-
ADULT CONTENT
This article contains adult content that may not be suitable for all readers.
Sexual References: Features sexual themes or language, without the depiction of sexual acts.
Sexually Explicit: Description of sexual acts.
Sexual Assault: Features non-consensual sexual acts.
Gore: Depiction of blood, gore or mutilation of body parts.
Child Abuse: Features severe mistreatment of children.
Self-Harm: Description of self-harm.
Suicide: Description of suicide.
Torture: Description of torture.
Hate Speech: Depiction of transphobic slurs.If you are age 18 or above and wish to read such content, then you may click Continue to view said content.
I strike out three times before I see the tranny across the bar.
Tall, redhead, wearing cute glasses with frames as round as the curves filling her tight jeans. She was chatting up some guy with thin wrists sipping a rum and coke and her laughter sounded like bells. Stunning.
But you can tell. You can always tell. The torso is a bit too long, her hips too narrow, her jaw too angular. She still has a dusting of fine hair down her arms, too broke for laser. The guy is just being polite. They're not an item, and never will be. He looks straight.
When she leaves to go to the bathroom, I bribe the guy a hundred bucks to settle his tab, and take his barstool. When she comes back, she doesn't seem surprised to see him gone.
"Sorry, am I sitting in a friend's seat?" I open up conversation lightly, with a vague note of a tease. Make it seem like I didn't sit here with any perverse intent.
She takes it in stride. "Nah, just some perv who wanted to get in my pants."
I made a sympathetic noise in my throat, as if I'm half-invested. I'll have to the low-and-slow approach to bag her. It'll be a long night. "I hear that. Sorry you have to deal with those assholes."
She hums. "Self-selection. Most of the men I'm not interested in have a habit of… filtering themselves out. Perks of bigotry, I suppose."
I chuckle at that. "Perks of bigotry, huh? That's a new one for me."
She pauses, and tilts her head. The way her auburn curls cascade down her shoulder and over her tits… man. You'd almost think they were real. "You meet a lot of trans girlies?"
I try not to look at her for too long, keep my eyes moving, maintain the appearances of partial engagement. "A few, here and there. More in the city than I expected, before I moved here."
That gets a laugh out of her, full-throated and husky. "It's Minneapolis, baby. Like saying you'd didn't think Chicago would be windy, or for New York to have traffic."
Shrug. Start looking at her more closely. Smile gently. She has a few of those occult tattoos New Age hippies adore so much. Crosses topped with loops and celtic knots and satanic pentagrams. Nails on her first two fingers are cropped short, like the lesbians in porn. She must be bisexual. Nice. "You been here long, then?"
"Born and raised, darling."
"You must like it here, putting up with all the bullshit recently. Surprised most of you don't just move."
Her lips quirk. She has dimples. "Living here has its perks. My friends take care of me, and I take care of them."
I nurse my drink, nodding along. "You girls have to stick together. I respect that."
I let the noise of the jukebox and human interaction swell over for a second, glossing over our conversation like a scab. Can't pick at it and scare her off, have to let the talking ebb and flow naturally. I count out ten mississippis, drain my drink, set it down, and stick my hand out. "I'm Joshua. It's a pleasure to meet you."
The girl looks at my hand. For a brief moment, you'd think her filler-puffed lip pulled into a small sneer, before she takes my hand and gently shakes it. "Hepzibah. My friends call me Zi."
Time for a soft innuendo. "'Hepzibah,' huh? Hell of a mouthful."
Zi takes the bait. "In more ways than one, baby."
Swish.
We both laugh at that. I get more outwardly confident, more forward. Ramp the pressure up. "Hey, do you want me to buy you a drink? No strings attached, just to make up for the other guy. Wash that bad taste out of your mouth."
She purses her lip, considering for a moment. Her mouth widens into a Cheshire grin of perfect pearly whites. "I think I would like that very much."
We order drinks, sidle over from the bar to a booth, and slide onto the cushions. Zi ordered a shirley temple, and I mirrored with the same. Make it seem like our interests are parallel. Have to seem trustworthy.
Sitting down across from each other, I have a fuller view of her assets. Zi’s nose is pert and petite, must have gotten surgery for that. Her breasts are close to spilling out of her top, must have gotten surgery for that, too. The amount of skin showing might be considered unadvisable by more prudish men, but not me. I enjoy the view. She clearly wants her looks to be appreciated. Otherwise she wouldn’t have spent the cash.
