“Are you serious?” he said, a genuine look of astonishment crossed his face. I was sure I had gone too far. “You want me to pay? What about your life? How much is that worth?” he asked.

“If you are the Transkiller then I am dead already. You kill people like me. People who do not want to hurt anybody. People who just want to live the life that nature has denied them.” There were tears coming now, and they were real. I was not sure where the speech was coming from, but I was running with it. He seemed unsettled. That might be a good thing.

We drank more wine. I wondered whether I could persuade him to drink enough to give me some advantage, but he drank only as I did. I could never last as long as he could – he was so much bigger.

Then we ate a dessert that he brought out.

“Can I say that it is very hard for me to believe that you are the Transkiller,” I said. “You say violent things, but you don’t seem to be a particularly bad person. I simply don’t understand …”.

He stopped me with a raised hand. “That is enough for one day,” he said. “Let me take you downstairs.”

I tottered off on my high heels, in the ridiculous froufrou clothes.

I sat on the bed and he unlocked my shoes. I actually thought about kicking him in the head, but it seemed to me that the risk was too great. I needed to wait for a better opportunity.

“I apologise for the room,” he said. “Perhaps I can move you upstairs. We shall see. You are my guest and I want you to be comfortable, but I need to be careful. I am sure you understand.”

I really did not understand, but I sensed that something had shifted. I was a guest rather than a servant to a master. Maybe that was why he had cut things short.

“I am trying to understand,” I said.

“Oh, by the way,” he said before he left and locked the door. “What is your name?”

“Joanna,” I replied. “I am Joanna Tessier. I am your guest.”

He smiled as he closed the door.

So far so good. I was still alive. I had dined with my captor and he seemed to like me. I figured that for so long and he liked me, and enjoyed my company, he would not kill me. All I needed to do was to get a message out.

He must have entered the room while I slept, because when I got up there was another dress beside the bed, this time a little more practical. And another pair of heels also with a padlock which I snapped closed after I had washed and dressed. The wig this time was a brown bob.

He led me upstairs for breakfast. It was in a room adjoining the kitchen with the morning sun flooding in. It was a beautiful day and it reminded me again that life is precious and so I needed to be careful.

The room had plenty of windows and a view of the garden. As we ate breakfast he pointed out the trees and shrubs, and some of the bird life. I gained the impression that as well as being a good cook he was also a keen gardener.

“Take off your wig,” he said. I did what I was told. “You hair is all there but quite short,” he noted.

“I told you,” I said. “My journey has just started. But I have burned my bridges and I will be a woman.” Then I added: “If I survive I will be a woman”.

“I hope that you do,” he said. “And Perhaps I could have a hairdresser come around to see what can be done with your hair”

“Oh please, could we,” I implored as if it were true. I thought that a visiting hairdresser could be somebody that I could send a message out through.

“Tomorrow morning,” he said.

After breakfast he gave me a box with lunch in it to eat in my room. That would be the daily pattern – breakfast with him, lunch in my room, and most nights dinner with him.

“I will bring you some things,” he said. “I have women’s’ magazines and I can bring you a dressing table with some items to help keep you pretty. You would like that, wouldn’t you.”

“More than anything” I lied enthusiastically.

The following day there were different clothes laid out for me, and no wig. I had not had a haircut since leaving the academy, just to assess the permitted limits, supposedly clear of the ears and collar, but after I had been suggested for undercover I was free to grow it. So it was probably a month past regulation. Short, but with room for some styling.

The hairdresser was short and maybe Filipino. She had a mass of hair with soft curls and plenty of makeup on – advertising her skills.

My host introduced her: “Joanne, this is Connie, I have asked her to style you and give you a facial, make up and a manicure. Sadly you won’t have much to talk about as Connie is deaf mute, but she is very skilled in her job.”

I still believed that I could communicate some kind of distress message, but he was always about, and I could not seem to get across to her the situation that I was in. I promised myself that if I could get her back I would try to smuggle her a written message. But for now it seemed to difficult. There was also a concern of the consequences for her if I was able to pass any message at all.

She went to work. The result was that about 3 hours later I had a short blond bob hairstyle, plucked eyebrows and a fully made up face, and nails painted to match my lipstick. And I was no closer to getting a message out.

