The Monthly Story: Now I'm a Girl (an unfinished TG fantasy)

(Image via Pixabay. Used under a public domain license)

Just a little snapshot for y'all this month, the early fragments of a tale I was working on but couldn't quite make fit together. I dunno if the mood was wrong, or if the challenge was just too daunting, or if this story simply had too much potential to be heartbreaking. Whatever the reason, I wound up abandoning this one. Maybe I'll go back to it one day. Maybe not. For now, y'all can take a quick glimpse behind the scenes, and see a teenage TG tale that might have been...

One last quick note. Every single author in the world has a USB drive or folder in the cloud somewhere that's full of unfinished tales. It used to be those pieces never saw the light of day - unless you were so famous that people wanted to pore over everything you ever wrote. Thanks to Patreon, though, that no longer has to happen. Even a lowly TG author like me can share her unfinished pieces here with all her fans. Niche tales like this might not be finished, but now they no longer need to be forgotten.

Lisa X

Now I'm a Girl

Even as I write this, I can’t believe it’s really happening.

Sat at my desk, my mirror in front of me, one slender leg crossed over the other as I type away, I find it hard to believe that this isn’t just some fantastic dream.

Only a few days ago, I was Trey. Until recently, looking in the mirror meant seeing a slightly-nervous boy with dark hair, a weak jaw, and faintly feminine features looking unhappily back at me. Then It happened, and the view got even worse.

But now…

Well, let’s take a look, shall we?

There, look at my reflection. That long, gorgeous blonde hair that curls and bounces, that’s mine. Those high cheekbones, that round face; they’re also mine. That tiny button nose, those pouty lips, those wide, innocent blue eyes that seem to sparkle, that girl with the look of wonder on her teenage features…

Well, you get the idea.

I pause in my writing, push back from the desk. Look down at myself, marvel at what I’m seeing.

Where once my chest was flat, it now has two bumps, right in the middle of it. Two perky little breasts that are technically on the small side but, from where I’m sitting, seem to poke right out like two reminders of my newfound femininity.

Where once my body was V-shaped, it now curves like a slender hourglass; tucking in at the waist, before expanding outward again at the hips.

Where once my legs were dusted with dark teenage hair, they’re now both smooth and slender, poking out the bottom of my cute little denim skirt. The skirt I found myself in when I first woke up. The skirt I like to think of as my lucky skirt.

Like I said. Hard to believe.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking this has to be a lie. Has to be fiction. There’s no way this petit and pretty (if I do say so myself) 18-year old girl could have ever been a boy.

I have two things to say to that. First, looks can be deceptive.

Second, dreams really can come true.

I didn’t use to believe in magic. I didn’t use to believe in fate, or God, or the paranormal, or any of that shit.

I thought this was all there was. A ‘what you see is what you get’ kind of deal. That life deals you a shitty hand and you’re stuck with it, forever.

But sat here now, in my lucky skirt and my plain white tank top, with my cute little leather boots on my tiny new feet and my new breasts resting in my bra, I can see that I was totally, utterly, stupidly wrong. And every time I realize that again, I want to hug myself and laugh out loud in my soft new voice, and smile and smile until I think my face is gonna break.

Coz it’s all true. You really don’t have to be who you’re not. All you have to do is…

Oops. Spoilers. Don’t worry, yeah, we’ll get there in the end.

But first, I want to take you back. Back to when I was still Trey. When happy, vibrant, and oh-so female Tracey was nothing but a dream. I want to take you back to when I was miserable, and everyone around me was miserable, too.

Coz this amazing change, this transformation wasn’t easy. I had to go through hell to get here. So let me take you back to hell.

Let me take you back to when I was in the hospital.

*

“How’s it feeling now?”

I smiled weakly at the nurse; a girl in her mid-twenties. Nodded my head.

“S’OK. Nothing too bad.”

Yet, I wanted to add.

The nurse nodded briskly. Professional but encouraging.

“You might experience some nausea later,” she said, before adding with a smile, “but I guess you knew that already.”

I smiled back. I didn’t want to. My gums ached. My teeth ached. My whole body ached. But I didn’t want to make her feel bad either.

“I guess I did.”

No mention of the pain, the endless sickness, the feeling like my body had vanished, leaving just a stomach that bobbed and churned on a rolling boat, and a nervous system that glowed with a miserable fire.

