My mind and body stuttered back to consciousness like an old robot trying to run new firmware. Everything felt wrong. Seriously, gut wrenchingly wrong. I hadn’t opened my eyes yet, but I knew the pod was opening by the quiet whirring sound that the motors made. Reaching for the edge of the pod with my eyes still closed, I blindly grasped with a far too big hand and missed, managing to bash my forearm on the lip instead.

“Fuck!” I groaned, and then recoiled at the way my voice rumbled through my chest, vibrating it like a drum..

I sounded like… a man. Like Terry.

I lay in the pod, stunned by the awful deep grotesque sound that had just come from my lips. My stomach felt like it had just plummeted into the core of the earth, and I gulped in air trying to calm myself. I needed to move. I couldn’t stay in the pod.

I felt around at the edge carefully this time, until I was sure I would be able to get myself out of the pod, and then hauled myself upright. When I tried to step out my foot caught on the lip and I stumbled forward, colliding with the wall of my pod room with a dull thump. Leaning against the wall for a moment, I tried to catch my breath, while I attempted to make sense of the signals my brain was receiving.

This was worse than any time I had logged out of VR before. Granted, I hadn’t been in full immersion before, but I’d never heard anyone complain overly much. But who was I really kidding though? I knew why I felt like shit.

The first thing I had noticed as I exited the pod wasn’t the pain in my arm or my foot, it was the way something gross and sweaty stuck to the insides of my thighs. It was the way my legs brushed against each other, the body hair feeling terrible and foreign. It was the way my voice sounded as I’d sworn. It all culminated in a stomach churning horror that threatened to wash me away. My body was male again.

The very word male tore through my consciousness and mood like a cannonball through closed ranks. I collapsed instantly to the floor, my face wet with tears I hadn’t even been aware I was shedding until one dripped onto my hand.

“Oh god,” I sobbed, beginning to shake violently as the shock of everything finally hit me.

I didn’t want this. I didn’t want this. I wanted to get back in the pod, but even that seemed like too much right now. I cried for what I had just lost with such visceral force that some of my sobbing turned to coughing as my body went too far. I didn’t care though. This body could fucking suffer. I hated it. I felt like I wasn’t even human while I wore it.

That’s what it felt like right now. I felt like a human trapped in an alien’s body, my mind struggling to comprehend appendages and organs it was deeply sure it was not meant to have. Even as I had this realisation though, I had another, far worse one. My mental breakdown inside the game had been entirely correct.

This was what I had always felt like. This had been normal for me. This had been… normal for me? How the fuck had I gotten through so much of my life with metophorical chains tied around every limb? I was almost in awe of the mental strength that my ignorance had given me, but that had all been stripped away now. My resistance to the emotional anguish I had felt my entire life was gone.

What did I do now?

I was on my way to a panic attack, that was for sure, if I wasn’t already having one. I needed to stop it. I chuckled bitterly as I realised that I’d learned to clamp down on panic attacks because of sex. When I’d been pestered and coerced into actually going penis in vagina, especially with Kristina, I’d felt similar to this. So I clamped down brutally on my mind, using the same technique of mental self harm that had worked so well in the past.

Fuck you Terry. Fuck you. You shut the fuck up you worthless cunt. You’re not allowed to have a panic attack because you aren’t worth the energy that one would require. You are nothing, you don’t deserve to feel happiness, you don’t deserve anything good. Be a good little man and stand the fuck up, clean yourself up, and go to sleep. You have class to go to early in the morning.

The old tactic worked, thankfully, sending my mind into a depressed, saddened, neutral state that was mercifully stable. Why bother getting worked up over anything if I wasn’t worth anything?

With a calmer mind, I was able to open my eyes and stare blearily about the room. The pod was open like some undead thing had just crawled out. It did look like a smooth plastic coffin after all, which was rather fitting. The door to the room was closed, and there wasn’t really anything else going on. Time to go to bed I guess. At least sleep would mean I’d get to be unconscious for a while.

