Silaqui offered to walk me home, which I accepted, as my mind and senses were firing at an acuity and speed that I was not accustomed to, and I was feeling rather overwhelmed. As she found some old clothes that would fit me, I realized I could hear her heartbeat acutely, and knew intuitively the beats per minute of it, and that she was slightly hungry, and that she was getting close to whatever her ancestry called a period. I heard the cars rushing by outside, counting each one as they drove by, and smelling from the fumes of the car and from the weight of their tires on the ground the general makes and models. A siren drove by, and I covered my ears, its screeching drone like nails on a chalkboard. It only took two minutes for Silaqui to find me clothing, but it felt like three times that length. I wasn’t sure if my brain was made to process this much information, but I guessed I would figure that out as time went on.
When we walked the streets, I was acutely aware of each step we took, the direction I was facing magnetically, how far above the ocean I was, how many people were within 100 meters, what those people smelled like; the list of information went on. It was a sensory attack, and I could feel myself panicking a little bit, but almost as soon as I started, the panic would begin to subside, and a wave of serenity would wash over me, and I would regain control, and things would make sense again: I think my brain was getting used to its new processing power in real time. Silaqui looked over to me as I walked beside her; she used to be shorter than me, but now we were about the same height, with her having a slight edge.
“I’m going to need you to call me every day and tell me exactly what is going on with you, okay? Like, no stone unturned, every detail, got it? And twice a week, you are to visit me and check in with me physically, alright? If you miss any of these things more than once, I will hunt you down and karate chop you, I swear,” she said, half jokingly.
“I’ll call you every day, and visit you twice a week,” I repeated back to her. This brought her some comfort, and she seemed to relax a bit more for the rest of the walk. When we arrived at my place, I asked if she would be okay getting home, to which she replied by simply disappearing in front of me. I walked up the steps to my apartment, which was in a state of slight disarray. I began cleaning, not feeling especially tired, and when I finished doing that, I felt a pang of hunger, so I began to make food. When I satisfied my hunger, the desire for sleep still didn’t come, and so I inspected my new body and began testing its capabilities using some of the free weights I had in the apartment; lifting all of these basically felt the same as one another, and so I just assumed that meant whatever strength I had was just that much higher than what I had before. So I went to the list of movies I had kept from my grandfather, and started watching them one after another until the sun came up.
The next day, I went to my grandfather’s money supply and took out a bit of money, before walking to the nearest thrift store and buying myself a new wardrobe of clothes that I had always wanted to wear but never felt okay with allowing myself to: a dress, a nice button-up and slacks, an off-shoulder top, skinny jeans, soft leggings. I then used the rest to buy a pair of new sneakers that fit my feet, as I felt that was probably important to keep on top of. I went back to my apartment with my new clothes, and changed into a nice outfit, before grabbing the paperwork Silaqui filled out for me and heading to the Social Security office to update my citizenship and registry. Strangely, the paperwork stated that my transformation was the result of a botched job to alter my human form, and had obscured many details about Silaqui, but I leaned into the lies. After all, she had saved me, and so who was I to question her desire for anonymity.
Stolen story; please report.
When I finished with Social Security, I went straight to the cafe where I worked. When they first saw me, my coworkers were afraid; I could tell from how their heartbeats quickened. But I spoke with my new voice, husky yet soft, and assured them that I was no one to be afraid of, before asking to speak to the manager, and stepping into her office. When I explained who I was, and showed my paperwork, Ms. Plantera was shocked, and I could tell she was trying to think of some way to fire me without firing me, but luckily, Silaqui ran over the law with me last night, including that it is illegal to fire someone for being transmogrified, even if it was with consent. And so, I left the office, and reintroduced myself as Avery Grey to my coworkers, who laughed with me about my serious entrance.
When I went into the school’s admissions office, I saw many turned-up noses in my direction. Perhaps it was the facial tattoos, I mused to myself as I made an appointment with the registrar. When I finally got it, it was a relatively painless process to change all of my in-school information to be updated to my new Othersider information. The person I worked with remarked on how rare my situation was, stating that only two other students had ever been transmogrified in the history of the school. I thought that sounded about right, given how expensive getting the procedure done is, and how extremely rare it is for it to happen accidentally or without intention. For the first and only time, I thanked the Siphoner for allowing me the opportunity to show Silaqui I had what it takes to endure the operation and become this new person.
As I shook the hand of the registrar, my mind was filled with a memory. I was standing over a child, a little boy, bruised and helpless, shaking. They were bleeding from a spot on their side, with tears in their eyes, looking up at me. I was wearing a suit and tie, and had a belt in my hand, gripped as a weapon. The child was afraid, begging me to stop, but the feeling in my heart was a sadistic joy, a comfort that this frail thing could do nothing to stop me, and that they would love me anyways afterwards. As I let go of the registrar’s hand, I looked at their suit and tie, and at their belt. It had the same buckle, the same tan hue, as the one from my vision. He had a strange smile on his face, and I could hear his heartbeat with a strange serenity that it did not have before I had shaken his hand. Before I did something I couldn’t take back, I left his office.