“Then you’ll also know it passes. And that, no matter how bad you feel, it’s a sign you’re getting better.”

I nodded again. Tried to focus on having a normal conversation.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. What I’m here for.” She checked the drip leading into my arm, an arm that was always short on muscle but had recently become skinnier than ever. “Cool. Looks like you’re nearly done.”

A smile.

“A few more checks, some waiting around and we’ll have you home in no time. Got a book?”

“Sure,” I lied. I don’t know why. Maybe I didn’t want to admit I was gonna spend the rest of the day blankly scrolling through Facebook, trying to absorb all these normal lives.

“That’s good.” She checked the drip again. “Need something to distract you. That’s the worst part. All the waiting.”

*

Let me set the scene here.

I’m guessing you weren’t expecting a hospital scene in a book being sold as a transgender romance. And if you were, I’m guessing you thought it would involve surgery or hormone-boosting, not drugs that make you barf and feel like you’ve died in the middle of the night. Hospitals aren’t romantic places.

But this isn’t an ordinary romance.

Don’t get me wrong. I wish it was. I love the idea of writing a story about how I grew up young, effeminate and bullied and, when I turned 18, suddenly decided I wasn’t gonna hide any more, and went and got the treatment to become the girl I always secretly wanted to be.

I love the idea… but that isn’t what happened.

Instead, It happened. Instead, I grew up effeminate and bullied, and then I turned 18…

…and my whole world came crashing down.

Shortness of breath. Losing weight. Not being able to keep up with my best friend Kyle on those long cycle rides he liked to take.

My mom, getting all concerned. A visit to the doctor. Some tests, and then that word. The one you never wanna hear, especially not age 18 when you’re still stuck in high school.

A word beginning with ‘C’, that is really code for another word beginning with ‘D’. A soft, nice-sounding word that no-one likes to say out loud, coz it means the end. The end of a story.

The end of a life.

Do I have to spell it out? Clue: it ends with a ‘TH’.

When a lot of people first hear the C-word, and think of the D-word, they start figuring out what’s important. They tell people if they have secrets that need to be told, they try and be themselves, the last chance they will ever have.

Unfortunately, I’m not “a lot of people”. I’m polite. Boring. Nice. I don’t like to rock the boat.

Even if it means getting to be myself.

So I spent the next few months trying to ignore the whispered voices in the back of my head even harder than ever. The ones that had been there since I was a kid, that told me I wasn’t meant to look like this, that told me I wasn’t meant to be changing with the boys, and doing boy things.

It just felt too much like letting my parents down, you know?

So I let my chance drift away, let time move on, and tried to console myself that it probably didn’t matter and it was all just a phase, only I’d never get a chance to grow out of it now.

I kept thinking that as my teenage body got weaker, as my hair vanished, and my skin got freakishly pale. I kept thinking that as the treatments began to feel even less like treatment, and more like torture.

I kept thinking that as time ticked away, and I probably would’ve gone on thinking that forever, had there not been this miracle, the one I still can’t get my head around.

We’re coming to it, I promise.

But first, I want you to meet Kyle.

*

“You’re such a pussy.”

Kyle looked down, a frown on his handsome features. The sun was so high the movement cast a shadow over his face, so I could only see one of his clear blue eyes.

“I’m mature. There’s a ton of leeches living in there, plus the current’s kinda strong.”

He shook his head.

“And I don’t wanna swim out to your dumb rock anyway.”

It was a hot Saturday, two days after the upbeat nurse had given me the drip that made me feel so sick I wanted to cry. Insects were buzzing all lazy in the sky, and the air felt like a warm and heavy blanket.

I propped myself up on my elbows, leaning back against the tree. I’d woken up feeling better than I had in weeks, and just being outside and away from my parents was making me feel even better.

“It’s not my dumb rock. It’s ours. We came here last year, remember? We swam out there and had a beer each and you started going on about how buzzed you were.”

Doubt flickered across the half of Kyle’s face that wasn’t in shadow. But I could tell he was bullshitting. I hoped.

Coz, there was no way I was ever gonna forget the day we had.

We’d started early, on our bikes. This was before the C word had ever intruded into my life, and I thought nothing of riding for hours and hours.

We rode out into the country, taking lanes we’d never taken before, looking for a place to sit and have the two beers we’d daringly stolen from Kyle’s dad’s collection. It was a gray, humid day, and the New England countryside looked like a world of mystery.

