Leela Brown and the Mutant Apocalypse. A tale of survival, multidimensional romance, transformation and the puppies of war.
By H'eidi Knight
Part Two (of several.. you have been warned) MONDAY ... Monday!
Welcome back, amazing readers. Firstly: Guess the flippin' quotation/movie references challenges:
"Its beautiful!" is apparently the line Belloq the evil Nazi loving archaeologist utters as the Ark of the Covenant begins to spew Industrial Light and Magic special effects at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Honest!! If you picked up on that one, you are an evil genius as well.
"If this is foreplay, I'm a dead man!" is the one most people seemed to have got (as S made it easy by pointing it out as being a movie reference ...) it is from the movie Cocoon.
Brace yourself for another hard to spot one: 'Rabid Weasels' is a obscure tip of the hat to a macabre joke in the film Return of the Living Dead. Extra points for that one.
"Will you give me oral pleasure?" is the seductive line Fabienne whispers to Butch in the excellent movie Pulp Fiction.
"Stay On target!" is straight from the classic original Star Wars. For extra nerd points you could tell me it was Gold Five on the attack run to the Death Star.
Now after this, is there is anyone still out there who doesn't believe me that Sarah is an evil genius ...?
Dedicated to Jayson from Down Under again. Savage Beauty, strangetides, Andy P, thepoet. You are all scary scary people!! (And I love you for it!) xx
Copyright of text Heidi Nighy 2014. Created by myself barring any movie/pop culture references inserted in by my partner.
Donation, support the archive. There are a billion other dysfunctional ways to spend your hard earned cash, but none will give you the same feeling of doing something naughty and nice at exactly the same time! x
On with the thoughts of Chairwoman H'eidi.
- It is the early hours of Monday morning. Possibly the late hours of Sunday night. It seems weird to think back to a time when everyone didn't grope in the darkness to their mobile phone to check what time it is from those little glowing screens.
I lie in the my tent. In my hand is a note Sarah wrote last week and hid for me to discover after she had left the camp site. She wrote a whole series of these. I've already opened Saturday's and Sunday's notes. I have to wait until Monday morning now to read her thoughts. It could be Monday now and I could grab a torch and open the note. The lip of the envelope isn't even stuck down. In the darkness I pull at the tucked-in lip, open the envelope and then re close it again. This isn't a pattern of behaviour likely to help me fall asleep.
It is a warm night. Sunday afternoon the temperature rose in merciless fashion. By the early evening my family were flaked out in the shade of our caravan. Nobody was hungry and now every window in the caravan is wide open for ventilation. I can hear Dad's snoring from all the way inside the van. I've not got it much cooler in my tent. The entrance flap is open onto the still night. No breeze moves the hot air around.
It is more my brain than the heat keeping me awake though. I'm over thinking things again. Tonight is the subject of what I am .. sexually. It is nonsense, it doesn't really matter, but for some reason I'm picking over the topic.
Am I gay? I am an individual who is in a physical relationship with another individual with the same genital configuration. Yes, this is the way my brain talks to me in the early hours of the morning. So if I am gay... Is that male gay or lesbian? Sarah and I both identify as gender female, so that makes us lesbians? But we both currently have a penis, and I suspect that aren't many lesbians who wake up in the morning with their hands on a penis. ... especially their own.
Round and round my brain goes with this kind of unhelpful thinking. I am pleased to find that I'm not actually worried if I am gay. I think my parent's have always been very positive about gay issues. I remember my dad getting extremely cross at a local political figure who had made some nasty homophobic comments in the press. My mum talking to me last week about her concerns that I might bring a boyfriend home instead of a girlfriend makes me wonder if they haven't talked about the real possibility I might be gay. That they have been subtly making sure I knew and understood for years that being gay is completely fine.
But I am attracted to girls, despite the fact my favourite girl in the universe has a penis. When you are 16 years old, this stuff can really get your brain in a mess, especially after the witching hour. So could I be really gay ... boy loving, wanting to go to the gym a lot, perfect hair and the whole deal gay?
I decide to try and 'test' myself. I've just seen a really great movie about Viking warriors, lots of bare man forms and a lead actor who is pretty damn attractive in a very exotic Latin sort of way.
