Content note (huge spoiler):
Spoiler
Sexual assault
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This is the moment I’ve been waiting for ever since I first figured out what I wanted, and that my body wasn’t going to willingly give it to me.
I just didn’t expect it to still hurt so damn much.
I should have known Oaklen would feed me lies about how quickly the test subjects’ pain resolved. From their virus. From my version. All of it, bullshit. Fuck. Weeks in and it all still hurts like hell. Joints, bones, tendons, ligaments. Even my fucking face aches.
I stabbed the last dose of Neoeridine in to get me out of the hovel — sorry, rude — the motel, before the money ran out or, more importantly, before my good luck did. Enough pain hidden that I could interact with reception-boy, and hopefully make it across to the car.
Each step is still fucking agonizing though, at least the pain’s fading with the drugs. I should be able to concentrate enough to keep the car on the road, at least. Out here though, in the cool of the day, before the sun really hits and scorches the earth, sears the life from the surface, in this one moment everything is both wrong and, thank fuck, right at the same time. No going back once I’d done this. That moment just after I’d infected myself I couldn’t stop the spiral of ‘But what if I’m wrong?’ And what if I’ve just destroyed my life, burned any future I had, for some stupid fantasy. What if I was really just a cis guy with some fetish — some weird fucked up dream that being a girl — being a woman — being in a different shape body — would be better? At least the trans girls they can try some estrogen, no harm no foul. Probably shoulda done that first.
Didn’t.
Why bother.
Hated who I was.
Despaired at who I’d be.
But now I’m here. Now this is me. I hadn’t noticed as I crawled or staggered around the room but my center of gravity is different. Hips sway some as I walk, and don’t blame the Neoeridine. It doesn’t do that shit. Doesn’t even fuck up your consciousness like the old school shit. But yeah, hips sway, because the weight’s in different places. And my legs — my hips — are a different (and fucking achy) shape.
For the first time in my life I can appreciate my body.
Not as in, “Well, I guess other people say I look okay.” As in, the shadow cast on the gravel, well, gravel and glass and trash, it’s curvy. It’s cute. It’s me. Shame it’s so fucking bright out here.
Shorter — that’s the thing that throws me, though. You’d think it’d be the tits, but honestly they just feel right. Like something that should always have been there is finally there. But the view’s different enough to throw me. And it’s not like I was exactly tall, but as I go to get in the car it really hits me, I’ve got to be a couple of inches shorter.
Huh.
Wild.
I mean, again, I knew. It’s one of the things that pissed Oaklen off. Led to him screaming at me, furious that I’d ruined…
…anyway. I knew it made you shorter. A bit of thickness from each vertebrae, a bit of shortening to every long bone. (No wonder I fucking hurt). But to experience it. I sit, feet not-quite touching the brake. Flash of memory to sitting on my mom’s lap, steering the car while she drove. Peering above the dash and below the wheel.
Fucking wild.
A manic grin smears itself across my face. Cranking the seat forward and up I cross my fingers and turn the key.
#
I’d’ve liked to change the plates earlier, but it’s just so fucking flat out here. I’d need to drive miles off of the road to hit a point where I’d not risk someone stopping to ask why I was fucking miles from anywhere, stripping the plates off my car, with a non-matching set of different plates in my hands.
I mean, at that point they might not bother asking and might skip straight to calling the cops.
And you might say, “Hey, the advantage of it being flat is that you can see someone coming.” And you might say, “There’s no one out here for miles — you can tell because that big rock you passed this morning was visible for-fucking-ever.”
To which I’d say, “I ain’t pushing my luck any further than I already have.”
So here we are. Twenty-seven miles from the shithole motel in a shithole parking lot tucked behind the burned-out shell of a Dunkin’ Donuts that got tied up in some dumbass land dispute. And look, I only know this because I spent hours futzing around trying to find somewhere out here to hole up if I needed to, and “permanently closed” on the map was a tempting option.
Then I checked a little more and found out it was urbex central. Crowds of hipsters wandering through the parking lot in search of the perfect photo of the dust caked plastic seats through the cracked double pane windows.
All fine for them, but less than ideal for a rendezvous between my license plates and a screwdriver.