I let Zi talk first. Make her feel like she is in control of the conversation. “So, where were you before you moved to the Twin Cities?”
“Here and there, Boston, Dallas, Chicago. Never in one place for long. I have been bouncing between consultancies, nothing really sticks with me.” I gesture with my straw, a purposeful affectation. Exaggerated motion makes you seem excitable, less guarded and more open. Trustworthy. I like being trustworthy. “I want to put down roots though. Would be nice to be someplace stable.”
“Put roots down.”
“Exactly.”
She hasn’t touched her drink. That doesn’t bode well. I stick my straw back in the drink and take a sip. Maybe it will kickstart things for her. “What do you do, then?”
“Nothing impressive on my end. I do retail at a local antique store. An office job sounds really nice.” She seems to have got the hint, and is poking at her own glass. Problem solved.
“Mm, I don’t know, handling antiques sounds fun. I know its probably hard dealing with the smell of must, but I guarantee I know some antiques at my work that would give them a run for their money.” She snorts at that. Some tension goes out of her shoulders, and she seems more relaxed from the jokes. The chitchat is working.
We continue the small talk in earnest, talking about shitty jobs, shitty weather, shitty sports, and shitty cars, the conversation greater than the sum of its shitty parts. We slowly developed a rapport over the course of an hour, and I was actually enjoying myself for once. Strange. Though I guess if I was to hit a home run with guy talk, it would be with a tranny.
There are a few stumbling blocks, of course. Zi brings up politics, and I have to deflect with the “I’m apolitical” chestnut Took a second to veer back to a better subject. Same thing happened with an aborted venture into religion that I walked back into the topic of natural parks. But other than those potholes, it seems like smooth sailing.
We are finishing up the loose end of a tangent to a tangent when her gaze slides off of me to focus somewhere behind my left ear. “Oh, shit I think I saw a friend come in. You mind if I swoop by and say hi? I promise to come back.”
I smile, keeping my own gaze guileless. “Not a problem. Take all the time you need.”
“Excellent.”
I hold my position and wait as she scooches off the bench and disappears into the crowd behind me, talking excitedly to another one of her girls, painted and pierced like a quintessential 80s goth. I wait another five mississippis, and nonchalantly look around, popping the cricks out of my neck, checking to see if anyone is focused in my direction, especially Zi and her friend.
Seeing none were looking, I stretch, discreetly palming the small pill snuffbox up my sleeve. I pop a colorless tablet and and pinch it between my fingers, grinding it into her drink. I sit back and palm the snuffbox up my sleeve again. So close, now. God knows it's not that much fun, not hearing the reluctant squeaks and groans of a girl underneath you, but something about the pallid, limp flesh yielding without resistance more than makes up for it. Plus, she seems like the feisty type who would want me to go down on her.
I’m fiddling with the straw in my drink when she comes back, lightly tracing a hand down my arm as she walks around the table and slides back into the booth. “Sorry it took so long.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not that clingy.”
I’m about to restart our conversation when a horrific crashing of glass sounds behind the booth, startling us both. I turn to look, and there was Zi’s goth friend, kneeling next to a waiter and a floor full of shattered glass, blushing and apologizing. “Oh, huh.”
“God. Yeah, Emmy can be, uh, a bit of a klutz, lol.”
I turn back to her and arch a brow. “’lol?’ Really? Don’t tell me you’re chronically online. We were just starting to have fun.”
She takes a big sip from her straw, thick lips wrapped around the plastic shaft, sucking. Her drink was more than half done, now. Must have been drinking when I wasn’t looking. “So what if I am?”
I make a show of taking a gulp of my drink, she laughs, and we’re back into the groove of it. She’s drinking more, now. Shouldn’t be long for the rohypnol.
“So what’s with the tattoos? The significance of them all?”
Her smile curls, pointed canine digging into lip-stained flesh. “Eyeing something in particular?”
I pick one at random. “The crescent on your bicep. How about that?”
She giggles and takes another sip. She was down to dregs and chipped ice. “Oh, that one. It’s a New Age thing, Lilith’s Glyph, a crescent and a cross.”
I pop my jaw. “Lilith? That’s the, uh…” finger snap. “Adam’s first wife, right?”
