Scraps

Fragment 1 – Beginnings, False Starts

When Fresia was a child she never looked in the mirror. Children are endlessly fascinated by themselves, their bodies; every excretion, every lump, every surface of skin is examined, prodded, touched, with scientific scrutiny.

Not Fresia. Fresia saw her reflection when she was five, saw how fundamentally wrong she was, and didn’t look again for ten years.

She couldn’t define it at the time, of course. She didn’t know the words yet. But she recognized the feeling in her stomach. Now she would call it ‘revulsion’. Back then it was just the feeling she got when her mother made her eat green beans. Or how she felt the time she found a dead cat, roiling with maggots, the flesh of its tiny pink nose half-gone.

Hideous. Nasty. Sick. Ugly. Horrid.

Over the years, Fresia learned a lot of words. She has no shortage of words to describe herself.

The word she would choose now is, simply, ‘finally’.

Fragment 2 – A Conversation, A Gambit

Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?

Not you, my child. Dear god, the gall!

What’s wrong with me mirror, am I so awful to see?

My child, strange creature, you are a monster to me.

Mother mirror, I’m lost, I don’t know who I am.

Daughter, you’re nothing but reflection; you’re for the slaughter, little lamb.

Fragment 3 – Chrysalis

The headaches are the worst part. When she started taking the pills she knew there would be side effects; she signed a thick sheaf of papers to prove she was prepared. It’s change she was after, for sure, and she knew there would be consequences. She was removing parts of herself, adding new parts, sucking up hormones like a thick grey milkshake, stripping herself down to essentials and re-building from scratch.

Still, though, she wasn’t prepared for the headaches. Everything else makes sense, and she relishes it, the pain of it. But her head has always been right. What’s inside her head has never been the problem.

Fragment 4 –parts and flaws, An alphabetical, but by no means comprehensive, list of

ass, flat and inconsequential; back, acne’d and hairy; clitoris, unresponsive; dick, shriveled, turtle-like, a vile insect; feet, flat, peeling, like spatulas slapping against the ground; glands, swollen, leaking, milk-heavy, plump and female; heart, thundering and smacking against ribs; intestines, knotted and sinuous as snakes; joints, crackling like popcorn; knees, too big, too raw; larynx, shaved painfully, and shaped ironically like a vagina; mandible, weak; pituitary gland, put in backwards and upside down; testicles, deformities

Fragment 5 – How Fresia and Lilith Met

This happened a few years ago. I was on a boy kick at the time, especially the kind that I could actually kick, if you know what I mean. I was real angry back then, so my tastes ran toward the S&M boys, the kind wearing dog collars, with scars on their backs and slave names tattooed on their necks. Personally, it’s not my thing – but if you like being led around like an animal, that’s cool, I’ll oblige. Especially when I’m in a bad fucking mood.

As long as everything is consensual, you understand. I’m not interested in rape. I’m only interested in games. And I’ll take power wherever I can get it.

Anyway, I was into pretty little boys at the time, and it takes a lot to make me want a woman. I don’t mind pussy, but it’s got to be special – I’ll use and abuse a slave, but I will only let a true goddess really fuck me. I’ve found that true goddesses are in short supply, at least in this world.

I led my boy – some whimpering slave whose name (slave or otherwise) I have forgotten – into a club called The Red Door, which at the time was shiny and new. Now it’s a bloody splintered mess. The Red Door, in-fuckin-deed. ‘Abandon all hope’, and all that.

Anyway. That’s a story for another fucking time.

I let his lead go slack so the boy could get me a drink, and I took stock of the place. The usual scene kids: trans-humans like me (a pretty good assortment, actually; I saw cats and jackals and lambs, even a dragon or two), a few medical marvels that the City doctors must have let out of their cages for the evening, stunned normals slumming it, Gothic Ghosts flitting from table to table, stealing cigarettes and sips of drinks: the usual.

Ah, but then, there she was.

And she was.

Even though things are long over with us, I still get wet when I think about it, that first look. She stood a head above everyone else, and her own magnificent head was set at a weird angle, looking down at all the kids around her. Her hair was a crazy neon shade of pink back then, and she was wearing a silky dress that clung to her and showed off every curve and dip and carefully plotted map of skin. Her breasts were so full they hung like peaches on a branch.

In other words, totally fuckable. I mean, this girl would make a poet out of anyone, even me. Especially me.

And I forgot to mention the horns. See, this girl was a trans like me, and she had a set of huge curly horns growing out each side of her head. She had colored them blue and sprinkled them with glitter. She fucking shone. She shone like a goddamn goddess that night. The boy came back with my drink, but I shoved him off. When I see something I want I always get it.

Of course I ditched the Worm and went home with her. Slave boys are a dime a fucking dozen around here; goddesses not so much.

I have no interest in giving you the details of our first night together. Suffice it to fucking say, I found out what it’s like to fuck a goddess, and I found out the meaning of the horns, and I found out that the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

And that’s all I will say about that.

Fragment 6 – The Dreaming

She is sitting at her work table and sewing a dress. The pattern is laid out before her; she smooths the soft silk flat, and admires the rainbow pools of light that shimmer in it. Her mind wanders, and she’s on a high hill now, sitting under a tree with purple leaves. Fat wondrous fruit drip down its branches. She pulls a downy pink fruit off the tree, and bites into it. The juice drips down her arm, and she’s back at her work table, sewing a dress. The pattern is laid out before her; she smooths the soft skin of the dress flat, and admires the way the blood bubbles out from beneath it. She threads her needle with a slippery blue vein and stitches arm to torso, leg to hip, elbow to forearm. A drop of blood trickles down her arm, and she licks up the juice. It may be the sweetest fruit she’s ever tasted. She knots a vein tight, and smooths out her new dress. It’s coming along nicely.

Fragment 7 – This is the Picture

Picture this. Listen to this:

A white room. A white light. The white sheets. Faces swathed in white. Eyes peering brightly out.

beep beep beep

Sharp things, all in a silver row. Sharp angles, all the world at a tilt. Sharp eyes, boring down.

beep beep beep

There are dresses that will never fit. There is fabric that must be trimmed. There are scraps that must be snipped.

beep beep beep

Count down from ten. The needle goes in. The needle dips and skims.

beep beep beep

Wake up. Now, it’s finally time to wake up.