The first thought Circe had was how impressive the circular hole going through two floors and the roof was aligned. The person who cut it had even burnished the sides of the old wood, so the holes were clean of chaff. Talk about exceptional service! Why did the squat need a straight shot up to the roof, though?

Then he noticed the sounds of panic happening in the room, and the smell of something metallic. He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger and pushed himself up to sitting. The cushion felt damp as he pressed against it and he noticed that his legs barely touched the ground from sitting. Blinking, he took in his surroundings.

There was shouting coming from the bedrooms that sounded mildly like Natasha. Two brightly colored plastic balls were scattered on the floor, red and yellow. Mouse had faer back to the wall and was staring at him with wild eyes. Fae had flecks of blood on faer face.

As Circe made eye contact, Mouse flinched.

"What... happened?" He said in the most soothing voice he could muster. He jumped as his voice came out husky and matronly. Definitely not a man's voice. "What the fuck?" He looked down and saw boobs, not big ones, but enough definition that it was what they had to be. Then he realized his cloths were drenched in blood.

"Clarence popped..." Mouse chocked out. "You popped him like a fucking blister."

"What?" Circe snapped her head up in alarm.

"Whatever fucking entity you are, I know my way around the occult!" Mouse trembled, faer voice gaining a hysteric edge. "I will not succumb to your will!" Fae fingered something in faer pocket.

It took Circe a second to process this. "Who's Clarence?" He stopped, Mouse's shaking got more violent. "Wait no... I'm Clarence?" He furrowed his brow. "I remember being called Clarence all my life, but..." Mouse edged toward the door to faer room. "My name is Circe?"

Mouse paused and squinted at him. "Like the mythical witch?"

The words arose unbidden pouring out of him, a broken dam of repression. "Yeah! My parents raised me on D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths..." he trailed off, looking to the side to hide his embarrassment. "...and I always thought that it'd be cool to have the ability to change people into whatever I wanted."

Mouse blinked. "Ok. That's... kinda... something Carie would say?" Fae fidgeted restlessly. Circe went back to looking at his new body. Definitely real tits, very... bouncy... for how small they looked. Fae took a hesitant step forward. "Is it possible she stole Carie's memories?" Fae mumbled to faerself too loud.

Circe moved on to below the tits. Jesus Christ his hips were thick. He craned his head backward to look at his ass. Glorious. "Mouse, can you stop being weird about this? I just magically became.." He stopped. What had he become? He put a hand on his crotch. "AFAB?"

Mouse looked at Circe sideways. "You don't... think that's weird?."

"Ok, no it is weird..." Circe admitted. "It just..." He threw up his hands. "Why are you assuming it's not me?"

Fae pointed up. "You put a hole in the ceiling!" Fae was shouting now. "And then you went completely ridged for like 5 minutes..." Mouse pounded faer fist on faer hand, like fae were unrevealing a grand conspiracy. "Then! Then!" The waif was in hysterics. "You explode in a fountain of blood leaving a hot girl where you were sitting!" Fae marched up to Circe, and stuck a finger in his face. "and you expect me to be normal about it?"

Circe smiled "You think I'm hot?"

Mouse put faer hands on faer temples "Yes."

Before Circe could force Mouse to elaborate Natasha strode into the room looking like different Carrie at the end of the movie. Closely following her was the rest of the band. Serina, the close cropped Type A, looked horrified at the state of the room. While Brie, still wearing her sleeping onesie, looked like she had just been forcibly woken up through her hangover. Natasha merely smirked, the drying blood cracking on her face. "'I'm cis' my ass."

Circe could barely squeak out a 'hi' before Serina charged forward trying to take charge of the situation. "What did y'all do to the couch!?" She looked at the flecks of blood on the floor. "What the hell happened here?" Circe followed her gaze to the floor and realized she could see just where Natasha was when she got hit by the majority of the splatter. Serina looked up "There's a hole in the roof." She finally turned her gaze to Circe, who was trying to look as innocent as she could covered in blood. "What in hells name happened, and who the fuck are you?"

Serina was great at writing songs, and could play passable double bass, but she had awful people skills. Brie, too much of an internet addict for how good a mandolin player she was, put her hands on her mouth in shock, just now comprehending what she was seeing.

Mouse grabbed Serina's hand and gently tugged her away from couch. "Her name is Circe, and she used to be a certain guitarist we all kinda thought was an egg." Mouse hissed. "But I still haven't been able to confirm nothing eldritch has contaminated her mind."

Serina frowned. "What." She glared at Circe. "How could you possibly be Carie?" She gestured at Circe's body like a homeowner showing off damage to a chastened neighborhood boy. "She's like a quarter foot shorter, has creepy light gray eyes, and is very clearly cis, or at least an early transitioner." She pointed at Circe's hips. "Look at those fuckers."

"Wait" Circe said, processing. "Do all of you think I'm an egg?" He put his hands on his hips. "I like my style and shopping for cloths, that's like, one of the major indicators!" He raised a finger confidently. "I've looked it up."

Mouse sighed, exasperated. "Circe, you dress like a soft butch lady. You can literally tighten up your overalls and roll up the cuffs and you'll have like 10 girls numbers in an hour at any gay bar you choose." Fae looked at him sideways. "The blood would probably help."

Circe froze looking down at himself(?). He had felt while blacked out that he had gone on some sort of journey of awakening. If this is what had come out the other side? Who was she to argue?

"Ok fine, its obvious I'm a girl." Circe stuck out her tongue. "I'm so sorry it took you so long to get it through my thick fucking skull." Her sarcastic barb was undercut by how shockingly different the valley girl accent hit with a fem voice.