I was about to click on to the next hopeful spot when I found some tumblr sadvestigating from some urbexer who’d turned up and found the perfectly-preserved-in-the-middle-of-nowhere nineties-era Dunkin’ had been deep-fried by some asshat who, it turns out, had decided to try and turn back on the coffee machine and then hadn’t turned it off again.
There’s a couple of insanely zoomed-in pixelated photos of the machine not-on a few months before. Then, a few days before this girl went and discovered the crispy husk, someone posted pictures and the little glowy red light was on. The building’s mostly charcoal, bent metal and crumbling concrete — but there’s still enough standing up to hide me and the car behind. Which is good. Because now my shitbox has a whole new set of plates from a whole new state.
Which, given that my car’s only current disguise is the splotches of rain-dampened sand that still cling to the paintwork, is a relief.
I take a couple of extra minutes to burn the old registration and insurance, grind them into the ash that’s blowing around the site, and finally frisbee the plates way off into the scrubby desert before hitting the road again.
My throw’s really off.
Theory one: Tits. It’s not that they’re in the way, exactly, but I definitely need to throw differently.
Theory two: God-damn this virus is rough. I know, my fault, stop being a whiny bitch. But also… God damn.
I really, really want to just lie down in the car and sleep. Or die. Whatever. But I should be putting distance between me and the lab. So instead, I creak back into the car and stick it in drive.
#
One hundred and forty-three miles away from the motel the highway forks. New off from the old. The new one’s faster, straighter, multilane. It’d get me there in a straight-shot day or two. Only it’s probably filled with cops. Cops who might take too much interest in me.
So instead, I exit the shiny new blacktop and twist back under the highway, finding myself on the pot-holed old one.
First passing depressing derelict buildings. Then there are whole unincorporated towns, and even places with city limits, all dying too.
Take away the highway from places like this and what else is there? Just the last few sad folks clinging on. I mean, this is the desert, and sure they could probably mine some fancy ore or I dunno, solar panel making from the sand (or is this the wrong kind of sand? Is there a right kind of sand?). But these places just seem to be decaying in place.
But at least there’s no fucking cops.
#
One hundred and seventy-two miles from the motel. One hundred and seventy-two miles of dust and shitty little shrubs and yeah the odd tumbleweed. Even had to brake for a bunch of them and a couple of big ones, blowing across the road. Didn’t really think they were like that, like in the movies. At one hundred and thirty miles the road disappeared under sand. I thought I’d end up stuck in it, but incredibly we kept rolling. Just.
And yeah, I guess if you’re in the right mood you can say it’s beautiful. Maybe when you’re hurting less, and the sun doesn’t slice through your eyeballs. When you’re in a car with AC that actually ACs. And fine, sometimes there’s a climb up, then down some hunk of brown-ass-rock to keep the interest. Maybe some kinda red-ass-rock if we want real excitement.
But there’s been no chance to change the car. Everywhere’s been too small, too observed or just nothing within my limited car theft skill set. It’s making me edgy. New plates are one thing, but a new car would really separate new me from old me.
And the odometer’s ticking up far too slow on this stupid two-lane highway. I knew it would be dog slow when I planned the route.
Do you risk the big freeways and highways, or try and hack through back roads? In states like this one, states where they’re obsessed with the contents of people’s pants, I sure as shit did not want to be pulled over for anything if anything went wrong. And maybe I should have reevaluated when, well, when it turned out I really am a fucking good geneticist.
There’s nothing to separate me from the cis girls now, not unless you pull out your pocket gene sequencer. But all the same, I don’t know if Neuragene’s reported the theft, or the destruction, or sent out their little army to come find me. So I’ve been keeping strictly below the limit. Especially — most especially — here.
I looked at the communities I’d be driving through and this was one of the counties that voted heavily for the state’s gender conservation bill. And sure, it doesn’t make much of a difference when half the country’s doing it, but I have a feeling if I’m caught here and Neuragene’s let slip why they want me back, then I’ll have some kinda accident real quick. ‘Kill it! It has the trans cooties.’ Or y’know, something like that.
#
Ten miles since I rolled past the bar, the liquor store and the diner. All but one of them dead. Nine miles since that last butt-end-of-nowhere blink-and-you’d-miss-it town disappeared into the dust. And eight miles since the disintegrating buildings in my mirror were replaced by a single slate gray car.