“Thank you, Master,” was all I could say. He looked pleased. He was looking at me strangely. He looked at me like that all the way through dinner.

I have to say that I felt different about myself dressed as a woman but without the wig on. There is something about a wig which says disguise. Without one it was just me. The problem was that I looked so much like a woman it scared me. Connie had given me the shade of lipstick and I freshened it twice at the table with a compact mirror.

Back in my room I just looked at myself in the mirror for maybe 15 minutes or more. Just looking at all the angles. I looked so good I jacked off to my own reflection. How weird is that?

That night I wondered if I could trust Connie even if I could pass a message. She must have seen my shoes with the padlocks. She must have known that I was a man. She could have guessed that I was a prisoner.

A couple of days later a different opportunity arose. Over dinner the Master was talking about sex assignment surgery.

“That’s all I want,” I said, spinning out my tale.

“Maybe I can get a doctor to visit,” he said. “We could get you a hormone prescription. Some shots and tablets to push you on a little.”

“Oh please, pleeease, could we?” I begged. I knew that the doctor would not be deaf and would probably want to speak to me in private. This seemed like a much better chance. If I could have a doctor brought to me I could get a message out. This monster would be in jail and I would be free.

“You be on your best behaviour,” he said. “If you see the doctor make sure that you be as ladylike as possible. And talk only in your best lady voice. Promise me?”

It was a week later and Connie came around to style me a gain. I had a note written on paper from a magazine using eyeliner pencil, but I kept it concealed even after she had left. I had a bit of a crisis in my head and began to wonder if she would just pass the message on to him. If she did I was dead – no question of that.

I had been returned to my room and I was sitting at my dressing table in a sundress just about to jack off at my reflection again, when the door swung open and I heard a voice say “Joanne, could you come up to my study for a minute. There is somebody I want you to meet.”

The voice was coming out of the air-vent in the ceiling which obviously had a speaker in it. But more importantly the door was open. He was not there. I was not wearing locked on heels. There was a pair of fairly flat sandals that I could wear. I could try to make a run for it.

I knew the house better by now. The study was by the front door, but there was a back door and French doors from all the main living areas. But there were locks. There may be open windows. I had not been upstairs. But the grounds were large and I had no idea how far we were from another house. If there is a visitor there may be a car. What to do?

I walked into the study. My master stood and so did the other man. About the same age but bespectacled and thin.

“Joanna, this is Doctor Street, the specialist that I was talking about.”

He reached out his hand and I took it, to offer mine rather than to shake his.

“Please to meet you, Doctor,” I simpered.

Then I could see that as the Master moved behind him he was holding a knife. It was a curved threatening blade. The doctor was in a life or death situation and the killer wanted me to know. I needed to find the opportunity.

“I have heard all about your situation, Miss Tessier,” said the Doctor. “One look and I understand everything You present as a very attractive young woman. That will certainly help to make your transition easier. Unfortunately I do not have time for a full examination today. In fact I have a pressing appointment in town and some way to drive. But I would be happy to help. I will have my receptionist arrange an appointment for you to come and visit me very soon. But in the meantime, I can get the prescription through and the paperwork started.”

And with that he shook the hand of my captor warmly. The knife had disappeared. The doctor was gone. I was standing there. Yet another opportunity missed.

“Forgive me the melodrama,” he said. “I like this doctor. In fact I have known him for a very long time. We could even be called friends. But you need to be in no doubt that I would have killed in the way I showed you just now, to keep our secret.” I did not doubt it.

He picked up the prescription after I was safely locked up. He gave me the injection every week and he watched me take the tablets every morning with breakfast. I took them with pretended joy, of course. They were my road to womanhood after all. And that is what I wanted. I was now aware that I was counting off the days.

At least I was alive. I knew that the longest period between abduction and death before now, had been 10 days, and I was now more like 10 weeks. Survival was good. More time for my people to find me was good. But what kind of clue could they have? My shoulder bag had been lost. There would probably be no trace of my captor near the scene even if its location could be pinned down. I was starting to get worried again.

When I was talking to my master over breakfast or dinner, I was becoming increasingly relaxed. My story had now been run through so many times that my fear of being caught out by some inconsistency was fading. The story had become my life.

