The Many Misadventures of Persephone Anna Sharbrough
My name is Persephone Anna Sharbrough
I have no earthly idea why I decided to name myself 'Persephone' when I decided to start coming out of the egg. Not that many would know it. None of my friends called me 'Persephone' neither did any of the poor, poor souls that had the grave misfortune of having me as a pupil in the four required years of instruction I needed to endure to get a High School diploma. And none of the professors who I would soon subject to the misfortune and torture of having me as a student would know me by that name.
No, only a few people on Bonfire and those people who enjoyed reading anime inspired stories knew me as 'Persephone'. There was no reason for me to have that name. I was not Greek, I was most likely of German descent with a bit of Irish and Scottish added in. I did not look like a 'Persephone'. I was most likely underweight and all skin and bones. I'd spent the whole summer working from dawn till dusk on my uncle's farm in the heart of the Mississippi delta. I was thus tanned, and there was this hollow look around my eyes.
At best many called me androgynous at worst many called me a runt. But all of that was behind me now, I could not put those four, terrible years of High School behind me. And embrace the two years of social bliss that Junior College would be. Like I'd said I'd spent the summer working on the family's farm, checking cotton and planting cotton that will be harvested soon. So I had a little pocket money saved up.
And a Federal Pell Grant had covered most if not all of the tuition of my first semester of college. I'd hoped in around four semesters I would be a freshly pinned nurse and I could then establish a career for myself and start on becoming Persephone in earnest.
All of these thoughts filled my head as I pulled into the deserted parking lot. You see, I'd started taking college courses my Junior year and had gone on to keep taking them my Senior Year. Those had knocked out a few basic courses, most the required History courses, Western Civilization I and Western Civilization II both I'd passed with somewhat flying colors. College Keyboarding had been another one. Somehow by the grace of God or should I say by the grace of Persephone I'd managed to pass by the skin of my teeth College Algebra last year before being booted to the Mississippi Delta.
What I'm driving at is this, I had some credits behind me. Enough credits to get one of the more private dorms on campus. The so-called Motel Hall. Here I would live for the next eighteen weeks, dwelling in private. Here I'm sure I could let the egg shells fall down on the floor and I'm sure maybe even around campus if I'm careful.
Anyway, returning to the story. As I pulled into the almost empty parking lot, I took a deep breath as I peered toward the two story dorm that looked like its name said a motel. The dorm was the smallest, the smallest and oldest on campus. A fossil left from the eighties. As I peered up at the building, I breathed a silent curse. My room was a corner room. On the second floor. Meaning I would need to haul my stuff up two flights of stairs. Concrete stairs. Thankfully I'd packed light. At least I thought I did.
I quickly found my scrawny arms and hand had to strain to pick up two suitcases that I'd packed. One suitcase held my normal clothes, the other case held my 'Persephone' Clothes. I quickly found my room, and using my foot I gave the old, red metal door a good kick. Taking a deep breath I tossed the suitcase's down on my bed.
The next item I needed to haul up was my books. Besides my textbooks, I'd brought a few anime figurines because you know I was a geek at heart. The anime figurines were sitting on top of my textbooks. With a grunt I hauled that box up the two flights of stairs and gently I dropped them down at the foot of my bed. Next.. I hauled up a few pillows, two blankets, a mini fridge, a coffee pot, and a twenty four count suitcase of coke-colas, up next to a microwave and last but not least my laptop.
Next came the fun part, unpacking all of this shit! The clothes were the first thing I tackled, I decided to hand my everyday clothes to one side of my provided locker and my 'Persephone' clothes to the other. For everyday wear I had three pairs of jeans, one pair of faux leather work shoes, a set of baby blue scrubs and a few long sleeve work shirts, all solid blue. Now when it came to my 'Persephone' clothes, I had a little more variety. I had a pretty floral print sundress with short sleeves. Another small black dress that I could either dress up or dress down depending on my mood and occasion. A few skirts, some so short I had to be careful how I sat down or else I might end up flashing somebody.
And finally a few pairs of girlish cut jeans and simple tops. For shoes, I had one pair of simple black pumps, a cheap pair of plastic sandals, and a pair of black lace-up boots. Also hanging at the far back was a simple, neon pink lacy baby doll gown. All of these things had been purchased just a few days ago when in a fit of Gonzo inspired madness I decided that college would be the perfect time to see if I could pass as a girl or not.
