2000's

Chapter 21 - High School Memories

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Link: The Road to Hell Title Page and Description

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Before the end of the month, Grace had her driver's license and the two spent their first evening out alone without Judy. It was a simple dinner at a fast food place and then a movie, but she and Josh enjoyed it just the same.

Chapter 20 - Another Birthday

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Judy spent the next month looking into any legal options for Josh. In the end all that came of it was that he could file a malpractice lawsuit against Dr. Williams, but not until after he turned eighteen. Until then only his parents could file one on his behalf.

Chapter 19 - Growing Up is Hard to Do

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Trapped in a one-car garage filling with smoke, Josh found it strange that he could breath just fine. It was then that he saw both Jennifer and Grace were there and choking on the deadly fumes as he watched helplessly. Suddenly, he noticed he had a respirator in his hand and looked at the two girls in turn. He knew that he could only save one of them at this point, as they were both so close to death that by the time he'd saved one, the other would be gone. Frozen in indecision, he stood there and watched as both succumbed to the smoke and fell lifeless to the floor as he screamed.

Chapter 18 - Right or Wrong

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Link: The Road to Hell Title Page and Description

CAUTION: Attempted Suicide
CAUTION: Referenced / Discussed Suicide
CAUTION - Highly Emotional Content

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As the school year came to a close, Josh and Grace were getting closer to one another, but he continued to struggle with his feelings while still clinging to the memory of his love for Jennifer and all that she'd tried to do for him. No matter how many times he tried to look at it, he couldn't figure out what the right thing to do was.

Chapter 17 - Beware the Ides of March

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Turning in place and looking at himself in his closet mirror, Josh sighed at the utter futility of looking anything like a boy. He'd bought some boy's clothes in a department store; a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap. Even with his hair tucked up in the cap and his still-growing breasts strapped down with an ace bandage, the image he saw reflected in his mirror looked like a pre-teen girl wearing boy's clothes. Once he took off the cap and his hair spilled out, the vision was complete and he would even be hard-pressed to say they were boy clothes. On him, he felt they still looked girly.

Chapter 16 - The Hand of Fate

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Link: The Road to Hell Title Page and Description

CAUTION - Indirect Reference to Suicidal Thoughts
CAUTION - Intense scenes involving a minor
CAUTION - Highly Emotional Content

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Josh was 'sick' the next week, which wasn't far from the truth as he was lost in a near constant fugue state. Friday came and he was taken down to Dr. Biggs's office and got his first three-month shot of puberty blockers. The next Monday, he went back to school and met Tracy at the bus stop.

Chapter 15 - Hard Lessons in Parenting 101

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Link: The Road to Hell Title Page and Description

CAUTION - Intense scenes involving a minor
CAUTION - Highly Emotional Content

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Slowly, Josh became aware of a hand shaking his shoulder. Not wanting to leave the warm comfort he felt, he groaned at the hand. "Go 'way!"

Chapter 14 - The Birthday Party

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Looking himself over one last time, he nodded with resigned satisfaction. The blue satin dress looked good on him, flattering his natural curves and making him appear to be every bit the pre-teen girl he was made to become. His visits with Jennifer and the Healy family and to their church over the past two weeks had been blissful reprieves from his home life. While his parents were happy to have him come and go as he pleased, when he was home he'd had to endure a new round of pushing from his parents.

Chapter 13 - Young Love

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The next morning Josh cheerfully made his way toward the bus stop. It was a beautiful late summer day, so he'd worn one of the skirts that used to belong to Tracy and one of the tops Melanie had gotten him. When he saw his best friend at the stop, he smiled wide and jogged forward to greet her.

Chapter 12 - Parental Guidance Suggested

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Sitting in Jennifer's bedroom, the door open, and with a promise from her parents not to 'wander by' to check up on them for at least half an hour, the two sat on her bed next to one another. Before the three had returned to the Healy's home, Josh had decided that it was now or never, so he'd asked her parents for a moment of semi-privacy to talk with Jennifer alone first.

Chapter 11 - Honesty is the Best Policy

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After the service, the family went to their usual restaurant for brunch. Josh was quiet and contemplative, distracted as he mentally deconstructed the topic, The Sermon on the Mount. He didn't understand the context, other than in theory, so all he could do was judge the value based on the words spoken. He ate his turkey club sandwich absently, staring off into space as he pondered the words that seemed to be in total contradiction with the impression his parents had given him of the Christian faith.

