Sneak Peek: Rewriting the return home - v3 (Patreon)

Another round of revision, tightening up the prose of "Julia's Story", or rather David's version of it.  Expanded the setting a little and squeezed in even more unsubtle imagery (the olympic park is shaped like a vagina; the train disappearing into the tunnel; hammering nails into soft wood; the man and his dog)--probably overdoing it a bit, but it's fun.  Trimmed out Julia's responses, and keeping it firmly in the 1st person narration.

Let me know what you think of this version - I've already started pushing ahead, into the dialogue between Julia and David.  That'll probably be the next sneak peek.

Enjoy!

***

  One: The Story of the Ex-Girlfriend

So, the story I told Julia was the truth, more or less, though I left some parts out, and embellished others for her benefit. It started with my return from the Clinic, and finished with—well, the reason everything fell apart between us.

And believe me, it wasn’t an easy story to tell, filled with guilt and embarrassment, anger and sadness. And to tell it, I had to go back a little bit, to before she actually showed because… well, just because I had to try, try and justify myself and the only way to do that was for her understand, and there’s no way she’d understand if she couldn’t put herself in my shoes and try, just try and imagine how I felt when I first got back from the Clinic.

Fucked up, to put it mildly. And fucked off. First off, the drive back from Asklepios was a long one. An overnight drive, and I only dimly remember stopping at a charging station halfway. Stumbling into the toilet. Bleary eyed staring into a cracked mirror under flickering fluorescent light through a mess of blonde hair and wondering what the fuck was going on and then standing—yes, standing to take a piss in the stall and feeling a warm trickle down my leg….

I could’ve cried, could’ve punched the wall. Instead, I shook and sat down and took deep breaths until the shaking and then finished the job, trying not to think too closely on what was getting wiped afterwards. Did my best to repair the damage when I got back to the car, grabbing a clean pair of panties and a skirt from the trunk and changed in the back seat. Pushed all the resentment down—like, really deep down—and eventually slept the rest of the way, trying desperately to not think about what the next six months was going to be like with a goddamn fucking slit between my legs.

That’s, like, half a dozen fucks. I weird, because I don’t really swear like this anymore? It’s just—remembering that first weekend—it’s like stepping back into his skin. Yes, his skin; David’s; and it feels so… angry. He was so angry, all the time, so angry with… everything and everyone.

But not when he was with Jules. Oh, sure, he—I—resented some of the things she made me do. Especially… well. We’ll get to that. But it was always about the clothes with Julia. I was her little fantasy dress-up doll, playing the parts she never could. Part of me really hated giving up that kind of power to her, like letting her decide how I should dress and consequently, how I should act. Like, her influence over the kind of workday I was going to have on its own was reason enough to resent her, right? Because it makes a big difference rocking up to work in soft pastels and pleated skirt looking like a demure schoolgirl, versus the shiny faux-leather skirt and tight white blouse of the naughty librarian.; or whatever other kinky fantasy seized Julia that morning.

But.

What can I say? It was also a lot of fun.

After two weeks of playing dress up at the Clinic, after all those sessions with Crystal, after—Chad; and after what they did to me? Well. I guess maybe Julia’s little games didn’t seem so bad anymore. And giving in to them, giving in to her? That first month, after we made up and before we fucked it all up again? Honestly, probably one of the best months of David Saunders life.

And I wish I’d told Jules this, back then, though at the time I couldn’t appreciate how good things were. Maybe if I’d been more open about—enjoying dressing up for her—I dunno; things might have turned out differently. She wouldn’t have done the things she did and—and neither would I. Maybe.

It’s like, even after all these months I’m pretty sure I’ll never like the reallygirly stuff, the pigtails and pink and glitter and all that—but…. It was fun, and what made it fun was doing it with her.

Julia kept the anger away. She helped me forget just what a wreck of a human being I am.

So. Yeah.