I reach down and slip my hand inside my underwear. It is all I am wearing tonight, lying on the top of my sleeping bag. I rest my hand on top of my penis. I imagine the actor in the movie sat beside me. He is naked and holding himself in his hand. I don't find this a very erotic image, but my penis still responds and begins to swell. It is probably just my hand it likes. It has got very used to responding to that since puberty arrived.
I imagine lying down with the actor lying naked alongside me. Holding me in his arms. His erect cock pushing insistently into my back. His hand stroking down over my bum, fingers teasing me. Kissing my shoulders and telling me he wanted me. My penis hardens and I let out long breath of anticipation. God, could I do that? Could I let a masculine, muscle bound beefcake sort of guy take me from behind? I roll over carefully and raise myself on all fours. I slip my briefs down and my erection swings freely. I'm actually feeling quite scared now. Not that I might be gay, but in the anticipation that I might enjoy having a really big cock inside me. Not Sarah's beautiful non-threatening tiny penis slipping inside, but a real male cock. One I might not be able to even get my hand fully around. That is a scary idea. In reality I've not even had Sarah inside me. Neither of us has surrendered ourselves to each other in that way yet. I try to imagine the Latin actor pushing inside me. Holding my hips and forcing his lubricated penis into me.
"What the fuck are you doing, Surely?" Claire asks me. She isn't here, but my brain has thrown me a lifeline by sitting her down beside me in the tent. "God, Claire .. thank god you are here!" I say. "I'm about to take a huge cock inside my bum."
"Why?" she asks, struggling to stop laughing.
"I don't have a good reason right now!" I can't help laughing myself.
"Realistically, and this is a no-brainer, as the Americans say .. who would you welcome inside your bum. Mr Beefcake or Sarah?" She asks.
"Sarah, obviously!" I say. "But why do I have an erection at the idea of Mr Beefcake?"
"I love you, but you are a stupid 16 year old transsexual ... you can have erections at just the idea of just touching yourself."
"This is true." I concede.
"Now turn around and face him!" she orders me. I roll around and imagine facing Mr Beefcake. His cock is pointed right at me. "Take him in your mouth." she tells me. I close my eyes and imagine trying to. "No, eyes open ... you wanted to face this, so face it."
I open my eyes and inch closer to that huge erection. It bobs up and down slightly to his heartbeat. I don't really want to suck it. Even though I am still turned on and my own penis is perky as hell, I don't want this in my mouth.
"Well you turned me on, you have to do something to finish me off!" He complains in a dusky Spanish accent. He pushes his erection toward me. I apologize and take it in my hand. It is big, ropey and heavy and I pump it experimentally a couple of times.
"Is this okay?" I ask sheepishly. I am not really enjoying this either. I continue to wank him and he begins to make deep masculine moans of pleasure. "Oh, I am going to cum across your little titties!" he promises.
"Have you had enough of this yet?" Claire interrupts.
"Hell, yes!!" I say.
"Then let go of Mr Donkeydick and sit down." She scolds me.
I sit down and then lie down on my back. My own erection has got lost during my inexpert hand job and the idea he might cum across my little titties. Yuck. I don't even have breasts yet, but the idea of anyone calling them 'titties' is a total turn off.
"Feel stupid?" she asks.
"Yes," I reply.
"What about me?" Mr Donkeydick demands.
"Go play with yourself outside." Claire tells him and points to the tent flap.
"Thanks, Claire!" I say as he leaves the tent. "Still worried about stupid things?" she asks me.
"No." I reply. "God, Claire .. I am so glad you are my sister."
I look around, but she has already left. Thank goodness it wasn't Sarah that discovered me doing this. She would never let me hear the end of how stupid I am.
"My silly girl!" I hear from inside my mind. Oh crap, I have internalised her as well. Sarah's arms slide around me. Her hand dips down to my wilted erection.
"I am sorry!" I say.
"Of course you are, but thank god you didn't let that man inside your bum." she says. "That is my place to be and nobody else's."
"Do you want to be inside me now?" I say. I roll over and present my behind lovingly toward her.
"Yes, but I have a hotel room booked in London in two years time. Overlooking the Thames, with the full moon outside the window and rose petals scattered across the bed. We are going to try and hilariously fail to make love to each other's bottoms all night long." she promises.
"Really?" I laugh.
"Yes, remember I am from another time and place ... I know all these events to come like the Ghost of Christmas future!" she promises.
"You are doing Dickens Characters in my head now?"
"Nobody in Dickens I'd really like to 'do' I have to confess." she pokes me. "Jane Austen though ... god I'd do Elizabeth Bennett in a heartbeat!"
