Alicia Telfair - My Pants Feel Empty

Chapter 2 - My pants feel empty

MadMaeve's CYOA experiment
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So.  Fuck, where did I leave off...

Oh yeah.  I was stranded a few miles off an exit, draped in men's clothing, an hour past sundown, struggling and failing not to cry.  When I said I was as young as I looked, I meant it.  Sort of.  Most people wouldn't call that sort of situation naked - I had a cute little bow and the collar to a uniform sticking out of my shirt - but I felt naked.  Anyone on that road could've seen me bawling.  They wouldn't even know what to do.  Little girl, wrecked car, who deals with that on a daily basis?

I've just been informed that some people deal with that on a regular basis.  You're weird.

Anyway, you're not here to listen to me talk about how sad I was.  I've been on that for a little while now.  Not sure how much time passed after I stopped crying and took stock of my predicament.  I remember digging into my pockets and the glove compartment, looking for a golden ticket to salvage something of my life.

You can guess how that went.

I don't remember my name way back then, but I knew it wasn't mine anymore.  It struck me as foreign the first time I sounded it out off my driver's.  Crisp.  Atypical.  Mono-syllable.  The kind of name you'd give a pet.  Ended in 'Telfair.'  This wasn't 'me.'  At least, as much as I wanted to believe it to be me.  I felt so little connection to this dude, it hurt.

As much as I wanted to take his name, I couldn't.  So, I stuck with what I could remember - Alicia.  Fit a little blonde hellion like me.  Alicia Telfair.  At least I could still claim I was ne.

I ended up ditching my clothes in the backseat.  Maybe the tow-guy'd think I lost it and ran naked into the woods.  Not far from the truth, honestly.  Learned a lot of things when I got down to my skinnies.  For one, the smooth sensation under all the big-cloth wrinkles was, in fact, spandex.  Lots of it.  Couldn't pull it off for the life of me.  Covered me from feet to neck, one big pantyhose set and jumpsuit.  The only real piece on it, aside from a pair of Mary Janes, a tiny white bolero jacket with a bow on the collar and slim, little cuffs on the ends of the arms.  Big, white stage gloves were tucked away in the left pocket.  Badges were pinned to the right.

I made the mistake of pressing one.  Some poor fucker got to see a naked pre-teen squirming in the backseat.  Joke's on you, pedophile - I already felt like shit.

Another thing learned - you have to squeak out your 'transformation phrase' to look decent again.  It's a lot less flashy than people make it out to be.  It's mortifying at first, ends up gratifying.

A note to trans folk - newfound respect for the gender dissociation you guys (or girls, far be it from me to discriminate) feel.  I didn't feel it so much when I was struggling to get some semblance of covering back on, but the body difference was really starting to set in.  The strength, not so much.  My arms and legs were narrow.  So was my torso.  I barely filled the seat out (that's not a joke for the internet to enjoy; as far as I remember, I was a skinny sonuvabitch before I got girled).  What's more, I felt... clean.  Too clean.  Too feminine.  Slipping around on leather, struggling to get footing and look over seats.  Hair brushing cheeks.  Crotch feeling empty, rubbing on shit.  It creeped me the fuck out.  None of it registered like I thought I would.

I ended up wriggling out of the car and hoofing it.  Not going to deal with that until I could at least find a place.  So, I started walking.

You may have noticed I drop in and out of the whole identity thing.  Newfound respect.  Even with all the shit that's happened to me, I like to think nothing changed.  This is just a body.  A little girl's body I happen to be lounging in.  I'm still me underneath the fetters.  I'm just... prettier.

Though, if I were me, I'd remember my name for more than a few seconds.  And stop pleating down the folds in my pantyhose like it mattered.  I was more like a little girl now than I cared to admit.

Another thing I learned - I couldn't say shit.  Literally, I couldn't.  Had a bit of a breakdown half a mile out from the car.  I tried to go full tourettes and use a temper-tantrum to restore my peace of mind.

Fucking holy fucking shit, god-fucking-dammit that bear-fucker shit me up.  Cocksucking fuck. I can't...

"... even rustle my dress!  Who in heaven does he think he is, that little booger bomb?!  I'll love him to death the next time I see him, I swear on my loving godmother!"

Ahahahaahahah.

I'm laughing now.  It was horrifying when I first heard it.  Little girl voice, translating your internal shit monologue into a first-grade recitation of Fight Club.  Lisp and all.  Don't know exactly that works, but I have yet to break it.  Chucklefucks, you've been warned - if you turn into an underage magical girl, you'll lose the ability to express your inner loser.

At least, as far as speaking it.  I can still write all the fucks I want.