Around midday, we’d stopped at an old stone bridge over a river. We were hot and sweating, and Kyle said we should take a dip. I was all nervous about being seen with the beer, so I said we should follow the river further down. Kyle called me a pussy, but we went in the end.

And we found paradise.

Well, that’s how I remember it. The great clearing, the shade under the trees. The silence of the forest, and the powerful, flowing river with that rock in the middle of it.

“If there are any bears,” I remember Kyle grunting as he dumped his bike down, “I’m gonna throw them your skinny butt while I haul ass outta here.”

But there weren’t any bears. There was just us, and we both stripped down to our shorts and swam out to the rock.

I remember the way Kyle swam ahead of me, a little pack with the beers in, still fastened to his back.

I watched his shoulders as he moved his arms, making slow, precise movements against the current. Watched the way his muscles moved, bunching and stretching, drawing attention to his broad shoulders and thick biceps.

Later, I remember watching a single bead of water make its way slowly down his chest, and being mesmerized by the way it ran between his defined pecs, so different from my own skinny chest.

On the rock, we drank the beers – all cold from their dip in the river – and chatted shit, like guys always do. And outside I laughed at Kyle’s dumb jokes and told my own.

But inside. Inside I was in another world…

I can write this now, now that everything has changed. But at the time I tried to keep my thoughts a secret, even from myself. They just felt so… wrong, somehow. Like I was committing a crime just by thinking it.

As we sat there, and I watched the first shafts of afternoon sunlight playing through Kyle’s hair, I lifted my beer to my lips and pretended I wasn’t Trey anymore.

That I was someone else. Someone who had long, flowing blonde hair. Who had slender legs and curvy hips and perky breasts. Someone with a high-pitched laugh, someone Kyle would look at not just as a friend…

And that image made everything perfect.

And now here we were again, in the same clearing, and I was trying to get Kyle to swim out to the rock for me again, without telling him why.

It wasn’t exactly going as I’d planned.

“Even if we did go out there…” Kyle yawned, stretching upwards, giving me a momentary view of his chiseled abs, “why bother now? I’ll just be sat over there and you’ll be sat over here. What’s the point?”

“I just wanna see if you can still do it, after all those months of pizza. When was the last time you used the pool, huh?”

Kyle put one hand to his gut, as if slightly hurt.

“I’m carb-loading, dude, not turning into a fatass. But whatever.” He turned away. “I ain’t swimming today.”

“Stop being such a pussy,” I insisted, not quite sure at the time why I was being so insistent. “It’s a challenge.”

“It’s a waste,” Kyle declared, flopping down beside me, “of fucking time.”

For a moment, I simply looked at him. Then, suddenly, I was on my feet. Kyle sat up, surprised.

“Fine. If you’re not going out there, maybe I will.”

Kyle gave a nervous laugh.

“Don’t be a dick, Trey. I mean, I know you’re on the up today…”

“I’m not being a dick.” I replied. “I’m going swimming. You can watch me.”

And with that, I was turning, walking towards the water, trying to ignore Kyle’s cries as he nervously asked if this was a joke.

I was still unsteady, so it took me a while to get to the water. When I did, the river looked black, like midnight itself was flowing past me. The rock was further away than I remembered. The current looked stronger.

“Dude, if you slip and crack your leg, your mom is gonna kill me…”

My heart was hammering in my chest, like it was trying to force its way out. My legs and arms suddenly seemed a lot skinnier than they had been, a lot weaker.

I stuck my foot out. Wobbled on one leg. Let the water flow over my toes, over the ball of my foot. It was cold, like a corpse’s skin.

“C’mon Trey, stop being an asshole…”

“I’m fine,” I yelled back. “People do this shit with cancer all the time. Never heard of Lance Armstrong?”

There was a brief pause.

“You’re kidding, right? Ever heard the phrase disgraced drug cheat?”

I was silent. Deep down, I knew I was being dumb. Knew the ride out here had already left me way more tired than I should have been. Knew the latest round of chemo had left me weaker than I’d been in months.

But, damn. I was gonna go out to that rock if it killed me.

“Wanna know the definition of pussy, dude?” I shouted. “A pussy is someone who can’t swim faster than a guy who’s dying.”

“You’re not dy-”

But it was too late.

I’d already jumped.

