Constant in All Other Things 3, Chapter 02 (Patreon)

With the decision to shift Julia's story to chapter 03, it meant that chapter 02 was suddenly done. Well, not quite - I went through it one more time, hunted down a bunch more typos, and tweaked a few things here and there. Added a bit to the scene between Mr Connor and Cindy, and a few subtle shifts to the interactions between David and Julia. Nothing radical, but hopefully the whole thing reads a bit better now. This chapter comes in at just under 20k words.

With this chapter done, I'm going to focus on finishing Julia's scene (now part of chapter 3) and the have a look at updating the Patreon, making sure the tiers are actually offering what they say they're offering, and so on. I haven't really looked at how this thing is set up since I first hastily put it together, and it's probably about time. I'm hoping to find a little time to clean it up a bit, too - people joining must find it hard to find anything in the pile of sneak peeks, completed chapters, and so on.

I'll update TGstorytime with the final scene of chapter 2, but going forward I'll be keeping new written content exclusive for subscribers for longer - curbing my natural instinct to get this stuff out as quickly as possible - it's only fair as a thank you to all of you, for your support and encouragement.

In the meantime, please find below the complete chapter two, finally together in one place. Enjoy!

***

Constant in All Other Things 3

Chapter 2

by

Fakeminsk (fakeminsk@gmail.com ; https://www.patreon.com/fakeminsk)

“Friendship is constant in all other things

Save in the office and affairs of love:

Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues;

Let every eye negotiate for itself

And trust no agent.”

Much Ado About Nothing

Synopsis:

The funeral of David Saunders continues, as Cindy shares more stories of the feminine experience that apparently killed off his male self.

What has gone before:

David Sanders saw something he shouldn't have: his boss, pharmaceutical magnate Jeremiah Steele murder the son of an underworld rival.  Placed in witness protection, an assassination attempt forced David to adopt the life of Cindy Bellamy, a tragically deceased young woman.  For months he lives a life he despises, the experience alleviated and acerbated by Julia, a jilted ex-girlfriend. A return trip to the Asklepios Clinic extended his time as Cindy by another six months whilst making his disguise all the more complete. Nine months into the experience of living Cindy’s life, David seems to have admitted defeat, inviting Julia to his own funeral and sharing the stories of what ultimately killed his male identity.

One: The Story of Something Awful

“You don’t have to—” the boy said, and then his cock’s in my mouth and neither of can talk.

            And for a moment I just knelt there between this boy’s knees with his nob distending my cheek, lips a painted ‘O’ of surprise around his girth and now I’m this girl with a cock in her mouth, this girl in a tiny dress with her tits out leaning forward with her ass up in the air and I’ve got a cock in my mouth, and all those lines in the sand I said I’d never cross, they’re gone and I’ve crossed them long ago and now I’m a fucking cocksucker because I’ve got a cock in my mouth, and this kid’s expecting me to suck on it….

            And it stank, a musty funk of sweat and piss, like the pungent ripeness of an unwashed armpit and it’s clear this shithead didn’t even shower before coming out tonight and little patches of dried piss and fresh dots of precum stain the front of his boxers.

            And I thought, What now?  I reached for memories—of all the women who’ve gone down on me and how they did it—the licks and flicks of the tongue—the eye contact and encouraging coos—the performative wet slurps and silently determined work—and remembered the girls who took the whole thing in, impaling themselves until my balls bounced off their chin. But the ghost of those past encounters brought nothing: in the panic of the moment, it was all just incoherent flashes of dicks and lips and a sense of my own sexual frustration.

            And my knees were already starting to ache and the boy’s looking down at me, expectantly and with his cock in my mouth and this is what I wanted. Third time’s lucky, right?  I’ve got this thing in my mouth and there’s no pretending it’s anything but a man’s penis—not a sausage or a thumb or a dildo to practice with—it’s a cock and it’s in my mouth and warm and tastes a little salty and the smell hits me and I remember he pisses out of this thing and then I want to gag. 

            And the trip’s souring, it’s going south and I’m not feeling so good, now.  Still hot, still horny as fuck, but all those happy little sparks and the pleasurable liminal fizz outlining my surface, skin and self from the outside world retreated and left me cold.  The illusion that what I was doing was the most natural thing in the world wavered.  I was a sexy, young girl; but this clashed against the seething susurration that I was a thirty-nine-year-old man on his knees between a boy’s legs. 

            And so, when I felt pulled outside myself and looked down on this scene, I eagerly took the opportunity to escape, to mentally check out, because the view below—the rolled down dress, the bobbing pigtails and jiggling tits—brought only disgust and shame.  Hollow detachment shielded her from the worst of that shame and disgust, but it was still with a sinking feeling to her stomach that she got to work—because how could she not, with a cock in her mouth and a boy’s hand signalling impatience? 

            I wanted no part of this, was desperate to escape the moment—but couldn’t.  The taste of him on the tongue, the muffled noises around his prick, flared nose and watering eyes, a groan—mine or his—all dragged me back: suddenly, it was me down there once again, on my knees with a penis between my lips.

            The room went dark, and even though the music droned on all I could hear in that quiet darkness was the humiliating, wet sounds of my efforts. The dick slipped free and trailed saliva and slime across my cheek. I caught it and it was only semi-firm in my grip. I took a tentative lick up and down his length.  With long nails I tickled his balls and my fingers slid over saliva slickness as they worked the shaft. My tongue flicked along the rim of the helmet and tasted sweat and precum and again I suppressed the urge to gag. 

            It seemed a little less disgusting with him in my mouth; more mouth-feel, less stink. I took him in again.  I tried swirling my tongue. His hips jerked; that was a good thing, right?  I bobbed my head a few times and already my jaw began to ache.  A pause, then down again—too far; I gagged, eyes watering and his cock popped free. He was fully erect now and his thing bounced off my nose.

            I coughed and sputtered.

            Seemingly from very far away: “You okay?”
            I gave a watery smile and weak thumbs up.  I tried again.  I kissed and I licked and I slurped.  I bobbed and stroked and tried to find some kind of rhythm. The whole thing began to feel horribly mechanical.  I still felt horny.  I reached for my own tits.  My own touch was unsatisfying. My tits felt like udders, like sacks of fat; embarrassing and heavy.  Something was missing.  I felt the strain in my neck and jaw.  My knees hurt.  I let go of my breast and reached under my dress and touched my finger to soaking-wet panties and—nothing. I was hot and I was wet but the scratch of my nail along those prosthetic lips brought zero relief. And his cock was still in my mouth.  It was going soft. I sucked harder. 

            “Maybe—” With surprising gentleness, he cradled my head and pulled me off his penis.  It popped free from between my lips and slumped, defeated, a wrinkled worm curling into a dark patch of hair.  “You should stop.” A string of saliva briefly connected us, broken when I looked up at him. He hiked up his trousers and I sat back on my haunches. 

            He tucked himself away and buckled his belt. I silently put my tits away and tugged the dress back into position.

            “Sorry,” I said. 

            “Yeah.” He pulled me back into the pod. “Thank. I guess.”

            “I tried.”  A took a sip of water and swilled it in my mouth before swallowing. I grimaced and felt awful.  I was tired and my jaw ached.  I felt the kid’s frustration.  I’d been at the receiving end of shitty blow jobs before. I felt like a failure. 

             “You okay?”  There’s was a gentleness to his voice. His concern surprised me.

            I tried to smile. Another failure. I pulled myself back into the pod and sat next to this kid with my shoulders slumped, staring at the floor. “Yes, I said.”  Then I shook my head, pigtails bouncing. “No.” 

            “What’s wrong?” he asked.  He stroked my chin with newfound familiarity. His hand rested on my waist, and he touched me with confidence. 

            Outside the pod, the scene rose from the inky depths of the deep sea that concealed our activities.  A blood-red sun rose over a savannah, spiral-horned silhouettes standing in tall grass raising their heads at the dawn of the day. From the dark reeds rose a murmuration of birds, turning in unison against the backdrop of the sun.  Their flight drew my eye as they danced and swirled against the baleful eye of the sun.

            I turned back to the boy to say ‘nothing’—but nothing came out.  Silently, I stared into his eyes and took his hand between mine and held it to my chest.  Again, I tried to speak; my bottom lip quivered; something deep inside shuddered and tore itself loose.

            “You’re crying,” he said, and he was right. The first heavy tears dribbled silently down my cheek. They gathered and shimmered at the end of my chin.

            I laughed—or sobbed—and hiccupped.  His thumb brushed the tear from my chin.

            Like a songbird released from its cage, what came out of me in that moment was a trilling explosion of emotion: an exultant cry of release, fiercely spat rage, and keening anguish for something forever lost.

            Eroded by drink and drugs and hormones and so much more, the chains holding me together that night broke away.  A long, low ululation tore free and I grabbed this boy by the shoulders and buried my face in his chest and let it all out. In the way of men holding girls throughout history, he held me in his arms as I cried and kept silent.  His body absorbed my cry, muffling my choking wail as he patted me awkwardly on the back. He couldn’t understand my misery, but instinctively understood that it was his masculine responsibility to allow me to cling to him.

            “There, there,” Jonas said.

Two: The Same Tired Dynamic

Julia laughs.  “Christ.  Real meltdown, huh?”

            The memory of that night leaves me uneasy. I stand and wander over to the balcony. It’s a cold and windy November afternoon and rain continues to dash against the windows, but I feel a need for air. “Yeah,” I say, opening the door a crack.  I take a deep breath.  “It was pretty intense. Like I said: fucking awful.”

            Her chair scrapes the floor as she stands. “So what happened?”

            “That’s another story,” I say.

            She groans.  “You’re loving this, aren’t you?”

            “Less than I was at the start, to be honest.”

            “So why’d you lie?” she asks. “Why the other story?”

            “Because it’s the better story,” I say. 

            “No, it’s not.”  She joins me to stare out into the twilight outside, towards the distant glittering cityscape.  Lights sweep the sky, ragged in the falling rain.  She stands close and she touches me lightly at the small of the back.  “It was a man’s story.”

            I snort. “I had his cock in my mouth, Jules.  I had my tits out.”

            “How long’s it been?  Eight months—nine?—you’ve been living a girl’s life and you’re still looking through a man’s eyes.  Fine. You played the girl’s part. But the story was still from a man’s point of view: a male fantasy of the happy cocksucker and the supposed eroticism enjoyed by a woman pleasing her man.  A girl on her knees and a man in control.”  A cool, wet wind breathes over us and she shivers. “The same tired dynamic: submission and dominance, and a girl validating her rightful place at the man’s feet.”

            I hug myself.  “You think a limp dick and sore jaw’s the better story?”

            She shrugs.  “It’s more real.”

            “I told you the story I thought you’d want to hear. Me, sucking this kid off. On my knees, dress rolled down, his spunk painting the back of my throat.  Isn’t that what you want to hear?  David Saunders, macho male, humiliated?”

            She looks hurt.  “Jesus, David—”

            “Cindy.”

            “I don’t know.”  Her shoulders slump a little.  “I don’t know, okay?  Once, yes.  Now? God, I don’t know.”  She goes silent, staring blankly into the distance.  When she speaks, it’s as if she’s pulling the words from somewhere deep inside of her.  “Even after everything, fuck, yes, there’s a part of me that still hates you, okay? And that same part, yeah, it still gets off on knowing you’re doing this now, blowing boys you’ve picked up in clubs.”

            She holds her hand to the door separating us from outside, and I can see she’s staring through her reflection in the glass. “And there’s a part of me who can see this person you’re becoming, Cindy, and—I like her, she seems like a good person, and taking pleasure in her humiliation’s just perverse, right?  Why should she even feel humiliated, right? She’s her own person, and what business is it of mine what some twenty-year-old girl gets up to?”

            In reflection, I see her eyes slide sideways to look at me, also in reflection, next to her.  “I’m nearly forty, right? I mean, shit, I could be her mother, just about and no wonder some people at work have commented: what the hell am I doing hanging out with a girl half my age?  Our lives just move in such different circles.  I’m in management—she’s a secretary; I’ve got a condo in town—you live… here.”  Her reflection brushes back a stray bang.  “You go clubbing on weekends and I catch up on work, go out for an expensive meal, maybe head out of town for a night at fancy hotel in the countryside.”