And the femininity seemed to have become equally natural. What was pretence, with the real risk of being discovered that I am not transgender at all, was now becoming almost reality. Now it was just how I spoke and presented myself. I found that if you pretend to enjoy have your hair done, you start to enjoy having your hair done. If you pretend to like fashion clothes in the magazines, you feel happy when you put them on.

Then one day he took me upstairs for the first time. He showed me a room. It was bright and sunny and decked out in pink. It was feminine but not wildly so. He said: “Next week, this will be your room. From next week, you can call me Scott.”

For the first time since I had been taken I felt at ease. Those words seemed to confirm that he now saw me as a person. And I felt that “Scott” would be a lot less likely to kill me.

With that relief, I turned my back and I looked out the window. I could see over the hedges and the fence. I could see how big was the land we were on. But I could see a neighbouring house in the distance, maybe two miles off. I thought that I could see freedom. I said to him: “This is great.”

“Next week,” he said, “All of your dreams will come true.”

Maybe all of Joanne’s dreams, or Wendy’s dreams, but not mine.

What I now know to be a few days after that, I woke up in that bed, in agony.

I knew immediately knew what had happened. This was the genital mutilation that I had seen in the pictures at the briefing. I was expecting a gaping wound. It was a small mercy that I had been unconscious while he had done it to me. Next he would kill me. I thought I was getting somewhere, and now this.

I pushed back the covers and struggled to raise my head, to look down. But before I could even look to see what had happened to the area in pain, I saw that there were two mounds on my chest, in a bandage. Only then did I have the sensation of another discomfort on my chest. I had been given breast implants.

But the pain was below. I stretched up further. But instead of seeing my body opened up I saw a neat bandage over my groin. It was surprisingly small. Hardly there at all. But it confirmed what I wished was not true – he had taken my cock and my balls.

I realised that all the pain was internal. God knows what he has done, I was thinking.

I started to think about those other mutilations I had seen in the crime scene photos. Tidy removal of the genitals and then crazed slashing of the entire area. Like a surgeon gone mad. Horrifying. Sickening. And like a surgeon gone mad. Small traces of anaesthetic in the system of these victims, so they died sometime after they came out of unconsciousness. After surgery. A period of recovery. Consciousness and then death. Death by the obliteration of the surgery done.

Even in my pain and my shock of what had happened to me, I was starting to understand. He botched sex change operations and then went berserk to obliterate his handiwork. And what I knew now was, that on the basis of the condition of all the prior victims, my time was up. He would appear and I would be slashed to death.

And as if my thoughts had summoned him, he came through the door.

He walked up to the bed and asked with nonchalance: “How are things?”

“Painful,” I replied honestly. “But I love it,” I added the lie with my best effort at a smile. “I haven’t used it yet, even to pee through, but I know it will be perfect.”

“Do you think so?” he asked.

“I know it,” I said. And then to confirm my thoughts I asked him: “Did you do it yourself?”

“I am a qualified surgeon,” he reassured me. “I am still new to this procedure, but getting better every time. I have done my best to preserve all feeling for you. You have a working clitoris. I can’t wait to see it myself. I think I am quite pleased with it.”

That had to be good. If I had to lose my genitals to stay alive, that suddenly seemed to be a price I could pay. I had to reassure him that his work was worthy of preservation. That I was worthy of preservation.

“It feels so swollen,” I said. “Please give it time to settle down. I want to look my best, even down there.” This was hard to say, but the survival instinct permits reason in a moment of extreme pain. I felt sure that whatever triggered the frenzied last act for all the other victims, it could be avoided if he did not view his work just yet..

So it appeared that all these attacks just practice operations. Operations that he got wrong so he then defaced the work and killed the patient. The profilers had not mentioned this possibility. Certainly his treatment of me seemed not to match the profile. If the profile was right, maybe he did want to have sex with me? Then would he become so disgusted with himself that I would have to die? It did not seem right. He seemed so in control.

There was no doubt in my mind that he was insane, but what was the nature of his insanity? I needed to know so that I could use it to my advantage, to survive.

“I can remove the packing and then we could look at when we can do the forming.” His words meant nothing to me, but he arranged me on my back and pushed my legs apart. He did it tenderly so that when I winced he moved with greater care. He removed the dressing and I craned to see the nature of the injury he had done to me.

