We made it home without further incident and I found myself washing off my makeup and starting my new nightly routine: brushing my teeth, moisturizing my face, and reading my new book. The novel was surprisingly easy to get into and the setting was an interesting blend of science and magic. The author had a very direct and candid prose that made the writing engaging without using a lot of superfluous language. Honestly, it was the perfect way to unwind after such a chaotic day.

Jeff had texted me. Once. 

 

Don’t think you’re getting away with this. I’ll ruin you.

 

I had no idea what he thought I was “getting away” with, but I decided to cut my losses and just block him. After all, it’s not like anyone actually knew who the hell I was, right? We didn’t go to the same college and as far as I knew, it was his word against mine with my actual social circle. And let’s be honest. Jeff was a big fish in a little pond, but someday I wanted to swim in the ocean. So fuck it.

As I lay in bed in my plaid lounge pants and oversized t-shirt, I felt reassured with the thought that nobody would be able to tell I was the same femme-presenting person that had dinner at The Black Tortoise. Because that wasn’t me. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself. That was Lauren. That was a cover, an alter-ego, a secret identity. Lauren wasn’t me.

I realized I wasn’t able to focus on the book anymore. Which was a shame because the main character had just arrived at his mortuary home after collecting the soul of a “client” and things were getting really intriguing. But my mind kept wandering to Emily and the soul-wrenching guilt that wracked my heart. The more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I felt about it. I was a grown man. Playing pretend and dressing like a girl to trick someone I genuinely cared about seemed almost criminal.

I slipped the bookmark into the novel I was reading and set it on my nightstand and took a long draw from the water bottle next to where I had set the book. I picked up my cell phone and glanced at my messages.

 

Emily

I’m so excited about tomorrow night! I can’t wait to hang out! Oh, and wear something cute, I wanna get pictures! - Sent at 10:38pm

 

Subconsciously, I scrolled up to the last selfie she had sent me and felt my cheeks color red. She was so adorable it made my heart hurt just looking at her. I just wish I’d met her under different circumstances. I sighed, a pathetically lovelorn sound more fitting of a middle schooler than a man in his early twenties, and plugged my phone into the charger before flopping back on my bed and turning off the light.

I tossed and turned a bit, unable to find a genuinely comfortable position and also feeling a bit… stirred up. I guess it had been a while. Still, after everything that had happened tonight, I wasn’t in the mood, so I just flopped over on my side and started mentally reviewing lecture points from my Business Communication class. That knocked my ass right out.

***

That’s when the dream picked up. It was easy to tell it was a dream because my body wasn’t my body. It was Lauren’s body. Which was easy to identify because it was naked, revealing body parts not normally found on my fleshy mortal vessel. I never slept naked, so this also clued me into the dream-like nature of things. The last piece of the puzzle was the fact that Emily was standing in my bedroom wearing sheer stockings, a black pencil skirt, and a white blouse. Her hair was bound in a slightly messy bun and her glasses were perched upon her nose in kind of a bossy librarian or secretary look.

Or school teacher?

She smiled at me and gestured at my body. “Welcome to class, Lauren. As you can see, today we are studying sex education. Specifically, we are addressing the erogenous zones of the human body as they compare and contrast between male and female forms. For today’s class, I’ve ensured that you are dressed appropriately for hands-on education.”

The strangely detached, almost clinical appraisal of this body made me feel even more exposed and I reached to cover myself, only to discover that my hands and ankles were bound with silk handkerchiefs and tied to the corners of my bed. I began to panic, sweat beading on my brow.

“No! This isn’t my body! This isn’t right!” I tried to shout, but my mouth was filled with a soft rubber gag and all I could manage was a garbled, “Eh! Ih ehn meh boh! Ith ehn rah!”

Despite my helplessness, I could see my dream body writhing and the experience was raising my arousal. My whole core felt tingly and I couldn’t help but work my knees up and down a bit which heightened the sensation. I began panting a bit.