Her cheeky hand is on me, stroking and teasing me. She laughs that laugh that turns my insides to jelly. We kiss and our tongues slide across each other like Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett on their wedding night.
"Mr Darcy?" she stops kissing me. I'd forgotten she can read my thoughts. "I kind of hoped we were finished with the beefcake fantasy for this evening?"
"Elizabeth Bennett and ...?" I stall, "I'm not as well read as you!" I whimper.
"Then pick a girl from one of your science fiction things." she offers.
"Elizabeth Bennett and Carrie Anne Moss from the Matrix!" I suggest.
"Oh, in the mood for a little PVC loving, are we?" she laughs. Her hand, my hand, it doesn't matter which, is stroking myself back to hardness.
"I wouldn't mind seeing your perfect bum squeezed into black PVC leggings!" I gasp suggestively.
"Cum for me, my love .. and make the rest of the world disappear." she whispers. In the darkness of a Cornish night there is a small cry of release and a moment of sweetness.
The hours pass and I still can't sleep. I'm no longer troubled by lust, or the heat. The temperature has slowly cooled to the point of comfort. I pull on a nightdress and push my toes into my ratty trainers and decide to take a little walk down to the beach. I've brought my note for Monday and a torch. It seems like a romantic thing to read the note on a moonlit beach with the rough choppy waters of the English Channel surging against the shore.
When I reach the beach the rough waters are like little kittens lapping a saucer of milk. There is no moon to be found at all. I open the note and attempt to read it by the less than full batteries in my torch.
My Leela, I feeling possessive again. I hope you don't mind. I am wondering if you have managed to keep to the schedule of opening one of these each day or did you give in and read all of them on Saturday? It should now be Monday morning, or just after midnight. One or the other. The weekend is over with, which will be the worst bit of the being apart. I've always struggled with Sundays, always make me feel the week is about to steal over me. When I was in school it the boredom of knowing I was off into classes that didn't challenge me in the slightest. I lived only for art and history. (and John Steinbeck) I am full of hopes and dreams at the moment. Wondering what we'd been planning separately to do once we meet again in just a few days time. I am just awash with a million things I want to share with you. Paintings, movies, books, poems, places, people, countries. I'm sure you have a similar list and I wonder how many things we already share in common. As a wise person once said...Thirty seconds of revelation is worth a million years of know-nothings. If you have 30 seconds, here is a quick list of things I want to share with you in the next million years. No particular order, this is just how they tumble out my head. Kissing raindrops off your eyelids... lets get the mushy shit out of the way first! Marmite on toast. Love it or hate it? George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. Cardiff Castle in spring time. Sister Wendy talking about paintings. Flat on your back in a field watching the night sky. My god, it's full of stars. The Rows in Chester. Cold rice pudding straight from the tin. xx
Her handwriting is perfect and readable. Good job, by the time I'm down to wondering about cold rice pudding, my torch has nearly given up the ghost. Thinking about the ghost, my ghost makes me want to write a little more of my fantasy/sci fi epic 'Leela Brown and the Mutant Apocalypse' ... I didn't get an awful lot completed before writing my first love scene. That love scene caused me to give in to my body's need for physical release. That caused me to stop writing. Viscous cycle that may undo my ambitions to be a professional writer/illustrator.
I need to think of a story that won't dissolve into soft porn at regular intervals. Like a ghost myself, drifting along in a long white nightgown, I wander back to the tent. I settle myself down with paper, though it is too dark to actually check what I'm writing.
The orgasm was powerful. A raging torrent of pleasure that twisted space-time. Leela found herself tumbling from it's embrace to lie on the cold hard surface of somewhere else.
The Sanctuary had gone, vanished in the transforming chaos of the Reality Bridge experience. Leela lay on a cold wet pavement. She looked around at the tall grey buildings that stretched upward like judgmental figures about her. She was naked, but for the single crimson ribbon that tied back her long blonde tresses. It was cold. She picked herself up and ran to the oblong recess of a nearby building's doorway. Bare feet slapping on damp concrete making a noise that any predator ghouls would hear. To her distress she also felt the slap of male genitalia jiggling between her thighs. That gift from the Reality Bridge hadn't gone away. She glanced down at it and it stirred into life. She pushed a hand onto it to discourage the reflexive erection, but that encouraged it.