Chapter 10 - When All Else Fails

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Josh awoke at six as usual. He almost didn't need the alarm he'd set the night before, having gotten used to rising at that time anyway, but he was taking no chances. Jumping out of bed quickly, he got dressed. Putting on fresh white undies and white tights easily now that he'd had practice at it, he put on a pretty bra and then got into the skirt and blouse.

Chapter 9 - Unexpected Journeys

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After returning home, Josh was truly happy for the first time since the start of school. He had his two best friends again and it actually gave him hope for a moment that, with their help, he could figure a way out of his predicament. They always helped with my parents insisting I'm gay! he reasoned. Slowly though, a new thought dawned on him. I've gone to school three times dressed as a girl! Everyone thinks I want to be one now! It'll be impossible to convince them I really wanna be a boy... even Tracy and David!

Chapter 8 - Altercations

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Petrified as he saw the bus coming, Josh knew it was too late to get a ride from his mother as she'd already gone to work. Getting a ride with his father, which wasn't an option as he was not due back until that afternoon, would have been more humiliating than getting on the bus in a dress. He honestly respected his parents and their right to express their opinions, but he'd gotten enough of a hard time in Primary and Intermediate school when his classmates would see the rolling campaign ad for the Democrat Party. Not because of their politics, but simply because it looked so tacky.

Chapter 7 - School Daze

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Josh could see the group of kids milling about around the bus stop. Coming to a halt, he very nearly chickened out and ran for home. His mother had offered to drive him to school, but he had refused.

Chapter 6 - Self-Deception

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Waking when his alarm went off as usual, Josh turned it off and slowly stretched, trying to clear the cobwebs out of his head. As he opened his eyes, he was confronted by the reality of his situation as the short sleeve of his nightgown came into view. Slowly he remembered the previous day and how he'd caved to his parents' insistence that he was a girl.

Chapter 5 - The Things We Do to Get Along

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Waking up in the dark, Josh looked around the room and saw out the window that it was night. Stretching, he felt a funny pain from his ears. Reaching up to rub his earlobes, he felt the magnetic earring fall off and onto his bed somewhere. The memory of his mother dressing him like a girl for the first time came flooding back to him. Almost getting angry about it, he then remembered the email from David and resigned himself to the fact that in order to get along with everyone, he was going to have to pretend to be the girl that everyone now expected him to be.

Chapter 4 - A New Look

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Josh came down the next morning, showered, clean, ready for school, and completely empty of feelings. He'd cried himself to sleep, awoke late in the night, cried himself back to sleep, and finally woke up again shortly before his alarm was set to go off. Emotionally drained, he knew that his parents would be full of questions for which he had no answers.

Chapter 3 - A Girl's Reputation

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When Josh walked in the door, he headed straight for his room. Repressing an involuntary shudder at the ultra-feminine dwelling, he picked up his phone extension, only to hear the squeal of a modem. Suddenly realizing his father was still at 'work', running his computer consultant business from home on the house's second telephone line that was also his bedroom phone line, he lowered the receiver quickly. Hoping he hadn't kicked his father off-line, he thought quickly and went back down to his father's office.

Chapter 2 - "Girl" Problems

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Their first day started uneventfully. The trio got their locker assignments, their class schedules, and coordinated when they would have time to hang out and share classes. When Josh saw the first class of the day that his parents had signed him up for was Home Economics instead of the Shop class he'd asked for, his heart sank a little more. The only bright point was that he'd be sharing the class with Tracy... and twenty-seven other girls.

Chapter 1 - Natural Assumptions

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A smile broke across Josh's face as he approached the bus stop. The cool air of the September morning stung his nose slightly, but it didn't detract from the happiness he felt at going back to school again. Unlike a lot of the boys in his class, Josh loved school. Now that he was going to Junior High, he would even be going to school with his two best friends, Tracy and David Edwards. He always thought it was silly that just because they lived two blocks over they had to go to completely different Primary and Intermediate schools. Stepping up his approach to a light jog, he couldn't wait to see them.

