Stacy had a problem, a BIG problem: her son. When she and her late husband, Chad (God rest his soul), found out that the baby rapidly growing in her ever-expanding belly was a boy, they had both been filled with such hope. What a handsome, strong man he would inevitably grow up to be, they thought! And virile too, though neither would dare say that part aloud (that would just be crude, of course).

But then Chad died in a car accident, and Stacy was forced to raise their child, named Ben, all on her own. She had tried her best, she knew, but something had, evidently, gone wrong - terribly, terribly wrong. Maybe it was always an impossible task – perhaps a single mother could never really hope to raise a son “right” without a man also being in the picture (she had refused to remarry after Chad’s death, despite her many suitors. There was no greater man than him - never would be - and she simply refused to settle for less). But this was all cold comfort now.

Presently, Ben was 25 and, sure, he had a job and his own apartment, but he was still, as far as Stacy was concerned, a loser: fat, greasy-haired, and with no girlfriend in sight (now or ever)! And he was a liberal too, if the stickers on his laptop were any indication. But he was the kind of guy Stacy personally wouldn’t touch with a ten-and-a-half-foot pole, so it’s not like she didn’t understand what women DIDN’T see in him.

“But he has a job! A well-paying one, in fact,” her air-headed girlfriends would protest, when she would habitually complain about her son during their girl’s night outs.

“A man’s job is supposed to support his wife and children! Not just allow him to buy even more Funko Pops and Poke-Man cards!” would be her eternal response, and they never had any counter to that, did they?

So, when a mysterious stranger, a gnarled old woman with a giant wart on her nose (complete with a lone, black hair growing out of it), pulled her aside while she was walking down the street one day, promising to help with her son’s “situation”, Stacy eagerly went with her, down a darkened alley and into a sketchy-looking store. “Fortune-Telling,” the flickering, neon-lit sign above the doorway read.

Yes, this was obviously a foolish thing for Stacy to do – maybe it was her sheer desperation that was to blame, or maybe the old woman’s magic was already being worked on her in some more subtle way. After all, why didn’t Stacy question how this stranger knew about her dissatisfaction with Ben in the first place? And why wasn’t she concerned with the fact that she had never noticed this shop before, even though she would have passed it countless times in the past?

Regarding her desperation – you must understand, Stacy and Chad came from a long, long line of successful WASPS. More importantly, they came from a long line of WASPS who reproduced. And with neither Stacy nor Chad having any siblings of their own, their whole line was in continuity jeopardy with Ben! So maybe magic wasn’t really to blame, and simple biology was the culprit all along!

“Through here,” the old woman said, and gestured to a door at the back of her store. Wordlessly, Stacy opened it, and was shocked to see Greg in the center of the bare room beyond it, bound to a chair and with a washcloth - a makeshift gag- stuffed into his mouth.
Now who’s this “Greg” fellow, you’re probably wondering? Well, Greg is none other than the piece of shit drunk driver that killed poor Chad all those years ago. Sure, the police didn’t have any evidence that Greg was drunk when the accident happened, but Stacy knew. She knew, alright, and had spent the last 20 years cursing Greg and the incompetent police that had allowed him to go free. Now here he was, finally at the mercy of Stacy (and her mysterious, new benefactor).

“This man – what would you have me do to him?” the old woman asked Stacy. Her accent was thick and decidedly not American.
“Is she Eastern European? Are Gypsies even from Eastern Europe?” wondered Stacy.

Not that it made a difference. And Stacy knew exactly what she wanted the old woman to do to Greg. She had fantasized about doing it to him on her own, many, many times before. Hell, she would have volunteered to take over and do the deed herself then and there, if she wasn’t so worried she’d somehow screw it up from a lack of experience.
“Kill him”, she replied, flatly.

“About what I expected. Good thing I came prepared,” said the old woman, as she took out a long knife and small vial from some unseen pocket in her dirty dress. Greg, seeing his captor’s weapon, and understanding its obvious implication, began screaming. Pleading too, probably, not that any of it was intelligible with that washcloth stuffed in his mouth.

Confidently (like she had done it many times before) the crone moved behind Greg, bent over – and slit his throat in one fluid motion. His eyes rolled back into his head as the blood began flowing profusely from the wound, and the gypsy collected as much into the vial as it would allow. The rest just spilled onto the floor, and Stacy had to shift her feet to avoid it getting on her expensive heels.

“I’ll clean later,” said the fortune teller nonchalantly, and Stacy couldn’t help but wonder if she would use a magical broom to do so.

It was kind of hard for her to think any further than that, though, as she now felt very similar to the way she had when Chad had given Stacey her first orgasm, one hot summer night when they were both still in High School: her heart was racing, her knees were shaking, and her skin felt like it was being massaged with faint electricity. Yea, she felt that good. And why shouldn’t she, after all of the pain this man had caused her? She cursed him one last final time, and prayed his torment would continue long after the last light faded from his eyes, which it very soon did.