I don't remember how much I left behind.  Had a lot of time to think about it, hitchiking.  Mom, dad.  Nuclear family, as far as I remember.  Might've had a sibling, might not've.  Either way, life at home was lonely, and college, I guess, wasn't much better.  Maybe my parents panicked and tried to find me.  Or, maybe not.  Their faces are a blur to me now.  Any friends I would've had, I'd have found by now.  The me that existed, that was gone.  If I was more focused than I was, sullenly following the roadside, I think I might've had a complete nervous breakdown.  This is the kind of existential crisis little girls aren't prepared to handle.  All of the relationships I had built up were gone.  Money unreachable.  Accounts rendered void because I couldn't collect them.  Sarte would've had a goddamn field day with me.

Either way, I didn't get that far.  A truck pulled up in front of me and parked on the grass.  My beat-up station wagon wrung up on the bed like a fresh catch of the day.

Oh good.  Tow-guy.  I can explain just how fucked my life is.

Surprisingly enough, it was a tow guy.  Big dude.  Had to bend over to get out of the front cab.  Coal-colored skin, from what I could see.  His wife on the other side - curves, dreds, eyepatch, something of a mocha color - quickly came around.  Something small and blonde was tugging at her jumpsuit.

Oh god.

As soon as little blonde saw me, it ran up to me and hugged me tight.  "Oh, thank heaven, you're okay!"

"..."

I was hugging myself.

Semantics - something that looked like a me I didn't want to acknowledge as me was hugging me.  Speaking in my voice.

"... are you real?"

She giggled at me.  I shuddered.  "Yeah!"

"Get off me."

"No!  I was worried about you!"

"Go suck a lolipop."

I really should've been grateful I was looking out for me.  Lord knows I wasn't.

The tow-guy and his wife came around to formally greet me.  They stood so tall, I might as well have kept my neck craned.  The woman with the dreds spoke flatly.  "You could've waited for the tow to come get you, y'know.  Looks a lot less suspicious."

"Why am I hugging myself?"

"It's a quirk of the system."

"It's suspicious."

The twin spoke up.  "I'm your sister, Aniece.  I-I hope you remember me."

I croaked.  Being so mean to my 'sister' was starting to get to me.  "N-no?  Should I?"

The adults in the conversation sighed.

"What?"

The woman took a clipboard off her husband and made a few notes.  "Nothing, nothing."

"That wasn't nothing."

"Well, no, but it's better than you losing your shit again."

"You saw that?"

"Yeah.  Don't worry - other people've had it worse."

"... is that supposed to give me some sort of perspective on this?"

Mocha woman sighed again.  She looked tired.  Still, she extended her hand.  "Archon.  This is my husband Polemarch."

I shook with both hands.

"According to the call, you hit a magical girl."

Gulp.

"And, as collateral, you were turned into a little girl to, uh, 'take her place.'  About right?"

I glanced down to my sister.  She seemed hurt.  "... yeah."

"Memory in an odd state?"

"Uh-huh."

"Feeling scared, helpless, alone?"

"You're reading me like a book."

"Remembered to keep your change?"

Skepticism is a powerful tool.  Even if you don't have common sense, you're probably not going to go off with a bunch of strangers who know a little bit of your life history.  Too bad for me - I'm a little girl without parents to make the bad people go away.  Why don't you just hop into their windowless van, Alicia?  Save'em the trouble of knocking you out.

I swallowed my fears (and my pride).  "... w-what's going to happen to me?"

"Pole, get the coffee brewing in the cab.  I'm gonna talk to her."

I blinked.  He left.  My sister was still clinging to me.

The lady with the dreds kneeled down.  "Aniece - why don't you get the blanket out from under the seat.  Alicia's probably tired."

Aniece fidgeted.  Her doll-like eyes lingered on me.  "... okay."

She ran off.  Big mocha momma ushered me over to her knee.  I felt compelled to follow.

"... Listen.  This is complicated.  And I know you're feeling like shit.  I'm not going to go over what your life is right now, because frankly, you're going to have to adjust whether you want to or not."

"..."

"However, we're not in the business of just taking your junked ride and hocking it.  This happens more often that it should, and a lot of you kids end up like this without a home or a place to stay.   I know this is going to sound really, really suspect, but you'll just have to bear with me-"

"Would you mind staying with us?  At least until you get your bearings?  I promise, we'll explain this all."

Let me reiterate a point: I didn't know these people.  They knew how bad my life was going better than I did.  I had every reason to scream bad touch and run across the freeway.  Death was probably going to be better than stranger danger.  Because let's face it, in our kind of world, there's no real honesty in anything.  Shit's a shithole.  Everybody's crooked.  You're likely to get screwed out of your money and your job if you looked at somebody the wrong way.  You're a victim - I just happened to be one of the worse ones.

Of course, that was me a long time ago.  A whiny, callous little shit with no faith in anything.  I've, uh, grown up, since then.

"... I don't have anything to go back to."

"I'm sorry, child, but you don't."

"..."

She took my hands into her own.  "It'll be okay.  I promise."

My legs pushed me into her.  We hugged in the gravel.  I couldn't say no.

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(end of chapter)