"-yeetus deletus, this girl has no further use for a penis" Melissa finished, twirling her wand for added emphasis. I watched on with an anxious feeling curling up in my gut from my position tied up in a chair. It wasn't exactly where I thought I'd be on a Thursday evening, but all things considered, I probably deserved something like this. After all, I had been letting my need to be an ass get the best of me recently and Melissa had been the biggest target of it. Enough that when she pulled me into her room upon my return to the apartment, I had simply resigned myself to whatever revenge she had planned for me. Besides, if it were that bad, I was sure I could get one of our housemates’ attention. The rope had been a really nice touch I had to admit. Taking away my dick and calling me a girl seemed a bit of an overreaction if you asked me though.

As Melissa finished her incantation, I pinched my eyes shut, waiting for the pain that was sure to come with such a transformation. Except it never did. I kept my eyes closed for a solid 30 seconds before daring to crack them open, only to be met with a pair of twinkling green eyes inches from my face. I yelped and tried to jump back, forgetting for a split second that I was quite thoroughly entwined with a chair. Too late, I remembered that sudden movements weren’t the best idea in such a predicament andI found myself tumbling to the floor. I was about to thank my lucky stars for not hitting my head when the sound of Mel’s unrestrained giggles from above me removed all of my relief.

"Really Nate? You thought something was actually gonna happen? I mean for Goddess' sake, I used the phrase 'yeetus deletus' in that! No way any self-respecting witch would make a spell using such a silly phrase!" Melissa gasped out between her giggles. I tried to keep my face from heating up in embarrassment but I didn’t think I came close to succeeding. I couldn’t tell if I was more ashamed that I had believed her, that I had fallen over, or that I could feel that same strange coil in my gut tighten even further from the way she was taunting me while towering over my restrained form.

With a bravado I definitely did not feel, I forced out a retort "haha very funny Mel. You sure got me good. Here I was thinking I'd get to finally see the legendary witch in action." Averting my eyes, I muttered "shoulda known you were all bark and no bite"

"Oh? What was that? All bark and no bite huh? Would you rather I have actually turned you into a girl?" She replied coolly, lifting an eyebrow in challenge as a smirk found its way to her face.

"W-what? Of course not! I-I just meant - like, I shoulda figured you couldn’t cast a spell on me since everyone knows that magic isn’t real." I stammered, trying to calm my racing heart. She must have been getting to me more than I realized. "I'm just a lot more gullible than I expected. I mean maybe I was just hanging on to hope? But that's ridiculous. I mean, even if it were real, what are the chances that my favorite housemate of two years would be able to do it. And that she hadn’t given any of us a hint of it in that time? And that she would finally reveal herself just because I was being an ass? Besides, I would assume changing someone’s body that much would be really complicated! I mean it's just absurd! I don't even know how you got me worked up. Maybe it’s just the fact that you caught me by surprise. Or the fact that I’m tied up. Can you undo these ropes by the way? Or at least help me sit up? The joke’s gone on long enough now, right? You got me. I'm a fool. Hahaha…" I rambled on nervously, feeling my face heat up again as my mouth started moving faster than my brain as it had a tendency to do when I was nervous.

"Oh Nate. Silly silly Nate. You're in no place to ask for things. Besides, you've been quite the insufferable little misogynist recently and I can't just let you go. Where's the fun in that? And how’re you supposed to learn without some sort of punishment? I suppose I can understand you not believing that I can do magic, but with how you’ve been treating Amanda and me recently, it seems like you really underestimate women, so it’s still gonna factor in. I don’t think either of us wanna keep dealing with that shit. I'll help you sit up for now but only because I want to sit down." She teased as she pulled me back up with…a surprising amount of ease; Where was she hiding all that muscle? As she proceeded to seat herself in my lap, eliciting another yip of surprise, I tried to counter, but she cut me off with a finger to my lips. "Ah ah ah. I need a minute to think, so be a good girl and stay quiet for a minute." 

I felt my mouth close, losing track of the quip I was gonna toss out. I opened and closed my mouth a few times, but found myself unusually speechless as I blushed at her insistence on calling me a girl again. Part of me wondered if magic was at work, but quickly discarded that thought. No way an emphasized word was all it took. Much more likely was that it was just the combination of her sitting in my lap and being distracted by that coiling in my gut tightening each time Mel continued to call me a girl. I was obviously just flustered and anxious from how she was treating me. She had always had a mysterious ability to get me to shut up with her teasing after all. Initially I’d thought it was simply how attractive she was: her emerald eyes always catching the light in just the right way to glitter, contrasting perfectly with how her black hair seemed to draw light in and trap it. Eventually I had come to the conclusion, however reluctantly, that it was something to do with the way she treated me. I had known my fair share of jaw dropping beauties, and had even dated one or two of them for a time. None of them had ever silenced me with so much ease past the first week of infatuation though. Something about the way they flirted and complimented me always just felt off. The fact that Mel wasn't even flirting properly and only did it to torture me for fun just made it all the more frustrating that it worked so well. I couldn't even retaliate. After all, how can you tease someone you know has no attraction towards your entire gender? Finding myself going down the useless mental path of getting back at her again, I shook my head and shifted my focus to undoing the knots keeping me in the chair since she had no plans to help.

