Chapter 39: Forced Femininity
John woke to the feeling of his bones singing.
It wasn’t pain. It was worse. A deep, cellular violin note, vibrating through every ligament, rearranging the architecture of himself. The ceiling of Chloe’s apartment swam into view, but it was wrong—higher, the cracks in the plaster forming different, unfamiliar patterns. A neon sign from the street below pulsed pink light through the window, rhythmically illuminating the holographic disco ball that spun lazy, prismatic squares across the walls.
His body finished its silent symphony with a soft sigh of settling tissue. He was smaller. Lighter. The center of gravity was a compact, alien thing in his hips. He felt the brush of long hair against his neck and shoulders.
‘Ah. First shift of the cycle,’ Amy’s voice sounded, not in his skull, but from his own throat. It was her voice. He was just… listening from the back. ‘The autopilot engagement. Try not to hyperventilate. It’s undignified.’
John tried to speak. He couldn’t find the controls. He was a ghost in the machine, feeling everything. The soft weight of breasts against the fabric of his—her—his—the tank top he’d slept in. It was now comically loose in some places, sinfully tight in others. The sweatpants he’d borrowed from Chloe pooled around unfamiliar hips.
Amy sat up on the air mattress with a fluid ease John’s lanky frame never possessed. She stretched, and John felt the pleasing pull of muscles in a back that was not his own. Then she went still.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” she muttered aloud.
A warm, insistent pressure was building in the cradle of the new pelvis. It was a blunt, confusing signal, a biological echo ringing in the wrong-shaped chamber. It swelled, an undeniable and deeply embarrassing fullness.
John’s mental panic was a silent scream. What is that? Is that—?
‘It is a predictable synaptic misfire,’ Amy thought back, her internal voice dripping with disdain. But she also shifted slightly, a faint flush of—was that annoyance?—coloring their shared perception. ‘The transformation protocol is a two-way circuit, you unbelievable infant. The body remembers. If turning into a woman is tied to male arousal, then the female form’s activation can… stimulate the analogous neural pathways. A feedback loop of spectacular idiocy.’
So I’m turned on by being myself?
‘You are turned on by existence. It’s pathetically consistent.’
Amy swung her—their—legs off the air mattress and stood. The sensation of the erection, so utterly out of context in this body, was a constant, throbbing distraction. She walked, with deliberate poise, toward the large mirror leaning against the wall. The posters of superheroines flanking it seemed to nod in grim solidarity.
John watched through their eyes as Amy Smith’s face—his face, but not—appeared in the glass. Fine-boned, with John’s own hazel eyes but sharper, framed by a tousled mess of dark hair. The expression was pure Amy: an arched eyebrow, a look of profound resignation.
From the clutter on the nearby milk crate, she picked up a tube of lipstick Chloe had left out. It was a violent, metallic purple. Without breaking eye contact with her reflection, she uncapped it and applied it with a single, practiced swipe.
“There,” she said aloud, her voice a controlled alto. “Armor. Now, the rest.”
She turned to the pile of clothing Chloe had assembled—the “utilitarian punk librarian” vision. Black, high-wailed trousers, a striped mesh top, a boxy blazer with aggressively padded shoulders. As she dressed, John felt every sensation: the cool slide of the trousers over skin, the constriction of the waistband, the weird, airy feeling of the mesh against their chest.
The physical discomfort of the erection didn’t subside. It was just… there. A background hum of awkwardness.
“You have to ignore it,” Amy said, buttoning the blazer. “Focus on the mechanics. Walking. Breathing. Not thinking about the entirely mundane biological glitch you’re currently hosting.”
It’s not mundane! It’s horrifying!
‘It’s a Tuesday.’ She checked the reflection, gave a slight, approving tilt of her head. Then her eyes—their eyes—flicked past their own image, to the deep background of the mirror.
The whisper from the previous day wasn’t a sound. It was a movement. A shadow in the glass that didn’t match the room. It coiled in the reflection of a dark corner, a tendril of something oily and dark that slithered behind the image of the spinning disco ball.
Amy went preternaturally still. ‘Do you see that?’
I feel it.
It was a cold spot in their shared consciousness. A pinprick of vacuum.
The shadow in the mirror pulsed. The glowing pendant on the coffee table, which had been emitting a soft, steady cyan light, flickered and stuttered. On the TV screen, the 90s infomercial host’s grin distorted, his voice dropping to a guttural, drawn-out syllable that might have been “see…”
Amy’s hand—their hand—shot out and yanked the chain of the pendant. The light died, plunging that corner of the room into deeper shadow. She grabbed the remote and muted the TV. The apartment was suddenly, thickly silent, save for the electric hum of the neon sign.
The thing in the mirror shivered, as if disappointed.
‘A reflector,’ Amy thought, the words sharp and clinical in their mind. ‘Not a true breach. A parasite on reflections. Weak to interrupted light and broken attention.’
She reached over and, with a violent jerk, pulled the power cord of the holographic disco ball from the wall. Its spinning slowed, the prisms fading. The shadow in the mirror faded with it, dissipating like ink in water until only their own wide-eyed reflection remained.
John felt a cold terror that was entirely his own. What was that?
‘A consequence,’ Amy thought. She let out a long, controlled breath. John felt her pulse rate slowly decelerate. ‘The universe has weak spots. That newspaper article, the focused public ridicule… it creates a kind of psychic lint. Things that live in shame are attracted to it. They gather in the low places.’ She met her own gaze in the glass, her expression grim. ‘Your humiliation is a beacon, John. It’s drawing flies.’
The sheer, grotesque unfairness of it crashed over him. Not only was he a laughingstock, his shame was literally attracting monsters.
Before he could form a coherent thought, the deadbolt on Chloe’s apartment door clacked and the door swung open. Chloe bustled in, arms laden with paper bags smelling of greasy breakfast sandwiches and coffee.
“Rise and shine, girlf—whoa.” She stopped, taking in Amy, fully dressed and made-up, standing rigidly before the mirror. “You’re already up. And you look… intensely focused. And kinda turned on. Is that part of the look?”
Amy turned from the mirror. The controlled mask was back. “It’s a systemic glitch. Ignore it.” She accepted the coffee Chloe offered. “We have a problem. The narrative is attracting more than readers.”
Chloe’s smile faltered as she followed Amy’s glance to the now-dark disco ball and the silent TV. The air in the apartment still felt charged, thin. “Oh,” she said, her voice small. “The mirror thing again?”
“The mirror thing,” Amy confirmed, taking a sip of coffee. “It’s escalating. We need to do more than edit the highlights reel, Chloe. We need to change the channel entirely.”
She set the coffee down, her purple lips set in a thin, determined line.
“Put your boots on. We’re going to give them a new story to follow.”