There was not much to see. Bandages stained with disinfectant. Glimpses of inflamed and swollen flesh, and then he commenced to pull from inside, yard after yard of absorbent bandage. It seemed enough to fill a large bucket, as if a cavity that size was now inside me.

“You are healing well,” he said. “That is because you are a healthy woman.”

Was I a woman now? I was a mutilated man. But I needed to say the opposite.

“Thank you, Doctor,” I gushed. “Thank you. Thank you.”

He was obviously pleased to hear the gratitude, but he said: “I said that you can call me Scott.” He then pulled a long dildo shape from a sealed plastic bag and started to insert it inside me. It hurt like hell.

“This is a soft forming device,” he said. “It will keep you in shape until you have healed. Then we can use these.” He produced 3 more large dildoes in different colours. The largest one was so big I almost fainted at the thought of having it inside me. I am a small person. That is how I ended up here. Surely, I could not have enough room inside me for that? It seemed crazy that I was pretending to accept all of this with gratitude. This monster had mutilated me and was now expecting me to plunge a foreign object into my own guts.

“Will it hurt?” I asked in my little simpering voice. It now seemed to be the only voice I had left.

“There is no gain without pain, Sweetheart.” And sadly, that turned out to be true.

But weeks later it was going inside me. Right up to the blunt end. They were all painful to start with, even the smaller ones, but with him watching I had to do it. He even offered to do it for me, but I declined as politely as I could. It is one thing to fuck yourself with a dildo, but I did not need a psychopath shafting me with one.

And then, after I was “dilated”, and he told me that this exercise would a permanent chore, I discovered that it did not have to be. I discovered that I could bring myself to orgasm – a female orgasm – if I did it properly. The first time it happened I was frightened that he would see it. But I wondered if he would not be happy to see me enjoying his handiwork. I decided that the next time I would keep it private, but give him a glimpse of my enjoyment.

The risk of course, was that he might want to have sex with me. The thought was horrifying. Despite my new anatomy I was a man, with no attraction to other men. Sex with a man was revolting to me. Would I do it to survive? Of course I would. And I knew now that I could pretend to enjoy it.

The surgery and its aftermath had knocked me around, but I was walking now, with nothing between my legs, and I was starting to gather my strength. I started to consider whether I was ready to make a run for it. For the last few weeks I had simply been too weak to consider clambering out the window – the door was always locked. Add to that it had become cold, and there were no clothes suitable for outdoors if I were to make a run for it, even I tried layering multiple garments.

I asked for warmer clothes, although I was not cold. He suggested that we turn up the central heating instead. I preferred it tuned down. Maybe the extra layer of fat from the hormones made me uncomfortable if it was too warm.

The first snowfall that I saw outside seemed early. I figured I had been a captive for four months, but it may have been longer. However long it had been, there had been physical changes beside the surgery. The hormones had worked on my body, and their effect accelerated after my balls had been removed. My skin and flesh were soft, and muscles had reduced to very little, and the nipples on my augmented chest had grown large and pink. My hair had grown more than seemed usual, I learned later because Scott had added biotin to my orange juice as well as hormones. It was down to my shoulders, soft and shiny with the regular brushing he insisted upon.

I had thought it was barely the beginning of December when he told me that we would need to prepare for Christmas. He told me: “I am going to have a family member over, and if you promise to be good, I you can share Christmas with us. Otherwise, you will be in the basement.”

While the though crossed my mind that a family member might be as crazy as he was, it seemed to be an opportunity to get help, go I promised that I would follow whatever rules he set, and otherwise tried to convince his that I was a grateful and pliant patient, rather than a captive.

He cut a small tree from the woods nearby and we potted and dressed it with decorations he had in storage. He had me help him prepare a meal, but he was still careful to see that I did not have the chance to handle a knife. Then he told me to get myself ready.

Connie had only visited a few times, and we had problems with communication, but she had shown me a few things that I could put to use. I used a curling wand to make my hair look even better, and I used the makeup as she had shown me, with a little additional guidance for the magazine. They even had suggestions for “festive season looks” with bright makeup and a green red and white them in the clothes. As I went about my work It seemed as if being a woman was very different, but could be fun. In particular when you look at the finished appearance with such satisfaction.