Cold, naked and sporting an unwanted physical response she .. he .. hid in the doorway and took stock. The street was thankfully deserted. No beings or creatures shuffling between the high stone edifices. It was also meticulously neat and tidy. No skittering pieces of rubbish or debris blew past in the stiff wind.
Shivering, one hand pressed over her groin, she looked for anything that might cover her nakedness. She cursed the sterile neatness of this place. In the fiction entertainments she loved so dearly, a naked heroine would find a dumpster filled with old (but surprisingly laundered) clothes. Maybe a washing line hung with a convenient selection of size 5 clothing. Alas, naked she had come into this world, and naked she would remain for a while at the very least. She took stock of her own body. Still the waif-like physique she remembered. Her tiny breasts with nipples now hard from the freezing cold. Her hair was still the riot of blonde curls held back by the crimson ribbon.
Crimson ribbon? That suddenly spoke of all kinds of symbolism to her. Tragic Thomas Hardy heroines with doomed futures marched through her imagination. She might be deflowered and left at the whim of a judgmental social order at any moment.
"No!" she thought. "Get a grip, Leela!" This area of civilization didn't look as shattered and chaotic as the mutant wasteland she had left behind. That was one positive thing to consider. No lights burned in the windows around her. Which might mean everyone had gone to the apocalypse and nobody had come home yet. She could break in somewhere and get clothing, maybe food and shelter.
"And all without worrying about being eaten by the ghouls and mutants." Her ghost spoke to her.
"Thank the Great and Holy Mother of the God Mithras!" Leela swore. "I thought I had lost you when the bridge broke apart."
"I think we are more closely linked than I originally suspected." Sarah stood in the street. Her pale blue insubstantial form a blessed vision for Leela. Leela could see the buildings across from her through the outline of Sarah's body, but she didn't care. Sarah was naked as well. All the changes wrought by the Reality Bridge remained on her body. The tiny male penis clung like a little animal to her. Leela must of looked at it a little too intensely, for her ghostly lover responded physically.
"Oh my god!" Sarah said. Seeming to look down herself for the first time. "I still have it."
"I do as well!" Leela lifted her hand from her crotch to reveal her penis. "What are we going to do about them?"
"That is a very low priority question now, my love." Sarah said. "More important is where we are and getting you food and shelter."
Shivering and covered in goose bumps, Leela was forced to agree. She huddled down into the doorway and wrapped her arms protectively about her to keep as much of her body heat in as possible.
"Do you recognise this place?" she asked.
"I haven't ever been here before," Sarah answered. "Have you checked to see if the door to any of the buildings are open?"
"Oh ... no!" Leela said, feeling dumb. Sarah smiled indulgently at her and gestured to the doorway Leela was hiding in. Leela scrambled to her feet and tugged, then pushed at the big oak door.
"No, it is locked fast." she moaned.
"Try some others, I'll quickly scout around the streets and see if I can spot any signs of life .. friendly or otherwise." Sarah said.
She turned and began to run along the street away from Leela. She got 10 yards and suddenly seemed to slam into an invisible barrier.
"SARAH!" Leela called.
"I'm okay, just a little surprised!" She picked herself off the floor and rubbed a hand across her forehead. She extended her arm in front of her and pushed. Reality pushed back.
"What is it?" Leela had crossed the distance between them as Sarah withdrew her arm. She tried it again and found no barrier.
"I think it is us ..." Sarah said, walking away a few paces with both arms extended in front of her. "Wait where you are .." Leela stood in the street, the cold forgotten for the moment. Sarah got another ten yards away and suddenly stopped as her hands touched the invisible barrier again.
"We can't be too far apart." Leela said, feeling an inner warmth that the two of them were somehow linked in a way that altered space itself.
"It appears we can't," Sarah commented. "This ruins my plan to be able to scout ahead for you."
"I'm sure I'll survive," Leela grinned, shivering. "Why don't we scout together." They picked a direction at random and began to explore. Leela fruitlessly trying all the doors they passed.
"Can you hear something?" Leela stopped and craned an ear forward.
"No." Sarah shook her head. "Nothing."
"Footsteps ..." Leela hissed and looked wildly around for a doorway to hide in. Sarah watched her scurry to relative safety. Leela's trim goose bump pocked behind bouncing delightfully as she dived into a deep door arch. Sarah noted that the cold had caused Leela's penis to also shrink protectively. It now appeared no larger than a chubby thumb poking from her bush of pubic hair.