I returned to Cindy’s apartment on Friday morning. It was the first weekend of September, and even here in the suburbs you could feel the city’s efforts to retain heat, concrete and glass fingers clawing the sky, but it still slipped away. The buildings broke up those early autumn winds, but something had changed. There was a nip in the air, a little swirl of cold against my bare thighs and pantied bum as I emptied the car.

And boy was there ever a lot to empty. It’s a miracle no one tried to mug me. The Clinic, in their infinite wisdom and generosity, sent me home with all those gorgeous clothes they’d made for me, all that bespoke lingerie, the 3d printed dresses and shoes, even the Sin-DI corset from the photoshoot.

I bitched about it then, but those clothes made the next few months easier. Worth a small fortune, it was a really pretty pile of clothes, mostly, and not exactly affordable on Cindy’s salary. Most of it tragically useless for work, but turned out my clubbing wardrobe was set for the months ahead.

Dragging all that stuff up to my apartment that morning was a bit of a nightmare. But it kept me busy and that was good, the work kept me moving and not thinking because after I was done, after I’d dropped the last case by the entrance and the door clicked shut behind me, I just stood there a little sweaty and very tired and leaned against the wall. And that’s when it hit me, really. I just kind of took Cindy’s little apartment—the whole thing’s visible from the entrance, pretty much—my home for the next six months again—my reality for the next six months….

It all just caught up with me then.

I dropped to the floor and clutched my head in my hands and wanted to cry.

But I didn’t.

And when I was done not-crying, I went downstairs to the dodgy little ground-floor shop and bought up a shit tonne of booze and some crap food I could throw in the microwave and brought it all back up to the apartment. The plan was a simple one: to huddle down and hide until everything went away. Everything: me, Cindy, the thing between my legs and the expectation that I live with it for the next six months.

I started with beer. Wandering around the apartment, getting steadily more and more drunk, I surveyed the apartment. Stopped and stared at the ribbon of peeling wallpaper in the hallway, or that corner in the bathroom crusted over with black mildew, or the wicker chair in the bedroom that was half-caved in under a pile of dirty laundry. I’d left Cindy’s place a mess. Now, it was my mess.

Eventually, I fell into the sofa and stared at the wall, killing cans of cheap off-brand lager one after another. But beer can only get you so far, really, at least when you’re small like I am, feeling bloated and having to take a piss every thirty minutes. I stared at the can in my hand and I wasn’t feeling it, some little nagging voice at the back of my head kept staving off the desired oblivion. Feeling increasingly nauseous, I staggered over to the balcony and stood outside, breathed deeply and stared towards the centre, towards the city, towards that great cluster of shining glass and cold steel standing tall against the dark sky.

It was getting close to noon by the time I rallied and switched to the hard stuff, some kind of knock-off vodka that was nasty, leaving an oily feel to the tongue and was probably in breach of FDA regulations or something. First couple of swigs burned like hell on the way down. It got better after that.

The sun was high in the sky by this time, painfully bright in a cloudless sky behind a brown haze. I stared into the sun until I saw spots, until my eyes stung and watered and tears streamed down my cheek. Julia was out there, somewhere, working that Friday but if I’m honest there wasn’t much room in my head for her, for anyone, for anything beyond incandescent rage and stomach-churning fear and shame, God, I felt so ashamed of what I’d become, at what I’d allowed them to do to me.

At some point I stood naked in front of the mirror in my bedroom.

The time between balcony and mirror remains blank. I just knew it was dark, now. Nighttime noises filtered through the open bedroom window: the wail of sirens, arguing voices, a child’s cry from another apartment, all riding a breeze that raised goosebumps across bare skin.

I willed myself to hate the girl I saw in reflection. She was young and beautiful in her youth, a slender ghost in dim light. Slender arms hung limply at her side; large breasts pushed out from the darkness, tipped by pale nubs rising in the cool air. Smooth thighs waxed pallid in the little light slipping between fluttering curtains. Her hair was long and straight and fell nearly to the curve of her ass.

But I didn’t hate her. I wanted to but couldn’t, not anymore. I… resented her and despised everything she represented but—not her. After all, she was me; and I was Cindy Bellamy, at least for the next six months. And possibly longer.