“Come back in week,” said the hag, as she put the now-full vial back into the hidden compartment from whence it came. “And I’ll have what you need.” She then proceeded to explain to Stacy exactly what that was.

…

A week later, Stacy was at her son’s disgusting apartment. She had used the excuse that she wanted to cook for him as her reason for coming over, and so both were now standing in his filthy kitchen. Her original scheme was to slip the potion into his portion of the soup she was making, but you know what they say about the best-laid plans of mice and men…

You see, Ben had been droning on and on about some awful nerd shit (Marvel films? Star Wars?) when Stacy - not being able to listen to him for another single second – decided that she had finally had enough, and pulled the small vial out of her pants pocket. She turned on a dime, and tried to force its contents into Ben’s zit-ringed mouth.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!! I WANT MY DAUGHTER ALREADY, YOU FAT FUCK!!!” she screamed.

The witch had explained it all back at her shop– all she had to do was give Ben the potion she would make with her husband’s murderer’s blood, and he would transform into a 100% biological woman almost immediately. Stacy was, at first, admittedly disappointed that he wouldn’t just become the Alpha stud she and Chad had always wanted him to be, but it’s not like she could go shopping around for other magical elixirs, could she?

And anyway, thinking over this prospect the past week, she had actually come to prefer this over her original desire. After all, hadn’t she secretly felt gender regret when she and Chad had learned that Ben was a boy? Hadn’t she always, deep down, wanted a daughter? Yes, the notion had grown inside of her each day since she had been pulled into that strange store, until it had become the seed of a kind of insanity.

An insanity that was now being expressed, very physically, by Stacy.

“Mom, what the hell are you doing!” cried Ben, before slamming his mouth shut.

He wasn’t making this easy for her. Thinking quickly, Stacy did the one thing she knew would get him to open his mouth – she kicked him straight in his balls. Sure enough, his gullet opened, and Stacy hurriedly poured the witch’s brew down his throat.
“He won’t be needing them again anyway,” she thought to herself. “Not that he was ever going to use them for their God-given purpose to begin with!”

Ben coughed and gagged, but the changes came quickly regardless. Before her eyes, Ben was transformed (very painfully, judging by his moans and screams) into a “slim-thick” young woman with supple breasts; a plump, rounded butt; a toned, flat stomach; and long, blond hair. Even his dark, stained, oversized clothes changed into a white tank top and denim short-shorts.

The last things to change were his eyes, and when they did, going from dark brown to a bright blue, something else changed, too.

This was the death of Ben’s identity, of course. Now he was Megan – always was and always would be, the only daughter to a single (but, thankfully, rich) mother, whose beloved father had died in a senseless car accident when she was still a baby.

Something inside Stacy changed too, as new memories of raising Megan flooded her mind: taking her to gymnastics; teaching her about the changes her body would be going through with puberty; watching her graduate High School, and then College. Her old memories of Ben weren’t rewritten, however, meaning she would be the only one left in this reality who would remember he ever even existed.

Did this bother Stacy? No, it did not. A week ago, after killing Greg and taking his blood, the old woman told her exactly what was going to happen, and every price she outlined was one she was willing and glad to pay to rectify this – her – mistake with Ben. Hell, the whole world would be better off with an attractive white girl like Megan than with just another male loser incel like Ben. Who needs more rapists, misogynists, and mass shooters, right? Stacy might have actually saved some lives by making Megan, even!

“Mom, are you okay?” asked Megan, causing Stacy to suddenly snap back to reality.

Mother and daughter were standing in the latter’s modest but nicely-decorated kitchen, Stacy having visited so she could check in on her precious daughter and cook her favorite dinner for her. They had been pleasantly chatting away when Stacy had suddenly gone quiet.
“Oh, I’m fine, honey,” replied Stacy, a little wistfully.

“Anyway, let me tell you more about this guy I went out on a date with last week,” continued Megan, picking up the conversation that she and her mother had been having before her mother had started acting so…weird.

As Stacy listened to her daughter go on and on about her recent date, a deep sense of calmness washed over her. This was something she hadn’t felt in…well, not since Chad had passed away on that fateful night, so long ago. Finally - finally - things were right.

And she had so much to look forward to, as she had no doubt that Megan would quickly find a husband, perhaps even this very same guy she was talking about right now. An engagement, a wedding, grandchildren…If there were any doubts left in Stacy, even somewhere deep in her unconscious mind, they were definitely gone now.

She had a beautiful, healthy, and happy daughter, and a Mother couldn’t ask for anything more.

…

Epilogue

Stacy did try to return to the gypsy’s shop, to not only thank her for her help with Megan, but also to see if she could enlist her aid in a few…other matters. She was disappointed then, but somehow not surprised, to see that the store was gone. No, not abandoned, not closed: it was as if it had never been there at all. Instead of the windows, door, and neon sign that had been there before, all Stacy found was a smooth, unmolested brick wall.

Stacy simply shrugged and continued on with her day. She imagined the old witch had moved on to help other poor, struggling women like Stacy, and found herself comforted by the thought.