            She turns to me then and her hand flicks out, sweeping a stray bang from my face as well.  “I’m glad I got to know this new you, this girl-you.  Cindy. And you know, all those other girls at the office, girls like you and what they get up to—it’s not really any of my business?  Unless it impacts on work performance or something, and maybe word gets around sometimes, but it’s not like I take any—you know—pleasure or disappointment in hearing rumours of some skank a floor down doing the rounds, right?”

            Julia’s hand is still at my face, tucking another stray hair back behind my ear, sliding along a cheekbone, tracing the features of my face.  There’s an intimacy to her touch, and she ought to know better. But I can see she’s beginning to detach herself from me and casting the shape of my face to memory. Several months ago, I bound her to me and now—she’s breaking free.

            “And so, the part of me that knows it’s really you, David, in there, sitting pretty at your work desk, flirting with guys in the office, hitting the bars, flirting, going home with some guy you’ve met and fucking?” She smiles weakly, unconvincingly.  “Yeah, I guess there’s still a little thrill to that maybe although honestly, it’s starting to feel old. 

            “Because the other part of me is coming around to the idea that David really is gone.”  She takes a deep breath.  “And I guess the best thing to do is just wish the pretty young girl in front of me all the best and leave her to her life.”

            I take her hand between mine. I look into her eyes.  “So why don’t you?” I ask.

            And for a long moment she just stares back at me, and her hand twitches as though she wants to reach out and touch me again and is actively holding herself back. “Because there’s another part—the worst part—the part of me that still loves you and just can’t let go.” 

            She takes a small step closer. Her voice is barely above a whisper. “That same part of me,” she says, “wants nothing more than for you to take me into your bedroom and fuck me, right now.”  Her hand darts out and brushes my hip before sliding over the tight silkiness of my dress to rest at the smooth junction between my legs.  She pats me there and gives a wry, sad smile.  “It’s probably a good thing it’s not possible.”

            I take her by the wrist and remove her hand. My grip is tight, and she winces.  “You’re right.” My voice is cold.  “It’s not possible.”

            She jerks her hand back.

            “I dated him for a couple of weeks, you know.”       

            Julia sighs.  “Yeah?”  She turns and leans against the door, arms crossed.  “Do tell.”

Three: The Story of Jonas

He couldn’t understand, of course, that I was suffering an existential crisis as I wailed and clung to him the way a drowning sailor might cleave to a life preserver in a tempestuous sea.  Both sides of my selves were collapsing into each other as I cried into this confused boy’s shoulder. I mourned a part of myself forever dead: some heterosexual fragment that had never tasted a man’s cock on his tongue. And so, Jonas’ shirt darkened under my tears and he winced a little as my nails pricked his arm.  He held me lightly and made little comforting sounds.  He had no idea what was going on or quite how he’d ended up with this girl holding on to him.  No doubt he questioned whether a half-assed blowjob was worth the price of the drama.

            He didn’t have to put up with me for long.  Though intense, my crisis was short-lived.  I felt remarkably better as I pulled away.  Something had dislodged within me.  Something toxic, now expelled and almost instantly my mind cleared with an odd elation taking its place.

            “Wow,” I said and smiled to see his confusion.  “What was that, huh?”

            “Are you—okay?” He blinked. “Should I get Bruno over here?  He can take you to medical.”

            I laughed.  “No.” My shoulders shook, seeing his unconvinced scowl.  “No—really.  It’s… fine.”  I pressed my hand to his chest, fingers spread.  “I’m fine. Really. Tonight brought a bunch of stuff to the surface. I really just needed a good cry.  And… thank you for being there when I needed someone.”  With my other hand I cupped his cheek.  “You’re a good kid, Jonas.”

            “Kid?” His crooked smile sparkled with a hint of condescension.  “I bet you’re not even twenty-one.”

            “My ID says I am,” I answered and stuck my tongue out at him.  “So there.”

            “You alone tonight?” He made a show of looking around.  “No beefy boyfriend coming to beat the crap out of me?”

            “Nope. You’re safe.” That little sardonic smile of his, equal parts charming to annoying, grew.  “What?”

            “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just—surprised, I guess.  A girl like you, single?”

            “I know, right?”

            “Here with friends?”

            I nod.  “Yeah.  I should probably check in on them.” My little clutch purse sat at the back of the pod.  “But—they’re big girls.  I’m sure they’re fine.”  I sidled a little closer to him, arm sliding around his waist.  Leaning into him, I added, “I’d rather be here right now.”

            “I—” He blushed.  “Um—are you sure you’re okay?”

            We sat in silence for a short while.  Occasionally someone walked by, often peeking in though the darkness of the pod.  At one point the girl from the neighbouring pod got up, stretched and stared for a long time at the rising sun. Eventually she wandered off, staggering a little in her chunky heels, leaning against the wall for support.  The digital sky brightened.  Under the yellow sun, the hall shimmered with an amber glow, and shadows fled.

            I giggled.

            “What?” Jonas asked.

            “Oh, I was just thinking,” I said, and nudged him in the ribs.  “I’m glad it didn’t do that—you know—earlier, when I was—you know.”

            A tremor of a laugh passed through him.  “Oh.  Yeah.  No chance of that.”

            “How so?”

            “The pods….,” he continued, were equipped with a number of micro-cameras linked to the surveillance software watching over the entire club.  While visuals were obviously anonymized for legal reasons, the club’s security AI monitoring the feeds had been trained to identify hotspots and flag security as needed: such as when a girl suddenly finds herself isolated and alone on the dance floor, surrounded by boys turning nasty.  It’s how Bruno got to me so quickly, he explains.

            “Oh,” I said.

            He rubbed my shoulder. “The AI also monitors these pods.  It adapts the visuals to match the needs of the people in the room, which isn’t always easy because obviously not everyone needs the same thing at the same time, but—” Jonas chuckled a little uncomfortably.  “Well, if people are getting a bit, uh… intimate, I guess, you know, it triggers a low-light mode for, um, privacy.”

            I twisted a little to sit and look up at him more clearly.  “How do you know all this?”

            He nearly beamed with pride; he’d clearly been hoping I’d ask.  “Oh, well… it’s my job," he said. “It’s my AI. I’m the one who trained it. Am still training it. It’s a side job.  Bruno brought me in a year back and I’ve been working for the club since.”  He chest puffs out a little. “By every meaningful metric, it’s made things better here.  Fewer call outs to the police, sexual assault rates, theft, drug ODs way down—it’s made the place a lot safer. The club’s old security AI was a bit shit, but I’ve brought it a long way.”

            I was listening, but also looking across the length of the lounge, picking out the individual pods and their inhabitant.  I blushed a little, to think of all the girls at the same moment as me, on their knees—enough to bring on sheltering darkness as we pleasured our men. “I wonder how many,” I murmured.

            “Hmm?”

            “How many other girls were, you know—like me—when I, uh, with you?”
            He laughed.  “Oh, that!  Oh, I don’t know—I mean, I could find out,” and he waved a hand at his laptop, “but it might’ve just been you.”

            “But you said—”

            “Yeah, but it’s my AI, right?”  He grinned.  “I’d have to check the log, but I suspect it was doing me a favour.”

            “What? Eww.”  Frowning, I put a little distance between us.  “Like—a digital pimp?”

            His eyes went wide.  “What, no! No, nothing like that!” He looked around, as though security forces were about to jump out and drag him away.  “Believe me—this was a first!  I normally just sit here and work away, you know, nudge the code along during the night. But you…”  He laughed nervously, rubbing the back of his head.  “Girls like you don’t normally come and sit with me.”

            I made a show of eying him warily.  “If you say so….”

            He threw his hands up in mock surrender. “Trust me.  I’m totally legit.”

            “Fine.” And then, rather impulsively, I leaned in and gave him a little kiss on the cheek.  “Well then… thank you. Again.”
            He looked a little embarrassed again.  “It was, um—my pleasure.”
            “I really thought I could do it, you know,” I said.  “I really wanted to.”

            “I don’t follow.”  His hand was at my waist again, pulling me closer and again I leaned into him.

            I gave a little smile.  “You were my first.”

            “First—?”

            “Blow job.”

            “Bullshit,” he said. The word just sort of popped out. His eyes went wide and he immediately grimaced.

            “Excuse me?”

            “Nothing.”

            “No—not nothing.  What did you mean?”

            “It’s just….” He shrugged apologetically.  “I mean, look at you, at the way you’re dressed.”

            I looked down at myself—at the dress—at the gleaming expanse of thigh and cleavage and the eye-catching shimmer of every movement.  And I knew what he meant—agreed with him, to some extent—but wasn’t letting him off that easily.  Beneath the wreckage of my makeup, my cheeks flared red with anger. “What’s wrong with the way I’m dressed?”

            “Nothing!” He raised his hands, palms out.  “Nothing. You look… great.”  There was a brief struggle in his eyes; he couldn’t help himself.  “It’s just—”

            “Yes?”

            “The way you’re dressed, you know, girls like you?”

            “Girls like me?” I arched an eyebrow.  “Oh, please, do go on.  That’s the third time you mention “girls like me”.  What about ‘girls like me’?”

            A tremor quavered his voice, as though he knew he was about to ruin something wonderful but couldn’t help himself.  Sounding one part angry to one part defensive, he added: “Oh, give me a break—you know what I mean.”

            “Yeah, I think I do,” I said, and pried his hand off my waist.  “But I want to hear you say it. Go on. Tell me about ‘girls like me.’ Tell me about the way we dress.”

            He took the bait. “Well, it’s just a bit… much, isn’t it? You’re beautiful,” he said, “obviously,” and it didn’t feel like a compliment the way he said it. “Beneath all that makeup. But you plaster on the makeup anyway, and then the nails—and the hair—"

            I tugged at a pigtail, combing glittering fingernails through its length.  “Oh, but don’t you like it?” I said, twirling the coloured strands on which Willow worked so hard between my fingers.  “I thought it was cute.”

            He rolled his eyes. “And the dress—”           

            “Oh, please, tell me about the dress.”  I held my hands akimbo at my narrowed waist and twisted this way and that, sending scintillating dots dancing across the inside of the pod.  “I love this dress!”

            “It’s all just so… so ‘look at me!’ man-chasing, alpha-male signalling, isn’t it? Over-compensatory attention-grabbing to ease deep-rooted insecurities created by an industrial complex driven by constant growth—flogging solutions to contrived anxieties rooted in artificial needs that only exist to be exploited.” 

            Getting that word-porridge out in one breath left him pink-faced as he worked up a full head of steam; it was kind of cute, in a first-year, idealistic sort of way. He was all of twenty-one and had the world figured out, and I sort of envied him that ridiculous confidence.  He’d probably never been truly hurt; never suffered genuine loss; or directly confronted the reality of these abstract injustices he felt so strongly about.  What did this kid know of the world, sitting as he did in the comforting darkness of a pod watching people flow by under his AI-controlled lights? 

            “And all this ego-punishing, fear-inducing bullshit manufactures unconscious consent in—girls,” he continued, as I sighed and waited. “Girls like you, coming to places like this, in short skirts and flashing your skin and yearning for male validation, making sluts of yourself to—”

            “There it is!” I jabbed my finger in the centre of his chest. “Took you long enough.”

            “Ouch.” He swept away my finger.  “Don’t try and—”

            “You think I’m a slut,” I said, “because of the way I dress.”

            “You don’t understand.  They—”

            “Shut the fuck up,” I said.  “Because, yeah, I do understand, thank you very much: you think I’m a slut because of what I’m wearing. You think I’m stupid because of my makeup. You think I’m frivolous because I spent hours tonight doing my nails and hair and picking out this outfit and pouring so much effort and time into my appearance. And you think that’s all there is to me—appearance, surface, makeup covering—nothing; a vacant space where a real personality should be.

            “And you say “they” made me this way but here’s the thing, you arrogant little prick.  There’s no ‘they,’ it’s just ‘you’—you projecting your own fucking insecurities.”

            I leaned in close to him and his eyes went wide.  “So shut up and listen; and you can take your fancy authors and whatever other book you have in there,” I said, waving a hand at his backpack.  “And shove them up your ass.  I understand just fine.  But you don’t.  This dress—this gorgeous, sparkly dress—isn’t just a scrap of fabric and sequins, there’s a whole story wrapped up in this little dress you can’t understand because you’re arrogant and think a tiny bit of education and watching from the sidelines of a club means you know something of the world, Jonas, but you know nothing.