In one hand she held a half-empty bottle in the crook of her thumb by its stubby neck. The other hand—well, it hovered over that space between the thighs, palm down as though warming itself by the heat of a hidden fire. Pulling the hand back confronted what was there: nothing. Female smoothness: the cleft and slit; that garden or rosebud or peach; a pussy, snatch, twat or cunt—meat sheath or honey pot. My vagina.

Enough time had lapsed for the prosthetic to blend perfectly with the surrounding skin. Back at the Clinic I could still disassociate myself from—it—from the dull, grey cover laid over my genitals, like wet plaster wrapped draped over a damaged limb. But there was no longer any seam or discoloration, no division between where I ended and the artificial genitals began. Most tellingly—judging by the faint stirring of the cool night air—I could feel it, as a part of me, as a tickle of curly blonde hair and a prickle of goosebumps.

In that half-obliterated state of extreme drunkenness, I stared at my girl parts for a long while. Strange and incoherent thoughts churned through my head. Eventually, I brought the bottle to my lips for another swig. It was the smell that did it—harsh, chemical—and I laughed, once, and then my arm dropped back to my side, the bottle dropped to the floor, and I dropped to my knees in a puddle of pungent booze.

Curled into a naked little ball with knees to chest, I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, haven’t I already done this?

Six months ago when I first woke up her I faced—well, not the same thing, actually, because that first time was worse, far far worse. It nearly drove me mad that first time, nearly killed me the first time I saw Cindy—I mean myself—in the mirror, it nearly drove me over the edge. And that girl back then, hell, she wasn’t nearly as… girly? as now. Smaller boobs, thicker waist, shorter hair—and a fine specimen of manhood between her legs.

I tried to efface her through booze, too, back then, the last truly glorious bender of David Saunder’s life and—well, it didn’t work, right? A few weeks later I had a job, was living Cindy’s life, had men hitting on me, men like Dan, and Cindy’s first kiss, a man tongue in my mouth on a drunken night out at a trendy bullshit bar after work.

And that first night back in Cindy’s apartment? It just didn’t feel right, I couldn’t get into the groove of killing her off, if that makes sense. Hey, maybe therapy works after all, right?

And so while it’s all a blur, I can dimly remember stumbling into the kitchen and pouring the rest of the bottle down the drain and then—well, I must’ve collapsed on the sofa or my bed or maybe just the floor, but I don’t remember anything until the sun and heat beaming through the open balcony had me crawling to the toilet to puke my guts out.

I’d woken up with a blistering headache but it faded quickly—a perk of all those regenerative chemicals in the bloodstream keeping me fit and female, I guess. I ate, drank loads of water and looked at the state of my apartment and decided I couldn’t quite deal, yet. So instead I slipped on a sports bra and some jogging pants, did my hair up in a quick ponytail and went for a run.

It’d been ages since I went for a jog in the neighbourhood. After starting my bullshit job at Volumina International, I started using the employee gym there; still do. And no, it’s not because I’m trying to catch the eyes of the guys who work there, the managers and directors, the up-and-comers, whatever those bitches at work say.

Although I do, obviously, catch their eyes that is. And yeah, the guys who show up early like me are in great shape, like I used to be; and they appreciate a bit of eye candy on the treadmill, just as I once did. Maybe a few of them have offered help from time to time, like spotting me on the bench or adjusting the machines; and maybe I’ve accepted their help once or twice; and sure, I might do my makeup and hair before my workout because… why not? Doesn’t mean anything, and if one of those guys wants to take me out for a drink, pay for dinner, well, I’d be an idiot to turn down food, right?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. That’s a different story, another nail in the coffin. Point is, I went for a run around the block to clear my head and this time… this time, it felt different.