A few minutes later, Melissa startled me out of my task as she suddenly hopped off me, exclaiming "Got it! I'll just edit what I did for that and mess with the wording from that and then…"  she trailed off into barely incomprehensible muttering as she turned her back on me and started scribbling furiously into a notebook on her desk. Her room was surprisingly cozy, I realized. Her desk would be best described as an organized mess. She obviously had a sorting system with how quickly she seemed to be able to shuffle through the pile, but it just looked like a stack of papers, books, and plants to me. The wall behind held an orange, pink, and white pride flag. In the periphery of my vision I could see there was a full-length mirror in the corner behind me to the right. On the opposite side of the room, the bed was in the darkest corner with some color changing lights hung up around it. She had a simple little dresser at its foot. The walls I could see were covered with various pieces of artwork, most of which depicted cultivated gardens or ritualistic nature scenes. As I noticed that the open central area of the room in which I was situated had a white circle drawn into the floor, Mel suddenly spun around and pulled me into the center of the circle as she stepped behind me and began to chant.

In this circle I do stand

With little time to rehearse

My own body's powers I do command

And upon my guest I bestow a curse

He has earned many girls' ire

And some recompense I desire

So for each time he is a dick

He will increase the effect of this trick

For each act that is sexist

His body will take an impact

His own ego to be catalyst

For better manners to extract

If he thinks women so secondary

And to be one such a poor fate

Each mistake femininity shall carry

Until I allow his cute curse to abate

This time, I could have sworn I felt a slight pop of releasing pressure in the air as she finished. As she sagged a bit and began coughing, I realized I had managed to loosen my ropes enough that I could slip out of them while she had been chanting. Worried about my friend, even if she did just seemingly cast a curse on me, I grabbed her water from her dresser and handed it to her. "You alright there Mel? I'm not gonna claim I now believe in magic but that certainly seemed like it took a lot out of you." She gave me a tired half-smile as she grabbed the water from my hands and drank greedily. As she was already looking better and I was no longer restrained, I couldn't help but continue with some sass. "Or is this just the blowback of how bad some of those rhymes were? I mean really? ‘With little time to rehearse?’ you really couldn't think of something better? Maybe something about coming up with a verse or something about the magical universe? You had so many options. You may have come up with it in around five minutes but damn girl, I know you can do better."

Melissa's half-smile turned into a glare with my words. Her voice still a bit raspy, she replied "oh whatever Nate, I'd love to see you do better. And besides, I'm studying engineering, not English. Oh and there's the fact that I'm rusty since I'm not supposed to be doing this kind of shit outside home anyway. Coming up with rhymes on the fly is hard enough without trying to make it shitty enough that it'll be easy to reverse later. I mean unless you'd rather the spell continue to affect you for the rest of your life? With how vague being a dick is, even I don’t know what would come of you given enough time."

“Oh. Hmm. Yeah I guess that’s a fair point” I could feel my face burning as I imagined it. “That really would suck. Eventually I’d probably become some sorta parody of feminism huh. That wouldn’t be fun for anybody, least of all me. And what do you mean you were trying to make it shitty? How does that make it easier to reverse? I mean, assuming I believe you that you actually just cast an actual magic spell using a mediocre poem, that is.”

“First off, you better stop being a prick unless you want to become a girl in record time. Secondly, yeah basically; one way you can cast a spell is by using rhyming verses. The more natural the rhymes and flow, the more consistent the meter, the better the accompanying music, even the personal importance, and other such thighs; each will improve the power of the spell. Music is arguably the hardest to manage, but people do it when they want sufficiently powerful spells. I'm still not completely convinced Beethoven's sixth symphony wasn't an attempt to return his hearing. Anyway, this one should be weak enough to counter easily with how bad it tasted. Ugh why am I telling you any of this; the fact that I even used magic in front of you is bad enough. Forget it.” As she spoke she threw herself onto her bed. “Since you seem to have gotten out of your bindings I guess you can let yourself out. I’m gonna take a nap.”

“Wait, what do you mean how bad it tasted? Spells have a taste? And-”

“I said I’m taking a nap Nate, we can talk more when I don’t have a headache. Please leave,” Melissa interrupted and with a wave of her hand, the door opened. I figured pissing her off more might not be the best idea and retreated to my room to study. After studying for an hour, grabbing a quick cup-ramen for dinner, followed by browsing memes for a few hours, I went to bed.

That night I dreamt of events past: mostly from the past week or two. It was a strange experience, but not entirely novel to me. I flickered between scenes out of chronological order, floating in the space that should have been the ceiling for most of them. The position itself wasn’t strange to me as most of my dreams were viewed like this; incorporeal and detached from what was happening. What was strange was watching my own body spout the same brand of nonsense I hated hearing from my dad. Admittedly, it was quite toned down, but I could still see his venom and influence behind my words. I was far more used to watching the normal nonsensical stories and scenes that made up dreams than these memories. The other odd note about the memory-dreams was just how recent a good portion of them were; on the rare occasions I did have dreams directly related to dreams, they tended to be from years past.