It swung out onto the highway a few seconds after I passed. Suspiciously quickly, like it’d been waiting. And now it’s just sitting behind me. Keeping its distance. Being driven by some mustachioed asshole in stupid sunglasses.
It’s not like I was speeding.
I’ve held a steady fifty-four, neatly centered in my lane on the highway with both hands on the wheel. And my new phone’s stayed wedged in the cup holder, not in my hand. There’s no reason for him to be following me — apart from maybe the out-of-state plates. But out-of-state plates on a junker? Is that really worth anyone’s time.
I’m not sure the why matters. Not really.
Asshole pulled on the road as soon as I went past, and despite me driving like an angel, he still hasn’t passed me. No lights, no sirens though. Just following.
Normally the fuckers fly past at seventy-five, burger in one hand, other hand probably down their pants, but not this one. So saintly driving it’s been. And, of course, as the last scrappy little gas station for God knows how many miles finally disappears from my mirror, that’s when the lights flick on. Well, there’s the lights and a whoop from the siren to make his intention clear. As though he might have been going to pull over a fucking cactus.
“license and registration.”
There’s a cute young woman with curly hair reflected in his sunglasses. It’s only when I start to move that I really register the reflection’s me, and immediately find myself stopping stationary, like some woman trapped in amber.
The glaring desert light reflects someone I’ve longed to see my whole life. A woman I never truly believed I’d get to be. And yet, there she is.
My thoughts come in through distant static.
What if I move and she’s gone?
What if I look back and it’s him there, again.
What if it all just disappears again.
What if it’s not real.
Stupid lies from my stupid brain. I know what I did. I know what I’ve done. I know what the genetics I’ve overwritten my own with are.
But brains are stupid irrational things, and in the motel I only saw myself through the scratched haze of the unbreakable mirror: barely formed, constantly in flux. I couldn’t really take it in.
Couldn’t really believe.
But here, now, reflected in some dickhead’s macho fucking aviators, I can’t focus on the bags under my eyes. I can’t see the pain. Suddenly It’s just me.
And just as suddenly the emotions are all right fucking there. Joy and terror; excitement and misery; despair and elation. I can’t remember the last time I was able to cry…long before I dosed myself, I know that, but how long? I fought for tears when my parents died. Lay there screaming, punching the pillow I’d balled myself around. Despair and darkness roiling inside me with no exit. Whatever I did, tears never came. In their place just hollow, inexpressible anguish.
Now there’re years of tears welling up. A crying debt that’s trying to escape. Emotions so insanely huge I can feel their gravitational pull.
It’s hard to swallow.
Hard to breathe.
For the first time in forever I desperately try and tamp down emotions instead of scraping and scraping to even feel anything.
But is this is what it’s going to be like from now on?
It’s weird, and amazing, and beautiful, and—
“license and registration, now.”
Oh shit. Fuckhead cop’s still here.
I swipe at the corner of my eyes. “Sorry officer,” I scrape out, voice still scratchy and hoarse. And yeah, it is marginally higher pitched than I’m used to, the sound is still weird in my ears, but the resonance is all wrong. I did so well back in reception but fuck, I should have practiced more.
As I lean to grab the registration, in my peripheral vision, something about his manner shifts. I remind myself: voice forward in your mouth, clear and bright. Inflection. C’mon, girl.
“Here you go, sir.” I try and inject respect and humility and most importantly, I-Was-Definitely-Assigned-Female-At-Birth into the few words I dare to say as I hand the documents over. In the process I catch a glimpse of the photo I sent to the forger a few days ago, once the pain in my face had dropped to merely excruciating. At that point I figured the biggest changes must be done. I looked kinda like a hamster, or like I’d had a shit ton of dental work. I still do, a bit. Face — everywhere really — slightly swollen, despite my gene silencing that’s meant to turn down inflammation. If I get the chance I’ll definitely have to work more on that. But despite it all, like my reflection in his sunglasses, the picture on the license makes me smile.
At the cop.
He smiles back.
Something about that smile makes my heart rate spike.
That was not a good smile. Not even in the same fucking solar system as a good smile.Shit.