The minute I landed in the water, I knew I’d made a mistake.

It closed over too fast, the cold sucking my breath away. The current was too strong. Maybe if I’d waited another coupla days after chemo, I coulda done it.

But like this? I felt like I was drowning.

I broke the surface, gasping for air, kicking towards the rock.

“See?” I yelled, still trying to show Kyle up for forgetting that day. “It’s fine.”

Yeah, right.

Even as my body screamed at me to turn back, I started kicking for that rock. Kicking through the black and the cold, like I was reaching out for a disappearing memory.

I kicked my legs, thrashed my arms. Yet, somehow, the rock didn’t seem to get any closer. Instead, it just slid casually sideways, as the river took me away from it, took me into its cold embrace.

I remember Kyle shouting. I remember ignoring him, and kicking harder. I remember realizing I’d done something stupid, that no amount of kicking would save me. I remember trying to turn back to shore, trying to turn round, trying to yell, my mouth filling with water…

And then I remember that strong arm clasping hold of me. I remember the way the world seemed to stand completely still, frozen between two breathless seconds…

…and then Kyle was swimming, one arm cutting a slow path through the water while the other held me tight, his strong body tensing and rippling beside me, pulling me towards the rock.

“Dude.” I protested weakly, “you don’t gotta…”

“And you don’t gotta be an asshole,” he grunted, spitting out some water that got in his mouth, “but there we are.”

So we spent an hour out on the rock, me pretending like I didn’t need help anyway, and Kyle acting like he was my savior, my knight in shining armor.

Outwardly, I still kept calling him a pussy.

But inside? Inside, I couldn’t stop thinking about how safe I’d felt in his arms. How much I really had felt like a damsel in distress.

And how secretly pleased I was that my knight had come to save me.

*

If you’ve ever been in a state of unrequited love, you’ll know how it feels.

By that, I mean you’ll know how it feels when you have an unexpectedly great day with this person. Like, I dunno, swimming out to some dumb rock in the middle of a river.

You’ll know how it feels to be so happy, so ecstatic, so lost in your little world, the one they don’t even suspect of existing, the one you’re terrified they’ll one day find out about.

And you’ll also know how it feels when that happiness suddenly curdles. When you swim back in off the rock together and both get dressed and cycle home and go your separate ways, and you realize that none of that stuff you imagined was really real.

You might not know how it feels even worse when your time is running out coz you might be dying, and you still haven’t got the guts to tell this person how you really feel.

But you can probably guess.

I know I could tell you. I could take all 12,000 words just telling you all about that feeling.

Only I have something else to tell you instead. Something much more urgent.

Coz this is the part where my story gets really weird.

*

I was lying awake in my room, trying to ignore how shitty I was feeling, when it happened.

It was a little while after the thing with the rock. I’d gone back to the hospital that day, and was now feeling sick as a dog again.

“They’re trying something new today,” the nurse had said as she stuck the needle into my arm. “Nothing too extreme, but you might feel a bit worse than usual.”

I’d nodded glumly, not even bothering to open my mouth. After nearly six weeks of aggressive chemo, I already felt worse.

I’d had no idea how much worse it could get.

The day had been one long slog of sickness. I’d come home feeling dreadful. I’d laid in the front room feeling worse, only giving my mom weak smiles when she asked if I was OK.

I’d gone to bed feeling crap-tacular, and now I was lying in bed, staring at the shadows swirling across the ceiling like eddies in the current of a rushing river, wondering if I’d be better off just dying already.

It’s hard to describe just how bad I felt. Bad and weird.

Like, I was sick, but my arms and legs were tingling, too. There was this sort of strange… tightness in my chest. My scalp itched. My lips were numb. Everything that could be wrong with me, was.

Downstairs, the faint sound of the TV crackled away. Mom and Dad, watching something on Netflix, trying not to think about their ill kid upstairs. Beside my bed, my cell showed the time: 23:59.

I closed my eyes. Took a deep breath. Let out a gentle moan. My cell gently bleeped the hour.

And then it happened.

Even today, I struggle to describe it. It was unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. It was like something you read about in a science fiction novel, only a thousand times weirder.

So bear in mind I’m not doing it justice when I write this. I’ll try my best, but I don’t think anybody could really explain what it felt like.

At the moment it hit midnight…

Well. I began to change.

That was the moment I first turned into a girl…