“Oh my god Damien, you fuck!”

 

“Should have been quicker, bish,” Damien grinned. He frantically worked the controller, not really caring about his own score anymore and straining his hands to steal every kill he could. It was driving Alli crazy, and that was fine by him.

 

“You just have the best character, ass.” Allyssa’s pretend anger was marred strongly by the big goofy grin on her face. She’d missed hanging out with her best friend. Damien had been a lot more difficult to get a hold of since his sixteenth birthday, two years ago. She tried not to think too much about the illness that kept him at home three days a week. Allyssa hoped it wasn’t something too terrible, but he didn’t like talking about it. He’d reassured her it wasn’t terminal and he wasn’t like, in too much pain or anything. But he needed to be home on time and manage his energy levels. Days like this had become a rarity, but it felt good to game like they did in the good old days. Even if he was insufferable, playing as the Amazon Barbarian character, the most mobile character in the game. 

 

“You’re just jealous because you have to play as a dude,” Damien shot back. He wasn’t wrong, she thought. The Amazon was the only aesthetically pleasant character, and she couldn’t blame him for preferring to play as her. She’d never tell him, but she was scared for his illness, which is why she always let him pick first. She wanted him to be comfortable and happy for the time they could spend together. She tried to keep the smile on her face as she found herself consistently outmaneuvered by Damien’s tall and muscular avatar. 

 

“I just didn’t want to see you constantly get your ass handed to you, Damien.”

 

“Yuh-huh. Keep telling yourself that. I could run circles around y--”

 

The alarm cut through his sentence, through the room, like a razor. The rest of his sentence hung bisected in his throat. Damien immediately became sullen. He paused the game and put his controller down on the sofa, and turned off the alarm on his phone. 

 

“I have to go.” 

 

Allyssa felt her heart break, seeing her friend like this. He looked so hurt, so sad, and she couldn’t do much. But she could do this. She put her own controller down, and hugged him. He stood there stiffly. She tried not to cry, to be strong for him. He’d never returned her hugs, but he’d made it clear he enjoyed them. Still, she found it hard not to be a little hurt that he seemed… repulsed? Damien had been touch-averse since they’d met in grade school, but he’d found himself comfortable enough for these small displays of affection, even if he couldn’t return them. 

 

“Come back soon, okay? We’ve got loads of time now.”

 

He nodded mechanically. She unwrapped herself from around him and sniffed. Damnit. 

 

“I’ll see you soon, Alli. I really have to get home.”

 

She nodded again. He lived close enough, so he could visit whenever. The opposite wasn’t an option, sadly. His parents didn’t allow visitors for fear of contaminating his sterile area, he’d said. Besides, during his treatments he wasn’t worth much, apparently. Couldn’t see visitors, let alone entertain them. 

 

She walked him to the door and gave him another small hug before he left. She’d see him again soon, she told herself. But maybe one of these days was going to be the last time. That thought hit her like a truck when she’d finally, after watching him walk his way down the driveway, closed the door. She went up to her mother’s study and walked in. 

 

“Damien go home?”

 

Allyssa nodded. 

 

“Are you okay?”

 

Allyssa shook her head.

 

“Do you want a hug.”

 

Nodnod.

 

Her mom hugged her while she cried.

 

“Your friend is going to be okay, sweetie. Just give it time, okay? Medicine has gotten really good these days, I’m sure it’ll be okay, okay?”

 

Sniff.

 

Nod.

 

“Now go take a shower or something, you smell like gamer.”

 

Allyssa stuck out her tongue and went to her room. She worried about Damien for the rest of the day.

 

---

 

Damien got home and put his backpack by the door, went into the kitchen and took a candy bar from the cupboard. His mom was reading the paper at the living room table. She was still in her work clothes, the black turtleneck and jacket in stark contrast to her crimson skin. 

 

“Hey hun, did you have fun at the Wright’s?”

 

“Uh-huh,” Damien chewed as he pulled his sweater and then his shirt over his head. His mother didn’t react to his disrobing, just drinking her tea and reading.

 

“What time is it, Damien?”

 

“Five minutes to, mom.”

 

“Alright, be with you in just a second, dear.”