            “You ever think maybe you’re the one with the problem, you’re the one pushing misogynistic bullshit onto the girls around you?” My hand danced from hair to face to breast to leg. “You don’t sympathise with our so-called oppression, because you don’t see any value in femininity, or anything associated with it.  You can’t understand what this dress means because you don’t care, you think you’re better than it all, don’t you?”

            I pulled my shoes up for him to see.  They glimmered in the bright light, even as that light dimmed slightly and turned a calming blue.  Those sandals were gorgeous, too, a dizzying ten centimeters of slender heel, another two of platform, silver and shiny with the most delicate, sparkly straps.  Then with a sweep of my hand, I took in my outfit for the night and then went wide, wider, taking in the entirety of the club and all the gorgeous, wonderful women in it. 

            “Is it fair?” I said, “that us girls, all of us girls, whatever we wear: heels, skirts and dresses, stockings or pantyhose, even our underwear, our fucking bras—that whatever we wear is weighted with meaning?  Why does everything we wear have to be part of some tedious discourse on gender, Jonas, why is every decision subject to your fucking scrutiny? 

            “These shoes: fun and sparkly?  Or oppressive? Did the patriarchy make me wear them? Fuck the patriarchy! Maybe they’re empowering; maybe they’re crippling; maybe I really just don’t give a shit and just wanted to have some fucking fun tonight, and guess what, Jonas, it’s fun being a girl and it’s fun wearing makeup and doing our hair and nails and putting on a sparkly dress and getting shit-faced with girlfriends before heading out to go dancing. 

            “Maybe you should try it sometimes, Jonas. Have a little fun!”

            He opened his mouth to say something when I went to take a breath, saw my eyes widen, and stayed quiet.

            “Like, maybe try taking a goddam shower before coming out, not because it’s—it’s….” I lost the words for a moment. My mind flared with words and the effort of coherent thought—with the brain-fizz of fading pills—and my tongue struggled to keep up with ideas erupting from my mouth only partly formed. “Because it’s—what?—a mechanism of capitalistic exploitation? I didn’t dress up tonight because ‘they’ fed me an anxiety-narrative of impossible beauty ideals.” I jabbed an angry finger at him, “No, I dressed like this because—because—because it’s fun and my friends wanted me to and because I gave a shit.

            “And you should too, you dipshit, give a shit and at least fucking shower, you stupid dork, so that next time a drop-dead gorgeous bitch like me goes down on you, your crotch doesn’t smell like a back-alley dumpster!” 

            With a final huff, I crossed my arms beneath my tits and turned my back to him.

            A long, awkward moment, and then I heard him stir behind me, and a nervous hand on my shoulder. “Um…”

            I blew a raspberry and shrugged his hand away.

            “I, uh… messed up, didn’t I?”

            “You think?” I deigned to look at him over my shoulder. “Yeah, you did.”

            He shuffled a little closer, and his hands tentatively circled my waist again.  I let him keep them there. “Is there anything I can… do? You know.  To make it up to you?”

            “Tell you what,” I said, and gave up the scowling pretense and smiled sweetly. “You’re a jackass and a snob, but you’re also really nice and you were there when I needed you.  So I’ll give you a second chance.  On one condition.”

            “What is it?” he asked warily.

            “I’m hungry. Take me home tonight. Buy me something yummy to eat on the way. And you know that shitty blow job? Maybe, if you’re really lucky, and really kind, I might try and squeeze in a little practice with you…”

Four: Alla Norma

“Talking of hunger….” Julia says.

            We’re sat on the sofa now, knees nearly touching as we curl up at our respective ends—I say curl but the tightness of our dresses don’t leave much leeway for that, so it’s more of an awkward legs-to-one side pose.  I’ve long since kicked off the heels, and I’m feeling hungry, too.

            I nod.  “Yeah.  We should eat.”

            She nods towards the descending outside darkness. “Order in?”

            I stare into the night for a moment. “Nah,” I say.  “I’ve got some stuff in the fridge. I’ll throw something together.”

            “You can cook?”

            “Guess we’ll find out.” But I laugh at her vaguely horrified look, and add, “yes, I can cook. But,” I continue, squeezing my tits, “not with the girls hoisted up in my face like this. I’m going to get changed first.”

            “You still have that homemaker dress I bought you?” She smiles wistfully. “I’d love to see that again.”

            I hold her gaze long enough for it to become uncomfortable. “You don’t get to tell me what to wear anymore,” I say.

            She winces and looks away.

            Then I soften my voice, and add, “But yeah… I do.”

            Which is why, five minutes later I’m breathing a lot easier and wearing that polka-dotted red dress, though I’ve swapped the tight lingerie for simple cotton bra and panties. It’s a shame the dress only really works with heels, but I keep those sensibly low, a pretty pair of kitten heels with a decorative bow.

            Truth is, I would’ve preferred sweatpants and a t-shirt, but I just can’t seem to help myself around Julia and while there’s nothing aggressively sexy about what I’m wearing, it’s still a step up from simply cute. A moment to swipe on a little lipstick, dab on some gloss and brush back my hair, and I pose in front of the mirror and like what I see there.

            Julia’s waiting by the kitchen when I return, and she eyes my floaty dress and the way she smiles puts a little flutter in my belly and totally justifies the effort.

            I nod towards the bedroom. “Go on,” I say as I tie on an apron. “Why don’t you slip into something more comfortable, too?”

            She arches an eyebrow. “Meaning?”

            “Hey, it’s just us girls, right?” I open the fridge and start to rummage around.  “We’re not too far off on size. Have a look, I’m sure you’ll find something that fits. Something comfy.” It occurs to me I don’t want her to dig around too deeply, but the stuff I wouldn’t want her to find is well hidden.

            “Just us girls,” she repeats, so quietly I almost miss it.

            I pull my hair back from my face and glance back at her over my shoulder. “Pasta alla norma okay?” I pull an eggplant from the fridge and wave it at her.

            Julia’s face is more than a little flushed with drinking, the tip of her ears red, and even without heels she’s swaying a little. She stares at the eggplant for a moment, and the corner of her mouth twitches. “Eggplant? Like the emoji?”

            I roll my eyes. “Go get changed.”

            The veg’s diced and frying in olive oil over a low heat when she returns. I’m expecting jogging pants or maybe jeans—but she swans in wearing a pastel blue babydoll and satin tap pants. The hem skims her thighs and she’s blushing red as she glares at me with this weird look in her eyes, one part defiance to one part mirth.

            “Found this at the back of your closet,” she says, leaning against the wall, arms crossed beneath her breasts, and she knows I’m struggling to not stare. Her nipples stand veiled and erect beneath the pale blue fabric, and I yearn to caress her tits. Even after everything that’s happened, I feel a twinge in my pussy and bite my lip.

            She grins wickedly at me. “Comfy,” she says.

            “I’d forgotten about that thing,” I say, dragging my gaze away from her.

            “It’s pretty. Wear it often?”

            “No.” I toss a pinch of dried oregano into the frying pan.  “It’s what I was wearing when I first woke up as Cindy, all those months ago.”  I turn up the heat and stir the eggplant with a wooden spoon, crisping up the edges but careful to not let it burn. Remembering that first day brings an echo of unpleasantness, a sudden nausea that doesn’t sit well with the night’s drinking. I focus on the cooking and push aside the memories.  “I still have nightmares about that morning. I should’ve thrown it away.”

            It takes me awhile to realize Julia’s gone quiet. When I look up at her, she’s holding one hand balled up into a fist to her chest, and she looks stricken.  “Oh, God—Cindy—I’m sorry. I thought—”

            I force a smile. “Hey—hey, it’s—”

            “For a laugh—”

            “It’s okay—”

            “I’m so sorry….”

            And she’s gone, flying back to the bedroom, her gorgeous, pert ass dancing beneath the hem of the babydoll.  And I’m left thinking how I’ll miss her, after tonight. I already miss the sex with her. And I wonder if somehow things could’ve gone differently, in another life, and what that life might’s been like. 

            By the time she returns, I’ve stirred in the tomato paste, red wine vinegar and capers, and brought the pot of salted water to a boil.  I look up from opening a can of chopped tomatoes to see she’s slipped into a pair of faded ripped jeans and a figure-hugging t-shirt emblazoned with “100% Princess.”  That shirt, too, carries memories; it’s funny how much more weighted with meaning clothes are for Cindy.

            “Smells good,” she says, reprising her spot on the wall.  I can see she’s repaired the damage to her makeup again, fresh concealer and mascara. I appreciate the effort in a way I couldn’t have, before. 

            She watches as I place the spaghetti in the boiling water and give the sauce a stir.

            “Did you really say all that?” she asks.

            “What do you mean?”

            “All that—you know—feminism 101 stuff, about clothes and patriarchy and so on.”

             “Yeah.”

            “Did you mean it?”

            It takes me a moment to get she’s talking about Jonas. “I guess so?” I comb through the pasta with a fork, making sure the noodles don’t stick together. “I was still pretty fucked up at that point, but he really fucked me off, too. I was feeling the pills more than the booze, brain sparking with ideas, you know? I’m not quite sure it came out as clearly as it sounded in my head, but he got the point.  I’ve definitely got a different perspective on this stuff these days.”

            “Huh.” She watches for another moment, and adds, “David Saunders, feminist crusader. I never would’ve guessed.”

            I wince. “Cindy, remember?” ‘Feminist’ still sounds like a slur, somehow, especially in recent years. “And I’m not sure an actual feminist would agree.  I mean, I did go home with him after all.”

            “And…?”  She smiles and waggles her eyebrows.

            I laugh. “Yeah. I got in some practice.”

            Her eyes go a little wide. “Seriously?”

            I nod. “We stopped at this little noodle shop he knew on the way back to his.  Ramen. I was really coming down by this point and man, I don’t know if I’ve ever eaten food that tasted better than those noodles and that broth did right then. With the high gone, I really felt the booze and it hit me like a brick to the face. I slumped, I slurred; I was a mess.

            “He pretty much carried me the rest of the way to his. There was a taxi, I think. I crashed hard. And you know, this kid, he was alright. I got lucky. I know it doesn’t always end quite so well for a girl on her own on a night out.” I think of Emma, and frown and push those though aside and focus on Jonas, instead. The memory brings with it a little smile. I really hope everything turns out okay for him, considering. “He dumped me on his bed and crashed on the sofa. And yeah, nothing happened that morning, let me tell you. I felt like death warmed over.

            “But I bounced back quickly. He fried me up a full breakfast, bacon and eggs and all that, and let me hang out at his place. His roommate, the bouncer, had a stern word with me.” I grinned at the memory of Bruno towering over me, wagging a finger in my face. “And then it was just Jonas and me again for the rest of the day.  I lounged around his place, wearing a borrowed t-shirt and sweatpants. We—get this—played Nintendo for hours. We ate pizza. And like, it was fun! I kinda felt like a kid which… I am, I guess.

            “And then suddenly it was, like six in the evening and so….”

            “You went home, end of story?”

            “Can you imagine?” I put a lid on the pasta and sauce. “But no. He’d left me in the living room while he started some work. He was sat on his bed and… well, it seemed a fine way to express my gratitude before leaving, right? So while he was working on his laptop, running some checks on the Tartarus security A.I., I popped into the bathroom and freshened up my makeup and slipped back into that sexy little dress and those heels and posed in his doorway. Took him longer than you’d think to notice, but when he did—” I grinned. “Totally worth it.”

            Julia shakes her head. “You kids these days, huh?”

            I laugh. “And then I… how can I put this? Got in that practice I promised.”

            “And you were sober?” Julia asked. “You just—”

            “Yup.”

            “And….?”

            I shrugged. “Mission accomplished?”

            “You mean—?”

            Just then the pasta boils over, starchy froth spurting from beneath the lid and sizzling as it hits the stovetop.

            Swearing under my breath, I lift the pot off the stove and drain the water away.  I quickly stir in a lump of butter and some salt and pepper and grate in a little nutmeg before giving the noodles a quick fry over a high heat.  Then I split the seasoned noodles between two plates and spoon the sauce over both servings. We return to the table.  Julia opens the last bottle of red she’s brought with her and pours out two glasses while I grind out a little black pepper and cheese.