There was a knock on the door while I was upstairs, so I went towards the entrance hall. There was a moment when they both stared at me, and I wondered whether I had gone too far with the Christmas thing. But the Scott made the introductions.

“This is my brother Magnus.” And then to him he said. “This is Joanna. She is staying with me for a while.”

Magnus put out his hand, and for an instant I was confused. When I took his hand I did not shake it as I would normally, I just let him hold mine for a moment.

“I so pleased that we will have some feminine company this Christmas,” said Magnus. He was obviously Scott’s brother although they did not look alike, but the main difference was his gaze upon me. There was no doubt that Scott was manic, but Magnus appeared to be warm and genuine, with kind and happy eyes. I hoped that it was true.

Magnus had a bag of gifts which he took to the tree, while I got some snacks from the kitchen and Scott poured the eggnog. I wondered if I would be able to be alone with Magnus. Even if the opportunity arose, what would I say.

As it was, when it happened I did not need to say much. I am not sure what caused Magnus to ask, but after we had sat through a long meal and drank quite a lot of very nice wine, Scott had to go to the toilet and leave us alone.

Magnus waited until he was well clear before he turned to me and asked bluntly: “Are you here of you own free will?”

I was shocked, but there was only one answer: “No. I am a prisoner here.” Then I added, so as not to seem an enemy: “Your brother is not a well man.”

“You have to trust me,” he said. “I will get you out of here.”

I did trust him. But really, I had little choice. Here was somebody who had volunteered to help me. As the brother of my abuser he had the best chance to convince him to let me go, but it seemed to me that was not a possibility. After all that he had done to me, and the connection back to other murders, he would not be surrendering. This would need to end in death – his or ours.

Sure enough, they were in another room when the shouting and the violence began. I decided that I needed to go and help Magnus, and I looked around for a weapon. But before I could find anything Scott entered the room. He was dishevelled but not injured, although there was blood on his knuckles.

“You need to wait downstairs,” he said. That meant the windowless dungeon.

“No, Please Scott,” I implored him. “I will be good. I don’t want to go with Magnus. I want to stay with you.” I was sure he intended to kill me.

He dragged me roughly downstairs and pushed me into the room, locking the door behind me. I remember thinking how much I liked to live upstairs. I liked my room, and my dressing table with everything on it, and my wardrobe full of clothes. Now I was back here. I lay on the bed and cried a little.

Not long afterwards the door opened and a body was dumped into the room. It was Magnus, he had been punched and perhaps hit on the head. He was bloody, and concussed. I rapped him in a blanket and attended to his wound with what I had. I was able to tear up a pillow case to bandagfe his head.

There was only one bed in the room, and I was larger than a single but no quite a double bed. It was much colder in the dungeon room, so I got into bed with him, so that we could keep each other warm. After the adrenalin had dissipated, we slept.

Morning light came in through the small window. We were lying together with his back to me. When he sensed that I was awake he rolled over to face me.

“I am sorry,” he said. “He is my brother, so I know that he has problems. There have been abductions in the past, you see. Our parents paid people off, but since Mom and Dad died I have tried to look out for him. I guess I knew something was not right through dinner. I tried to talk to him, but he just snapped.”

“I think that it is more serious than just abductions,” I said. “He has basically admitted to me that he is the Transkiller. We are talking about multiple murders.”

Magnus appeared deeply shocked. He said: “He is a doctor, a surgeon, although he lost his license to practice last year. He is sworn to save lives not take them. How can you be sure?”

“I am sure,” I said. I did not feel that I could explain who I was, or rather who I had been, and what had happened to me. The important thing was that now two of us were prisoners, and we had to address that problem.

The other immediate problem that we faced was the cold. The warmest place in the room was the bed, under the blankets and close to one another. If there was nothing else to do that is where we would be. But we needed to look of means of escape. Magnus was taller than me and stronger, so he was able to reach the ceiling and explore, until it was cold and he needed to get back into bed with me.

Scott delivered us food through the hatch in the door – two bowls of hot porridge in the morning, a sandwich each for lunch, and two bowls of hot stew in the evening. Scott said nothing despite Magnus calling out to him. But two days later he pushed through a box of sandwiches and two bottles of wine with a note that he would be away for a few days: “with love to you both, Scott”.