He swaggers back to his cruiser, him keeping enough of an eye on me, and me, glancing at him nervously in the mirror. When he eventually starts back, he doesn’t look pleased. There’s a moment — just a nanosecond — where I think maybe I could run. Start the car, floor it, get the hell out of here. Or maybe at least back to a place with witnesses.
And then I remember the road that’s dead-fucking-straight for probably hundreds more miles, I remember that I’m surrounded by stupid fucking desert, and most of all I remember he’s in a cop car with more horsepower than probably five or six of the POS that I’m driving combined. By the time my damn thing’s finally started, he’ll probably have shot me in the head.
“I need you to step out of the vehicle, ma’am.” He says, standing back slightly. Impatient for me to get out, hand resting lazily on his gun. “Imma need to search your vehicle.”
I wish to God I’d brought a fucking Taser or some pepper spray or whatever the fuck (although stories that start Brown girl pulls a weapon usually end in an obituary, especially if the Brown girl has a weapon around a cop. So uh, maybe it’s better that I’ve not). I have enough sense to tell that something’s wrong. As my hand rests on the door handle, I gift myself a second to berate me for lack of prep on clothing. I knew sizing would be hard, but I should have bit the bullet and just bought a bunch of different sizes. Or some one-size-fits-all shit.
I mean, sure, I didn’t want to look like a creep wandering around the women’s section of the store. And I figured it might be kinda suspicious to be buying a bunch of stuff in different sizes. But these are all weaksauce excuses. I just didn’t want to be there as him. Which means that now, as me, I’m gonna get out in front of some shithead cop and it looks like I’m doing a drive of shame. If it isn’t the consequences of my own actions.
When he directs me to the cruiser I feel his eyes on my ass as I walk.
“Bend over, hands on the hood.” He grunts.
“Is this really necessary?” I try. Polite. Friendly. Nervous. That last one’s easy.
“Procedure. Search you, then the car. Can’t have you pulling a weapon on me.” He laughs. At least, a laugh’s what it’s meant to be, I think.
There’s nowhere in this getup to hide shit, but he sure spends his sweet time patting down the scant areas that are covered. I’m not exactly an expert on police procedure but I’m pretty sure he shouldn’t have run his hands slowly over my hips and I’m damn certain he shouldn’t have ended up with his hands resting on my tits. I can feel myself shaking. I want to elbow him, or turn and grab his fucking throat but instead I’m. Just. Stationary.
No fight, no flight, not even fawn, just freeze.
A whole fucking glacier of freeze.
He steps in.
Stands far too close.
I will my body to do something. Anything, but it ignores me. Just stays there. Immobile. A statue to honor my damn stupid choices.
I desperately try and imagine it’s a gun pressing against my butt, his wide stance putting him close enough to for me to feel his hot breath against my head, heat from the desert be damned. “You’re a long way from home, honey,” he finally says. “What’s a pretty little thing like you doing all alone and the way out here?”
“Heading to meet my— my fiancé.” Brain at last trying to come up with something to salvage the situation.
“Don’t see no ring on your finger,” he says immediately. Mocking.
Sand whips up in my face while his hands continue to maul my chest. Why the fuck isn’t there another car.
Because I chose a fucking isolated route as a Brown girl traveling alone.
So freaking clever. Well done.
I thank fuck for that dose of drugs before I left. They’ve properly kicked in now, so the pain he’s causing is just excruciating; not drop to the floor agony. Y’know when I said I needed a Taser? I was wrong. What I need’s a vial of the fucking virus to smash in his stupid face. Dump the fucker naked in the woods, let him try walking down the street afterwards.
“A real man knows you gotta mark your property.” He laughs again, that same laugh borne of a void where his soul should be.
I didn’t think it was possible but he moves in closer, forcing me to choose between the hot panel or pushing back against his dick.
Scorching hot metal it is.
I can’t help but yelp as the black paint burns against my bare skin.
“Like that, do you?” he says, pushing against me harder. “Your man should know better’n to let a little slut like you be out here all alone. Anything could happen. Lucky I pulled you over.” He waits for a moment, glances over his shoulder and steps back a little. Despite the hitch in my breath I finally feel like I can get a little air.