            We sit and she pokes at her food with her cutlery. She twirls a little around her fork then moves it around her plate. “That was your first?”

            It takes a moment, but I get what she’s asking. “Yeah.”

            “Did he—”

            “Cum in my mouth, jizz down my throat, feed me his baby gravy?” I take my first bite and its good: the pasta’s just right and though the eggplant could’ve used a bit more time to drain, it’s crisped up nicely.  I’d probably enjoy it more without the thought of Jonas’s dick in my mouth, though. For a moment, slurping down a strand of spaghetti, I’m reminded of sucking on a different sort of noodle and it’s not what I want running through my mind with dinner. The phantom taste of his semen splashing the back of my throat flavours the food unpleasantly and I hide the urge to gag behind a gulp of wine.

            I continue: “Drop a load on my tongue, uh—” I stare at the ceiling. “Splash his spunk? Left his deposit in my oral bank? I’m running out of euphemisms here. Bust his nut on my —”

            “I get it,” she said. “And…?”
            I shrug. “It wasn’t as bad as I expected.”

            “Really?”
            And for a moment—just a moment—the charade nearly breaks. My toes curl and my hand, unseen beneath the table, clenches around my knee and I’m sure the knuckles whiten from the tension; but above the table, I remain calm and sweetly smile. “Really, really. Like, so really, I went down on him more than once.”

            “Huh.”

            “You can’t be that surprised,” I say. “Like, together, we’ve—”

            “Yeah, but that was….” She hesitates. “Different. And I thought, together—”

            “That was the first one?”
            She nods her head.

            “Sorry to disappoint.”

            She contemplates that for a moment. “So, what happened with you and that boy?”

            “Jonas?” I sigh. “I went around to his place a few more times, and we hung out, and it sort of petered out. He was a nice kid, but—you know.” I wave the fork like a wand casting circles over me. “Look at me—major hottie, right? Out of his league.”

            “Bitch,” Julia said, and laughed. “Who knew?”

            “What can I say? He was a bit boring. He also never got over the whole sexist snobbery thing. That got to be a real drag, really quick.”  But I smile at the memory, and a little regretfully add, “but I guess I could’ve done a lot worse.  He was my first, after all: my first blowjob, my first boyfriend.”

            She stares at me, swirl of spaghetti suspended over her plate. “First….?”

            “Yes?”

            “You know—”

            “What?”

            “Did you—have sex with him?”

            “A lady doesn’t tell.”

            “You’re no lady,” she says. “And by the time I was back on the scene….” She trails off, then shakes her head.  “Your life’s complicated, Cindy Bellamy.”

            Picking my glass of wine, I raise it in cheer. “To a complicated life—a long one.”

            Her glass chimes with mine, and she takes a long drink before finally taking her first bite of food. “Hey, this is pretty good.”

            “Thanks,” I say wryly.

            We eat in silence. I’d forgotten how nice it is to cook for someone, and I’m enjoying the moment, sharing food without there being any awkwardness. Her company is reassuring, as is knowing there’s no pressure for anything to happen afterwards. The meal wasn’t a prelude to sex or making out on the sofa; it wasn’t an attempt to impress. It occurred to me then that this meal might be another first: my first time sitting down with a girl for the simple enjoyment of their company, and nothing more.

            And so, because it’s just two friends sitting and sharing a meal, I ask, “how’s work?”

            Julia’s face twists into a scowl. “Really?”

            “Oh—I didn’t—”

            “Work sucks,” she interrupts.  “I don’t want to talk about it.” Then she jabs at her food, takes an angry bite, and then clearly does want to talk about it because she launches into it with fervour, booze-reddened face darkening further with anger. 

            “It’s all fucked up, is what it is. Ever since that jackass Malik beat me for the promotion—” and I swear she pauses here and glares at me, as though I’m somehow responsible, and I shiver—“it’s been a nightmare.

            “He keeps pulling me up on anything, everything, the tiniest infraction that isn’t precisely according to the new owner’s guidelines—including the dress code—the fucking dress code!—and that’s how they’re getting at us, now, isn’t it, finding little transgressions to use against women, especially women in positions of authority, keep us in line, keep us off balance, distract us from what matters.” She waves her fork angrily in the air. “The hypocrisy is staggering. Have you seen what that fat fuck looks like? Malik’s a slob.”

            She spears a piece of eggplant and glares at it glistening on metal tines. “He actually sent me home one day, can you fucking believe it? For not being dressed properly. Like some schoolgirl with her skirt rolled up too high, except these goddamn perverts want the short skirts, don’t they?  But it was just a pretext to get me out of the office, to miss a meeting with the client they’d secretly arranged—and when I was out of the office, they went and fucked up my project! My project—I’ve been working on the Unifab marketing campaign for months.

            “They went and changed the tagline, you know, I told you about it, the “Because You’re Worth It,” campaign. All the pieces were lined up, we had the creative agencies on board, advertisers, copywriters, the client was happy, this whole massive product line aimed at women and it tracked well, V.I. research indicated it was a hit with the target audience.

            “And now? Now it’s “Because He’s Worth It” and instead of the whole thing being this self-empowerment push, it’s all about the man, the usual heteronormative bullshit, reinforcing stereotypes, women seeking external validation from male authority. Hard-working men have never worked harder for this country, the bosses said. Brave men are dying in wars overseas, they said. Selfless men are keeping this country going, they said. Isn’t it time we thought about the men for a change?

            She growls from somewhere deep in her throat. “Like, the message to women is clear, isn’t it? Reward your man! Dress up for them, wear makeup for them… keep yourself worthy of their attention and when they want it, spread your legs for them—aren’t they worth it?”

            A heavy gulp of wine silences her long enough for me to squeeze in a word. “How’d the new tagline go over with the focus groups?”

             “People loved it!” She bangs the poor table with her first and the plates rattle, a little wine sploshes onto the table.  “They loved the idea of rewarding men for all their so-called sacrifices. They loved the idea of a return of traditional values, women in the household, men at work.”  She growls into her plate of food. “They should’ve strangled that fucking trad-wife movement in its cradle thirty years ago.”

            I give her a moment, considering my words before speaking. “Does it matter?”

            “Excuse me?”

            “Either way, it’s just selling shit nobody needs to people who ought to know better.” I shrug.  “One way or another, it’s just about making money.”

            She glares at me. “You sit there in a dress and think it doesn’t matter?”
            “No,” I say. “I sit here wearing a dress and think it wrong, and yeah, it sucks but there’s fuck-all I can do about it. But I also sit here thinking there are people out there actively looking to kill me and there’s fuck all I can do about it.”

            I wave my hand at the night outside Cindy’s little apartment, towards the distant city and the world beyond it. “I sit here with tits and a pussy and wearing a dress, and the world’s going to shit, there’s wars on beyond our borders and riots in our streets, the oceans are boiling and the coasts are flooding and governments world-wide are going ape-shit crazy, we’ve got pandemics breaking out every couple of years here, there and everywhere—and we’re just waiting for another freaky AI to try and wipe out humanity again, or another lunatic with a homegrown biolab’s best effort at holding the world hostage, and—guess what?

            “There’s nothing I can do about it, about any of it.

            “Compared to all that, what does my story matter? A guy witnesses a murder and ends up in witness protection disguised as a girl, and does his best to fit in and survive—and who cares? Maybe I’ll get back to being a guy someday. Maybe I’ll be stuck as a girl for the rest of my life.  Maybe they’ll get me and kill me in some horrible, horrible way. Either way: the world’s still going to suck. And your campaign’s going to sell stupid shit to stupid people and make some stupid assholes a truckload of money.”

            Julia stares at me for a long time, as though trying to decide whether I’m being serious or not. “Doesn’t anything matter to you?”

            “This matters,” I say and wave my fork at her.  “You matter. This moment in time? It matters.”  I pluck at the neckline of my dress.  “And these matter: the clothes I choose, a shade of lipstick or wearing cute earrings somebody once bought me—it all matters, because this is something I’ve got some small control over. I wore this dress because I knew it’d make you happy, and that made me happy, too.”

            She blinks, and I swear there’s sudden tears in her eyes, and her lips twist into something that’s almost a smile, almost an expression of pain.

            “Thank you,” she says, voice barely audible. “I forgot I bought you those earrings.”

            “My life—it’s a small life right now, and I don’t know—maybe I’m okay with that. I don’t want to change the world.  I can’t change the world. The best I can do is…”  My hand flutters in the air, nails flashing. “… is be a good girl, I guess, the best girl I can be; and maybe there’s a virtue in that. Maybe there’s happiness to be found in that.”

            Then I smile at her. “And if I’m lucky, maybe I’ll get in some good food and drink along the way.” I raise my glass of wine in mock cheer. “And even better company.”

            Julia eyes me for a moment, and she sits back in her chair and a little smile breaks through. “And sex?”

            “Hell yeah,” I say. Then I pat my frustratingly smooth groin, and grimace. “Well, no. Not so much that these days.”

            “Fine.” She pushes what’s left of her food around her plate for a moment, biting her lip. “Here and now. Fine.” She frowns, then glances up at me, and sighs. “Your turn, then. How’s work going?”

            “Fine.” I begin to tell her some not particularly exciting stories of low-level office politics, assholes hitting on me at the reception desk, uniform malfunctions and my own run in with the office rules, all seasoned with just a frisson of sexual tension. I’m holding back the good stuff for later, the salacious Halloween story with Mr Connor in it, but notice then that Julia’s stopped eating. She’s staring blankly at her half-finished plate of food.

            “Everything okay?” I ask, even though obviously it isn’t.

            It takes her a moment, and a deep breath, before she makes eye contact. Her eyes shimmer, as though still holding back tears—but no, it’s not that. She’s drunk and yeah, maybe that’s got her a bit mawkish, but there’s something more profound than simple sadness in the way she looks at me.

            “Julia?”

            She stares at me for a moment longer, and then sighs. “I was just thinking.”

            “About?”

            Instead of answering, she stands and steps away from the table. Moving once again to the funerial display I’d made, she gazes down at the little circle of flickering candles and the framed photo in the middle. She picks it up. Her fingers trace the face of the man she sees there. She glances back at me, and her smile is a little watery.

            “He really is dead, isn’t he?” she says.

            I flinch. The words hurt, far more than expected.

            “Do you remember the first time we met?” Her voice is soft, but in the deep quiet of the room easy to hear.  She focuses on the photo as she speaks.  “The first time I met Cindy, I mean.”

            It takes a moment to remember. “At Café d’Eon?”

            “Yeah.  And after, at the restaurant—remember? You told me a story, a story about a wedding dress.”
            I nod.

            “It was all lies, right?”

            “No. It really happened. Except for the epiphany part, you know, suddenly discovering I wanted to be a woman because I saw a gorgeous dress.” Then I smile. “Though that part was true, too. It just wasn’t my story. I knew this guy—girl, rather—years back; performer at a drag club. It was her story; I stole it and made it a part of mine.”

            “But you know, that story—the dress—the wedding dress—have you ever thought about—” but then she frowns, and cuts off.

            “About?”

            “Marriage,” she says and then quickly adds, “or even just the future. You talk about how nothing matters except the here and now, but you must’ve thought about…?” She trails off, and gently returns the framed photo to its little ring of flickering lights.

            Cocking my head to one side, I consider how to answer. The whole situation is surreal. Standing with Julia in my tiny little apartment, the world outside flaring with the passing lights of drones and the distant city centre—me in a dress, her in my borrowed clothing—talking about our day—the remains of a meal I’ve made on the table and… I kind of get where she’s coming from, I think.

            “About?”

            “What happens if….” Her hand traces little circles in the air between us, delineating me, my apartment, my current life.  “If Cindy, you know…?”

            I take a deep breath. “Is… permanent?”

            She nods.

            I stand and step away from the table. My heels tap out a gentle rhythm on the cheap laminate floor as I join Julia in quiet contemplation of the deceased. His green eyes and sardonic grin and innate confidence belie a future he can’t possibly imagine.

            “He’s dead,” I say. “But not gone, not completely. I mean, there’s a bit of him right here,” and I pat that smooth space between my legs, and smile weakly, “that I definitely intend to see again someday.” I glance aside at her. “But otherwise—yeah….”

