4. The First Transformation #3
I jerked my hand back in shock, my heart pounding in my chest. Then I tried again, slower, to make sure it wasn’t a hallucination.
The skin was bare, every contour exposed to the cold air, the water droplets rolling over the smooth expanse like a lover's caress. The only sensation was the slick of cold water, the prickle of hairless flesh, the new and terrifying sensitivity of every inch. It was as if I’d been wiped clean, a slate erased by hands that knew exactly how I was supposed to feel, how I was supposed to respond.
Panic set in, then something darker, something hotter.
I pressed my hand to my pubis, not daring to look, and confirmed what I already knew: I had been shorn smooth, not a single stray left behind.
The skin was tender, flushed from the cold, but not irritated.
The job had been done perfectly, almost lovingly, as if my body had been prepared for a lover's touch.
I let out a sound somewhere between a moan and a sob, the vibrations shuddering through my chest, echoing through my very core.
I squeezed my thighs together, the new friction startling in its sharpness.
My clit, freed from its usual curtain, was swollen and hypersensitive, every drop of cold water that touched it making my knees threaten to buckle, sending jolts of pleasure and panic coursing through me.
I slid my hand between my legs, just to prove to myself that this was real.
My fingers slipped easily, the skin fever-hot under the blast of icy water.
The sensation was so intense, so alien, that I almost forgot to breathe.
The horror was instant, but it was tangled up with something else: a heat that burned through the panic, spreading outward from my core, like a molten river carving through ice.
I hated it. I wanted to turn it off, to erase the evidence of what had been done to me while I slept.
But I couldn’t stop touching. My fingers traced the unfamiliar skin, every pass sending a new jolt of electricity to my brain, a new wave of heat through my body.
I stroked myself in disbelief, feeling the heat build, the nerves screaming for more, for release, for something I couldn’t name.
I shut the water off with a slap and stood there, dripping and cold, staring at my own hands as if they might suddenly become someone else’s.
My thighs trembled, the muscles clenching and unclenching, echoing the pulse deep within me.
I wiped the condensation off the mirror and looked.
The body in the glass was mine, but not mine: nipples peaked and hard, breasts rising and falling with every panicked breath, a narrow waist that flared into wide, beckoning hips, legs long and shivering.
And between them, the clean, vulnerable pink of a woman who had been remade for someone else’s pleasure, a secret, erotic landscape, exposed and waiting.
I reached up and touched my face, certain that I’d find the lipstick there again.
There was none, but my lips looked fuller, stained from the blood rush of the shower.
My eyes were wide, pupils blown, almost black in the bathroom’s meager light.
I stared at myself for a long time, trying to remember who I was supposed to be.
When I stepped out of the tub, the cold hit me anew.
I wrapped myself in a towel, but it didn’t help.
I was numb everywhere but where it counted most. I sat on the edge of the tub and pressed my knees together, rocking back and forth, the towel bunched in my lap.
The urge to touch, to keep exploring, was overwhelming.
But I was scared of what might happen if I let go.
I went back to the kitchen, still naked and dripping, the towel dragging behind me like a shroud.
I found the matchbook on the counter and picked it up with wet fingers.
I thumbed it open, struck a match, and watched the flame bloom and die.
The smell of sulfur filled the air, sharp and clean.
I wanted to set fire to my own skin, just to see what would be left behind.
The need to see became a compulsion. I drifted to the bedroom, not bothering with a towel, water trailing from my calves and darkening the floorboards.
The mirror, a cheap full-length stuck to the closet door, reflected a version of me I'd tried to ignore for years: too tall, too broad-shouldered, with the kind of chest that drew stares even when I swaddled it in two layers of sweater and an armor of social ineptitude.
In the night's silence, though, there was nowhere to hide.
I stared. My skin was flushed from the shower, beads of water gathering at the dip of my collarbone and the creases beneath my breasts.
They were larger than I remembered, gravity and cold making the pink of my nipples pucker to obscene attention, the areolas darkened and stippled, each goosebump a tiny mountain range across my flesh.
My left hand, almost without thought, went up to cup the right breast. The weight somehow surprised me, flesh spilling between my fingers, nipple pressing hot against my palm.