“Ow fuck!” I scream as he grabs my arm, wrenches it behind me, then the other, the warm metal of the cuffs wrapping too tight around my wrists, clicking closed. He slams me down on the hood for a second, my face adding to the cacophony of pain responses, before he yanks me back up and shoves me towards the back of the car. It’s a smooth, practiced move for him to throw me onto the back seat. On the way, his hand somehow finds purchase, yanking my shorts part way down, half exposing my butt, before he steps away and slams the door.
“Now, the big question is, is that trunk of yours hiding anything it shouldn’t?” He leers for a moment through the open window. Watching me as I squirm, trying to pull my stupid too-tight shorts back up. “God, you’re a horny little bitch. I knew you’d want it.”
“I don—”
“Shut your mouth,” he screams. “You filthy whore jeets come parading through here, dirtying up our blood. Shoulda never let girls vote, don’t have the brains for it. Too weak. They let you lot in, then you go around thinking you’re as good as your betters. Well, we’ll fucking see who’s your better. Gonna show you your damn place.”
Flecks of spit land on my bare skin. I close my eyes for a moment to try and block out the world. Focus on breathing. On imagining myself anywhere but here. Anywhere but sticking to the tacky vinyl of some bigot’s cop car. I expect him to get into the driver’s seat — start driving — take me out into the desert — or some deserted fucking cabin — and… Or maybe open just the door back up, drag me out and beat the shit out of me — dump me here to die. But he doesn’t.
“Like I said, I don’t like surprises. So better tell me if there’s anything I’m gonna find.” He doesn’t wait for an answer, heads over to the car, starts tossing what’s in there out onto the road.
Thankfully so long as he doesn’t dismantle the dashboard — and pull out the stash of cash — there’s nothing to find. The last of the evidence went in the trash the hot second I was away from the motel. And the worst of that was some experimental medication vials and a stack of empty bags of saline. Nothing that would lead him back to Neuragene.
Not that that exactly matters right now.
The protein shake and MRE I had for breakfast threaten to rebel and join me on the back seat.
I try to see if I can squirm my hands through the cuffs, but I can’t. They’re far too tight anyway, already digging into my skin. If I wait long enough though, my hand’ll drop off since he’s nearly cut off the circulation to one hand. I guess that’s a solution of sorts. A bleak half-sob-half-laugh escapes me at the thought of my shiny new body looking like one of those old B-movies. Hand dropping off, blood spurting everywhere. At least that’d make it hard for him to remove the evidence.
Why the fuck didn’t I get more clothes. Something — anything — different. Although… Would it even matter?
I know it doesn’t.
Not really.
I could’ve arrived here dressed like a nun and this asshole would probably still have grabbed me. What you wear doesn’t matter — it’s just another excuse to guys like this one. Guys who think women exist for them to use.
You’d think I could have managed a whole day without being assaulted.
Despite the pain in my shoulders, the pain in my wrist, all layered over the pain that exists everywhere, by the time he’s finishing up, I’ve managed to at least writhe myself the right way up — and mostly upright. Butt on the seat. Shorts pretty much back where they should be. Not that that’ll matter either, I guess. Sadistic asshole’ll enjoy ripping them off anew.
And despite my best efforts I’m still cuffed.
Should have wound up the strength in the genetics I guess. Made myself one of those buff women down at the gym. Doesn’t really work that way though.
Looking out I see the fraudulent tableaux he’s laid out ready for whoever comes along to call the police and provide plausible deniability. Bastard’s fucked the car as best he can in a few minutes.
The hood on my car’s up, the passenger door’s open further than it should be. Asshole probably bent it — and I wonder anxiously if I survive this, will it close?
Most of the windows are down, one’s smashed though. Glass glittering, scattered across the road, along with all my shit. MREs, protein bars, water bottles he’s stomped on pissing away my chances of survival onto the blacktop.
I can see the story in the local news. Some woman broke down, maybe tried to walk back to that last gas station, and some meth head’s come by and stripped the car. Stripped her. And I’ll just…disappear.
He saunters back to the car, unnerving smile firmly planted back on his face. “Time to go.” he declares over the sound of my sobbing.
#
“Shit,” he says, with venom. He’s staring in the mirror. I desperately swivel round, hoping sufficient nodding and anxious looks might flag down whoever it is, but there’s no need. The battered red pickup’s behind us, hazards and high beams flashing. Eventually, after another volley of expletives, he starts slowing. “You even fucking squeak at this bitch and I’ll shoot you, then her,” he says before he jumps out, broad smile on his face. “Mary-Anne! Everything okay?”