“Oh, you’re jumping ahead a bit, aren’t you? We need to focus on other areas, first,” Dream-Emily said matter-of-factly. She leaned over me, both of her hands on the bed on the right side of my torso and drew her tongue slowly over my nipple. It was a feeling I’d never experienced, a gentle, tickling pressure that stirred me up a bit and made me moan.

I shook my head at the pornographic sound that just came out of me. “I’m the man! I’m supposed to be on top! I’m supposed to be in control!” Of course, those words were lost around the gag and came out as a series of grunts and moans, which only seemed to goad Dream-Emily on further.

Her tongue worked around my areola some more as she shifted her weight to her left hand and used her right to tease my other nipple. She grinned then, an almost sadistic smile, and said, “What’s wrong, Lauren? Are you thinking you’re supposed to be in charge?” She gave my nipple a hard flick and stood back up. “That’s not how this class is set up, though. I’m the teacher. You’re the student. And I want to teach. You. Everything.” She sat on the edge of the bed and let the fingernails of her right hand trace down my abdomen toward my groin, raising goosebumps all over my body. I tensed up involuntarily, expecting to see my erection spring upward… but there was nothing there. Instead, her fingertips danced in the neatly-trimmed hair covering my pubis and I gasped.

“I want. To teach. You. Everything. You’ve been. Missing,” she intoned in a husky voice as her fingers spread me open and her mouth descended on my nipple once more. Even my scalp and the soles of my feet were dancing with electricity as her tongue flicked across the erect nub of flesh in her mouth and her fingertips gently worked their way through the folds that I knew logically should NOT be there. But I was feeling it all. 

I tried to resist. I tried to thrash. I tried to pull away, but I was held in place by my binds and the pleasure that Dream-Emily was inflicting upon me. “Neh, peeth!” I cried around the gag. “Ahm nah ah reh wahmn!”

Emily’s brown eyes looked up into mine and she gave a seductive smile. “What do you mean you’re not a ‘real’ woman? Look at yourself! Look closely. What do you see?”

Sure enough, my eyes glanced across my body and all I could see was a somewhat thin, somewhat muscular woman’s body, pale skin exposed under the soft white light of my bedside lamp. My mind couldn’t reconcile what I was seeing and feeling with what I knew to be the truth and it felt like a dam had broken. I began crying.

Dream-Emily sat up and appraised me. “We play the roles that we’re assigned at birth as best as we can, but sometimes it just doesn’t fit. You know this logically. Why are you so resistant to it?” Her fingers slipped inside me and it felt right.

***

To say I woke up would be an understatement. I quite literally lept from my bed to a full standing position, facing the crumpled blanket and sheets as if they were a nest of spiders from which I’d just escaped. It was then I became aware of two things. One was the wet spot in the front of my lounge pants. The other was the tingling sensation that ran from the middle of the inside of my thighs all the way up into my belly.

“What the ever-loving fuck was that?” I asked of my non-existent companions. Even in the dark of night, some light trickled in from my bedroom window and I could clearly see that I was alone. I wiped the sweat from my brow and assessed my situation. No. No no no. There was no way that that got me off. I’m not a woman! I’m not transgender! I’m the fucking man of the house! I felt sick to my stomach. I hadn’t had a wet dream since I was thirteen and to have one now at my age was ridiculous. I wasn’t that pent up, was I?

I stripped out of my pajamas and tossed them into a pile to the side as I wiped myself off with a wet wipe from the drawer in my night stand. Don’t judge me, they come in handy! Ugh, gross. I could smell it on me and it made me feel queasy. I needed a shower, badly. What time was it? 

According to my phone, it was 1:17 am. I’d been asleep longer than I thought. To be fair, it’s not like you remember every single dream unless they really stand out. That one had stood out.

I threw on some replacement pajamas for decency’s sake and hopped into the shower down the hall, the temperature a bit cooler than I would normally use. Nah, let’s be honest. It was just straight-up cold water. It definitely chased away any lingering “tingles” that might have been in my body and cleared my mind quite a bit. After I got out and dressed, I snagged the clothes from my room and went down to the basement to start a load of wash.