I shivered at the sensation, at how sensitive the skin was, at how the touch traveled from my palm all the way down to the core of me, now shaven and slick and waiting for some command, a molten ache building between my thighs.
My other hand traced the sharp ridge of my waist, the slight softness just below it, then the flare of my hips and thighs.
My pubis was as smooth as the rim of a drinking glass, the lips between my mound visible now, swollen and flushed pink against the pale canvas of my thighs.
I hated how erotic it looked, how the lack of hair made the rest of me seem obscene, pink, raw, exposed like some forbidden fruit.
I pressed my thighs together and saw the muscle flex, the damp skin sticking just above the knee, a glistening trail betraying my arousal as it slid down the inside of my leg.
For the first time, I let myself look at the whole of it, not as a collection of flaws, but as something that might be worthy of desire.
My heart thudded, equal parts dread and anticipation.
I could not stop touching. My hands roamed, shy at first, then with a growing boldness.
I squeezed my breast, harder this time, and gasped as the nipple spiked against my fingers, a jolt of pleasure shooting straight to my clit.
I slid my hand down, cupping the mound between my thighs, feeling the newness of it, the utter vulnerability, the heat radiating against my palm.
I let a finger slip between the folds, slick even after the cold, and shuddered as it glided over my entrance, gathering wetness, circling the swollen bud of my clitoris with exquisite pressure.
The reflection in the mirror moaned, a sound barely recognizable as my own, throaty and primal.
The clock on the wall read 11:58. I waited for something…
another blackout, maybe, or for the me that wasn’t me to rise up and take over.
My mind screamed against it, but my body was already succumbing.
I watched as the woman in the mirror straightened her back, shoulders rolling back to display and revel in the full weight of her breasts, chin lifted.
The movement sent a ripple across her flesh, nipples hardening further against the cool air.
Her eyes, usually green and half-hidden behind the shield of glasses, were wide and wild now, irises gone dark with dilation, the hunger in them almost predatory.
Her lips, still stained faintly pink, swollen from invisible kisses, parted in a half-smile that was all invitation, no apology.
She leaned closer. I leaned closer. For a split second, we were perfectly synchronized, our breath fogging the glass in identical patterns.
Then the change happened: the woman in the glass drew herself up, posing with an arrogance I'd never possessed, a sexual arrogance that burned in her gaze and the twist of her mouth.
I flinched back, but she didn't. She let her hand trail up her torso, fingertips grazing the sensitive underside of her breast before cupping it fully, the flesh spilling between her fingers as she tweaked the nipple until it stood painfully erect, then letting it bounce heavily as she let go.
The other hand slid down, between her legs, two fingers finding the slick, swollen slit and opening it with a lazy, practiced ease, exposing the glistening pink interior to the cold air, her middle finger circling the engorged bud of her clitoris with deliberate pressure.
I recoiled, but I couldn’t look away. The mirror woman watched me with pity, then hunger, then something like affection.
She mouthed a single word, and the room seemed to go silent.
“Scarlett.” I felt my knees go soft, my entire body pulsing with the urge to fall to the ground and worship the thing in the mirror.
The sensation built. It was like being squeezed from inside out, every cell in my body pulling toward the glass, toward her.
My mouth was dry; my cunt throbbed, the slickness gathering on my inner thigh.
I wanted her, wanted to be her, wanted to crawl through the glass and let her do whatever she wanted with my body.
The need was so intense it made me dizzy.
The world narrowed to the frame of the mirror, the clock’s second hand ticking louder and louder.
At the stroke of midnight, she smiled for real.
It was not my smile. It was all hers. Feral, triumphant, and completely free.
My mind screamed, but my body… her body surged forward, almost smashing into the glass.
For one ecstatic, horrifying instant, we were one: her hands cupping my face, her tongue forcing its way into my mouth, her body enveloping mine in heat and pressure and the knowledge that I would never, ever escape.
Then the lights went out. I felt myself falling, not onto the bed, but into her. I tried to remember my name, but all I could see was red. All I could taste was lipstick and the salt of someone else’s sweat. The last thing I saw was her face, grinning, as she pulled me in and devoured me whole.