The footsteps finally registered on Sarah's ghostly ears. A soft pat pat pat of tooled leather on rain slicked sidewalk. A tall figure in a long dark coat swung around the corner. A tall hat perched on his head, scarf wrapped tightly around the lower half of his face. He was straight from a Dickens novel. Possibly something darker, Sarah decided. Maybe the love child of Scrooge and Joseph K from Kafka's The Trial. He strode past and didn't even glance at the shivering form of Leela in the doorway.
"He isn't a mutant ghoul .." observed Leela redundantly, her teeth chattering as she looks at the man's retreating behind.
"No, he also doesn't appear to be a denizen of our far future world of 2999 either." Sarah said, inwardly squirming at a sentence she would never utter in her reality.
The girls continued cautiously around the corner, coming upon a wide main street. A slow procession of darkly dressed figures moved almost silently along it. All dressed hauntingly similar to the first man they had witnessed. Leela looked enviously at their long coats and neat leather shoes. She had reached a point in hypothermia were the body begins to feel disconnected from the cold that is killing it. It becomes like an abstract concept that the brain examines with dispassionate ease. She feels a sudden bizarre urge to talk to these people.
"Please, can you help me?" Leela stepped out into the street and confronted one of the figures. The man barely glanced at her while walking past. She began to feel panic, weaving between the other figures and asking them. She could hear Sarah's cries of warning, but as her body slid into the warmth of possible irreversible shut down, she needed to do something. Running down the street now, arms spread wide in appeal to anyone who would help.
The tall figures ignore her. It was as if she didn't exist for them, even if she stumbled into one momentarily. They just brushed off their coat front, smoothing non-existent wrinkles from the heavy dull woollen fabric. On and on she ran, Sarah being drawn behind her like a ghostly carriage, helplessly sucked in her wake. The tall featureless grey buildings a seeming maze of regularity and despair.
Leela is rapidly running out of energy. The flush of adrenalin fades and she begins to pant in anguish as she runs. She weaves and wobbles as her legs threaten to fail her completely. Suddenly three people in long dark blue suits appear. Instead of steadfastly ignoring her, they close about her. Hands reaching out to lock around her thin wrists. Leela screams wordlessly and collapses. Sarah is alarmed to discover, as Leela falls into unconsciousness, that reality closes around her own vision like a grey cloud.
Leela feels the world slowly return. She is a bed, dressed in a rough nightgown. She still isn't warm, but the bone sapping chill of her pavement flight has gone. She tries to reach a hand down to scratch an itch on her left leg and discovers her hands and feet are secured. Bound to the bed frame with leather straps.
"Hello?" she asks, opening her eyes in darkness.
"Leela?" Sarah's voice seems a long way away.
"What happened?" Leela asks. Her eyes try to burrow into the dark to see where she is. Slowly Sarah's blue ghostlike outline appears, flickering and insubstantial.
"I don't know, you ran hysterically into the crowd .. then you collapsed. I faded out as you lost consciousness." Sarah tries to look into the darkness herself. She can only just make out the restrained form of Leela on the bed. With a ten yard limit to how far she can range from the bed, it is impossible to even reach the edge of the room. It must be a huge place. Leela's voice has an echo to it that hints to a largeness.
"What can you see?" Leela asks.
"I am not sure what I see." A cold voice says from Leela's left.
"Ahhhhhh," Leela screamed in shock. "Sarah, there is someone in here with us!!"
Sunshine pricks my eyelids painfully. I roll over and try to avoid it. I don't know what time I finally went to sleep, but the floor of my tent and sleeping bag are covered with scribbled notes. Much of it almost unreadable. Some of it overlaps other bits. Sentences weaving together in wobbly lines .. almost like Leela's run through the crowd of dark figures. I don't relish the task of going through the words and trying to find what I was writing last night.
"Rise and shine, sleepy miss!" my mum's cheerful voice sounds from outside.
"Please mum, not now!" I mumble. "I didn't get a lot of sleep last night."
"Well, neither did anyone. Too hot and sticky, but today looks beautiful." she says. "We are all heading up to Padstow for a visit."
"What is at Padstow?" I ask, thinking it had better be the second coming of the messiah. Any old Messiah will do, but they ought to be able to perform miracles and be willing to lay hands on the sleep deprived. A little divine transformation into a girl would be great. I begin to wander into a pleasant fantasy were a nice church meets to perform miracle gender reassignment on me.