Chapter 24 - Every Day is Your Last

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CAUTION - Highly Emotional Content

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I didn't hear about Jack or Rich until I'd been deployed to Bagram for over six months. When they extended our deployment another six, we were given ten-day Leaves. Mine came up first in rotation, so I got to fly back to Guam where I called Jenny as soon as I could get off base. She told me and I dug up the details after they were already buried and gone.

Heather got a letter from Rich's CO that he'd been killed while volunteering for picket duty, but he didn't know about the association between Rich and Jack, so Heather didn't find out about his death until she called to break the news to Erica. They met up at Arlington and it was the last time any of us in New Hampshire would see any of the California families again. Jenny was there to represent me as a 'friend of the family'. No one ever knew about us while I was serving. I made sure it never showed and Jenny was a rock! She passed the time I was gone with Heather, Faith, her folks, and a promise.

After the funeral, everyone just stopped communicating. It... it was like their deaths killed more than their bodies. It killed their families. Last I ever heard from Erica was a Christmas card from her that she must have sent before she got the letter about Jack, but I didn't even know about that until almost two years later when I came home. After so much time and pain, I just couldn't bring myself to call or write her.

When Erica finally wrote Heather, and she wrote back, none of us knew just how important those letters would become or how much they would change all our lives.

Chapter 23 - No Greater Love

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Link: Every Day Is Your Last Title Page and Description

CAUTION - Highly Emotional Content
CAUTION - Violence

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We mourned with Heather and Rich when they got the news about her not being able to have any more kids. She and Rich wanted more, but things are the way they have to be, right? That's what Jack always used to say. They moved north that fall while Rich worked at fixing up the big house.

They surprised Jenny and I when they told us they were going to give the little house to us. No rent meant Jenny could quit and I could open my own salon with her as my office manager. So in spring of ninety-nine, just after Faith's first birthday, we moved to be with Heather and Rich in Pittsberg.

Meanwhile, Jack and Erica had their own share of troubles. She caught an ectopic pregnancy three months after Jenny and I moved, days after Heather's twenty-fifth birthday, that nearly killed her. She had a radical hysterectomy that saved her life, but meant they too would only have one child. Rich and Heather flew all four of us down there, staying nearly a month, but we had to come home eventually, leaving Jack and Erica alone again. Judith broke her promise and tried tearing them apart, and Frank separated from her over it, though they reconciled after... well...

Things were never the same after that. They never came back to visit us in New Hampshire. Jack couldn't leave his business and Jenny and I couldn't leave ours, and Heather had her practice, so that trip in summer of ninety-nine was the last I ever saw Jack or Erica. We kept in touch, but not enough.

Then everything changed... for everyone.

The Road to Hell

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Josh Ryan was not normal. He talked different, walked different, laughed different... and everyone knew it. He had two very close friends who always wanted to help him; in fact, throughout his young life, he always had people around who wanted to help him... usually to fend off his parents who seemed like they would do anything for him. Their desire to help however, often made his own life take a back seat to their ideas of why he was so different and who he should become as a result... "for his own good." Determined to raise Josh 'their way' and according to their own ideas of who he is, it would take extreme circumstances and more pain than Josh ever thought a person could endure for anyone to even begin to see the damage his parents were doing to his childhood, his future, and in the end, his very life... all "with the best of intentions."

Every Day is Your Last

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Jack Dunning was just a poor kid from Pittsburgh, no better or worse than any other. When he met Richard, it seemed to be a one-sided friendship; Jack needing Richard much more than the other way around. As the years passed however, it became clear to them both just how important their friendship was, eventually culminating in both learning the hardest lesson in life; that every day is a gift and you should treat each one as though it were your last.

Watching MTV pt.2: Laura's Birthday

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From that day when I was crossdressed as Kylie Minogue to now, there have happened too many things with the three of us. I became a little bit more outgoing, maybe not at school or at home, but at Steph’s and Laura’s house I was outgoing, they began to use me as their guinea pig for testing makeup looks, and by their suggestion I began to let my hair grow because they said it would look more cool like Tyson Ritter’s, yet I knew they wanted me to have longer hair to test hairstyles too.

Watching MTV

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This was just a regular day in my life, I arrived at my house after school and changed out of my school uniform into regular clothes. It was always the same routine, I would change, then help my mom to set the table, and we would eat together with my father. Then as I finished eating with my parents the doorbell rang, I went to answer the door.

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