And no, I don’t mean the obvious. But let’s get that out of the way first. That first run was probably the moment I realised that, yeah, as much as I hated having my cock and balls sealed away behind some kind of lunatic fake-flesh Frankenstein science experiment, I felt… free. Not like a bird, but you know… I didn’t have to strap anything back, right? Nothing constrictive, nothing tight, just a simple pair of cotton panties and some baggy jogging pants and no pain, no anxiety over someone noticing an unlikely bulge between my legs. I had a drawer full of underwear in a rainbow of colours and a dizzying array of styles that I’d never worn because of the need to sleeve, tape or tuck my dick out of the way.

That morning, a minute into the run and I was grinning like a fool, despite the throbbing in my skull and the fuzz on my tongue. It felt—good; great, even, to just be able to walk or run freely again. Just an easy, lopping stride, ponytail dancing in counterpoint to each step, and for a moment I forgot what was—or wasn’t—between my legs. So, yeah, score one for the vag: Cunt 1, Cock 0.

It didn’t last, though. Because it didn’t take long for me to start to notice just how sketchy my neighbourhood was. I’d never really noticed before. Or more to the point, I’d noticed but hadn’t cared. Why would I have, intending as I’d been to get the hell out of town as quickly as possible?

Now don’t get me wrong. David used to live in a pretty swanky community. Gated, clean and well-maintained, nice shrubbery, trees lining the road and paths, wannabe cops driving around in their little cars keeping the neighbourhood safe. And sure, from the lofty reach of my penthouse condo I used to look out over the neighbourhood below and you could always see the darkness, and if you breathed in deep enough you could almost taste the stench of trash piled up just beyond the walls and gates and barriers of my little upper-middle class fiefdom. Distance and height might diminish the sirens and cries in the night, but never got rid of it.

Thing is, I’d lived on the other side of that wall and the taint of piss and shit and vomit and refuse was a stain that never washed out.

It was a five minutes jog to the park. It was that early Saturday morning stage between the cleaners passing through—self-propelled bots that didn’t bother to show half the time—and the homeless creeping from whatever refuge they’d found for the night. Friday night trash littered the streets: broken bottles, scattered canisters like silver bullets gathered in corners, used condoms under a bridge. Lurid paint on closed security shutters barricading shops and restaurants shut prophesised revolution, the end of the world, and where to have a good time. Hastily scrawled tags warred with meticulously painted, sensationally artistic graffiti.

It seemed that for every tired shop or grubby apartment building there a hole in the row of buildings, like gaps in a boxer’s grin who’d gone one too many rounds. Fire and riot and decay had left their indelible mark over the years, but I noted what survived: the gambling shops, off-grid tech traders, pawn shops and foreign fast-food joints; the dodgy dealers in jewelry, ticket and credit resellers, grungy cafes and AI re-trainers; the laundrettes, the market stall and the cast-off clothes resellers. There were also a few bars and an underground club or two, and over them giant media screens behind protective glass flashed larger-than-life promises, oozing sensuality, glistening lips and ballooning tits. The image I saw that morning of a corseted Sin-DI leaning forward, wide-eyed and arms bound behind her back, smiling around the steel bit between her bared teeth, hit home hard.

But many of the screens were damaged, black patches flickering amidst impossible dreams of foreign trips and aspirational purchases; or simply dead and broken. Darkness lurked behind cracked windows plastered with anachronistic newsprint, and I’d never noticed before how many lean, angry men with sunken eyes stood in doorways as I jogged past. They tracked my passage with a scowl, or an unnerving grin. A few called out but I couldn’t hear them over the music in my ears. But I shivered nonetheless as I passed.

Leaving the main drag behind, I cut across a disused lot, passed down a residential back street lined with dog shit and uncollected garbage, skirted a roundabout decorated with an almost hilariously incongruent statue of a sword-bearing angel—now stained with patches of rust and rude artwork—and reached the park at last.

The gate into the park was open. I made my way in, jogging out of the sun and into the long dark tunnel before passing into the wide oval space beyond.