            And I’ll be damned, but tears gather at the corner of my eyes, and maybe I’m as drunk as she is and getting soppy as well. Blinking to clear them, I quickly step away from her so that she doesn’t see the tears.

            “I don’t see anyway he comes back from this,” I mutter, and yank open the patio door.

            Passing through, I step out onto the small balcony, hugging myself against the chill November air.  The wind tugs at my hair and sets the hem of my dress dancing around my legs. The earlier rain has passed but the city smells wet, and even at this time of night cars sluice through the water in the streets, headlights throwing up shimmering pools from below.

            Stepping outside, staring at the passing traffic, it all feels so performative, an act for Julia’s benefit—and the benefit of any watching assholes, whether Jeff or the Clinic or some pervert from one of the other tall buildings.

            But it’s also genuine, painfully so and I hadn’t expected that.

            Julia’s standing next to me now, also hugging herself against the night. “You okay?”

            I turn to her. The wind catches my hair and blows it into my face, and I pull it away from my eyes and from where it sticks to my lips.  “What the fuck do you want me to say, Julia?”

            “I want…” Her shoulders sag, and she shakes her head.  “I don’t know, okay? I don’t know what I want.”

            “Have I thought about what happens if I spend the rest of my life as Cindy?  Yeah, I’ve fucking thought about that.  Of course I’ve thought about that.”  I turn away from her, looking back at the city.  My office is out there somewhere; possibly, my future as well. “Living the rest of my life as… Cindy.  And if you’re asking—if you’re asking, does that future involve marriage?  Have I thought about getting married? Wearing white, being a bride, being—” and here I all but spit the words, “a wife, yeah? Is that what you’re asking?”

            Her touch at my shoulder brings me back to her. “Watching you cook,” she says, quietly, voice cutting through the wind. “And what you’ve done with the place, the way you’ve cleaned it up, the little decorative touches. How neat it all looks. And, I don’t know. I just thought—” and she gives a little smile, a touch mischievous but also genuine and a little sad. And now it’s her turn to stare at the distant city lights. “Or imagined, rather. I suddenly pictured—us.”

            She takes my hands in hers. “Can you imagine it, too?”

            And the things is—I can’t.

            I don’t tell her this. I let her have her fantasy—some alternate reality where we stayed together, dated for a year or two, got engaged, got married. Sat around the dinner table, ate home-cooked meals and talked about our day. Work. Bills. Watch TV together. Then sitting up in bed, side-by-side and… reading? Isn’t that what married couple do? And fuck, supposedly, on occasion. Maybe have kids. I try to imagine Julia with her belly rounded with future life, but it’s pretty blurry.

            But because she mentioned it, suddenly these images flip: and it’s me, not her as the girlfriend, the bride, the wife. I imagine myself opposite some shadowy figure of a man and I’m wearing a nice dress. He goes down on one knee and suddenly I’m wearing white, a tight sheath with a plunging neckline and a sparkling veil across my face. Then it’s the red dress with white polka dots, and I’m waiting for my man to come home. Then we’re in bed. Then we’re fucking, my legs up over his shoulders, my tits bounding with each thrust.

            And then….

            I break away from Julia and shudder and grip the concrete balcony and stare fifteen floors down to the ground below.

            Julia’s hand touches my shoulder and I turn back to her.

            Personally, I’ve never thought much of the future. David never looked further ahead than the current work project he managed. I never imagined myself as an “adult”—even approaching forty—as someone with a pension, though I paid into one, or as someone paying off a mortgage, though I’d made good progress on that, too. I simply hadn’t imagined myself as old; I certainly never imagined myself growing old with anyone.

            I take her hands again and give a little squeeze. “And when you imagine us together, is it—me?  Or is it… me?”

            She smiles wistfully. “It’s crazy, isn’t it? It’s—both.  I want both.”

            “I know,” I say, and give her hands another squeeze.

            She passes the back of her hand across her eyes. Her mascara’s smeared, her face red and her smile is sad. “Tell me another story, Cindy. Please. Just… one more, so that I know.”

            “Know what?” I ask.

            “That he’s really gone,” she says.      

            I nod and tell her David Saunder’s final story.

Five: The Story of Halloween

She probably already knows some of the story, would have heard the post-party gossip from a few weeks back. Halloween conveniently fell on a Friday this year, and the office was abuzz with talk of costumes and pre-party plans, and hedonistic stories of parties past unfurled throughout the weeks leading up to the night.

            My workplace, I discovered in the leadup to the end of October, was semi-legendary for its annual Halloween party. With a half-dozen major clients invited, and at least twenty creative agencies, and the full staff from associated companies distributed across several floors also attending—it was a big deal. Even the new high overlords following the takeover were going to be there, and they’d splashed out on what must’ve seemed an easy morale win. The event spaces on the top floors were taken over by lavish decorations. Costumes were a must. Attendance was—well, for someone like Cindy, pretty much mandatory.

            And fuck me if Cindy didn’t cut a fine figure at the party that night.

            It wasn’t even my goddamn choice of outfit. All us office girls drew from a jar. Of course, we’d also filled the damned thing, outdoing each other in scrawling ever more daring costumes on little slips of paper. French maid, cheerleader, Sin-DI, sexy cat, or devil—anything, really, with the word “sexy” attached, that sort of thing. It was the usual deluge of sexualised, exploitative, demeaning shit that always seemed to target the girls more than the boys although—and maybe it was the booze and buzz of the night speaking—kinda fun, too?

            It’s not like anyone forced us to pick these costumes, right? Though telling, perhaps, that all the young office girls across the various floors and businesses ended up in costumes somewhere on that sexy-to-slut spectrum. And it’s not like any of the more mature women, or managers, the higher-ups and powers-that-be, wore anything as revealing or provocative as we did. No, it was purely an… indulgence? Of the young, the feminine and the frivolous.

             There was an expectation that the junior staff put in some effort; a tradition, that they take part in an opening catwalk display of Halloween regalia; and even hope, among some, of getting noticed by eligible higher-ups.  We were clearly part of the draw and part of the entertainment, colour and flair and flesh adding that frisson of naughtiness to the night’s fun.

            There were a few daring outfits, obviously, even among the upper ranks. Bondage-themed costumes were big this year, a general trend creeping out of the bedroom into everyday life; the Sin-Di effect, Julia called it. Lots of women in tight outfits, steel and leather, dystopian-inspired fancy or medieval reinterpretation: the COO’s wife swanned through the crowd in a big-breasted gilded breastplate with diamond nipples, steel cuffs at her biceps binding her arms to her waist: a golden Gwenevere tied to an aging, pot-bellied Arthur.

            And among the men there was a lot of leather and straps, collars and cuffs, but even then—well, the men were mostly bare-chested barbarian kings or toga-wearing emperors; even in costume they maintained their power hierarchy. 

            Cindy was way, way down that hierarchy.

            And workplace expectations be damned, I hadn’t planned on attending. Office girl social pressures could go fuck themselves, I thought. I wasn’t looking to catch the eye of any young eligible stud out in the crowd—though I might’ve taken some pleasure in reminding that fucker Dan what he’d lost. But I remained man enough in the leadup to Halloween to think: no fucking way I’m taking part in this exploitative shit show.

            Funny how things change. One bad weekend, and my resolve crumbled. Crushed, I couldn’t muster the willpower to deny the other girls in the office. I crumbled to their pleading and insistent demands. They were concerned; they thought they were helping; “it’ll be fun,” Willow said. She’d chosen French Maid for the evening. “It’ll get your mind off whatever’s wrong,” Emma, sci-fi slave girl, added.

            “Find a guy, for fuck’s sake,” Mel—a sexy nurse—said. “Get laid. And get over it.” 

            What could I do? I gave in and joined the girls that night.

            And okay, it wasn’t the first time I’d worn a skimpy little outfit, right? And Halloween sorta gave license to wear this kind of thing, made it… acceptable? But stepping out of the girl’s changing room that night—God—it almost killed me.

            Like, pre-Clinic, there’s no way I could’ve pulled it off—not with a cock dangling between my legs, not in a skirt that barely cleared my crotch and wearing a g-string stretched tight between my ass cheeks. And even afterwards, that first week in September?

            No.  David, or at least some tattered remnant of his male ego, remained far too alive and kicking to put up with this crap.

            But by Halloween? Like I said, a lot can change in two shorts month—or even in a single devastating evening. It’s not like I wasn’t used to being on display by this point. I’d been out clubbing a few more times with the girls. Even had a date or two. I was used to bared shoulders and appraising looks and coy smiling for the approval of men.

            No, and it also wasn’t just the skimpy outfit that made the night so painfully humiliating at first, even though that was part of it. Nor was it how easily I mixed in with the other young girls, though that gnawed at me, too. The setting played a big part, I think. This wasn’t some noisy club or intimate restaurant, but rather work, the office, and I’d be seeing all these men and women again next week and knew that whenever they looked at me, they’d see—

            Well, a costume; because by this time my everyday workday clothes no longer felt like a costume, nor Cindy a role I was playing.

            In memory, that changing room is some kind of fever dream of giggles, perfume and half-naked jiggling flesh: a freshman boy’s ecstatic fantasy of schoolgirl locker rooms. We did each other’s makeup and hair and helped each other into our ridiculous outfits and sucked in our guts, adjusted buckles and preened in the mirror. And while the reality had far more swearing, bitchiness, and elbowing for space—tears and fears, jealousy and resentment, humiliation and indignity--the booze and drugs flowed copiously enough to burnish those rough patches into something bright and pleasant, or at least tolerable.

            My lithesome form in the gentle glow of the changing room mirror was so fucking sexy I turned myself on. I still died a little inside from the shame of it all but even that—yes, even the full-body, stomach churning mortification of seeing myself so lewdly on display like this—simply added to the sensual quiver that coursed through me as I cocked one hip, tossed my hair and admired myself over one shoulder in reflection. I held one shiny fingertip to my lips and pouted, as the other shiny and pouty girls circled around me in their scant costumes, flashing tits and stockings and wide, disbelieving eyes.

            We waited for the signal to erupt from the room into the party, a gaudy explosion of girlish entertainment for big bosses, clients and agency employees outside—the MC heralding our arrival—and we tittered and blushed and prepared ourselves.  It was fucking insane, finding myself backstage with these girls. 

            I’d always been the one outside. Entertained, not entertainment; served, not the service, at least since I’d left those earliest days of David’s life behind.  And I’d been to plenty of wild, debauched corporate parties like this—just like this—only a year ago I’d been a samurai with topknot, kimono and obi, katana and wakizashi at my side, and an inscrutable expression as I sat cross-legged at my table and got shitfaced on an endless stream of tiny cups of warm sake. 

            Now I jiggled and jostled alongside the other girls and fought against the rising tide of panic and anticipation and knocked back another shot to quell the fear. Some, like Mel, hardened herself to the event through disdainful arrogance. More were like Emma, a flustered mess falling back on chemical confidence to get through the night. Two weeks ago, I could’ve pulled off a Mel but now felt more like Emma and I swear, half us girls in that changing room that night knocked back our SSRIs with shots of flavoured vodka and rode a soothing high into the rising swell of the party. All these blissed out babes riding their buzz into that feeding trough of a party—and I was one of them.

            The signal came. I stuck a large, round lollipop in between my plump, red lips. On uncertain, coltish feet I pranced out with the other girls, and joined the party.

            Hours of drinking and dancing, of leering conversations and unsolicited touches we couldn’t refuse, of brief breaks to primp in the toilet, or breaking away for a minor tantrum, cry or rant—swelling gossip, lusty glances and hopeful approaches. The evening swirled around me. Always, a hand at the small of my back and a grinning male face, looming, joking, eyes burning with confident lust. Dialogue, but not conversation: nobody gave a shit what I said, but they wanted me near them as I said it.

            Men stared at my lips, my tits and imagined what I’d look like naked. Some hinted; others said it explicitly. Someone flipped up my nothing of a skirt. Another lunged for a kiss. A pinch here, a grope there. More shots, another pill. Brief escapes with the other girls: fixing makeup, fixing costumes, fixing attitudes. Rallying, and ever spiralling into deeper drunkenness.