Feeling somewhat ashamed, I crawled back into bed and quickly escaped into sleep. Thankfully, without any mind-fucking (or just plain fucking) dreams. Instead, I slept like the dead and woke up feeling practically hung-over when my alarm came blasting out of my phone at 7am. “Shut up and put your money where your mouth is, that’s what you get for waking up in Vegas!” Katy Perry shouted from the tinny speaker on my budget smartphone. My hand relied on pure muscle memory in order to slide the on-screen toggle to Dismiss.

I rolled over on my back and stared up at the ceiling for a few minutes, just breathing in the morning air through the open window. Open window? I didn’t open my window last night. I sat up with a start, but nobody was in my room as far as I could tell. My eyes darted from the door to the window, to the closet before drifting around the room. The sound of my pounding heartbeat echoed in my ears with an odd thrum, but I saw nothing suspicious…

Wait, were those the clothes I had put in the wash neatly folded on top of my dresser? Shit. Mom brought in my laundry and opened my window. I smacked a hand to my forehead and laughed in equal parts embarrassment and relief. But what was I afraid of? What had made me panic?

Then it dawned on me. It was that stupid text Jeff sent me last night. It wormed its way into my subconscious and now I was going to see suburban hitmen in the shadows, I realized. I let out a long sigh and swung my feet over the side of my bed to grab my phone, thumbing the fingerprint sensor to unlock it.

After swiping away some overnight notifications that I was too lazy to disable or mute, I found a few new texts.

 

Chris

I think Jeff is unhinged. He called me last night, told me you stalked him

Then he said you played the minority card to get him banned from that one good Chinese place.

I don’t know, man, I don’t think I can hang out with him, anymore. Dude saps my energy.  - Sent at 5:13am.

 

For some reason, I wasn’t surprised by Jeff’s actions or Chris’s reaction. They were low-key frenemies. They had a rivalry, but more than that was the fact that their parents had bad blood. It was no secret that Jeff’s family’s development company had intentionally refused to use Chris’s dad’s construction company for the retail park on the east side of the city. Instead, they hired contractors from the next town over and even paid a premium for the distance just to cut the Clellands out of the deal. So their rivalry was born, in a sense, out of their families’ urging.

Still, they got along well enough, so I guess I thought I’d feel more shock by this message. Chris didn’t like to make waves or upset the status quo. 

There was also another message from Emily.

 

Hey, can you head over to my place a bit early? I wanted to treat you to lunch and I figured I could drive there and back! - Sent at 6:47am.

 

Well, okay then. That moved things up a couple hours. I dropped my phone on my bed and trotted downstairs to grab a bite of breakfast. Mom and Maggie were at the kitchen table, both facing the other with their smartphones in their hands. The determined expressions on their faces dissuaded me from interrupting them. Instead, I grabbed the box of Cheerios from the pantry and a bowl from the cupboard, nearly dropping them when my mom suddenly yelled, “Booyah! Headshot! Suck it, Mags!”

“Oh come ON! That was cheap, Mom!” Maggie sniped. “I can’t believe you’d camp the waterfall! That’s like shooting fish in a barrel!”

“Well then, Guppy, you’re going to have to take your shot like a good girl!” Mom retorted as she put her phone down. “Which means you get to make dinner tonight!”

“Fine, fine. I’ll figure something out before I get out of school,” came Maggie’s monotone reply. “Hey L- er, Mike? You okay? You’re staring off into space there.”

I shook my head and looked down at my hands, the box of cereal still poised over the bowl but the bowl still empty. “Uh, yeah. Yeah. Sorry, weird night. Got a lot on my mind,” I said as I resumed pouring the cereal.

Maggie nodded. “Yeah, I can see that.” She paused a moment to look me over. “Do you need anything before I catch the bus?”

“Nah,” I said, forcing a grin. “I’m alright. Go on, you’ve got more important things to worry about than your big brother.”

“Okay, but my offer is also for my big sister, if she needs me.”

Something about that made my heart miss a beat after the dream I’d had last night.