Mouse cocked faer head to one side. "I don't know... I'd say take your time with it." Fae pulled a hankie out of faer fanny pack and began spit cleaning faer face. "just cuz you got that body doesn't necessarily make you a woman." Fae narrowed faer eyes. "Also if you are an occult being from beyond, stop pretending to be my friend whom I love and trust." Mouse pulled out a candle labeled 'USE ONLY IN EMERGENCIES'. "It's annoyingly hard to stay suspicious."

Circe made a heart shape with her thumbs and forefingers. "Love you too, Mouse." She caught faer smirking, and smiled herself. "What are you going to do with that candle? blow smoke at me until I admit I'm a demon from the outer cosmos?" Natasha giggled,.

Serina, slipped deep into her New York Jewish accent, like she often did when trying to take charge of her bandmates endless riffing, blissfully interrupting Circe mid-thought. "Congratulations on the gender, lady..." She spread her hands out indicating the entire living room. "But seriously, what the fuck happened??"

Circe looked at Mouse. Mouse pointed to the chalk circle fae were sketching around the couch, and looked at Natasha. Natasha glared back at Circe, who shrugged.

Natasha sighed exasperatedly. "We tried to test Carie for psioninc powers as a bit, and she sent the test ball into the stratosphere, went ridged for a couple minutes, and then popped like a balloon of blood, leaving this girl in the puddle."

"Oh." Said Brie. "Oh fuck!" She daintily ran up to Circe, scuffing mouses circle, who swore loudly. "Do me next!!" She jumped up and down on the balls of her feet. "I wanna loose at least a foot!"

Circe stared at her trans band mate with the slowly dawning horror that she had no idea how to recreate what just happened. There were millions of girls around the would who would kill for what she had just experienced, and she could do nothing to share it.

Brie's exuberance waned as Circe's discomfort became more and more apparent. "You don't know." Brie clenched her fist, she wheeled on the rest of the band. "Fuck practice. We." She began slamming her fist into her palm to punctuate her words. "Are. Figuring. This. Out!" Met with a mess of nods and shrugs she turned back to Circe, and shoved a finger at the fresh girls chin. "Yes?"

"Yes!" Circe said with as much exuberance as she could muster with a finger in her face.

Brie clapped her hands "Ok good, now start at the fucking beginning!"

~~+-0-+~~

Detective Kovech laid his head on his desk. The shame usually faded with dreamless sleep and booze. Not today. He had woken with raging headache and erection. The whiskey in his coffee only worked on the hangover. He hadn't been able to crank off without his fetish since high school. He also didn't want to spend all day hiding a boner.

It was quick and dirty, and it made him feel weak. He could feel himself loosing to it. "Buy me bras." "Buy me dresses." "Buy me jewelry." His fetish had the habits of a bad girlfriend. He thought work would distract him, but his mind kept drifting to how much nicer it would be if he had been born a girl.

He couldn't let it win. He opened his copy of 'Psionic Weapons and the Cold War: An In Depth Look at Two Approaches to Pseudoscience' and continued taking notes. Nothing like a dense dry history to drown the voice out.

By lunch time he had skimmed the whole thing and pulled out what he needed from it. During the end of the dentate era in about '52, when America elected it's first president not in the Louisiana Machine in nearly two decades, tensions had broken out with the USSR. The Cold War came quick on its heels. A Hungarian pro-US pastor had been beaten into confessing his "crimes against the people" on live TV in retaliation for Eisenhower's execution of several prominent communists in the US bureaucracy. Basic American history stuff.

The story really starts when the Dulles brothers wrongly surmised that it was achieved via hypnosis, and so began their ESP research. Khrushchev's Polit Bureau, not wanting to be out done by the US began a similar USSR program. Both programs ostensibly existed to be shared with NATO, but were actually conceptualized as a way to beat the other power without having to break the world system they had created together in half.

The US's program focused on hypnotism and psychoactive drugs. Attempting to brainwash people by fully annihilating the independent self. They got really good at breaking people, but found to their dismay that hypnotism was a form of voluntary submission and dreaming not a form of psychic mind control. When the AFP took power back with the charisma of JFK, they immediately ended the program. Just as they had started research into trying to kill things by thinking really hard at them.

The Soviet approach was far more grounded in signal transmission. They believed that thoughts could possibly be sent through waves, and so attempted to amplify the psychic impact a single persons thoughts could have on others. A sort of Power of Positive thinking for making your population more loyal.

Then, he found what he was looking for- the author mentions a "Kamchatka Affair" partially declassified during Glasnost and then burned with many other embarrassing documents before the Soviet Social records act was past by Gorbachev in his first term as President.

Apparently the entire ESP facility in Kamchatka went dark, and, when searched, turned up no survivors. While that was the only thing declassed, a member of the body disposal unit did an interview on Moscow radio (before dying under mysterious circumstance, Russians never change). He claimed that every body they recovered had their skull blown open in some way. Like their brains had exploded. The only exception, according to him, was a girl not listed in the staff files with a bullet in her head. He said he never learned what they were researching, and a member of staff was missing, but that was all they had.

The next section was the author attempting to poke holes in this narrative, but Kovech had closed the book. He got up from his desk and cracked his back. The library book landed with a soft thump on the wood textured linoleum of the desk. As he walked out to his car to grab lunch, Kovech speed dialed Roy. When he heard his partner pick up he didn't even bother saying hello. "It's the fucking Russians."

FriendlyPastoralist

!!!!!IMPORTANT!!!!! Next Wednesday instead of dropping a Curious Case I'm just gonna post a Darla Darling Dearest chapter to advertise this one to the people who don't follow my scribble account.

I want people to know I'm alive at least, lol.

Anyway blah blah blah please leave a comment I need validation.