            Until finally—I broke away for a breather. Tunnel-vision staggering, girl-colours effervescing at the edges amongst faces—some leering, some concerned, other appraising or disdaining. Mouths moving and words unheard as I slid through the crowd. Then, suddenly, a bathroom somewhere, another floor, soft golden lights and calming music, an oasis of peace. I stared into the mirror and wondered how I’d gotten here. Fumbled in my purse and fixed my makeup. Spent ages on my lips, meticulously balming, outlining, filling, plumping and glossing until they glistened invitingly.

            I rode the elevator down to Volumina International, sharing the space with a sexy cat and xenomorph dry humping each other in the corner. Even back in my offices, there were people slithering in or out of costumes, or sneaking into darkened corners or empty offices. The floor was dark, illuminated only by security door lights and the occasional square of monitor glow. Guided more by instinct than rational thought, I passed by my desk. Collected something I’d left buried at the back of a drawer, slipping it into the safety of my bra.

            That’s when I saw the light was on in Mike’s office, the door ajar.

            So there I was, standing outside my boss’s office in a slutty little schoolgirl’s outfit, hair in bouncy pigtails and swaying in stripper-high patent leather Mary Jane platforms. I steeled myself for what came next. I hugged my bared midriff and saw in the polarised office windowpanes my plunging cleavage, white bolero crop top tied off beneath my tits with more than a hint of under-boob visible. A mockery of a tie hung around my neck and shimmering ivory stockings clipped to pink garters rode up beneath my micro-mini pleated skirt. Finally, my g-string—and its tiny triangle of pink satin barely preserving my modesty up front—plunged deep between the pert perfection of my ass cheeks.

            A moment’s hesitation—long enough for a final check and tweak of my appearance in the glass—and I slipped through the door into Michael’s office.

            “Hiya, Mikey,” I purred, pulling the door shut and locking it behind me.

            Rolling blues music matched the sombre atmosphere of the room, pensive and melancholy in the dim light. The wide expanse of the night sky swirled beyond his windows, city centre glow caught against the urban haze in washes of lurid colours. Against this midnight backdrop sat Michael at his desk.

            He watched my entrance. His hand rested on his desk out of sight beneath an open, face-down copy of Trendscape magazine. The photos from the table near his desk had all moved: he had a framed picture of his daughter in front of him, and the other pictures of his wife and family were all face down. In his left hand, he held a tumbler of whisky poured from the decanter that normally rested on the sideboard. Instead of sitting on the sideboard, the decanter rested on Michael’s desk. It was nearly empty.  On his computer screen, an open written document, unfinished.

            Taking in the room at a glance, I reassessed, pivoted and committed myself to a new performance: to slow, languid steps, stripper-footing towards him in those ridiculous shoes, ass and hips swaying. I pursed my lips around the small crimson ball of my last lollipop as I approached. My hair tickled my shoulders and hoop earrings danced against my cheeks and I kept my eyes locked to his.

            Michael scowled. He half-rose from his desk. His right hand remained beneath the magazine, but his left hand released its hold on the tumbler and instead gripped the edge of his desk, so tight the knuckles whitened.

            “Get out,” he growled.

            For a man always professionally turned out, clean, crisp and precise, he looked a mess.  His shirt was rumpled, top button undone and his tie loose at the neck. Though not quite bloodshot, his eyes were rimmed with red, and his visible hand trembled.

            I indolently rolled the lollipop around my mouth and popped it free.  “No,” I said.

            “Excuse me?”

            “The door was open,” I said and wide, wet-lipped smiling, I sauntered towards his desk. A muscle twitched and jumped in his jaw. He tracked my approach and in those turbulent grey eyes I saw a first glimmer of appreciation for what he saw. “I think you were hoping for a little company tonight.” There wasn’t any of the consideration of the appraising manager; instead, behind the pain I saw the lustful gaze of a man. “Like what you see?” I cooed. “I think you do, Michael.”

            “I’m—” and he swallowed, and his strength wavered. He dropped back into his heavy leather seat. “I’m not in the mood, Ms Bellamy.  Please. Leave.”

            “Why so formal, Michael?” I stood at the edge of his desk, hands on hips and from the height of my heels looked down at this man in his seat opposite me. “Why so serious?”

            This close, I could see him clearly. I saw the words on the screen and the strain in his face and the despair in his eyes. And for the first time, I saw myself in the picture of his daughter and realised how much I resembled her. Or rather, I suddenly appreciated how week after week, I’d slowly adjusted my look to align with hers.

            “Please,” he whispered. “Cindy.” A shudder passed through him. He took a deep breath. “I need you to leave. Or—”

            “Or—?”I tossed my hair and pushed out my chest and leaned forward.

            Eyes squeezing shut, he shook his head. “I don’t know what might—"

            I made my move, then, before he could finish, with speed that must have taken him by surprise. Reaching across his desk, I pretty much threw myself at him. His eyes flashed open, but I was already across his desk—sprawled across it, pens and paper scattering—with one hand over the magazine and his hand beneath it—and my other hand grabbed him by the tie, yanked him forward, and I crushed my lips against his.

            His concealed hand jerked but I pressed down hard and kept it pinned. He went stiff, and I felt him wince in pain. A protest rumbled through his chest, rose—I pushed my tongue into his mouth—his whole body sagged. With his tie still in my grip, I coiled the strip of silk around my hand and pulled him closer and kissed him deeply. I tasted the whisky on his tongue and smelled the faded spice of his aftershave. His stubble scraped my face and then his free hand was touching my hip, my waist, shoulder, his hand cupped the back of my head and when his fingers curled into my hair, I knew I no longer needed to force him close.

            Our kiss lasted for as long as it needed to.

            And when we parted, he sank back into his chair, and I let him go.

            “Isn’t that better?” I asked.

            He stared at me and went to withdraw his hand from beneath the magazine.

            “Easy,” I said, still smiling, and lifted my arm to let him pull his hand back. He stretched out his fingers and looked at me, then he watched in silence as I shifted the magazine aside.

            “You don’t need that,” I said. “No one needs that.”

            A tremor passed through him, an intense convulsion rising from the depths of his soul. His eyes widened and then he crumpled. He took his face in his hands and pushed back from his desk and let out a single, heart-rending sob.

            On his desk, ugly in its deadly simplicity, sat a last-generation Glock 19. I rested my hand over it and felt its cool polymer and steel touch. My fingers curled around the grip, shaped nails so incongruously pretty against dull grey. The weapon under my touch felt both intimately familiar and utterly alien. I lifted the weapon and for a fleeting moment felt—powerful, again, and serious.

            I slipped the handgun into my sparkly little clutch purse and pushed it away and turned back to Michael. Hopping off his desk, I walked around to his side and knelt next to him. Still clutching his face, his whole body shook with the release of silent emotion.

             I didn’t try to talk. I just knelt next to him. My hand rested on his knee, and with the other I gently stroked his side. Outside, a delivery drone hovered past. More bright lights caught the underside of the fog nestled over the city—the reflected joy of the party, several floors up, flashing down to the two of us in this darkened room. In the mirrored reflection of the tall building opposite I watched the distorted image of the city waver and twist. Then, in the glass of the window itself, I saw—me.

            Pigtails and lipstick, patent leather heels and micro-mini skirt. Kneeling, next to a man; looking up at him but also looking at herself. Staring into the night and into herself. Living this moment but remembering another. On her arms and knees with someone next to her, someone standing over her. Frozen with indecision, until the decision was made for her; then overwhelmed with—

            I looked up at Michael. The blues continued to roll out around us, serious and deep. Briefly, I heard voices raised in conversation pass outside the office.

            Michael stirred. With a groan, he lifted his head and then fell deeper into his seat and stared at the ceiling. I waited. His fingers curled and uncurled around the armrest of his chair. Some time later he sighed and sat forward but his eyes were still empty as he stared over my head. Still gently gripping his knee, and still softly stroking his side, his arm, and his back, I waited. I resumed staring into and beyond the window.

            Eventually, his hand came to rest on my head.

            “Thank you,” he whispered.

            I waited.

            “I—” His mouth worked wordlessly for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was weak and tremulous. “I’m sorry.”

            My eyes flicked to the computer screen, where his attempt at his final message remained incomplete. “Why?”

            “Because….” He closed his eyes again, as though exhausted, but found the strength to drag an answer from deep within. “Because she’s leaving me,” he said, and flipped over a framed picture of his wife. “Because I’m losing her, too,” he said, and his fingers lingered over the image of his daughter. “And because I’m losing all this,” he said, and his fingers paddled against my head.

            “This?”

            “The office,” he said. “This team.”

            Sitting back on my haunches, I looked up at him. “How so?”

            Doubtless, the last thing he wanted to do was talk about work; but at the same time, he couldn’t return to the previous awful, inward-looking silence. And as he spoke, his voice regained some of its usual timbre. It deepened, gradually, as he drew strength from the familiarity of the mundane.

            “I’ve been fighting to save jobs ever since the takeover. The new bosses want to streamline,” he said. “Efficiency cuts. Last week they ordered me to cut a half-dozen staff. Or they’ll get rid of me. Kill my career.  But—I can’t do it. Won’t do it. It’s not fair, and it’s not right. And—on top of everything else, all happening at the same time, it….” He slumped in his chair. “It was too much.”

            He sounded exhausted. I was exhausted, too. And I could feel his self-loathing as a reflection of my own.

            Still. “I don’t know anything about your wife and daughter,” I said, and tapped my fingertip against my lip in thought and smiled. “But the work thing? It’s not so hard, Mr Connor, sir,” I said, and held up my open hand. “Jack—he’s a sack of shit: threaten to fire him, offer him three—no, two months gardening leave and he’ll go.” I curled back a finger. “Benjamin: I know for a fact he’s already looking for a job, been offered one even, but you could play it as a redundancy.” Another finger down. “Ava. Dig a little into her personal record, you’ll find an excuse to get rid of her; trust me. Cut her a deal and she’ll leave quietly.” Another finger down. “Dan,” I said.

            He stared at me and finally asked: “Why Dan?”

            “Because he’s a dickhead.” I grinned. “But if you can’t get rid of him, go after Hamza. He’s also a dickhead and a bad man and HR have a secured file a mile long on that bastard. Threaten to “accidentally” open his file, maybe share it with people. He’ll run.” Finally, I curled my thumb, forming a tiny fist. “And Melanie: you promote her into the comms position you offered me. She’ll resist at first, because she’ll be scared, but push her on it and she’ll take it and she’ll be awesome at it.”

            He stared at me in silence. It wasn’t my first hatchet job, though he had no way of knowing that, of course. There was a reason they’d sent me out to the Tokyo office a few years ago. I’d “streamlined” as they called it, made those hard cuts with brutal efficacy. For all I knew, that was the very reason my name crossed Steele’s desk before all this shit started.

            Meanwhile, a hint of a smile danced at the edge of his lips, the contrast with his desperate demeanour as incongruous as my girlish fingers bright against his gun.  “That’s only five,” he pointed out.

            “Cindy Bellamy,” I said.

            He raised an eyebrow. “You want me to fire you?”
            “No.” I shrugged. “With Mel in the Comms role, you’ll still need a dogsbody down here, someone taking on her receptionist shifts, someone to bring drinks and food to the focus groups, a pretty girl to do the shitty, face-forward jobs. Collapse that part of Mel’s job into mine, pass the other assistant duties onto a few other girls. Streamline. Right? I’d bet you the Boss’s higher up’ll go for that.”

            He shook his head. “That’d effectively be a demotion for you. I’d have to rewrite your job description. There’s no progression from that kind of work; you’d be stuck in a dead end job. There might even be a salary cut. That’s—”

            “Life,” I said. “Right?”

            He looked at me, and a hint of clarity returned to those intensely grey eyes. The pain pulled back as his mind engaged with my proposal—not gone, far from it; a temporary retreat at best. He was still hurting, but he was also distracted; and that meant something. Whatever had brought him to his lowest point of despair was past, though I knew how easily a person could loop back to it in a moment.

            “I’ll think about it,” he said. I could see he wanted to ask more. Maybe he was wondering how it happened that I’d stumbled across his office at just the right time. Maybe he wondered how a twenty-year old secretary had the outrageous confidence to slice-and-dice a team. And wonder was good, because wonder looked forward and asked questions.

            “Please do,” I said.

            Then he went silent and turned inwards.