Thirty years ago, the park had been an Olympic stadium, an impressively designed oval raised in glory of athletic prowess. Then it became a white elephant, a curse on the community as the promised Big Team takeover kept getting delayed—the arena languished once game seasons started to get too hot for outdoor play. A few corporate rentals, the occasional music festival, but one pandemic and a few bouts of street violence and even those died out. Once the owners finally admitted they couldn’t be bothered to build a retractable roof over the thing and install air conditioning throughout, it fell it disuse. Scheduled for demolition, some bright spark about a decade or two ago had to idea to use some federal greening money to revitalise the whole thing, turn it into a closed garden and community centre, break up the concrete and steel sprawl with some shrubbery and flowers.

It worked and flourished for a few years—according to the faded information panels at the entrance tunnel behind their scratched and scored plastic protection—and drew investment and people back into the neighbourhood. Shops, restaurant, an art gallery and even a nursery moved into the faded shell of the stadium. Property values went up; crime went down.

A couple of years and change of government later, and the whole thing was sold off to some corporation likely more interested in the land beneath than the community above. Even the propaganda at the entrance couldn’t salvage the story of negligence: part of the buyout was a contractual obligation to maintain the space, but over the past decade they’d only put in the minimal effort necessary to avoid triggering a major lawsuit.

Jogging along the winding circular path, I could see the new owners were doing a top-notch job of letting the place collapse into wrack and ruin. The park at the centre of the stadium was yellowed from the sun and lack of water, and drifts of rubbish accumulated at the base of trees. There was some token effort at maintenance. At one point I passed a crew repairing a fountain and the bench next to it. A bored-looking young man in a grey-and-orange, hi-viz one-piece outfit listlessly checked over the fountain, whilst a pretty, young female counterpart watched in sullen silence as a third man, older and grizzled, worked on the wooden bench. Hammer in hand, he lined up each nail and pounded them deep into the yielding wood, over and over again. The girl winced with each blow but seemed fascinated by the rhythmic beat of his labour.

Eventually I worked my way up the concentric circular paths that wound the circumference of the old stadium. I grew warm with the effort, a tired but pleasant buzz infusing my limbs. Jogging on, I passed bench after bench taken by men and women in a stupor.

I recognized their deep state of despair, the kind that’s nearly almost impossible to escape, some still drunk or drugged from last night, some already starting the process over again. It wasn’t everyone and everywhere, of course—there were a few other late morning Saturday joggers out for a run like me, mostly men but a few women as well—but it was impossible to ignore the despair and decay at the heart of my neighbourhood. You just needed to know where to look and what to look for.

I did. I’d been one of them, once, after all.

At one end of the oval, at the far end of highest concentric ring of the stadium park, there was a lookout platform. A simple round slab of horizontal concrete ringed by transparent plastic walls with a few solid benches, the viewpoint still offered a stunning view over the suburban sprawl below. Stopping there to catch my breath, I enjoyed a little break. Killing the music in my ears, I listed to the wind and the grumble of the awakening city. Far below, train tracks cut a sunken swath through the neighbourhood. Though the station connected to the stadium hadn’t been used in years, tracks still ran through here before curving off to join the junction the next stop further down the route.

I wasn’t alone. A man, probably about David age, with a full reddish beard and heavy eyebrows, sat with his dog. She was a slim, beautiful mutt—maybe a labrador crossed with something smaller—blonde and sleek, her fur shining in the sun in contrast to the heavy leather and steel of her harness. She was yapping up a storm, paws up on the barrier, barking at the trains below, and the man was hauling her back.

“Princess!” he shouted and yanked on her leash. “Heel!”

The dog dutifully returned and sat next to him, looking up with expectant and loyal eyes.

“She’s a stupid bitch,” the man said, grinning apologetically as he scratched the dog behind the ear. “But I love her anyway.”

Turning away, I shivered in the wind and watched as a heavy-duty maglev train approached with only the faintest hiss, hauling a half-dozen cars marked with industrial waste symbols. It diverted down the stadium branch, allowing a passenger train emerging from the tunnel ahead to rush past. The ugly, snub-nosed engine slowed as it approached the disused stadium platform, a swollen bulbous protuberance dragging the storage cars that snaked sinuously behind. Then it picked up speed once again, amidst a shower of sparks and grinding of connectors, before gliding with eel-like grace back onto its route. It slid silently and smoothly into the waiting tunnel, gleaming with the bioluminescent gel that illuminated the path and conducted power back into the thrusting engine. The train disappeared into those depths.