I pushed myself upright, struggling to ignore the way everything moved in my body. Even the way my head kept getting higher and higher as I stood gave me a feeling of wrongness. Shit, how had one week in a body that felt right done this much damage? I was barely functioning right now.

I hobbled to the door of the room, trying to move as little as possible so I didn’t have to feel the way my newly alien muscles moved. Opening the door proved difficult, simply because I needed to bring my hand into view. I didn’t want to see them. I opted to close my eyes as I reached for the handle, fumbling for a moment before I found it.

With the door safely open and my arm stowed at my side, I pushed onward through my small apartment and into my bedroom. I didn’t want to get changed or take a shower, I didn’t want to touch my body any more than was absolutely necessary, but the feeling of the sweaty, disgusting podwear I was in now was too much.

I showered quickly, keeping the lights off so I couldn’t see anything and shuddering at each swipe of my soapy hands of hairy flesh. Drying myself with the warm air jets built into the shower was thankfully not as terrible as it could have been if I’d had forced to towel myself dry.

I walked naked through and back to my room, where I found a pair of probably clean underwear and a T-shirt. My bed was still a mess since Taylor had slept in it with me, but I didn’t have time to do anything about it, and I wouldn’t have been inclined to anyway. I threw on some jeans and a baggy hoodie I could hide in, grabbed my phone and rushed out.

 

****

 

Riding the train to class was torture. I hated how much space my huge blocky frame took up. I hated the way women would get on and see me, then turn and go and sit with another stranger who was also a woman. I didn’t blame them. It wasn’t their fault, but it highlighted that everyone around me saw a man when they looked at me.

Unlocking my phone to distract myself from the waking nightmare I was living, I only found more shit waiting for me there. I had a message from Kristina. She’d sent it not five minutes ago.

Kristina: Hey Terry……. Just wanted to talk. Do you think we can meet at my place later today?

What the hell did she want? She was the one who broke up with me, and now a week later she was asking to see me? Thinking about her, about us, seriously for the first time in days and I found that I felt… not a whole lot. Aside from guilt, and maybe animosity towards her, but the break up seemed like such a mundane matter beside everything that had happened to me in Cora.

Shit… I’d even sort of found someone in the game and despite myself I smiled slightly as I thought of her.

It amazed me how fast Rora and I had become attached to each other. There was this strange connection between us, like we’d fallen into orbit around each other. It felt like it had been years that we’d danced around each other, rather than the week it had really been. I mean, we didn’t know each other, not really, and there was no way she’d like me outside the game… but regardless, she was apparently putting a smile on my face right when I needed it.

I didn’t reply to Kristina, at least not right then, and already I had received a few messages from my parents and Taylor. Each of them asking if I was okay in odd ways, like they’d been talking about me among themselves. Flicking a few “Yes I’m fine” messages back at them, I decided to ignore my phone after that. I didn’t feel like being social.

I found myself idly watching the women on the train as I tried to think about anything other than my pain. Even now though, my brain refused to let the matter drop. Instead of simply looking at them as someone I was attracted to as I usually did, I was now also wishing I had a body like theirs. That girl had nice hips, similar to the ones… the ones I’d had in Cora. The girl across the aisle had a pretty smile that was sure to get her into the good graces of whatever genders she was interested in.

...And here I was in a body that could do the same, but I didn’t want it. This made no fucking sense. I was attractive, I had proven that time and again, which made me feel all the more terrible for hating this body. I felt like an ungrateful git. People would kill to have what I had, and yet I wanted to throw it away.

Eventually I did make it into my first class of the day, slinking into the back of the room and taking a seat. Normally I sat near the middle where I was close enough to interact with the professor, but far enough away that I could flirt with my classmates. This time though, I planted myself as far back as I could and huddled down, signing into the desk with my phone as I did so.