            “Michael.” With sinuous grace, I lifted myself from the floor and stood over him. Reaching out, I brushed my hand through his hair. He caught my wrist, gently. I recalled the first time he held me that way and hoped he did as well. I settled on his lap and suddenly felt small, but comfortably so, and rested my hand on his shoulder and his arm circled my waist. “Talk to me,” I said. “Please.”

            He told me about his daughter, Lily, twenty years old and at university. He told me about his wife, Rose, and their house in the suburbs and the gradual collapse of their relationship—nothing angry, nothing dramatic, simply… nothing; a gradual emptiness that ate out the core of their marriage until nothing meaningful was left and they realised they’d stopped loving each other long ago. Michael told me how they met, at a university house party long ago and he told a story of the wildness of his youth, a night in a club in the days before he met Rose, an evening of sweat and sex in a darkened room in which he discovered he enjoyed dominating this young, wild girl, pinning her arms over her head as she nipped at his naked shoulder, a predilection for lingerie-clad girls and control not shared by his wife and one he learned to suppress, ignore or redirect his entire life.

            He stopped talking, and beneath my bare bum I felt him grow hard.

            I slid off of his lap and stood, trailing a fingernail along the erection tenting his trousers. “I should go,” I said, dropped my eyes demurely, then glancing up at him through heavy lashes.

            Michael gripped his armrest and his fingers curled and uncurled.

            I took a single, coltish step away.  “Unless…?”

            He remained silent. “Goodnight, Mikey,” I purred, and pranced towards the door.

            He stayed silent.

            I looked at him over my shoulder, and silently mouthed “stop.”

            “Stop,” he said, too quietly.

            I shook my head.

            “Stop!” This time, he spoke with authority, and the deep rumble of his word shot through me like an electric shock. I froze in spot.

            “You’ve been very naughty, Cindy,” he said, rising to his feet. His eyes flashed, and for the first time that evening I saw a glimpse of the man I’d gotten to know these past months.

            “Have I?” I held a finger to my lip. “How so?”

            Heavy footsteps carried him to my side. “Michael,” he said. “Mike. Mikey.” He glowered at me. “Such disrespect. You ought to know better, Cindy. Let’s not forget the formalities. Such things matter.”

            “Do they?” I said innocently.

            He reached out and grabbed me by the wrist. At first, his grip was weak and tentative. He looked at me with fear, and his lip trembled. For a moment he seemed lost and indecisive.

            “They do,” I whispered, and looking into his beautiful grey eyes, gave a little nod.

            “They do,” he repeated. His grip grew firm, and I felt delightfully weak in comparison to his size and strength. Even in my ridiculous shoes I only reached his chin as he stood over me. “They do,” he said again, and this time he spoke with conviction.

            I looked up at him. “I’m sorry,” I said in a little voice.

            Still stern and scowling down at me, he took my other wrist in his hand. “What’s my name?”

            “Mr Connors,” I said. “Sir.”

            He nodded. “Thank you,” he mouthed silently.

            I smiled.

            But what happened next? Fuck me, but I hadn’t quite anticipated what he’d do and if I’d know…?

            I’d probably have done it anyways.

            Moving with confidence, he collected both my wrists in one, large grip. With his other hand he forced me to turn, so that my arms were behind my back. He did this swiftly and easily. My breath caught in my throat as he spun me around. He controlled my motion with ease. Then his hand was at my shoulder. He gave me a shove. I stumbled forward, towards his desk. He controlled my step, yanking my arms up and forcing me down, face and belly onto his desk.

            I suddenly found myself bent in half, and with those heels my ass thrust up high and my tiny skirt flipped up over my waist. I felt my tits flattened beneath me. Fear and indignation flared through me, as well as strain in my shoulders as he held my arms up behind me. Through flared nostrils I breathed out onto the smooth wood of his desk. I felt the surface against my cheek and smelled polish and my own perfume.

            For a moment, a shadow of that terrible fear experienced at the Clinic, during the photoshoot when I was bound tight and helpless, seized me. My breath caught in my throat. I tried to twist and look up at him. 

            “Wait, Mich—”

            “Sir!” he barked, and his hand slammed down onto my defenceless bottom.

            That first smack sounded loud and clear through the room and—it hurt! It fucking burned, the bastard wasn’t holding back and he hit me hard. Hot pain flared across my buttocks. My pigtails jumped and hair fell across my eyes. His hand rested over my ass, and he kept my arms high behind my back and my tiny frame pinned to his desk.

            “What’s my name?” he demanded, flat palm massaging my smarting bum.

            “Sir,” I moaned.

            “Say it louder.”

            “Sir!”

            And his hand smacked down onto my ass again.

            “Again!”

            “Sir! Mr Connors! Sir!”

            Jesus fucking Christ, I was being spanked—spanked, by a man—bent over his office desk—dressed like a schoolgirl—I couldn’t fucking believe it and—

            “Again!”

            “Sir!”

            And his open hand slapped my firm ass and drove me forward, into his desk. Again, hair in my face, my nose and mouth. Earrings bounced against my cheek and my tits, suddenly sensitive, rubbed against the surface, nipples pushing into the wood. Between each hit, his hand would rest momentarily over my bum and gently caress it, a brief respite before he pulled his hand back once more. In the window opposite, I saw myself: pale ass high, wide-eyed behind tousled hair, tiny skirt, flattened tits, and his heavy form standing over me.

            He let go of my arms. I tried to protect my ass with my hands.

            “No,” he barked. “Drop them.”

            I complied.

            Ten heavy smacks, ten ego-crushing, masculinity-destroying, ass-reddening hits: Mr Connor spanked me like a father punishing an errant child. And I’m not going to pin the blame on Mr Connor here—he’s not the one who finished off David Saunders because by this point there wasn’t much left of the man I’d been to kill. Obviously. After all, even after he had me bent over his desk, arms in the air, and his hand on my ass, I could’ve broken free. Maybe.

            More to the point, I could’ve told him to stop. And he would have. It was consensual; I consented to everything that happened that night. More than that, even: at some level, I wanted it. Three more months of Cindy’s life; and one soul-withering night with Julia; I was broken. Maybe I deserved this—wanted it—needed to be punished for my failed masculinity.

            How else to explain my submission to my boss?

            And so, despite his innocence, each one of those ten flat-palmed, bum-stroking hits smacked a final piece of the man I’d been into oblivion. Some kind of dam broke. Which maybe explained the tears, that came after the third or fourth hit. Or the yelps and cries, that followed. It all happened so quickly, and the flood of emotions was too much. I didn’t know what to do with it. I squirmed under his hand. I wriggled and thrashed—but not enough to break free—and I sobbed at the loss of who I’d been.

            And even then, what happened next took me by surprise.

            Because there I was in my sexy little schoolgirl outfit, bum up in the air and face down on his desk, face wet with tears and makeup an absolute ruin, with Mr Connor’s firm hand stroking and cupping my ass after the tenth and final smack. His thumb ran under the thin strip of underwear flossing my crack. I took in a deep, shuddering breath.

            My ass was on fire.  But the fire wasn’t just in my ass.  I was—excited; and it humiliated me to feel that way; and that shame only excited me further. I could see myself from outside and see myself for this sexy slut with her bum in the air and her sex enflamed with desire, tiny triangle of satin fabric soaked through with her debasement.

            His touch became gentle, lovingly stroking the curve of my ass. His touch drifted lower. One finger rested solidly against my sex. My breath caught in my throat. I felt—hot; my skin shone with sweat, with heat and anticipation, and my legs trembled in their precarious perch as his finger slipped beneath the tenuous protection of my panties.

            “What’s my name?” he whispered, and his breath was hot on my cheek as he bent over me.

            “Mr—” I groaned, his finger slowly drawing along the soaked-through wetness of my panties. “Connor—” I squealed, as he languidly swept the pad of his finger back, and forth, and back again along my satin-covered pussy lips.  I took in a shuddering breath. My legs were tight, muscles trembling, and my buttocks clenched even tighter with anticipation and need.

            His finger stopped, hovered.

            I twisted to glare up at him over my shoulder, pigtails bouncing. “Sir—,” I hissed.

            His stern eyes challenged me.

            “Please,” I pleaded as his finger swept across my sex one last time. Slick fingers found my clitoris under the thin thread of my panties. It only took the slightest touch. My whole body jerked and juddered and the fire he’d spanked into me released in an incandescent release. “Siiiiir!”

            My legs turned to jelly, and his strong arms caught me. He supported me as I sagged to the floor.

            He wasn’t the first man to touch me there, but he was the first to make me cum—as a girl.

            “Stand up,” he instructed.

            Shaking all over, legs trembling, I stood before him, eyes downcast.

            “Look at me.”

            His face was flushed with passion, and his breathing heavy. He curled and uncurled his right hand into a fist. The index finger of his left hand glistened with my wetness. “What do you say?”

            “I—I don’t know,” I whimpered. “Sir.”

            “‘Thank you,’” he said. “You say, ‘thank you, Mr Connor.””

            “Thank you, Mr Connor,” I repeated.

            “You’ve been a good girl, Cindy,” he said.

            Hearing him say that felt inexplicably good.

            With great tenderness, and a gentle tap to my reddened bum, he urged me towards his sidebar. “Fetch me a drink,” he instructed, settling onto the sofa.

             The lightest brush of my skirt flared hot against my smarting ass as I minced over and picked up a tumbler. “Yes, sir,” I said, hesitated and, biting my lower lip, glanced back over my shoulder and held up a second glass. “May I? Sir?”

            He raised an eyebrow, then chuckled. “Yes.”

            I poured two fingers of whisky for us each from the decanter on his desk and walked gingerly back to his side. I passed him a tumbler and waited. He took a sip and closed his eyes and savoured the drink. Then he grunted and looked up at me and reached for me. His strong hand closed around mine and he guided me onto his lap. I sat gingerly.

            “This is a Macallan 18,” he said, and swirled the ruddy amber drink. A hint of a smile tugged at his lips. “I don’t suppose you’re much of a whisky drinker? You’re lucky; this is a good one.” He swirled his drink and took a sniff. “A very good one. Take a sip.”

            I did, with pleasure. He seemed surprised when I didn’t wince or cough; but then, it was a very smooth whisky. I had a bottle—or rather, David once had a bottle—in his old condo. I gave it a moment to sit on the tongue and tasted the hints of vanilla that mellowed into smoky cinnamon on the way down. It brought a delightful warmth to my belly, calming and comforting. I smiled at him over the rim of the tumbler. “It’s good.”

             His smile grew slightly. “A few years ago, Rose and I went on holiday to Scotland. Beautiful country. Especially the highlands. We drove along Loch Lomond, climbed a few Munros, visited distilleries. The Macallan was our favourite.” He took another sip and so did I, as he stared wistfully into his tumbler. “We stayed in this old hotel and—”

            He broke off and gave his head a little shake. “Sorry.”

            I stoked his cheek and chin and drew my nails along his stubble. “Don’t be,” I said, and smiled and felt his erection grow beneath me. “Don’t apologize.”

            But his gaze remained distant. “You should go,” he said.

            But I wasn’t done with him yet. I hadn’t gotten what I wanted.

            I took a long pull from my drink and finished it. Silently, I pressed the empty tumbler into his hand. I felt the whisky’s warmth and buoyed by that delicious heat I reached up and took his face between my hands and drew him in for a long and passionate kiss.

            Caramel and oak, a touch of sherry; our tongues shared the dark flavours as I wriggled in his lap and melted into him, my soft chest pressing up against his hardness. Then I sank to

my knees in between his parted legs. I knelt and looked up and reached for his belt buckle. He raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. I smiled up at him and he smiled in return and allowed me to continue.

            A moment later, his trousers and boxers were around his ankles, and his cock was out and in my hand. He took a sip of whisky and nodded. Then he was in my mouth.

            He wasn’t my first blowjob, not by a long shot and by this point I was a hell of a more skilled at getting a guy to blow his load. Not that it took much. He was already on a hair trigger by this point. He manfully controlled himself best he could but under my skilled ministrations, he wasn’t going to last long. I bobbed up and down his length, holding my hair to one side, and when I looked up, I saw him gazing down at me in wonder. He took another drink, not quite finishing off the tumbler but putting it aside. I licked his length, took him back in and went faster. He groaned and watched and kept eye contact. He watched me the whole time, and I did my best to look up at him, too.