I watched as a scene from earlier in the day resolved itself. It was the small classroom that held the ethics elective I shared with 20 other students, including a couple friends and Mel. As I watched, Mel was making her way down one of the aisles past my friends and I to her spot in the front. “Oh look, here comes  Professor Fanatic’s favorite little goth skirt. Wonder what position she’ll get in for him to try earning her A this week.” Kyle chimed, using his favorite nickname for our professor. 

“Don’t be an idiot, everyone on campus knows Mel only goes for girls.” past me responded. Ruining what little goodwill he might have gained, he continued “She might need to literally wear a pride flag to avoid sending the wrong message to idiots like you, but if she were gonna take a shot, it would be to distract the TA with how short her skirt is. Which would work out quite well considering everyone knows Ophelia - That’s her name, right? -  is the real powerhouse in this class” Mel sneered at us as she sat down, pointedly crossing her legs. My friends snickered as I continued. “But alas, she wouldn’t even do that since she’s got a stick shoved so far up her ass, even girls can’t have any fun with her.”

“I know your friends are gutter monkeys, but you’re better than this Nate. At the very least, you usually have more creative insults.” I could practically feel the heat radiating off her face as she spat out the words. Then the professor walked in and the whole scene fell out from below me. 

I was met with a much more expected type of dream sequence a moment later as I found myself in a campground watching a girl in her mid teens playing hide and seek with an assortment of my friends from grade school, strangers, a couple friends from the past couple years, and some sort of jackal-human hybrid who seemed to be the current seeker. It finished its countdown and started running around the area around the clearing, catching kids that were teleported into a birdcage hanging from the trees, sporting various animal appendages now. I watched as the girl snuck from tree to tree behind the jackal instead of hiding. She was the last one left and suddenly was jumping down from a tree onto the jackal, who let  out a high pitched “eep!” And turned into a chicken. I floated down through the puff of feathers and was met with yet another scene on the other side.

I blinked and I was at my parents' house. This at least, was a scene I was used to repeating in my mind’s eye over the handful of years since it happened. “-ad was right! You’re an entitled bitch that’s leaving the family now that we have no more use to you! And all for some stupid job your boyfriend suggested? You probably only even got that fancy new job because you were a diversity hire!” my other self yelled, unnoticed tears brimming in his eyes but refusing to fall. My sister’s face stood in stark contrast as tears streamed down her face, ruining her once subtle makeup.

“What the fuck Nathan! Gods, you really are becoming just like that piece of shit sperm donor we have. What happened to the sweet dorky kid I used to know? When did you become such a massive dick? I can’t believe I was considering asking you to come with me!” my sister’s face reddened as she yelled back. Even at the time, I had felt the stab of pain those words created in me, but every time I thought back over the scene it grew. Watching it like this made amplified the pain tenfold.

I winced as I knew what was coming next. “I grew up! Dad made sure I knew how to man up without you making me weak! It’s not my fault you disappeared and lost track of who I am. You didn’t have to go and decide other people are better than us. Real family is there when you need them, not just when it’s convenient for their perfect little lives Julie! Maybe if you think all of us are so awful, we’d be better off without you!” the other me responded cruelly.

Julie sobbed and ran for the door. Pausing as she opened it, she choked out a final message “I’m so sorry Nat. You won’t ever hear from me again.” And with that she was gone. I watched as a tear finally fell from the other me’s face. He stood there in shock, processing everything. I felt tears flow down my own face, if I indeed had one in this strange dreamscape. After he angrily wiped away the traitorous tear, I joined my other self in rushing through the door a few moments later.

Rather than being met with the empty street I was expecting, I was met with the sidewalk of a completely different one; the one separating the main campus and most of the underclassman housing. “Damn girl, work that pole” yet another version of myself jeered as a girl with black hair and a matching outfit on a skateboard landed after an impressive grind down a 10 step stair rail. She rolled her eyes, and continued rolling towards us.

“Think you can perform something similar to mine this weekend?” Dante added with his best attempt at flirting. At the second comment, her face contorted in disgust and she quickly used her heel to leverage her board up to her hand as she came to an abrupt stop.

“I would gladly apply my board directly right now if you’re so insistent, you miserable excuse for a default character model. Gonna have to excuse me now. I’m gonna go find some people that have actual personalities.” she snarked, and pushed past us. “Fucking straight dudes are the worst” she muttered as she dropped her board and sped away. If you had told me I would be housing with that girl two years later at the time, I would have scoffed and said some offensive thing about the gays. The rest of my first year at college had luckily changed a lot of my views. And I liked to think that the year and some change since had done even more. More dreams, memory or otherwise, passed through my brain throughout the night, but by the time I woke, those were all that was left.