"Wake up!" Mum calls again and I realise I've begun to slip off to sleep while day dreaming.
"Sorry!" I apologize and sit up. "Can't I be let off today's family thing?"
"No, we are all worried about you since Sarah and Claire left." mum says firmly. I know that voice and I know she won't stop worrying about me all day if I don't go along. I am literally preventing my mum and dad from having a nice day if I don't attend. That will make Dad grumpy and moods can go on for days.
"Padstow better be the most amazing place in the Universe!" I grumble. Actually it is a new place for the family. Despite having visited Cornwall repeatedly until we thought we'd seen every little village and cove, Padstow is undiscovered territory. It has raised it's head above the usual holiday day outs by virtue of being on the television in recent years because of cooking show featuring a delightfully entertaining seafood chef and his dog. Mum is an addict.
"I don't know, but it has to be better than lying in your tent all day like a doomed gothic heroine!" Mum says, tapping the top of the tent to prevent me from falling asleep again.
"I like being a doomed gothic heroine!" I complain.
"Which is precisely why we shouldn't let you indulge yourself."
"Ugggg!" Is the extent of the wit I can muster in response to that.
"Come on, you face forward or you face the possibility of shock and damage!" mum says.
"5 more minutes!" I plead, gathering the scattered sheets of my early morning writing marathon.
"I have sorted a pretty summer dress from your bag of clothes." mum says. "You will look so sweet if you wear it with the cute white shoes Elaine left you!"
"Vampire boots!" I grumble demandingly.
"Such a beautiful look." mum says as she walks back to the caravan.
The car is stuffy and no matter how far you crank the windows down it doesn't get rid of the smell of Ryan's trainers. He walked through something nasty on the beach and has been carrying it around with him in small traces ever since. You don't really notice it unless you are in an enclosed space, then it says 'Warning, Dead Body Buried Nearby' to your subconscious. Eventually sniffer dogs will discover his feet and crime scene tape will be strung around him. I breathe through my mouth a lot and try to make sense of my previous evening's scribbling.
Mutants, post apocalypse worlds, weird Kafka type cities with sinister Dickensian figures. Ghostly shapes of unobtainable transgender love objects. I am mixing my issues of missing Sarah with some dark hospital type beds and unhappy bondage. I had started with such a light hearted zombie filled nuclear wasteland, spiced with some affectionate oral sex. Why has it suddenly become so dark and scary?
I pull a pen from my pocket and began to write a bit more. It was difficult in the moving car, but the results were more readable than last night's efforts.
Leela dare not breathe. The voice did not speak again, but instead a match flared and an old fashioned oil lamp was lit. Sat in a large leather chair is a figure in a long white coat. A surgical mask across his mouth and nose. Eyes hidden behind mirrored lens of glasses. The hands were squeezed into tan vinyl gloves. Long fingered and delicate, but sinister in their careful movements.
The oil lamp rested on a large oak side table. Leela could see a number of surgical instruments arranged across it. Sarah crossed to the table and examined them. She didn't say anything back to Leela.
"What is it?" Leela demanded. The figure reached for a pair of stainless steel forceps and stood up. "Stop!" Leela said, terror making her voice small and trembling. The figure walked across to the bed and took hold of the thin sheet covering Leela's strapped down body.
"You will answer my questions or ways will be found to draw the truth from you surgically." the thin voice of the man said.
"What do you want to know?" Leela asked in a whisper.
"Get away from her, you creepy bastard!" Sarah said, pushing insubstantial hands into the figure. It was hopeless, like sea mist trying to stop the passage of an ocean liner.
Leela looked down at the rough cotton nightshirt she had been dressed in. The figure lifted the hem of it and drew it up until he had raised it to waist height. Leela squirmed, trying to vainly hide her genital region.
"Appearance of penis and scrotum .." the forceps dipped down. Leela opened her mouth to scream as the ice cold intrusion touched her. Nothing came from her throat.
"Please don't do this!" Sarah begged.
"These appear natural, but so do the breasts." the Figure poked absently at the modest roundness of Leela's chest. Strapped down flat on her back, gravity pulled the shape of her breasts down. They barely registered through the thickness of the nightgown.
"I just wanted to get some clothes to stop from freezing to death ... why are you doing this to me?" Leela found her voice.