I also decided that soon I would need to hit up the mall. I would need a wider variety of clothing if I wanted to make a go of being 'Persephone' . The good thing about college is nobody gave a flying rat's ass what you wore or how you presented yourself. My old school, the one I'd just left, gave a rat's ass. That school was a super private school that only the wealthy Bourgeoisie of the town could afford. Only the impoverished Episcopal gentry of the town and the surrounding countryside could afford the tuition. And the only reason my mother and father could afford it was the fact my grandmother and grandfather had been footing the bill. I'd been deemed a lost cause from the start, and so I'd been forced to struggle from the first to eighth grade in the Public School system before being sent to Manchester Academy to finish.
But this story is not about those four, hellish years I went through at Manchester Academy. I want to forget those four years if ever possible. Just blot them out of my mind. But just know it was not the kind of school where one could explore one's self.
Anyway, once everything was packed into the closet, the suitcases were stored on top. It was time to tackle the bed. Now, I'd never really made a bed before, so it took some time to get the sheets fitted just right. Once that was done I just smoothed out the covers of my bed and tossed a pillow or two toward the top. Good enough I suppose. I'm sure it would pass muster or cut the mustard one of the two.
Finally my medical textbooks went on the top shelf above the kind of desk-like thing. I set up a plastic anime figurine of my favorite sailor scout Sailor Mercury and one of another anime girl I could not name wearing a bunny suit. And then I decided my dorm room was fit for habitation.
After that little chore was done, I decided to get something to eat. Now, the community college was located in this kind of smallish hamlet called Benton. I'd never been to Benton before, though most of mom's folks lived here. I did know the local academy Benton Academy was a big rival with Manchester Academy. But none of that should matter now. Since I was in college.
I did know they had a pretty active main street, that a good number of the roads were paved in brick instead of asphalt and they had a smallish mall called 'Pecan Grove'. That all I knew, I'd settled on attending college here because I'd somehow managed high enough on the ACT that they had no problem accepting me and they had an 'Shake' and' Bake' Nursing program. Neither my mother nor my father thought I was fit enough, or smart enough for university and my grandmother thought I'd lacked the proper breeding and morality to attend one.
But that aside, I decided now I need something to eat before settling down for the night. I was in luck, just an half mile away from Motel Hall there was a little gas station that had a hot bar. Now, if you have never traveled the South or are just new to Mississippi allow me to take a few minutes to explain something. Most gas stations here have one of two things, some have both, they either have a hot bar where one can get fried chicken, it's always fried chicken. Or a Hunt Brothers Pizza machine where one can get a hot pizza pie. The one near me had both.
And so I'd settled on a dinner of fried chicken with a side of potato logs, and a dinner roll. I was lucky that the gas station had a little booth I could sit at and watch the world go by as I enjoyed their perfectly seasoned fried chicken, and perfectly seasoned fried potato logs and drank enough ice cold coke-cola to float a battleship. It was delightful, perfectly southern and above all afforded the breath space I needed at the time.
Dinner was done, and I returned to my dorm. I could tell by the number of lights burning I that only two or three others had moved in since this afternoon. All were on the first floor. It seemed I'd had the second floor all to myself. Smiling, I found my room. Once I was in my room, I gathered my kit, went down to the bathroom, stepped into the shower, I washed and conditioned my hair, shaved my face first and then I removed all the body hair from my body including my nether region. Then I stepped back into my room, and slipped on the night gown and snuggled under my sheets.
It had been a good day, really I consider this the first day of my new life. I'd been christened James Richard Sharbrough in Sharbrough's chapel, a white wooden church no more than quarter of a mile from a wide bend in the Sunflower River, the place were steamboats use to land and unload barrels of flour, lard, salted meat and beans and upload bales of cotton to sale in such busting river ports such as Vicksburg or New Orleans, That landing had given the settlement it's name of Sharbrough's Landing.
But I'd decided some nineteen years later to rename myself, my new name was Persephone Anna Sharbrough and today was the start of my new life.
The Many Misadventures of Persephone Anna Sharbrough
The Hospital's Fete (Part One)
I will confess something to you. I have a certain fetish, I discovered this fetish when I was twelve years old when I Googled 'Girls getting Pied'. The results blew my preadolescence. The deeper I dove down that rabbit hole the more I discovered. In the course of my wandering from one corner of the internet to the other I happened upon several sites that hosted stories written by people who had this fetish. I devoured these stories like a hungry dragon.