The desks were holographic projectors with computers in them, similar to my coffee table, and it brought up my notes. I had time to kill so I tried flicking through them to refresh myself on what I had done last time, but I quickly grew bored and my thoughts began to stray into darkness once again.

I was saved from impending boredom and depression by someone sitting down with a thump next to me. “What are you doing in my seat Terry?”

I looked up, startled to find Dawn sitting next to me. Dawn, Kristina’s best friend. Dawn, my old best friend. She looked good these days. She was a little taller than average for a girl, with a body that had always seemed to be about eighty percent leg. The rest of her was similarly lithe and strong, with a frame that was just shy of well built. The type of body that was at home in a dress or a suit, and looked great in both.

She hadn’t always been this way though. Time was that she was the gangly, sporty girl that the boys had liked to tease, both behind her back and to her face. I’d earned several bruises defending her from them. Well, defending was a strong word. We’d both earned bruises, much to Kristina’s disapproval. Sometimes we’d won, sometimes we most definitely had not won.

She was actually kinda gorgeous now, in an intimidating punk sort of way. The boots she wore were huge and covered in spikes, but she wore a simple black hoodie similar to mine on top. I noticed idly that there was flakes of something on her boots like she’d kicked a wall and come away with some souvenirs.

“Well?” she demanded, scowling at me as she pushed long purple and green hair out of her face.

Her hair was intense actually. It was that type of almost-straight that gave it a shitload of volume, and it was currently messy and all over the place. It looked frustratingly good, and for a second I had this strange sense of deja vu. Something about seeing her was making me wig the fuck out.

“I… I um…” I stammered, trying to get my brain working. God damn, my fucking voice was awful.

“Kristina should have dumped your ass sooner. You didn’t deserve her,” she said frostily, turning to her own desk and signing in.

“Yeah she should have,” I sighed, letting my head fall to the desk with a thump, earning a beeping protest from the hologram projector as I invaded its space.

“Um… I didn’t expect you to agree with me there honestly,” she said, sounding taken aback, although I couldn’t see her.

“I’d go one step further. I never should have said yes in the first place,” I groaned, thinking back to the day Kristina had confessed her feelings to me.

“You’re fucking right. Only took you three years, plus destroying our trio of friends in the process, you fucking prick,” she said vehemently, then stopped and frowned. “Wait, said yes?”

“Yeah. She asked me, didn’t you know that?” I asked, frowning back at her.

“I… didn’t actually. She was the one who asked you out? Really?” she asked, her frown deepening, but I didn’t seem to be entirely the target anymore.

“Of course. Do you really think that ‘Terry the man slut’ would actually go looking to get pinned down in a relationship?” I laughed bitterly.

Dawn winced as I threw the name she’d started calling me back in her face. “Ah…”

It’s not like the name wasn’t earned… but it still stung.

We sat in silence for a long time after that, and eventually the professor came into the room and began the class, although I didn’t pay any attention. Stuck between my past mistakes and my newly discovered hatred of my body, I pulled my hoodie closer around me and did my best to shut out the world, especially the girl sitting next to me.

That had been the longest conversation we’d had since Kristina and I had gotten together, and it was causing me to take a trip down memory lane. It had definitely been a while. Three years of dating Kristina and being ignored by Dawn, but it had started earlier than that if I was honest with myself.

Kristina had been the first to start drifting away, strangely enough. Her parents had always had high expectations, they had the wealth and power of their church after all. Kristina needed to be their golden girl, and she’d dived into cheerleading to please them. Since she’d seemed to end up enjoying it, Dawn and I had done our best to be supportive. She’d made new friends in the cheer squad, and had spent less time with her awkward childhood friends as a result. Then puberty had happened in earnest to me, and I’d started down my own path.

My path being, well... girls. Looking back on it, I wasn’t sure how much of my exploits had been motivated by wanting to be the girl I was with, and how much of it was motivated by simple desire. I don’t think I’d ever really know, the whole mess seemed like a tangle of confusion that would take years to figure out.