"Are you an outland mutant .. some freakish mix of male and female?" The figure pulled a clipboard from a belt hook and dropped the now sullied forceps into a metal bin beside the bed.
"I am a girl ..." Leela struggled against the restraints. "Not a mutant!"
"No female has parts of a boy!"
"Where is this place?"
"That is none of your concern." The figure said, taking a pen from a pocket of his lab coat. "Now I have a few questions. Listen carefully, you will be fed and given water depending on how satisfied I am with your answers."
"I understand," Leela said with a whisper.
"Question One: Was your public nakedness and assault on various people in the main street an attempt to destabilise our society?"
"This is insane!" Sarah cursed impotently.
I was forced to agree. I finished the first question as the car rounded the step left hand bend into Padstow. I intended to lighten the mood of the weird street scene and bed bondage, but instead it had grown darker and more intense. I wondered where all this stuff was arising from. Sinister medical people examining my penis. Was I worried about the whole process I was about to enter into. The appointments with doctors, counselors and the gender dysmorphia team. Surely I didn't think anyone was going to take forceps to my private places?
Dad parked the car in a long sea front car park. We started a walk toward the town. On our right was the huge expanse of the sea/Bristol Channel and to our left the beginnings of Padstow proper. We walked past the restaurant of the famous TV chef. Mum couldn't resist popping across the road to check out the menu. The road twisted around to the right and we entered the harbour area of the town. Shops and cafes were clustered along this section. Ryan commenced moaning about hating seafood every time Mum and Dad discovered an interesting place to eat. I wondered if he was this shitty when I wasn't around.
"How about we go around the shops a little and then find somewhere nice for lunch?" Mum tried to delay the crabby confrontation. I don't really pay attention until Mum pokes me in the arm.
"Oh!" I say. A small back street clothes shop has a window filled with stunning ethic and Goth fashions.
"Well, Dracula girl, shall we check it out while the boys look for somewhere to eat?" Mum virtually drags me inside the shop. Ryan and Dad are left outside. We see them looking hopelessly in through the front window, but Mum pointedly ignores them. I never processed it before, but mum might well have felt jealous that some other women got to take her daughter clothes shopping before she did. I adored having Elaine, Clare and Sarah fuss over me, but really I was my mum's daughter and she had now a very different child than the unhappy boy she used to drag around Shrewsbury's Pride Hill Shopping Centre. I was never interested in new clothes, but that was because I didn't want boring boy items. Mum got a very different child to take clothes shopping today.
We went through the racks of clothes like a hurricane tearing the shop to pieces. The little changing room soon filled up with our choices. Mum even found herself some items, more probably suited to someone 20 years younger than herself, but she was caught up in the enthusiasm. The shop assistant was fantastic. It was like she sensed this was a first time/special occasion shop. She treated my mum like she was another of the girls, not a visitor from the previous generation.
"You have perfect bone structure!" she declared. I tried not to blush. From never regarding myself as attractive, I was now having to re-evaluate how to look at myself.
"I've a big nose," I said, "And a big mouth." I complained.
"You have a very sensual mouth and a smile drives boys crazy, I will bet!" the shop assistant said.
"She doesn't like boys." My mother accidentally over-shared slightly. The shop assistant grinned at her.
"Girls then, that is so cool." the assistant said.
"Oh," my mum realised what she had given away. She protectively clamped a hand over her own mouth.
"It is okay mum." I laughed.
"Someone special?" the shop assistant asked. She now wore a conspiratorial smile on her face.
"Yes," I admitted, grinning that same smile at her. "I'm not going to see her until this Saturday though, damn holidays."
"Awwwww, how long since you've seen her?"
"Two days." I said, feeling myself beginning to tear up slightly.
"You both got it this bad?" she asked. I nodded my head and felt the movement shake a tear loose from my eye. It slithered down over my cheek.
"Reunion outfit, what kind of things does your girlfriend like?" the assistant asked, giving me a side long wink.
"She is a bit of a Goth ... and likes," I began to dredge my mind desperately. " ...well, schoolgirl type things." I confessed.
"That is so easy to put together as a look!" she said. Off she vanished into the racks of clothes. There was a humming as she lost herself in thought.
