Parker

6 Weeks Earlier

“Where did you get these, Patrick?” My dad asked while holding one the bottles that I had poured my pills into. I had ordered them online with my own money three months prior.

“I ordered them. Can I have them back, please?”

“What are they for?” Dad asked this with a weight behind his voice that told me to tread carefully with my answer but there was nothing for it; in this case, the truth was worse than a lie.

“It’s Adderall, I’ve been taking them to help me study.”

“Lying shit! Did you know that you can look up any pill online with only a description? This is Estradiol and these little orange ones are Spironolactone. And when you search those two drugs, what do you think comes up?”

“You seem to have a pretty good idea. Why don’t you tell me?” I was done with these little games. There was nothing that I could do now that would dig me out of this hole.

“Feminizing hormones! You’ve been taking them, haven’t you? There’s been something off about you for a month or two now and I couldn’t place it, but now I know. You’ve been poisoning yourself. Why would you do this?” He’d started this little rant off angry; yelling loud enough for the neighbors to hear, but the last question was just pained, barely audible under the sound of traffic outside.

“You wouldn’t understand.” Telling him the whole thing seemed like a waste of time.

He knelt down in front of the bed on which I was seated, now pleading “You’re trying to be a girl? Why? God made you perfect as you are. You’re my boy. Why would you try to change that?”

“God made me this way to begin with. I’m not trans because it seems like a good time.” There, I’d said it.

“God did not make you trans, and you know well enough not to blaspheme in this house.” I guessed the bargaining phase was over with. “And this is my house. I’m flushing these down the toilet, I can tell you that.” He shook the little bottle that I had saved up for all autumn. “And you are not going to pursue this silly notion any longer and we’re going to have a nice chat with Pastor Ron tomorrow and maybe he will finally be able to explain to you how you can’t go around working against God’s will.”

I knew I was beat. There was nothing I could do short of trying to overpower him to take them back and then immediately get kicked out of the house. I just fell back onto the bed and stared blankly up at the ceiling just trying to disassociate myself out of this situation.

“Get comfortable mister, because your mom and I are going to be keeping a very close eye on you from now on and you can count on spending lots of quality time in your room.  You'll either be here with us or in your classes and nowhere else. Maybe I should even rethink that. Letting you go to a secular college was a mistake.” Leaving that horrifying thought in his wake, he left my room to flush my pills.

4 Weeks Earlier

“It was so good to see you again, young Patrick. Truly, I think progress has been made this day and I know that with time and the grace of God; you’re coming to see the light. All things are possible through Him.” Pastor Ron said ushering me out of his office. Dad had set up regular weekly meetings with him and it was inescapable if I wanted to be allowed to continue to attend school.

On the way home, I pulled over at a fast-food place just to have a moment to myself. I didn’t feel comfortable enough to cry like this at home. My parents would probably hear the sobs and storm into my room to lodge more accusations at me about how crying is not an appropriate behavior for a grown man.

I thought I had been so careful. I knew my dad would search my room from time to time and that’s why I hid the hormones in the garage, but he still found them. After two months of taking them, I had seen her once. I was walking past the big the mirror in the living room after watching tv with my dad and out of the corner of my eye I saw a strange girl standing by the end table. I did a double take because I genuinely thought she was a stranger in my house. But it was me.

It hasn’t happened again though. Even the soreness in my chest is gone now. When it began, I had never been so happy to feel pain. I had to figure out some way to get more hormones, but all the trans girls I knew were either scrabbling just to afford their own or their doctors kept them on such a low dosage that they didn’t have any to spare.

Everyday seemed more difficult than the one before now that I was off them. Each day was a step backwards; more estrogen out, more testosterone in. I had felt so lucky before. I’d seen a lot of before and after pics online and I felt like I had a good idea about what kinds of faces and bodies seemed to transition well. I believed that I would do okay as long as I transitioned now before the T could do more damage.

I looked at my phone, scrolling through my contacts list. I just wanted someone to talk to about this. Most of my friends had already heard this from me by now though and I didn’t want to burden them anymore with my drama.

That’s why it felt so serendipitous when my chat app dinged right as I was looking at it.

Vera: Hey, can you talk?

I hadn’t heard from anyone on that side of the family in a while. Vera was always cool though. I’d even mentioned the trans stuff to her one day after I’d just first discovered that people could take hormones and actually transition.

We talked for about an hour until my phone started to die. It was nice to speak with a family member that actually cared for me; the person I actually was rather than the one they wanted me to be. When we finished, I deleted the app from my phone. I’d reinstall it later, but my parents were definitely going to be looking at my phone after coming home more than an hour past when I was expected.

It was nice that Vera felt that her friend could possibly help me out in my situation, but I was very skeptical about what her baby-tran friend could do since it sounded like she barely had her shit together. I mean, it would take nothing short of magic to fix this. I was so financially bound to my parents at the moment, that there wasn’t really any hope of a solution.

Present Day 10:30 A.M.

I let myself sleep in late that morning and took my time in the shower. I couldn’t get that old song “I Got You Babe” out of my head for some reason and was humming it throughout my morning routine. Since I didn’t have classes today, I parked myself on the living room couch to binge tv since the parents were already out to work and I didn’t have to worry about them interrupting me.