As for Dawn, I honestly had no idea what she had been up to. I should have checked. When we’d all met up every so often, we’d reverted to how things had been before. We’d pretended for the hours we hung out that the other two people hadn’t drifted and changed from who we’d been. It was heartbreaking now that I looked back on it.

My reverie was broken by the explosion of noise that signaled class was over as everyone picked up their shit and made for the door. I reached to log out, and felt my arm hair scrape jarringly against the inside of my sleeve. I shuddered, having forgotten for a minute as I was lost in thought that I was… this thing. A man.

I had to pause, trying to keep myself from showing any sort of weakness in front of Dawn, who had been my enemy for so long now. My breathing and heartbeat had other ideas though, starting up an ragged series of intakes and erratic thumping as I fought to control my rising anguish again. Would I ever feel normal again? What could I even do?

“You okay?” Dawn asked quietly. “I guess what I said was mean… I just… fuck. Look I’m sorry, you two seemed happy and I guess I should have been a better friend too. You seemed good for each other.”

“No!” I said, far more forcefully than I had intended. “We weren’t. It would have never worked out…”

“Okay… Um… Why?” she asked hesitantly.

“Because… shit. I don’t want to talk about this with anyone, let alone with you,” I choked, my emotions overflowing as I tried to battle multiple sources of stress.

Desperate to get away, I snatched my phone off the desk and made for the exit, ignoring any further attempts on her part to talk to me. I had more classes to go to.

 

****

 

The rest of that day was gruelling. I struggled with basic tasks, every movement and social interaction reminding me that I was irreversibly male. On top of that, I had Dawn in many of my classes. We were taking the same course after all. She tried a few more times to talk to me, but every time she sat next to me and tried to speak, I huddled further into my hoodie and closed off from the world.

I was constantly crashing into things too, from desks to doorways to people. I was lost, unable to fully engage with reality because it was just altogether too painful. When I was forced to enter the men’s restrooms to go to the toilet, I spent five minutes sobbing quietly to myself in the stall because of the simple fact that it was the men’s restrooms. By the time I got home that afternoon, I was in a state of near constant disorientation and anxiety.

I’d had my phone on silent for most of the day, even opting to turn the vibration function off. I just didn’t want to deal with the real world right now. I needed to go to class so my attendance wouldn’t drop, but I wasn’t obliged to actually engage once I was there.

I had forgotten to turn off my home pairing function, so when my phone connected with the house, I was inundated with notifications. The first ones to come through were from my parents, who told me that they loved me, although they added a strange line about, ‘whoever I was’. There was a whole stream of messages from my sister too, most of them being her pestering me to answer her calls. I ignored her. I didn’t think I could face having her call me Terry or her brother again.

I was surprised to see a truly massive number of messages from Kristina waiting for me. What in the fuck did she want? We were supposed to be over!

Kristina: Please. I just want to talk. Can we still be friends?

Kristina: I know you got out of VR today. You have classes. Please reply?

Kristina: Terry.

Kristina: Terry.

...Etc...

Kristina: Terry.

Kristina: Terry.

Kristina: You owe me! Reply! Please!? Why are you ignoring me?

Kristina: Please? We were going to get married! You threw it all away!!! At least have the good grace to reply!

Kristina: Please… I miss you…

Kristina: Terry please……….

Every “Terry” that she sent me was like a crossbow bolt to the chest, affirming who and what the world saw me as. Why couldn’t the world just fuck off today? I didn’t want to deal with it!

“Incoming call from contact: Kristina. Automatically accepting call as per house preferences.” the house AI chimed.

“Terry!” Kristina exclaimed, a video call window flickering to life above my coffee table.

“Fuck! House, disconnect from the call,” I said urgently.

“Wai— “ Kristina cried before the call cut out.

Before I could even get my phone out to change the damn preferences on her contact, she called again.