We both wondered if this was a chance to escape while the house above us was empty, but we had already checked the room and the adjoining bathroom. There was no way out.

“Our best hope is to get him to open the door,” said Magnus. We’ll just have to wait it out.

We went back to our bed.

I am a heterosexual male. At least I was. I never thought that I could be attracted to a man. I do not believe that I was when it started. It was just a physical thing. He was warm and I needed that warmth. We had laid together for two nights me against his back, or him against mine. But that day we lay face to face for the first time.

“Would you be upset if I kissed you?” he asked.

How different would my life be now if I had said no at that moment. I often wonder. But I did not say anything. My immediate thought was that he was a very good-looking man – better looking than his brother. His body was against mine and it was so different. His body was hard, tanned and muscled, where mine was soft, pale and hairless. His eyes were warm and inviting. I did not say anything at all. I just kissed him on the lips.

Before I knew it we were in a rapturous embrace with our tongues entwined. I could feel his erect penis against my thigh, and base instincts seemed to take over. My instinct seemed to have changed, I was on my back and happy to be there. He was on top and showering me with kisses on my neck, and my belly, and my nipples. Oh, my nipples.

As he pushed my thighs apart I worried about lubrication. All that I could think to do was spit on my hand and smear it on his erect penis. It was the first time that I had ever touched another man’s penis, let alone an erect one. It seemed huge, and so much bigger than the one I used to have. I was now worried whether Scott had made me large enough to take something this big. I suddenly appreciated using the largest forming tool.

I will never forget the moment that he first entered me. I think that my eyes almost popped out of my head. But the sensation of his penis stroking my insides was fantastic. I remember think how much more pleasant it was to have it done to you, rather than doing it. But that was before the orgasm. As it turned out, Scott’s surgical abilities were of the highest order, and he had not only been able to achieve sensitivity, but he had placed the proto-clitoris for maximum effect. The phrase “mind-blowing” is not enough to describe it. Every inch of my body came alive and my mind was blow. I cried out, thankfully in a feminine shriek.

He called out too. There was no hiding his ecstasy. That might even have been the second orgasm, knowing that you had moved a man that much. It made me think that I had never really cared about the joy experienced by any female sex partner of mine, but somehow his joy was important.

I could feel his seed leaking out of my pussy. It was wonderful.

It was wonderful to have a pussy. I was wonderful to have had a man inside me. It was wonderful that he had filled me with his hot semen. I smiled at him and he smiled back. We knew that this was something very special.

And the truth is that we made love again and again over the next few days. Even when the sandwiches ran out and we contemplated starving to death in that dungeon, we would have done so with his penis inside me. That would have been a death.

And between each love-making session, we talked. He was an architect, and by all accounts a good one. He lived in the city, in a townhouse that had belonged to his parents. The house we were in had belonged to his parents too – the country estate where he and his brother had been brought up. His parents had died some years before in a boating accident. Their estate was resolved by each brother receiving a house.

His brother Scott had been troubled from an early age but was (like Magnus) highly intelligent and quite driven. Magnus had been married and divorced but Scott had always had problems with women. Magnus confirmed that Scott was a homophobe, possibly pointing to his own latent gay urges, but he always desired women. He liked to flirt and had an urge to dominate.

I did not tell Magnus that I was a police officer, but I did talk to him about the what I believed Scott had done.

“But why would the Transkiller be interested in you?” he asked. “You’re a woman.”

“Well I am now,” I said with a smile. But I could see that he was surprised or even shocked. He had no idea that I was not a real girl. “I’m sorry. I thought you knew. I told you that he was the Transkiller. He targets transwomen … like me.”

He just looked at me. Was it disbelief? Or disgust? I could not tell. We had made love countless times, or so it seemed. All I wanted was to be in his arms again, to have him inside me again. But that look seemed to tell me that it was suddenly over. How could that be? Surely his feelings for me were too important to disregard?

I found myself starting to cry. Not just a sniff, but a body racking sobbing session. After all that I had been through – the abduction, the incarceration, the mutilation, I had not shed a single tear. Now this?

But then his arms were around me. He was holding me tightly and kissing my hair. He said: “Please, darling. Don’t cry. It doesn’t change anything. I think that I am in love with you.”