I was about four episodes into a ten-episode anthology series when my doorbell rang. I hadn’t ordered delivery and I was ready to tell the Mormons or whoever was at the door that we were already full up on religion, thanks. But when I opened the door, there was my cousin Vera. “Vera! What are you doing here? Oh my god, you look exactly the same as you did when I last saw you.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of a long story. Are your parents here?” She asked while peeking around me, a worried look etched on her brow.

“No, they’re at work for the rest of the day. What are you doing here?” As I asked this, I noticed a minivan parked at the curb with an older woman behind the wheel and another young woman in the backseat.

“I said I wanted to help, so we’re here to help. Do you mind if my friends come in? They’re cool.” I figured that anyone Vera vouched for was okay, so I happily stepped aside to indicate that she and her friends were welcome in my house. I was wildly curious about exactly what kind of ‘help’ she had in mind.

Vera waved her friends in and the two people in the car got out and made their way into the house. “Do you guys want any coffee? I was about to throw a pot on anyway.” I may not agree with everything my parents taught me, but I still believed that hospitality to people in your home is always essential.

The older woman nodded and said “Yes, please” in a voice that sounded younger than her crow’s feet would suggest. I went to put the machine on while they situated themselves in the living room. Apparently, they’d been traveling for a while because they took turns using the restroom while I rushed around the kitchen.

“So, Parker, this is Rosalind and Olivia. This is my cousin, Parker.” I’d told her the name I’d picked out when we spoke the previous month, but this was the first time someone had actually said it in real life and I was bit dizzy with the euphoria of hearing it.

“I thought Rosalind was one of your friends from school?” I asked. I also thought that she was the baby-tran she mentioned too, but I didn’t want to tell this lady that Vera had outted her which she definitely had.

“Why don’t you go ahead and show her, Rosalind? Might as well rip that band aid off now” Vera said.

Suddenly, the older woman seemed to morph before my eyes. It happened within the space of only a couple seconds and now there was a very pretty girl who looked to be closer to Vera’s age standing in front of me. Shit, that was definitely magic. I was simultaneously thrilled and uneasy. If my parents, or anyone for that matter, knew that Vera had brought magic into the house, there would be hell to pay.

“Hi. I’m Rosalind Cole. Vera said that there was something you might want some help with?” The new girl stuck her hand out to me and I could only shake it with a dumbfounded look splattered across my face.

“Sorry Cuz, I kinda had to tell her your whole deal too. But I promise you that it will be worth it.” Vera said.

Rosalind started in immediately.  “So, I found a shard a while back and I got these shapeshifting powers and Vera said that you might want to make use of them. Now, I don’t want to get you too excited but I can essentially shape you into whatever form, more or less, that you would prefer. But you should bear in mind that you will have to deal with the fallout of any drastic changes on your own. Also, the cops are after us, so there’s that too.”

That was a lot of information to take in at once. Of course, I wanted everything this girl could do for me, but that was a pretty huge caveat about the police. “The cops? Do they know or suspect that you’re here?”

“I don’t think so. The shapeshifting thing has been pretty useful in that regard. But as they widen their search; it is possible that they would question our friends and family.” Rosalind stated as a matter of fact.

“Why would they question me though? I don’t know you. Just because Vera is with you?”

“I have powers too, actually. If the government doesn’t already know about them, they probably strongly suspect that I have them.” Vera added.

“If I wanted something drastic, then I’d have to leave too. Could I go with you?”

The three of them shared glances that seemed to confirm that they had anticipated that this question might come up. Rosalind filled in the silence with “Yeah, if you want. But we don’t want to say where we’re going yet. You’d just have to trust that you’d be leaving everything behind. And I mean everything. No phones or any other tech that could be used to track us. Speaking of, you don’t have anything like that in this room, do you?”  She looked a bit sheepish now, because she probably should have asked me that before all the exposition.

“No, it’s up in my room.” Did I really want to leave everything behind? Maybe I could have her just do small alterations and then I could just pretend like I had found a second source for hormones?  “Okay, how does this work anyway?” I asked.

“We go somewhere private and you’ll have to disrobe, sorry but that’s sort of necessary. And then I shape your skin like clay into whatever you have in mind. If you want any downstairs work, keep in mind that I will have to touch it.” I could see a blush rising to her cheeks as she said this.

I paused to go into the kitchen and get everyone the coffee and some pastries while I thought over the proposal. I was definitely getting something done, it was just a matter of what exactly. When I returned with cups, cream and sugar, the three of them were huddled on the couch talking quietly. Rosalind looked up expectantly. “I don’t want to rush you or anything, but you kind of need to decide quickly because we should get out of here as soon as possible. The longer we stay, the more damage we could do that might incriminate you. If you wanted to stay, that is?”

“Okay, I want to do it. Let’s go all the way. I mean, if you’re sure that it would be okay for me to come along?” I said, trying to force more confidence into my voice than I had. I was not the least bit sure that this was a good idea, but if the alternative was living with here with my fundamentalist family until I graduated college and got a good enough job to transition on my own; then there really was no viable alternative.