“Got it in one.” She stirs the ice in her glass with the straw, tongue in cheek. I wonder if she got hers split. Saw a tgirl on X that did that. Blowjobs must be phenomenal. “Stereotypical, sure, but I like her vibes. Strong, independent, striking out on her own before Adam messed everything up. Sexy as hell and not afraid protect her own.”
I nod before she finishes talking. “Yeah, a female empowerment thing, right, I figured.”
She chuckles, her voice dropping a register as the alcohol makes her lose focus. Guess she can’t keep up the charade all the time. “Got it in one yet again. Do I need to give you a prize?”
I smirk, squeezing her hand in mine. “I can think of something.”
She laughs. I finish the rest of my drink.
The conversation blurs by, the words smudgy and indistinct like ink on waterlogged paper. I’m looser now, more relaxed, more energetic, but I’m getting increasingly disengaged from my movements. They’re too slow. My hands moving through air at the speed of molasses. “Huh.”
Zi’s cute lips purse with concern. “You alright, Josh?”
“Yeah, I just… feel a bit weird, is all.”
“Oh, gosh. Do you need to go home? So soon?”
The overhead lights are too bright in the dim bar. I shake my head to clear my cobweb thoughts. Sticky. Sticky fingers and a sticky brain. “No, I… I needed to do something, first.”
“What was it?”
Indecent images, blurry and fogged. Zi sounds like she’s at the end of a long tunnel. “I, ah… shit. I’m wasted.”
“Okay, yeah, Josh, you’re done. Let’s get you home, ‘kay? I’ll pay the tab.”
“W-wait, hold on, Zi…” Trying to figure out why this feels wrong. Something didn’t go to plan. Can’t remember what.
She disappears and reappears, flickering candleflame. “Okay, let’s get you home. C’mon, big boy, up…”
Shuffling out the door, and into a car very much not my own, the sharp clinking of keys pierces the dull fog. Seeing those rusty curls bouncing as she gets in the driver’s seat and turns the key, I have a startling moment of clarity.
"Oh you bitch, you swapped the fucking-" Words slur and stumble and drop as my tenuous grip on reality loosens. The last thing I hear is Zi’s bell-like giggle, carrying a tint of twisted malice as my grasp slips entirely, and I drown under the black tar of unconsciousness.
Hard concrete, damp, slick. Sweet stink of rot and fungus. Blurred cones of warm light. Movement.
Can’t reach pocket, fingers cold. Some distant part of me tenses my diaphragm, but only a whimper worms its way through dry oesophagus and numb lips. A soft hand comes down with a hard slap, filling my world with stars.
Darkness, again. I can hardly sleep with all the whispers.
Warmth, now. Rough fingers rubbing teeth, hair, peeling the skin from my glans. The touch feels wet. Sticky. Nose burns with rosemary and sage and other spices. Mint?
There are more figures around me, more whispers and giggles, amorphous and thick in my ears. Women. Or they sound like women. Look like women. Gelatinous rolls and doughy breasts and pierced everything. Curls and cocks and dripping cum. Candleflame roils off porcelain skin, too much exposed to hint at the presence of clothing. I don’t know if I’m wearing anything, either. My heads throb.
I think there’s singing.
It’s dark again, but I smell the scent of gasoline before I go under.
They’re going to burn me.
I don’t know where I am. I don’t know when I am. I do know what I am.
Stupid. I went for the wrong girl.
Blinking cruft out of my eyes, I look around, straining in the darkness. I heard shifting, I hear whispering. I hear singing. The volume grows louder and louder until I’m deafened by the bass.
Strange symbols are daubed on my flesh in fluorescent paint and darker, scarlet hues. Locks of my hair are missing. My hands are bound in nylon cord.
I’m surrounded by human bone.
Three, four ribcages surround me, streaked pink with blood stains, the gristle at the joints torn to spread them open like ivory flower petals, like grasping hands. Geometric shapes etched in blood entangle the bones on the floor, with me at their center. The ribcages breathe in time with me. I try to calm down. The heads of the ribcages’ owners weren’t far away. I recognize them from the bar. I don’t like how their eyes still blink.
I try to gain my bearings, but its hard with the singing. Screaming, laughing. Three sets of musicians play at once, guitars and drums and synths discordant and thumping and screeching. And the spectators dance.