 

“Cool, thanks.”

 

“Don’t forget to draw the circle, hun.”

 

Damien unrolled a yoga mat in the middle of the living room floor. 

 

“Already on it, mom.”

 

He grabbed a piece of chalk off the mantelpiece and drew a circle on the mat, then a pentagram inside it. He was just about done with the writing on the outside of it when his mother joined him, and looked at his handiwork.

“Nicely done, Damien. You’re getting really good at this.”

 

“It has been two years, mom.”

 

“Fair enough. Are you ready?”

 

“As I’ll ever be.”

 

He knelt down in the circle and took a few deep breaths. His mother knelt down in front of him and made herself comfortable, tucking a strand of hair behind one of her horns, then looked at the clock.

 

“Ten seconds. Deep breath, dear,” she said, as she turned around to give him some privacy

 

Damien wasn’t ready, was never ready, but he didn’t have a choice in the matter. He took a deep breath, and almost filled his lungs to capacity when it started.

 

He felt as though his entire body was on fire, and his skin became a deep red, with a purple hue. The pressure in his forehead was focused on two points, and he knew that the nubs there would soon break skin and begin to extrude, two horns pushing and curving elegantly backwards and upwards. One thing he was grateful for was the painlessness of the process. That was something, at least. He felt the bones in his face shift and grind as it restructured itself, the muscle and tissue changing to make him almost unrecognizable, framed as it was by rapidly growing long, black hair. 

 

That done, the rest of the transformation began to take hold all at once. With a terrible tearing sound that he’d gotten used to over the years, two large feathered wings erupted from his back, feathers a deep red. His spine made clicking sounds as it shortened slightly, and he felt the familiar weight of the expansion on his chest, combined with the consistent loss of muscle tissue as he grew smaller, but far from weaker. His hips widened and he was glad for the sweatpants he’d been wearing. At first he’d made the mistake of wearing jeans and he’d nearly peed himself the first time. Finally, a long tail grew from his lower back, ending in a black, heart-shaped tip. And it immediately swished left to right as he flexed and stretched both it and his wings. 

 

He panted. The process was exhausting and he was glad his mother was there, in case he felt like collapsing. When it looked like he didn’t, she handed him a shirt over her shoulder, which he gratefully pulled over his head. 

 

“Ready,” he said with a voice that was distinctly different than it had been before. It wasn’t high-pitched, but it had a husky, seductive quality to it he’d never been able to shake. His mom turned around, and he could tell she was trying not to fawn over his transformation too much.

 

When he’d become sixteen, the transformations had started. At first, without the protection of the infernal circle, he’d caught fire and nearly burned his room down. After that, his mother had made sure to be there every time. She’d feared this might happen, she’d told him. His father had died before he’d been born, and when he was born she’d been under the impression he’d be a simple human child. But on his sixteenth birthday, his infernal heritage had shown itself, and his mother had been delighted, and then intensely disappointed when she’d found the new form to be temporary.

 

“I don’t know, “ she’d said, “why you keep switching back and forth between human boy and demon girl.”

 

“I hate it,” Damien had cried, and she’d consoled him, making a mental note not to be too happy about this transformation, and do some research into this at a later date. In the meantime, until they had it figured out and he could control his transformation, he needed to stay at home whenever the transformation hit. Humans got really weird about stuff like this.

 

Damien got up and stretched, his wings shivering a little bit. 

 

“Still no breakthrough on why I’m like this?”

 

His mom got up and put her hands on her hips.

 

“Still nothing. Nothing you can think of?”

 

He shook his head. “Not really.”

 

“All right, you can go… do whatever, alright? I’ll clean this up.”

 

“Thanks, mom,” he said, and went up to his room, careful so as not to bump his wings into the doorposts.

 

He hated his transformation. He hated that it kept him from living a normal life. He hated how it made him feel different and other. He hated that it kept him from his best friend, who could never see him like this, would never accept him. 

 

But most importantly, he hated that it wasn’t permanent. That it didn’t let him live one way or the other. 

 

He hated how it made him feel fake. Like he was wearing a girl costume that was taken away just before dawn. 

 

He flopped down on his bed face-first, and drifted off to sleep.