            I took him in as far as I could. His penis swelled between my lips. He finally reached down and held my head firmly in place. He groaned and grunted and his hips bucked. He came and I tasted his semen and for the first time, I swallowed. He passed me his glass and I drank off the rest of the whisky, chasing his taste down my throat. I think I’ll forever associate Michael Connor with the flavour of a fine whisky.

            Afterwards, I used his private bathroom to clean myself up a bit. Then it was his turn, and with him in the toilet I sat in his chair behind the desk and poured myself another dram. I shot it back in one to clear out the last of the bitter taste, though not the memory, of his manhood from my mouth. The cool leather stuck to my slick ass. My ass still stung like hell. When he returned, he raised an eyebrow at the sight of the little girl in the skimpy outfit curled up in the big chair behind his desk.

            “I don’t think you need this anymore,” I said. He watched but didn’t say anything as I deleted the letter he’d been writing. Then I stood and collected my purse and its lethal contents.

            “Cindy—” he said. “You can’t—”

            “I can, and I will,” I answered. My clutch rested against my hip. “When you want this back, when you think it’s safe to have again, I’ll give it to you. You just need to ask. But not tonight.”

            He opened his mouth to argue, frowning. But I stared him down—a tiny girl in a schoolgirl outfit, staring down this man in his suit—and this time, it was his turn to break and stare at the floor. Unable to meet my gaze, he nodded. Several weeks later, he still hasn’t asked for it. His gun remains hidden in my apartment.

            I crossed over to the door and unlocked it. It was very late now, though the party continued upstairs. I confronted the reality of leaving: heading back upstairs, collecting my stuff, trying to avoid other people, inevitably having to talk to them. They’d see the state of me and my makeup, my smeared lipstick and mascara, tousled hair and my costume, and they’d guess what I’d been up to. His handprint across my flesh felt visible beneath my short skirt and I knew that even standing, people would see and know. There’d be rumours and smirks and winks. Meanwhile, exhausted, I just wanted to crawl into bed. Jesus. A girl’s work never ended.

            “Thank you, Cindy,” Michael called from where he still stood by his desk.

            I looked back at him over my shoulder and flashed a tired smile. I’d gotten what I wanted from him. “Good night, sir,” I said. “See you on Monday, right?”

            “Yes,” he said. “See you on Monday.”

Six: Torture What You Love

“I saw him on Monday,” I say, and this simple fact still brings a flutter of relief. “He came in on Monday, and the Monday after that, and this Monday, too.”

            Julia’s staring at me wide-eyed.

            “That did not happen,” she says. “No fucking way Michael—”

            “It happened,” I say.

            She pinches the bridge of her nose, as though in pain. “Michael was going to…?”

            “Yes,” I say. “Was it a cry for help? Maybe. He left the door open. But he had that gun. It was loaded. And the note on the computer was… let’s just it was brutally honest.”

            “And you—stopped him?”

            I shuffle my feet. “I was there when he needed someone,” I say. “Pure luck.”

            She goes silent for a moment, processing. Eventually, she shakes her head. “I had no idea,” she murmurs. “He seemed—I mean, he always came off so… rock solid? Stable. There were a couple of rumours floating around, but….” Julia trails off. “I didn’t realise.”

            “You’ve been there,” I say, “and I’ve been there.” I avoid her eyes, choosing to examine my nails instead. It’s remarkable how good I’ve gotten at shaping them, painting them, and tonight they shimmer with a subtle glitter in near-black varnish. “You know how it goes. We get good at keeping it hidden, right? Operating like everything’s okay. Keep busy with—whatever. Smiling and going through the motions.”

            “Yeah.” Focused on my nails, I hear rather than see her sigh. “Yeah.”

            “But imagine you’ve got no one to share it with. No girlfriends to talk to. Can’t even cry it out. Can’t even hint at the idea that something’s wrong because, you know, it’s not manly, it’s weak, you’re a pussy if even for a second, you’re anything but strong and tough and—rock solid. Stable, as you put it.”

            I comb those gorgeous nails through my hair and pull my hair over my shoulder and smooth it down. “I’ve cried more in the past three months than the rest of my life put together and maybe, you know… I might’ve gone nuts without letting it out somehow. I used to get embarrassed crying. Especially in front of men. Just made me want to cry more.” I search for split ends, snipping a few tips between fingernails, as I talk. “Not so much anymore. And maybe it’s better this way? I’ve tried bottling it all up in the past. That never ended well.”

            I let my hair fall and smile mildly at her. “He kept it all inside. I just happened to be there when the pressure grew too much.”

            Julia’s still processing the second half of Mr Connor’s story. “And afterward he—”

            “He did.”

            “And you—?”

            “—kinda enjoyed it.”

            The sky outside is even darker now, an early-evening, late November grey streaked by the final reds of sunset. The sun’s dipped below the horizon and purple twilight hues are seeping across the city.

            “You enjoyed getting spanked.” She states it flatly. “You enjoyed submitting to him.”

            “Well, it definitely wasn’t part of the plan,” I say, and grin at the memory. “He took me by surprise. I just wanted to distract him. Keep his mind off of—but then he grabbed me—and it happened so quickly! But—” and here I blush. “It was kinda hot, and it felt—which took me by surprise—and I saw myself reflected in the window—and….” My blush deepens to a full-blown flush, red-faced with recollected excitement and embarrassment. “It was exciting; I got excited. I—hadn’t expected that. And when he touched me?”

            She squirms a little in her seat, and I can tell from the flush to her cheeks that she’s a little turned on by the story, but she’s also disturbed by it, too.

            “Is this the same as the blowjob story?” she asks. “Are you bullshitting me?”
            I shake my head.

            “And then you went down on him?”

            “Well—yeah,” I say. “He got me off; I got him off. Only fair, right? And this was Halloween, remember, just a few weeks ago. By that point, it was hardly my first time with a dick in my mouth.” I tap a finger to my lip and taste a memory of smoke, cinnamon and semen. “First time swallowing, though,” I say, and there’s a weird hint of pride in the way I say it.

            She shakes her head in disbelief. “On your knees.”

            “On my knees.”

            “Jesus. David Saunders, cock-sucker.”

            I bite my lip to still an angry answer.

            “I’d never have taken him for—” she rolls her hand at the wrist, searching for the right word, “a submissive.”

            For some reason, that’s too far. “He isn’t,” I snap.

            She looks at me speculatively. “So, Cindy is then?”

            “She—” I hesitate. “I—”

            “Yes?”

            “Maybe I am?” My voice is so soft she leans closer to hear. “Is that what you want me to say?”

            “I don’t want—” she begins, but I cut her off.

            “I felt—weak, that night, okay?” I start, and my voice stays quiet but begins to simmer with resentment. “I felt weak and broken. It was too much, okay, too much happened in too short a time and I was barely coping. And I was tired. And I was trying to keep my shit together and it wasn’t happening, I could feel myself tearing at the seams.

            “You know what that’s like, right? And every time I thought I got my shit together, that I was getting on top of all this—bam! Something would come and knock me back down. I didn’t want to go to that fucking party, but I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t—couldn’t muster up the will, the energy. And when I went into his office—

            “When he took control—"

            I glower at the floor, then sigh and my shoulders slump in defeat, but it doesn’t feel like a loss. “It felt good, okay? In that moment, to just… give in and do what I was told. I say that moment, but I think I’d been waiting for someone to tell me what to do ever since I’d come back from the Clinic. What to wear. How to act.” I drag my gaze from my feet to meet her eyes. “Like you used to do, Jules.”

            She’s taken aback. “You liked it when I took charge?”

            “Yes,” I say. “No.” I let out a huff of frustration. “I don’t know, okay? I just know that bent over his office desk like that, I wanted to be punished, I felt—broken.”

            “Broken?” she asks.

            “Because of what happened before,” I say. “With you. Because of you, Julia.”

            “No,” she says, standing, stepping away from me. “No way. You’re not pinning this on me.”

            “Funny, isn’t it?” I say, staring past her. The sun has fully set now. It’s all dark, now.  I can see my reflection in the windows behind her, my image caught in the frame of inside light and a canvas of outside darkness. And in a way I’m talking to her, the girl in the glass, even as I’m saying this to Julia.

            “It’s what you want, isn’t it? David Saunders on his knees, it’s exciting. You said so yourself, earlier. You love the idea, the image of him humbled and humiliated. Weak—thin arms, and big boobs, and wrapped in lingerie—stockings and straps, lace and bows—and with his lips wrapped around a man’s cock. Especially if those lips are plump and moist and painted. David, submissive, and docile. It’s what you wanted and I guess, in the end, it’s what you got.”

            My eyes flick from the reflected girl to Julia, and then back.  “But it’s not so fun now, is it? Because now when I’m down on my knees—well… it’s just Cindy, right, some girl going down on a boy and what’s humiliating about that? Sure, it’s still sexy but there’s no… shame, no revenge, even if I’m dressed and painted like some bimbo because I’m doing it by choice, now and hey—maybe I even enjoy it?”

            I stand, then, and step towards her. “How do you reconcile the two, Julia? If I’m still really a guy, if David’s alive, you get to continue your little campaign of revenge. You can enjoy your little thrills at my debasement, watch me prance around in short little skirts and squirm under the touch of boys as they fondle my tits. It’s sick and twisted, but satisfying, isn’t it, knowing I’m suffering under all this makeup? And exciting—so exciting, watching a man suffer as a girl; you’re probably getting wet right now.

            “Wet, at watching someone else play out your revenge fantasy because you’re angry, aren’t you, so goddamn angry at me, at men, at the world? You’re a strong woman, fighting the good fight and railing against the patriarchy, and what better revenge than getting some guy to suffer the shit they force on girls, right? But then you’re just reinforcing the stereotypes, too, aren’t you? You’re complicit in all this misogynistic shit by enabling all this—even if the girl being exploited is really a guy?

            “But—oh dear—what if she’s not? What if she—I’m really just a girl, now, or at least more girl than guy and everything you want to do to me is as exploitative and shitty as anything that’s ever been done to you?”

            She steps away and I step closer, and her eyes are wide as I continue. “And you’re tired of being angry, and tired of being tired, and most of all tired of hating yourself for taking pleasure in all this pervy shit. You want David gone; but you want him alive because… well, because you still love him, you want him, and what does it say about you that you torture what you love, and take pleasure in his pain?

            “So maybe it’s better to just believe he’s gone. But if I’m Cindy—just Cindy—well.  There’s not much fun in that, is there, what’s so exciting about a pretty twenty-year old girl doing whatever it is twenty-year old girl do? You’d have no reason to be here anymore, would you? All these stories we’ve told tonight, they carry on without you.”

            She’s up against the patio door, now.

            “So tell me, Jules.” I lean closer, until my chest presses up against hers and our cheeks brush and I whisper into her ear. “How does it feel? Are you happy? Is your revenge complete? Is this what you wanted?”

            “I….”

            “I’ve got tits. I’ve got a sexy little mouth. And I’ve got a cunt. And you watched me use them all. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

            “Please—”

            My hand reaches out and takes hers. “I wear short skirts and stockings, high heels and a bra—every day. And every day, I sit behind my little desk and smile my little lipstick smile and flirt with the boys that come into the office—is that what you wanted?”

            “That’s enough,” she says, and goes to pull away but my grip glides up to her wrist and tightens.

            “Let go,” she says.

            “Receptionist. Makeup. Sucking and fucking boys. A twenty-year old bimbo whose best prospect, really, is to hook these pretty, manicured nails into some young stud and ride him, or stay one step behind in his shadow, right, a trophy to his success?”

            She tries to yank her hand free from my grip but fails.

            “And all I’ve got to do is be there for him, be his toy, his stress relief, his arm candy, a decoration? Spread my legs when he wants, mouth open like a good girl, dress sexy, and give myself to him—because he’s worth it, isn’t that right, Julia?”

            “Let me go,” Julia says, and tries to pull her arm away again but she’s not strong enough.  “You’re hurting me,” she says.

            “Good,” I say, because I’m hurting, too. “It’s time, don’t you think?”

            “No.” Julia tries to free herself. “No!”

            She’s not strong enough to break away. I force her back towards the sofa. “You’re going to sit yourself down,” I say, and my voice is hard. “And listen. And I’m going to tell you one final story. But this one isn’t my story. It’s yours.”

            Julia doesn’t want to hear her own story, but I tell her anyway.