“Incoming call from contact: Kristina. Automatically accepting call as per house preferences.” the house AI excitedly chimed again.

“Terry please!” she pleaded from my coffee table. “We need to talk! I want to try and fix things with us! Please!”

I ignored her, flicking through the menus on my phone with unsteady hands until I found the setting I needed to turn off.

“Terry I can literally see you! Stop being an asshole and talk to me!” Kristina demanded, her pleading tone quickly becoming replaced with petulant annoyance.

“House, disconnect from the call,” I said again, hoping it worked this time.

It did, and I was left in merciful silence for all of a single second before she was calling again.

“Incoming call from contact: Kristina. Would you like to accept or decline?” the house AI said, and I swear I heard a tone of exasperation in there.

“No, and block all future calls from that number,” I said shakily.

That whole exchange had rattled me to my core. I felt weak and strange, my face flushing with heat and my breathing— fuck it was another panic attack. It had been nothing but Terry this and Terry that.

“Fuck you Terry,” I said half heartedly into the air of my quiet apartment.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,” the house AI said helpfully.

I don’t know what it was about the house’s response, but within seconds I was doubled over with laughter. It was so out of the blue, and something about the innocence of the computer just doing its job was a welcome reprieve from being pestered by so many real people today. The poor thing had all the intelligence of a golden retriever, excited to do whatever I told it, although usually missing the spirit of the commands.

I clung to that absurdity in my mind like it was a life raft and flopped down onto my couch. I wasn’t going to be sleeping for a while, and I desperately needed to distract myself. I guess I could see what was happening in Cora?

“House, show me news for the game Cora,” I said.

The coffee table came to life once more, bringing up a holographic web browser and showing me news from the game. There was the usual crap, what all the big streamers were doing, including my sister. She seemed to be involved in some sort of war, siding with one nation I hadn’t heard of against another. People seemed to be speculating that one side or the other had outside backing, but there were accusations everywhere and very few verifiable facts.

I was about to go and begin researching more about who the nations of this world actually were, when I noticed a headline and thumbnail that trapped my attention like a vice.

Mysterious Demon Girl Tami Sighted Again Battling the Undead, and Pirates!

I’m sorry… what? I opened the article with a gesture and started to read.

First seen in a stream from a member of the famous Phoenix Guild, then later seen in Alchemilla’s feed, the mysterious demon girl named Tami has been capturing the hearts of both the players and viewers for Cora. Denizens of the internet have become enamoured with her flashy fighting style and unique race, clamouring for any new video clips of the girl.

Today we were given an unprecedented double treat as two videos of the demon girl were uploaded. The first shows her and Aurora, the recorder of the video, battling and overcoming a boss in the heart of the Bleaklands. The boss appears to be one with a recommended party of ten, and this has understandably elevated her fans’ opinion of her.

That’s not all though! She was seen earlier in the stream of a prominent member of the Phoenix Guild named Mal, who is a trade ship captain for the guild. Tami and her friend Aurora were seen flying in to turn the tides in a battle against pirates as things were beginning to look grim. Speculation has already begun about who she might be and what she will do next, so stay tuned for more sightings of this mysterious and alluring woman!

Holy. Fuck.

That was too much. Like really, way too much. Surely people had better things to do than pore over thousands of hours of video for sightings of me? I wasn’t special, apart from maybe my race, so why did I have fans of all things? That’s just weird.

I flicked away from the “news” report about me and made an attempt to research the game mechanics, but I quickly lost interest. It was reminding me too much of what I had lost when I logged out, and I could feel my mood dropping rapidly.

I opted instead to watch some shitty streams of other games well into the night. I didn’t even bother cooking myself dinner, a task I usually enjoyed. I didn’t have the willpower to do something complex like that. Take out was ordered, and as the night grew long I stumbled to bed and downed a sleeping pill in the hopes it would knock me out before my pre-sleep brooding got too out of hand.