Smeared with paint, blood, saliva, piss, the spectators dance like the possessed, jostling and twirling and shaking. All trans, all nude. Six have sex in the corner, drooling and biting and cooing, snorting drugs off of each others’ breasts. One rears back with powder caked around her nose — Emmy, I thought — and the dancing, trickster blacklights and candles give her the head of an angry bull, panting and bellowing.
Bedlam.
Above it all, Hepzibah dances, writhes, suspended on nothing, floating on air near the basement ceiling. She sees me looking, impossibly, and casts a beaming grin. She mouths something, and impossibly I hear it.
“Got you your prize.”
My head throbs out of time with the clashing sets. Ribcages spasm. Women dance. And I can do nothing but scream.
The music accelerates, individual notes cascading into distorted noise as the women dance harder, the burn and churn of the mosh beginning to cycle around me, particles caught in my orbit, the gravitational center for their celebration. More animal heads, dog, sheep, cat, all laughing and braying and howling.
One of their own falls out of the mosh, lagging behind, unable to keep up. Nude and curled on the floor, hands over her ears. Crying, vomiting, rocking. I’m surprised to see several others peel away to go to her, touching her, kissing her, holding her tightly. A girl with the head of a snarling lizard rubs her back and gives her water. They whisper soft, malformed, unheard words to her, and help her to her feet, help her to join the dance once more. I hate them for it. Why do that in front of me, to mock me, pretending to care for some girl to spite me as I lay worse off broken and bleeding?
I wish I could cut her for it.
Hepzibah descends until she hovers over me, nose to nose, her eyes blurring into a cyclopic gaze. “Do you have something you want, Joshua?”
My voice is hoarse and cracks when I speak. I sound like a pussy-whipped bitch. “Home. Please, home.”
A look of faux-concern wrinkles her nose and brow. “Aw, Josh, I’m sorry, we can’t do that now.”
I mewl. “Why?”
She sounds smug, eternally fucking smug. “Why this? Why you? Why anything?”
“Everything.”
Hepzibah’s face softens into a smile that almost feels sympathetic. “I told you, Joshua. We want to protect our own. We will protect our own.” She kisses my forehead, her lips coming away stained with yellow paint and scarlet blood. “They’re my family, and they won’t be safe with men like you around. They will be safe.”
I snap, as much as I can in such a powerless state. “You fucking bitch, you fucking he-she, let me go or I will gut you, I will fucking kill you.”
The dam breaks, an unseen wind howls, the ribcages clench around me, and a white-hot pain sears my chest. My back arches and I scream as bones shift inside me, breaking from their holdfasts to go where they don’t belong. A lower rib snaps and crawls past my spleen. I can’t breathe.
Hepzibah cups my head again, cooing and massaging the back of my bleeding head. I have no words, I barely notice her presence. I’m dying. I’m not dying. I’m changing. What’s happening to me?
She murmurs, though she couldn’t possibly know what I thought. “You’re becoming.”
The ribcages crawl towards me, spider-like on broken bone and cartilage. They snap, splinter, and split, embedding themselves inside me, wriggling up my limbs, following arteries to the source.
My organs puncture and pulp, the swirling of the dancers external matched by bone internal, spinning and melting and becoming. I don’t know how I am alive. I wish I were dead. It tugs at my skin. It wants out.
I try to say something, anything, but I can’t even scream. My lungs were shredded a billion years ago. The thing inside me grows and molts and expands , incorporating my own flesh and blood, stealing myself for itself. My chest is concave without ribs, but the flesh tents around the Thing, hinting at its form. A hand caresses my spine from the inside. The witches shriek with joy.
Synth peaks.
Skin splits.
Lights flash and flames spit.
It grows. It rights. It stands. In me. Over me. Alabaster talons clawing at empty skin as dead shed. Owl eyes staring into my own bloodshot and crying. A crescent glyph shines from her forehead, bright as the noonday sun.
The crowd bellows, their voices united at last with the instruments and animals, growing to encompass everything, wrap my mind in a quilt of song.
“Lilith! Lilith! Lilith!”
The last thing I hear is the sound of their joyous, wondrous laughter. The last thing I see is Lilith embracing Hepzibah as her daughter, kissing her on the lips and cheek. The last thing I feel is
nothing. Just empty skin and ransacked soul. Discarded and hollow.
Left behind, as Lilith joins her children in celebrating their Black Sabbath.