I discovered this fetish around the same time, I started to wonder how it would be transformed into a girl. I kind of got into it around the same time I got into anime. The animes like Ranma ½ and Tokyo Mew Mew and of course Sailor Moon colored my earliest childhood memories and fueled my desire to be a girl. I blame Nickelodeon for my fetish. As for being a nurse, well if I wanted to be Persephone then I needed a stable career and nurses were always in demand. My mother had been a nurse too, before she had met my father and settled on being the wife of a chemical worker.
As for Benton, I can't say anything in the fortnight since classes have started I've stuck to the college campus. But from what I'd seen on my drive through town on my first day I can say this. It was a kind of charming, picturesque small southern town. A dozen or so different streets seemed to retain their original brick paving. Most of the brick streets seemed to be clustered in the older section of town around the older residential areas.
Speaking of the older residential areas, I noticed Benton seemed to have quite a number of historical Queen Anne Houses, those are those houses that have steep roofs with cross gables and sometimes have large dormers. I was told by a local historian that most of those houses were built following the Civil War, it seemed the Federal armies of the North under the command of General William Tecumseh Sherman had burned the town to ground following the fall of Vicksburg. Lovely, kind of wished he had salted the earth too.
Now the area behind my dorm was mostly houses, and the people who lived in those houses seemed pleased to keep horses, chickens, pigs and the odd sheep or two in their backyards. One morning, just when the sun was starting to rise and I was waiting in line for breakfast I saw an old woman, wearing a shapeless smock rush out into the yard, holding a kitchen knife high above her head. She then with one hand picked up a roster that was pecking at the ground and pushed his head down upon an old piece of wood and with the other she lifted the clever and in the blink of an eye she skillfully beheaded the creature. With practiced hands she then dressed and plucked the thing. Its lifeless body hung from a low hanging branch all day. Later that evening, as I was waiting on dinner. I smelled the wonderful scent of chicken being fried and it smelled like a little bit of heaven.
As for my diet, well I've been eating a lot of cabbage, stewed with thin slices of bacon, black eyed peas also steamed and seasoned with thin slices of salted pork , and kale. The only time I can get any meat worth having is in the morning and that is the sausage. And you're only allowed to have two pieces of it. Oh, and grits, that taste like mashed corn and one piece of toast that taste more like sawdust than a piece of toasted bread. Sometimes for lunch you can get something good, like a piece of baked chicken or some cubed steak that floats in a pond of brownish gruel they try to pass off as brown gravy. Served like I said with a side of cabbage, black eye peas and kale.
Anyway, back on topic. Two weeks had come and gone and I was now settling into my classes. I'd hidden Persephone or hidden away that side of me for those two weeks and I was now itching to let her out. But when and were?
And that brings us back to the story I'm trying to tell you. One day I noticed a bulletin pinned to the message board of the student union. The bulletin was a notice asking for any students, who were willing to risk their cleanness for a good cause, it seemed the hospital was putting on a local fete. The fete was to help the local hospital raise money to cover some of the cost for some much needed upgrades or to buy some crayons, coloring books, stuffed animals (?) and other stuff for the children's war. Something along those lines, anyway they needed somebody to get gunged for charity.
It seemed that they had taken a cue from our British cousins and hired a bunch of guys from the local vocational center to build a gunge tank. A kind of box-like structure with a reservoir that held around twenty gallons of slop that would drop on the person sitting below. The gunging was supposed to take place during a kind of circus-like show, one showcasing local talent and where other volunteers would put on acts, dance or sing songs. Cost of admission to view the show was ten dollars. And those who volunteered to take part in the show or get gunged also got into the fete for free. Which cost another fourteen dollars.
And so I volunteered. You see when I entered Persephone mode as I called it, I noticed a sudden and powerful change came over me. As James Richard Sharbrough I was silent as the grave, prone to brooding over the words of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Put as Persephone, I was a bit of a tart, I took on an air of promiscuousness. I found myself using all the charm, wit and flattery of a Southern Belle without me knowing it. Instead of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, I read Homeric hymns and often freely quoted the Rubaiyat because I found it romantic.
And so I volunteered and I was accepted. I figured this would be a good way to introduce myself to the town and would give me a good enough reason to dress up.
The fete I found out was to be held in kind of an open field just south of town. Looking at a map of town I noticed I could take the tram from College Station the closest station and only a quarter of a mile from Motel Hall to Battlefield Station the closest station to the field and from there I could walk the other half mile. It seemed the field had once been a civil war battlefield and was rumored to be haunted. In fact, the thickest, and heaviest of the fighting had taken place right above the place the show was to take place.
