“So, all of the girls in Diana’s posse swore they’d never have anything to do with yucky boys. But this guy named Jupiter saw one of them, a girl named Callisto, and thought she was pretty. He was a no-good kind of man, always chasing after girls and then leaving them alone as soon as they fell in love with him.”

 

“Yuck,” Jasmine commented.

“‘With great power comes great responsibility.’”

 

“Your power isn’t all that great,” she pointed out.

“I’ll pour three mugs of water, and heat one of them up in the microwave, and then shuffle them around while you’ve got your back turned. Then you look and tell us which one is hot.”

“I like being a girl. It feels better than being a boy, at least for me. But remember Jamie is a different person; still a lot like me, I mean we’re both still a lot like we used to be, but just because he turns into me at night doesn’t mean he’s gay or transgender. If anything, from what Bobby tells me, he’s more macho than we were before.”

“He said you’ve changed your name to Artemis? Why? Jamie works fine for a girl as well as a boy.”

 

Better for a girl than a boy, I thought, remembering some of the teasing I’d had to put up with. No sense bringing that up now, though.

We’d been awake almost twenty-four hours, and we were delirious with sleepiness. A few minutes earlier I’d been about to turn in, and Bobby had said: “We’ve stayed up this long, why don’t we go out and watch the sun rise?”

“Mom said supper’s almost ready, but I think I’ve got time to scrub the toilets...”

 

“Already?”

 

She shrugged. “They’ve been used several times since this morning. And Craig has terrible aim.”

“The usual punishments don’t work,” Steve said. “No sense giving her extra chores when she’s already doing way more than her share, or grounding her when she doesn’t want to go anywhere and she’s quit playing games or watching TV on her own. I said we should stop her from cleaning something, but —”

When we went out clothes-shopping, she didn’t fuss about trying on bras or skirts, or insist on buying only jeans, like some people. And you saw how she was dressed, just now — she picked that out herself. But we didn’t have time to buy very much because she got so anxious about the housework she’d left undone.

“It’s experimental, so the Medical Bureau won’t pay for it; I’d have to save up for it, probably put it off till I finish college and I’ve been working full-time for years. And there’s no guarantee it’d work; I might have a womb and ovaries but still not be able to have babies...”

“— I might have been like that guy who Twisted into a giant cockroach in his sleep.”

 

“That’s an urban legend,” I said. “There’s a book where that happened, but it was way pre-Antarctic Flu, pure fantasy.”

“It’s okay most of the time,” I said. “Times like this, I can forget what’s wrong with me and just enjoy being a girl out shopping with her friends. My friends accept me for who I am, and strangers can’t tell what’s wrong with me.”

I tried to elicit clues that would help me figure out what he was thinking and feeling about me, without leading him on in a way that would mess up what I had — or might have — with Rob. It didn’t work; by the end of the meal I had no more idea than before what Vic felt about me, and had only succeeding in confusing myself about my own feelings.

Mildred getting in trouble for using her trick was serious business and I knew I wasn’t supposed to encourage her, but I couldn’t help laughing.

“There you go. He doesn’t care about you as a person; he just wants you because you’re pretty.”

“This sometimes happens with Twist compulsions,” Dr. Oldstadt said. “They are vague at first, and easy to ignore, but once they become more definite, they are harder to resist and one suffers more distress when trying to resist them. I’m sorry we did not realize that wearing feminine clothes was a Twist-compulsion for you, and not just an expression of your altered gender identity.”

Another girl stepped out of one of the stalls just then and went to wash her hands, looking warily at me. Tracy said to her: “This pervert is using some Twisted trick to make us think he’s a girl, so he can sneak in here and spy on us.”

“No, I walked in here openly so I could empty my bladder.”

“There’s someone I’m close to who’s Twisted, but my family doesn’t want anything to do with him,” Morgan said, and hurried on: “Not like you’re thinking. He’s not my boyfriend, he’s my cousin. I haven’t seen him since his parents got divorced, which was right after his Twist, and because of it.”

“It’s what they call a mental Twist. Most of my body didn’t really change at all, but my brain... there are a lot of little changes there, because I have a kind of new personality. Basically, I have a girl brain.”

Then the real fun began, picking out skirts and blouses and a couple of dresses. I was eager to finally try on something that was right for me, but worried that, until I got my body fixed — and who knew how long that could take, if it was even possible these days? — this stuff wouldn’t look right on me, even if it felt right to my Twisted mind.

I got out my razor and shaving cream, and then paused, remembering the depilatory cream that Mildred used on her armpits and legs. She sure wouldn’t be needing it anymore.

“I hope I get a really cool trick, like Kerry’s,” Mildred said. “And I’d like to be taller and prettier, and I wouldn’t mind having exotic eyes, but...”

 

“But you don’t want to look like Kerry,” I said, and she nodded.

Twisted Throwback

part 1 of 25

by Trismegistus Shandy

This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in his Twisted universe. It's set about a generation later than "Twisted", "Twisted Pink", etc. I've tried to write it as a stand-alone, so you need not have read Morpheus's Twisted stories first, or recently, to enjoy it; some of his characters make cameo appearances, but I don't think it has significant spoilers for the stories they come from.