This body is beautiful. It’s soft and it’s feminine and it makes me feel alive in a way I haven’t felt in so long. This body is confusing. Because this body isn’t mine.
I thought it was a dream, that panel of judges dragging me before them and saying that I’d wasted my life. I’d been cruel and callous and shallow and I deserved to be judged, given one last chance to find a purpose that wasn’t built on exploiting the kindness of others.
It’s the way my new body makes me feel that surprises me more than anything. The way that it’s opened my eyes up to a new world, to a new reality. The way that it makes me rush, stumbling and trying to accomplish so much in the little time that I have left.
Twenty-four hours to give them their answer or I’m lost. Twenty-four hours as her to find a purpose or face my punishment. Twenty-four hours in this distracting new body, struggling to concentrate against the need rising in me.
Temptations on every corner don’t help me find my way. Distractions in this body, in the way that others look at me now and the way that makes me feel. Questions rising in me as the seconds tick away, as I lose each minute and lose myself into a fantasy I never knew I had.
Because twenty-four hours as her isn’t enough to feel all I want to feel.
Because my time is ticking away, and all I want is more.
Excerpt
Standing in front of the microwave I found myself staring into it, looking at the reflection I was casting and seeing it for the first time.
The long black hair. The blue eyes. The soft features. I only had a moment to take it in before he was right there behind me.
“You know I always ask the same question of the girls he brings home,” he cooed, nearly in my ear, “What is a beauty like you doing with an ogre like him?”
A chill ran down my spine at how close he was, at the words that he was saying. They were so blatantly manipulative but there was a certain blunt charm in them that in spite of myself I found admirable. But my head was spinning as I processed everything, the reflection in the glass of the microwave swirling up with the dream from last night and the way that Kevin was approaching me that when I turned and he placed his hand on my hip I froze a little, unsure of what else to do but look down.
There is a difference between seeing something in a reflection or a picture and seeing it in real life. A certain amount of undeniability that comes from the latter.
When I looked down and saw the curves of a woman on my body everything clicked into place. When I felt his hand touching a slight and feminine hip that didn’t belong to me, but felt it on my skin, I realized that I’d been changed.
Into her. Into some strange woman. Dropped into my world with a single goal, to find purpose in my life more worthwhile than the one I had before.
The full gravity of it would take a while to settle in, I suspected, but the certainty of my fate and the impending loom of doom lingered on over my head.
Kevin moved in to press his lips against mine and in a panic I pulled my hands up and pressed them against his chest, pushing him back and away from me but feeling a thrill from the firm hardness of the muscle there that didn’t make me especially comfortable with how close he’d gotten to me before then.
Still I succeeded in pushing him away, stepping out of his grasp and putting a few feet of distance between us.
“I didn’t fuck Charles,” where the first words that came out of my mouth and while they were true they, of course, didn’t come close to explaining things.
“That’s good,” Kevin replied, repositioning and taking a step in to close the distance between us a little, “I’m glad. I’m not very big on sharing.”
His eyes roamed hungrily over me and in spite of myself I found my body thrilling a bit at the way that he looked at me. He was so blatant about it, so coarse and unrefined. And he looked at me with this sort of palpitating need that made me feel desired. I couldn’t deny the heat of that.
Being who I was, I didn’t get a lot of people looking at me like that. When that council of women had changed me clearly they’d changed me into someone else, someone more desirable.
And in spite of the weirdness of the situation that made me more than a little happy. Like it was satisfying some innate desire within me that had been lying dormant all this time.
For a moment I entertained the possibility that all the desires within me now had been only ever dormant, that what I wanted was what I had right in front of me. But then Kevin took another step forward and the unsettling fear roared back for my attention.
“I am Charles,” I said to him, “It’s me, Kevin.”
He smiled, obviously charmed by the unbelievable truth, “Roleplay? I can do roleplay. Charlie is a good name for a girl, always been one of my favorites. Something about it seems forbidden, seems like we’re both doing something a little wrong.”
Kevin was so quick in stepping forward and wrapping his arm around me, pulling me in close and crushing me against him with a surprising grip. He was strong and this body was willowy and bendy. The contrast made me consider things, things that I was quickly coming over to the other side of.
“So what do you say, Charlie? Want to see what your new body can do? Want to see how much it can take?”