“Really” I said, looking up at him through my wet eyes. “You know that circumstances have forced us together. Relationships formed in crisis do not always last.”

“I think that this one will,” he said. He kissed me. It was not like the kisses we had shared of late. It was a loving rather than a sexual kiss. I thought that he might be right.

When a meal was slid through the hatch in the door, we executed the plan that we had hatched. Magnus had fashioned two shivs from the ballcock mechanism out of the toilet and had one. I had the other and I was lying on the bed with some blood on the sheets that we had arranged.

“She’s bleeding from her vagina,” Magnus called out to his brother through the door. “She can’t move. She’s in real pain Scott.”

“Get away from the door,” came the reply. “Stand in the corner and I will come in.”

As Scott entered, Magnus had the shiv at his throat.

“You won’t cut me,” said Scott.

I leapt out of the bed with my shiv and I was upon him. I said: “But I will.”

He always carried cable ties to bind me, and I was able to use these bind Scott’s hands and feet, and leave him in the cell. We rushed out of our prison cell. There in corridor at the bottom of the stairs, was a woman lying. She was bound with cable ties and had a hood over her head. She was gagged but I could hear a deep voice muffled. As I approached, I could see that it was not a woman.

Before I could pull off the hood to tell her the good news, Magnus grabbed my arm. He motioned for me not to talk. He pulled me back into the room and pushed the door so we could talk. Scott shouted at us to cut him free.

“Please let us deal with this ourselves,” said Magnus. “We need to release this victim, as soon as possible, but don’t let her see us. We can lock Scott in here and deal with him later.”

“He’s a criminal Magnus,” I said. “Surely this latest victim confirms, that he is the Transkiller. She needs to go to the police. He needs to go to prison.”

“Please. Joanna,” he said. “I don’t want my name drawn through the mud. I don’t want to be known as the brother of a murdering pervert. We can leave her somewhere.”

“And what do we do with Scott?”

“You decide,” he said. “I can tell you now that he will not go to prison. He is insane. We could have him committed. Or he could die, if that’s what you want, for what he has done to you.”

Could I execute this monster? His own brother would allow it – even participate. I looked at Scott bound on the floor, struggling and whining. Magnus was right. This was a sick man. And I looked at Magnus, his brother.

Deciding upon this course was the final bridge burnt in my progression from boy cop to Joanne Tessier, sister in law to a serial killer. Magnus took the poor creature lying in the hall, to the place where I had been abducted. He drove her still hooded, in the van that Scott had in his garage and which I recognised from the interior was the vehicle that he used. We made sure that there was no DNA or fibres left in it, and we abandoned and torched it. We drove back in Magnus’s car which I had driven following the van.

Scott was still tightly bound when we got back. He had given up shouting and was trying to appeal to our humanity to stay alive. Finally, he said: “You look so good together. Joanna is perfect, but she would not be here if it were not for me. Maybe I have given you the ultimate gift, Magnus?”

He was right. Without him I would not be a woman, and I would not have found love with this man of mine. Without his care in fashioning my female genitals Magnus and I would not be able to share the moments of total bliss that we constantly looked forward to. We would not be able to marry one another as we did.

So instead we contacted the mental health authorities. We explained that Scott had been violent and had struck his brother, but that he had expressed murderous desires and may well have caused injury to others in the past. That, combined with a history of mental ill-health, persuaded them to take him in.

As it happened it did not take them long to confirm his madness. He had functioned as a loner, but in a community he soon exhibited his violent tendencies and was placed in a secure wing. That is where he remains, and where Magnus and I have visited him from time to time.

I have not disclosed my name and I will not do so. The person that I used to be was declared dead shortly before Magnus and I were married. He was later described as “the last victim of the Transkiller - An undercover police officer who may well have played a role in ending a reign of violence against the transgender community.” That was because the killings ceased, and the assumption was it was down to the young heroic volunteer whose fate was a mystery. And I felt proud because it was true.

But as I read the news article while I was having my hair put up for the wedding, I had no desire to step forward and back from death to bask in that glory. My glory now was the huge diamond on my finger, and my perfect dress, and a man who was devoted to me and could give me everything I wanted in life.

The End

© Maryanne Peters 2018