Rosalind nodded and got up. It felt so weird and kind of seedy to be crowding into a bathroom with this girl I just met and start undressing, but I did it anyway. When I pulled my shirt off, Rosalind perked an eyebrow up at me. “Looks like you’ve gotten a head start already.”

I looked down my little swollen breasts that had only just started to be something other than perfectly flat. “Yeah, I had. Until my folks took my hormones.”

She made a pained face “I see.  Well, it’s a good place to begin. What did you have in mind?”

I described for her an ideal image that I had in my head. It involved perky softball size breasts, a little chin, longer hair, wide hips, and big eyes. These were all things she was able to do though some were more uncomfortable than others. When it was time to do the genitals, I said “Is it okay if I keep the dick? Like just get rid of the balls. I dunno, I guess that’s weird, but I don’t really mind it all that much.”

Rosalind looked up from where she was seated on the toilet and reassured me. “Of course, I’m not going to judge that. I’m here to help in whatever way I can. I don’t want you to ask me to do anything you don’t want.”

I nodded, grateful that she was being so cool about everything, then I asked out of curiosity. “Hey can you turn those into like, ovaries? I mean, it would be nice if I didn’t have to worry about hormones ever again. Not that I expect you to like, put in a bunch of eggs and a uterus and all that. Unless, can you do that?”

“No, I think eggs and all are a bit beyond my reach, but I may be able to alter these.” And here she was clinically cupping my balls in her hand as though they were a Rubik’s cube that would start producing the right chemicals if she could only get all the colors on the right sides. “I mean, they’re already set up to release hormones. Hmm…”

After she trailed off, she lifted her shirt up and stuck a hand into her own torso for a moment, before her eyes lit up “Oh, wow. Okay.”

“What?” I asked, wondering at the curious display of seeing her hand sink into her own abdomen.

“Oh, nothing. I guess I just hadn’t had reason to explore in there since all this happened. But yeah, I think I can fix you up.” She pulled her hand out of herself and returned to my testes which she fiddled with for a moment before shoving them up inside of me. “I think that got it. How does that look?”

I looked in the mirror and was surprised to see a strange girl with a nice cock looking back at me. It wasn’t the version of myself I had glimpsed that day in the living room, but she was pretty and she had all the right assets. “Wow, that’s amazing. Thank you so much.” I couldn’t stop touching my face. “Oh my voice…” I trailed off, a little disappointed.

“No worries, I got you.” And she put her hand on my throat for a moment.

“Thank you?” I said at first hesitantly, but once I heard the voice coming out of me. I reiterated my “Thank you!” with more enthusiasm.

When we left the bathroom, the other two gave me a thumbs up and I went upstairs to pack. It was something that I never thought I would have to do; taking only as much of my stuff as I could carry and leaving my old life behind. I didn’t even really want most of the clothes that I owned, but I didn’t know what the money situation was like nor when I might have the time to go to a store again, so I packed a fair amount of my boy clothes.

“Okay, so you should know before you leave with us” Vera said “That we are committing a bunch of crimes on the regular these days. And when we leave here, we’re going to do it again just as soon as we can. We need to switch cars. It’s pretty easy given our powerset but if you come with us, you have to be on board with that.”

I stopped in my tracks. We were going to steal a car? Maybe I was in over my head. “Do you really think it’s necessary? I mean, you can all look like different people, right?”

This time Rosalind spoke up “I wish we didn’t have to. But I spoke with the cops back in Arizona; if we get caught, we are done. There is no mercy for people with magic. We have to be careful.”

I nodded. It was a high cost of entry but I was in it now and didn’t want to back out over a little moral squeamishness. “Okay, how do we steal a car?”

After we packed into the minivan, Rosalind asked me where to find somewhere nearby with a lot of shoppers. I directed her to a strip mall where we parked and they put their powers to work. On the way there, Olivia explained the plan to me. She seemed to be about as enthusiastic about it as I was, but saw the necessity. She explained everyone’s powers and how they functioned.

I didn’t really need to do anything. This was all Vera and Rosalind. And we weren’t waiting in the car long before a woman in her mid-20s showed up to the car and handed Rosalind a set of keys and her purse. It was surprising seeing a strange woman walk up and just hand her stuff over before walking away again. Rosalind ducked down and started shaping herself. And when she stood up, she appeared exactly like the lady who’d just handed over her purse.

We found her car and set out east. We didn’t drive that long as they had been going the better part of the day already. They just wanted the car out of the city. Once we started coming down into the high plains, we decided to stop off for the night.

The car we stole turned out to be a Jeep so we bedded down inside it with sleeping bags in the parking lot of a big box store. Throughout the day, they’d told me about all the things that had led to them being on the run; the terfy moms, the cops, the Test. It sounded like a nightmare but maybe it was worth it. The things that they could do were amazing, and if they hadn’t been so hamstrung by the government, they could be helping a lot of people instead of just me.

I went to sleep second-guessing the decisions I’d made that day. By now, my parents had certainly found that I was gone and had packed most of my stuff. I might not be a witch like Rosalind, but if they got busted, I had no doubt that I would be put away too and I didn’t even get any powers out of it.