Minutes later I am faced with the elements of the outfit I am going to be wearing as I run across Shrewsbury Station's middle platform to the cafe. The skirt is short, dangerously, sexily short. Pleated and in a dark purple and black fabric. The blouse is a similar colour, black and purple with panels of dark sensual lace across the shoulders and down the sleeves. It cinches in just under the breasts and hugs downward to the waist. There are fishnet tights. Black socks that are sloppy like leg warmers, but with a heel and toe.
I try the outfit on, except the tights.
"On the day, don't wear your bra, you can see the straps through the lace and it spoils the effect a little."
"Okay."
"And you need to do your hair differently." she said. "You can't pull off a Goth schoolgirl with those Fay Wray golden curls."
"What should I do?"
"Can you look after the cash register for me?" the assistant asks my mum. She agrees, there hasn't been another customer since we arrived. "Any problems just yell me, I will be just in the back."
I get taken through to a cramped employees room. There is a mirror, kettle and couple of chairs. She plunks me down in one of the chairs and grabs her bag. Seconds later she is brushing my hair through and doing things.
"You don't want to do pigtails, pigtails are terrible, cliche and tarty on anyone over 7 years old." she says.
"I've never really considered it before, but you are right." I say. She braids some of my hair into long loose tails. She has some thin black ribbons, they haven't come from her bag so I assume she grabbed them from the shop. They get tied into some of the braids. On either side of my head are a few braids now. She gathers them into rough, almost out of control bunches and ties them off. The effect isn't two pigtails, but a kind of punky version. It looks sexy, but not tarty.
"Got any Make up!" she roots in her bag.
"No," I reply.
"Tip your head back."
I comply, closing my eyes as she begins to apply an eye shadow.
"Thank you!" I helplessly say as she works on me.
"Oh, hunny!" she says.
"What?" I ask.
"You've not been a girl very long have you?" she asks. I feel suddenly a bit sick. "Don't worry, your secret is safe with me." she hugs me across the shoulders.
"Just about a week." I say in a very small voice.
"You are a gorgeous girl," she says. "I honestly would never have guessed."
"What gave me away?" I ask.
"Beautiful 17 year old girl ..." I don't correct her guess. "First ever shopping trip?"
"Second" I confess.
"No make up, no teenage girl has no make up. Or goes out shopping without some on."
"Oooops!" I say. "I haven't had chance to get to know make up yet."
"It is okay, you are nearly totally flawless, even without it."
"Thank you."
"Don't ever overdo lipstick. You have a beautiful mouth, but it will appear a bit big if you put too much lipstick or too dark a colour."
"Check," I say.
"Eyes are your best feature. You can really overdo the eye shadow on special occasions, give yourself that Goth look. Avoid black lipstick though."
"Thank you." I say. "Anything else that gives me away." She leans back and looks at me very hard... I can see the gears rolling around in her head.
"Get your ears pierced. No self respecting teenage girl has unpierced ears."
"Does it hurt?" I ask.
"For about 20 seconds, and then you can wear beautiful little hoops."
We go back into the shop and see Mum has had precisely zero customers. She sees me and gasps. I look beautiful. I catch a glimpse of myself in the long mirror.
"Better than mortal man deserves!" the shop assistant announces.
While I float around the shop in a state of beauty, Mum is chatting to the shop assistant. I don't really take it in. I'm smitten with my look. I hear the til go beep and bags being packed. I don't change back into my tragic summer dress. At some point I notice both mum and the shop assistant watching me with little smiles on their faces.
"I'm closing early today .. my work here is done!" the shop assistant says. We all laugh and thank her. She gives me a hug as we head to the door.
Outside Ryan and Dad are slumped against a wall. Ryan looks covered in the remains of an ice cream. I suspect bribery has been used to prevent a boredom fueled meltdown.
"You aren't going outside in that skirt, young lady!" My dad says sternly.
"DAD!" I protest, but he starts to laugh.
"I never thought I would get to say that!" he says in between laughing at his own joke.
It isn't until the evening when I unpack the bags from the shop I discover the additional bag within the bag. It contains a note saying 'Keep the faith, you are beautiful. Some little things to get you on your way' ... She obviously took note of my necklace as she has put a pair of tiny Ankh earrings in for me, I need my ears pierced and probably tomorrow I decide. A handful of make up items and a pack of thin black and purple ribbons.
I think this act of kindness is going to make me cry, but instead I sit for the longest time feeling an utter joy at the shop assistant... I hope, Shop owner. Such simple, but beautiful gestures are priceless and timeless. I know I will never forget that woman, though she never told me her name.