A Brand New Goth Girl

[6]

This random pink flashlight device I’d been gifted had no further explanation for how it worked. The message told me that I could use the beam like a force of transformation. Was something like this how I’d been changed? I vaguely recalled a flash or twinkle of light when everything happened. If this was the instigator of the current chaos, then why did my mysterious benefactor judge me as the worthy recipient of such a thing?

I was liable to break reality altogether. There had to be some sort of instructions or a basic sense of how it operated. I didn’t want to just blindly test it on myself or anyone else. Holding it up to the nearest light, I actually discerned some tiny marks with letters beside subtle notches.

I didn’t understand what they meant, but it was progress. After poking around every inch of the device, I finally attempted to unscrew the battery case. At least that would tell me how it was powered. I aimed the front away from my face because I knew that, depending on how you screwed in a flashlight, you could get an accidental moment of illumination. With a little probing, I easily discovered that it accepted four AA batteries. Etched right underneath the top segment was a quick explanation of what the symbols and letters represented.

L and M were a range of Less or More. AA, UA, TA, UTA, and NA stood for All Aware, User Aware, Target Aware, User and Target Aware, and None Aware. All that largely made sense as my own transformation affected those who thought of me as Beatrice. User was a bit stickier, but I suspected that was whoever wielded the flashlight. I actually soon got my answer in another line which designated “Assign User (speak name)” as AU. The final elaboration was SC or Set Change with another speak note.

Those were a lot of different elements that I fretted about messing up. Slipping into the nearest bathroom, I put the flashlight back together while still aiming the business end away from me. Thankfully, it didn’t go off. In fact, I figured out that if the different variables weren’t set then I wasn’t able to turn the light on at all with the button. Good to know and a helpful safety measure.

All right. Assign User. A small portion lit up as though it were a live microphone. “Beatrice Lee.” The light went away and there was no further, clear confirmation. Super…

Well, I might as well run a test. As a precaution, I set it to All Aware and opted for a rather basic focus of change. “Hair length.”

I felt like I had plenty of hair but this would hopefully be easily correctable with a cut if it didn’t work the way I wanted. Again, the device lit up and then turned off when I was done speaking. With a deep breath, I resolved that using it on myself was the only possibility. I took a deep breath and resigned myself to accidentally erasing Taylor and thinking I’d always been Beatrice.

Flash.

Refreshing moments of relief turned to warm delight as I watched Beatrice’s hair illuminated by the pink beam gradually stretch forth like a stop-motion art project brought to life. Twisting the setting to L not only returned it to the original length that I started with but actually reduced it off my shoulders and into a closer cut. That was a little too short to look good on Bea but it was wonderful to know that I and those around me weren’t tied to a single, perpetual hairstyle.

Clicking the flashlight off stopped the progress and left me standing there with basically the same hair as a minute ago. My nervous chuckle wafted through the air, softening to a giggle of delight. This thing had immense power and potential. It terrified and delighted me. I wanted to have it on a permanent, secure chain on my wrist all the time and slip it into a locked, bolted safe when I wasn’t using it. I also wanted to really let loose with it, fueled by my percolating imagination. But how and on who?

Potentially, I could play around with Beatrice‘s body like a create-a-character game slider. Anything I could imagine could be modified. Lacking confidence, self-worth, and personal acceptance? Just give myself more of each? That truly felt like a cheat code. Terrifying.

What did I want to do with it? Norah’s mention of some version of Beatrice wanting to change herself presented me with the possibility of fulfilling that desire. Before I even approached that though, I made sure to figure out the approximate limits of what I was wielding. I tested a variety of spoken concepts and phrases. It appeared to accept whatever I threw at it until I hit certain walls. Assigning ‘masculinity’ and ‘immortality’ received several warning flashes. This vaguely reminded me of setting up a universal remote several years ago.

When wielding the light after that, it produced a blank, white illumination that had no effect aside from providing a standard light. Transitioning to ‘skin softness’ brought back the special light and allowed me to lightly soften my skin as an experiment.

Clearly, this device was focused on augmenting and controlling womanly or traditionally feminine qualities in whatever the light touched. I was able to alter the contents of paper towel dispensers on the side into a variety of quilted textures and colors. With some extra modification, they actually shifted into tampon dispensers. The exteriors also changed from clinically gray to cushioned and pink. There were already plenty of tampon options though, so I restored them to their original forms. I considered stashing a few spares in my bag. But, even though I knew the need for such things loomed in the life before me, I wasn’t quite ready for that yet. Meanwhile, ravenous possibilities rushed through my brain about turning this light on a structure, a sign, or a textbook.