“Officer Saint James. I just wanted to know if your passenger there needed any medical assistance.”
“My passenger is under arrest, Mary-Anne.” He gestures injecting before adding in a stage whisper, “I think she’s under the influence.”
“All the more reason for me to check her over,” the woman adds coolly.
“She was doing ninety-five in a fifty-five zone, Mary-Anne. She doesn’t need a doctor, she needs to cool off in a cell.”
She taps her fingers against the roof of the cruiser and fixes him with the kind of stare that makes me wonder if he’s going to survive the interaction. “For crying out loud, Christian. You think I was born yesterday?” The woman steps up to him, the top of her cropped gray hair only about level with his nose, and yet, he seems to shrink away. “I gave you an out. That was your chance to let her go, no harm no foul. Because, see we were doing a little birdwatching. Not much out today. So I passed a while watching her as she covered the speedometer check. Took her more than a minute for each mile which would be difficult for someone traveling at more than ninety. Your radar been calibrated recently?” He gawps at her for a second. “Then she pulled over and goodness gracious, that was an interesting traffic stop to see — and record.” His fingers twitch but before he can touch a weapon she gently lays her hand on his. “Don’t think Aunt Peter wasn’t recording, honey. Oh, and one other thing Officer Saint James, I can’t say as I saw everything, but it’s certainly interesting that with no traffic c’ept my little old truck here, in either direction, while I was heading down to meet up with you, that this young lady’s car appears to have been trashed. So me and the chief had a little conversation while I was catching up with you. He and I mightn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, but kidnapping some defenseless woman isn’t going to look good with your complaint record. He even hinted that maybe that his golden boy might need to go.”
He doesn’t say anything, just opens the door and gestures me out. Uncuffs me, hands me my license back. He stands for a minute, awkwardly between us and Mary-Anne’s truck. “Well,” she finally says, “I won’t keep you any longer.”
The tire smoke as he disappears makes me cough. I can’t stop alternately crying then apologizing as she leads me to the cab, then slowly starts driving back towards whatever remains of my car and my supplies.
“Oh sweetheart, I’m sorry I wasn’t there quicker. Especially out here, us girls stick together. We’ve been trying to get rid of that asshole for a while. Thought we’d got him for a while, but his dad’s the sheriff next county over an’ out here that still means enough. We got a schedule; days he’s on, there’s a few of us who’ll take turns keepin’ an eye. Didn’t none of us know he was on today. Not ‘til I saw him cruising past Ralph’s behind you. Figured he’d be after some poor girl — though we think he normally gets them at one of them city parties, Rohypnol or the like’s our best guess. Not managed to catch him doin’ that though.” She restarts tapping her fingers, this time against the wheel. Same rhythm she drummed out on the roof. “Yeah. That’s a change I don’t like, to be honest. Anyhow, we’ll get you out of here and get we’ll get himself dealt with.
“Sorry, you don’t need to hear all this. Just want you to know he won’t get away with it.” She sighs as she draws up to my car. “Uff da.” She mutters glancing across the wreckage of what little I have. “Sorry sweetheart. Let’s see what we can salvage.”
Half an hour later the stuff that’s not completely destroyed is back in my car, she’s filled a trash bag with the remainder which she tossed in the bed of her truck, and between a hefty shove from her and me pulling hard on the inside the passenger door’s at least staying shut.
“You need somewhere to stay the night?” She says, glancing at the suspiciously empty trunk. “I know a gal who works at the junkyard,” she says, smiling and gesturing towards her pickup. “It pays to make friends with them if you’re gonna drive something like this. Anyhow, she’ll sort you out. I bet they’ve got at least a couple of these in there.”
I look down at my shaking hands and at the state of my car, broken glass glistening across the back seats. I’m barely keeping it together. The idea of hundreds more miles in the remnants of my car?
“I’ve got ice cream…” She raises her eyebrows, pauses for a moment, then continues more gently, “…and I promise, no questions. You do what you gotta to stay safe, and whatever’s going on ain’t any of my business.”
I grip the window frame, the sharp corner digging in, bringing me back from the edge. “Um…okay. Yeah. Yeah. Please.”