Wonderful! Maybe some of the ghosts from the Civil War would show and enjoy the show! I mean really, the whole idea of this parcel of land. Called 'The Benton Common' on the town's ordnance map I'd looked up again thank you Google! Anyway this piece of land had seen some of the most savage, hand to hand fighting of the war in this area. I mean according to some sources some three thousand Federal troops had lost their lives in a near suicidal bayonet charge in order to dislodge some fourteen hundred Confederates who had hunkered down behind a earthen wall. The defenders had later been killed to an man when the Federal commander came to his senses and ordered some heavy cannons brought up and loaded with grapeshot. Those cannons in a sense became huge shotguns! The result was those poor bastards behind those earth walls were quickly torn asunder!
No wonder this town was suppose to crawling with fucking ghost!
Anyway the morning of the fete dawned hot, humid, and sticky, pretty much your average September in the Southern United States. It being a Saturday the campus was pretty much a ghost town. Most of the students had decided to travel home for the weekend. I, though, did not feel like driving the thirty-something miles of rural highway between Benton and Yazoo City. With my mind on the weather I decided to dress accordingly.
First though I had to shower, I washed and conditioned my hair. Carefully I shaved my legs so they were smooth as silk and then the hair under my arms and then my nether region. Once that was done, I walked back to my room, closed the door and stripped out of my bathrobe. Blushing a little I reached into one of the dresser drawers and carefully I pulled out a pair of french cut silken panties, these were a special kind of panties that I'd ordered online. They were meant for people like me, they were supposed to give a smooth, flushed appearance.
As I slipped them on I felt a mental switch being thrown. Next came the bra and the padding. I could not help but admire myself in the mirror as I turned around and gave a little spin. I was putting on a little weight. Good weight, the diet of cabbage, black eye peas and kale had fatten me up a little. I was no longer a twig, but a kind of curvy twig.
Next I settled for a high rise pleated denim skirt that would show off my legs. Then a simple pink top, a little lip gloss for the lips, a little blush, run the brush through my mane of lovely brunette hair and then wink in the mirror and I was all set. One last thing though, I reached over and picked up a simple, black, faux leather purse. Quickly I checked the purse for some basic girl, phone that was fully charged, check, mace, check, hairbrush with hair bands, check, and check.
Kindle.. yes, wallet with cash since I did not feel like using the AMT, check, some form of ID that I needed to get updated in the near future check! Key's, check. With all that accounted for I slipped the purse over my shoulder. Locked the door to my room and then locked the door and then I headed out. The walk from Motel Hall to College Station took around fifteen minutes. I'd decided to go with sneakers today instead of heels.
College Station was too grand of a name for the building I found. What I found was nothing more than a wooden, open air shack with a tin roof to reflect the strong morning sun and a wooden bench provided for your comfort. I mean it looked like a kind of bus stop, the only thing that was different was the iron rails that ran in front of it. I took a deep breath and booted up my kindle.
You see, I had in my wandering across the internet discovered another site a few days ago. Another story site, this one was called BigCloset TopShelf. The site focused on TG (Transgender fiction) and on that site I found a number of talented writers, one of whom was named Emma Anne Tate, Ms. Tate had published two works on kindle. And since her other stories were so good I'd decided to go ahead and buy the two offered ones on Amazon. The other one was called Joanne Barbarella who I swear would force me to buy a french maid outfit as most of her stories focused on three things, french maids, big cocks, and sex! I needed all three in my life! Heck, at nineteen I was still a virgin and I was afraid if I did not lose my virginity soon I'll be stuck as one. But I wanted to lose my virginity as my female alter ego.
All of these thoughts swirled around my head as I waited for the damn tram to appear. And it did, fifteen minutes past the posted time. The thing looked old, and looked dusty when the door opened. I was greeted by an old man with a few strands of white hair sticking out from under the brim of his dusty blue conductors hat. I sighed and climbed on board and paid my three dollars and told him where I wanted to get off.
He muttered something under his breath. A curse maybe? A prayer hopefully? And with that the damn thing lurched into action and started to speed down the tracks. Leaving me holding onto the railing above, screaming my lungs out. Thinking that at any moment this thing was going to leave the rails and as soon as it did it would be crushed to pieces and I'll be taking a one way trip to the afterlife. Oh what a wonderful start to my first adventure in Benton!