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Nothing came together from a possibility to an actuality. There were too much, too many considerations and uncertainties as well. It was immensely frustrating because it took me back to the start of all this. I couldn’t decide what to do. Maybe take another of my walks?

This was a lot bigger than an assigned art project. I would be toying with the lives of random people, if I wasn’t the test subject. I could go ask one of the new girls or one of the old ones for permission to transform them. But I wanted to see a big reaction. Start with a blank canvas and resolve the entire thing. Though, without the ability to invoke masculinity, it would be a one-way trip for my target. Like what happened to me.

One-way Beatrice. I could open up a variety of different styles of Beatrice, but the shades of Taylor were unavailable to me. That added an odd weight to my nether regions, as though it were some strange, intangible ship setting down anchors. I would be a variety of Beatrice for the rest of my life. I desperately had to use the toilet…

Not for nausea, panic, or even anything in my admittedly shaky stomach, just my Beatrice bladder. My bladder. Up in my guts. Around my uterus, vagina, and all the other stuff I just gave cursory consideration so many years ago in sex ed. I had considered Beatrice my host and I was a nervous guest doing his best not to ruffle the furniture or leave a mark on the carpet. This was all very interesting, lovely, and a delight to share in for a while.

Oh, what’s that?… This is where I live now and forever after? There never was any Beatrice? I am the host? I am the permanent owner? I am Beatrice? I am a girl in all respects from now on as though I were born this way? And all I can do is redecorate my home, my girl body? Yeah, I really needed to pee and sit for a moment with that metaphorical anvil to the face.

This was how I was going to pee from now on. My muscles down there quivered, fighting through waves of shakes. I was a girl. And, to basically everyone, I had always been this way. The prospect of trying to contact my parents and elder sisters terrified me on a normal day, so I definitely wasn’t ready for that like this.

I am the petite girl, Beatrice Lee. A goth girl in adorable shades of black. My blouse up here and my pretty little skirt down there. So soft, with a fundamentally different presence and aroma profile. I felt light years away from being a boy.

Standing after cleaning up took a good bit of effort, mostly willpower. I looked at my face in the mirror, my girlish face. Gulp… everything I did looked cute. God, it was like a tightrope between existing and my existence being a turn on. How could I be like this forever?

If my base form did all this to me, then how could I ever apply the startling shock of even more changes? It was all right at my fingertips, my slender, dainty fingertips with obsidian nail polish. I felt burning hot in places I didn’t even have a day ago. This was crazy! Just being myself now was a white-hot flare of perceptions beyond processing. Not so much the nitty-gritty of having a cleft between my legs leading to a smoldering, wetly consuming furnace, but the existential toppling of everything I was or could be.

My default was this girl. I was this girl, Beatrice Lee. I know. I know…it was weird that the lag time of several hours had to set in before this dawned on me but finding the only tool of transformation was set to varieties of girl was a big deal. The entire campus was ordained to be nothing but girls.

However, the fact I’d become one of them still mattered to me. It wasn’t a big deal to Norah, Kasey, or Rhea. That was just how they lived their entire lives. But Norah’s once boyfriend understood the chasm of identity too. Maybe I was being weird about all this, and it was just a matter of a few touches and shiftings of flesh, inside and out, but it boggled my mind. I still kinda needed Beatrice, even if I fashioned her as like an imaginary friend who I could aspire to emulate. Beatrice, please show me the way to comprehending girlhood!

What I wanted was a full-body apparition of Beatrice in my mind’s eye telling me what I needed to do and how I needed to be. My doppelgänger of true wisdom. But she wasn’t really there, it was just me and all this was on my shoulders. Okay…

I walked out of the bathroom with that flashlight and considered the paths before me. My benefactor wanted to change so many boys against their will. He or she… had their own motivations. It wasn’t my place to indict them one way or another. All I had responsibility for were my choices. And I wanted to help.

Whatever I was, with all the craziness mixed up from family, life, and circumstances, I never really imagined being a girl. But I knew people through the college and student life who did more than imagine it and sought achingly for the kind of change I’d been enlightened with.

Plucking my phone out of my purse, I did a quick search for transgender resources in the area. After Google attempted to bury me in a huge, useless variety of side ad links, I was able to find an office linked with a church resource center for trans outreach.

Unfortunately, when I called, I just got the messaging service. I left a polite message saying that I had donations and resources I wanted to provide and when I could get in touch to meet with someone and talk with whatever groups they had. That seemed like a plan. Find some people who really wanted the light of this flashlight and help them that way.

It might’ve been too serious compared to what my benefactor intended, but I couldn’t follow the path they walked. I had to find my own.