Cursed TG

Evan had never believed in witches. He laughed at the stories his grandmother used to tell—of bargains gone wrong, of nights when the veil was thin, of women with eyes that could unspool a man’s life with a single glance.

That was before he crossed her.

The woman had stood on the corner of the market, shawl wrapped tight against the wind, her hand outstretched for coins. Evan had brushed past her, muttering, “Get a job,” more cruelly than he meant. The words were small, thoughtless. But the smile she gave him was not.

“You’ll learn,” she said, voice like gravel under water. “You’ll learn what it is to be seen, and not yourself.”

That night, he woke to fire crawling under his skin.

The transformation was not a single moment but a series of betrayals. His chest swelled, heavy and unfamiliar. His hips cracked wider. His voice shattered, climbing into registers he had never used. Hair spilled from his scalp in red waves, hot against his shoulders. His skin smoothed, every pore alien to him.

By dawn, the mirror revealed a stranger: a woman with storm-bright eyes, lips too full, curves etched as if by a sculptor with cruel precision. Her hair burned copper in the morning light. She was beautiful—terrifyingly so.

And she was him.

Evan screamed, but the sound came out as a raw, feminine wail.

The first day followed a script he didn’t know he had memorized. His hands—no, her hands—pulled him to a vanity he had never owned, yet there it stood, stocked with brushes, palettes, tubes. He resisted, but his body moved with mechanical certainty. Foundation smoothed across her cheeks. Mascara darkened lashes. Lip gloss shone wet and pink.

Next came the clothes. A drawer yielded scraps of fabric: low-cut tops, shorts too tight, dresses that clung like a second skin. His body chose for him, shimmying into the skimpiest option, a tank top and panties that revealed more than they concealed. He wanted to cry, to tear it off, but the curse pulled him onward.

By evening, he was in a bar. He didn’t remember walking there. He didn’t remember choosing the seat, ordering the drink. But there he was, perched on a stool, legs crossed, hair falling in practiced waves. Men stared. One approached.

Evan begged himself not to speak, but her lips parted. She laughed at jokes that weren’t funny. She touched the man’s arm. The night blurred in a haze of neon and dread.

When she woke the next morning, alone in bed, it was the same day again.

The curse revealed its cruelty quickly. Each morning was identical. Evan woke in the red-haired woman’s body, compelled into the same humiliating ritual: makeup, slutty clothes, the bar, the man. But it was never the same man. The curse shuffled faces, but the script was unchanged.

Worse, each cycle degraded him further.

On the third day, he noticed his reflection lingered after he moved, lips curling in a smile he didn’t feel.

On the fifth, his voice in the mirror whispered, You look perfect, even when he said nothing.

By the seventh, he no longer remembered his old face. He tried to picture Evan—short brown hair, crooked nose, the scar on his chin from childhood—but the details slipped through his fingers like sand. The only face he could conjure was hers.

He tried to resist. One morning, he refused to pick up the makeup brush. His hand trembled, sweat beading, but the longer he fought, the tighter the pressure in his skull became. It felt like a migraine blooming behind his eyes, growing until blackness threatened. At the last moment, he gave in. The relief was instant. His hand steadied, sweeping blush across cheeks.

He learned quickly: resistance meant agony. Compliance meant… less agony.

So he complied.

The bar became a theater of horrors. He sat on the same stool, ordered the same drink, listened to the same compliments. The men changed—sometimes businessmen, sometimes students, sometimes lonely wanderers—but his role was constant: the beautiful red-haired stranger who existed only to smile back.

He hated them. He hated himself more.

Each morning after, when he woke again in the same bed, the clothes laid out for him were skimpier than the day before. A plunging neckline. A hem so short it barely covered him. Stockings that clung like chains.

The witch’s curse had logic: to grind away his resistance by making each iteration more unbearable than the last.

By the twentieth day, Evan no longer tried to run. He didn’t test the edges of the loop, didn’t scream at strangers to notice him. They never did. The bar patrons saw only what the curse wanted: a willing woman. His protests, his flinches, were swallowed by a hypnotic glaze.

By the thirtieth, he stopped counting.

The mirror laughed at him now. Some mornings, when he leaned close, its reflection whispered words he didn’t want to hear. Slut. Doll. Toy.

He pressed his hands over his ears, but the whispers wormed through anyway.

The worst part wasn’t the loss of control. It was the slivers of pleasure that bled in against his will. The relief of eyeliner drawn straight. The faint thrill of hair falling in perfect curls. The glint of approval in strangers’ eyes. Each scrap of satisfaction sickened him, but the curse fed on it, stretching it until it felt real.

By then, Evan wasn’t sure which parts of him were left. His memories blurred, his voice faltered when he tried to recall his old name.

He was no longer Evan. He was the red-haired stranger.

One night, after countless repetitions, he spotted her.

At the bar mirror, across the rows of bottles, sat the witch. The same shawl, the same grin. Her eyes locked onto his.

“Please,” he whispered, lips trembling. “End it.”

She raised her glass in a toast. “But you look so beautiful.”

And then the night reset.

Morning again.

Evan—if that name meant anything anymore—rose from the bed. The vanity waited, brushes lined like soldiers. His hands moved without asking. Foundation. Powder. Lip gloss.

In the mirror, the red-haired woman smiled back. Her smile stretched wider, wider, until it wasn’t a smile at all.

Evan screamed inside.

The body laughed outside.

And the day began again.