By this time my headache had largely cleared and so I left the platform, taking a final look over the park and my home for the next six months. I took in the tired, tall and slender trees below, and the washed-out building beyond, and the hollow and empty spaces that once housed fashionable shops and cafes. Crude cock-and-ball graffiti scored into the plastic walling of the balcony forever shot their triple droplets of jizz towards the concrete floor.

Afterwards, back in the apartment I was feeling—pensive, I guess. Behind the anger and the tiredness and the shame, something started to roll over in the back of my mind. I locked the door behind me and stood there for some time looking over Cindy’s—over my—home.

Stripping naked, I stepped into the shower and washed away the stench and grime from the run, the flecks of vomit in my hair, lingering traces of piss from the drive back and yesterday’s makeup. The water ran scalding hot as I scrubbed myself vigorously clean. A moment’s hesitation and then I allowed instinct to reassert itself and reached for the razor and shaved armpit and legs.

Soon after I found myself standing in front of the mirror once more, once again naked, but this time under the bright light of the noonday sun. I stared at the girl in the mirror; I stared at myself; and I thought: okay, let’s do this.

And if I had to pick a moment when all this started, the first step down the road that leads to the death of David Saunders, I think maybe it started then, a willful act of self-negation; suicide, in a way.  Something started to shift inside of me after that jog. By the time Julia showed up later that night, I’d already taken the first small step towards a larger change.

Which she did. Turn up, that is, uninvited. And when Julia showed up later that night, she found me hard at work, cleaning. She saw me in a cute Suzy-homemaker dress, one she’d bought me on a whim a month back, red one with white polka dots, 1950s vintage-inspired and flouncy with a nipped in waist. My makeup was all done up proper, and strapped myself into a girdle, stockings and heels, and with some cheery music on in the background was busily carving my little oasis of peace and tidiness out of the mucky mess of the previous three months.

And why was I dressed like a sitcom housewife from the 50s? Because at that precise moment, that’s who I wanted to be. Or rather, that was the part I wanted to play, the happy homemaker, the cheerful cleaner because, frankly, if this was going to be my home for the next six months somebodyhad to do something about the goddamn mess.

And yeah, it’s a bit ridiculous but I wanted to prove to myself that I couldplay that part. I was laying the foundation for the next six months, and I was laying it on thick—as thickly as the cream smearing across my face hiding the imperfections and damages of the past day—though saying that, even then, somewhere in the back of my mind, I was already considering what I could do to get the fuck out of there, to spend as little time as possible in my shitty apartment in that shitty neighbourhood.

So I didn’t hear Julia let herself in. She had her own key from before, not that she ever used it. Before, I’d almost always ended up at hers rather than the other way around.

Who know how long she watched me, flutter around and cleaning. It’s worrying and telling that I didn’t notice her come in. But I had the music on, was deeply into the task at hand, when her voice cut through to me.

“David?”

Like I said, I hadn’t expected the visit, hadn’t checked my phone in hours, and it was already getting late. I started in surprise, turned and saw… Julia.

Standing there in that swirling dress, in heels and heavy makeup, with a duster in hand as her eyes roamed back and forth over me brought a swell of emotions I could hardly process at the moment. I wasn’t ready, I realised, not yet, to deal with other human beings and especially one who’d known me as a man.  In two days, I’d be heading back to work as an “office administrator,” a glorified secretary, and so back to all the social expectations and anxieties and pressures of ordinary life; and I wasn’t ready, I just wasn’t prepared to go back, not when I was still reeling from the realities of life with a vagina.

One look for her and I instantly and acutely felt like a man prancing around in a flirty dress and flushed a deep and painful red with embarrassment.

She smiled, red lips parting in a broad smile, and her eyes sparkled with mirth. “Hello honey,” she said, stepping out of the hallway and into the living room. “I’m home.”