From the time he was a child Thomas knew he wanted to become a nurse.
From the beautiful pure-white hospital gowns that would parade around in as a child. To his yearly Halloween costume of choice, Nuse Marry, the main character of his favorite family rom-com. Everything pointed to him eventually pursuing the career.
Of course, his father had other ideas, beating Thomas intensely every time the boy even mentioned anything related to medicine, rom-coms, hospitals.....or Halloween.
The man claimed it was because he was protecting his son from the corporate brainwashing that came with the holiday but Thomas knew better.
Thomas blamed his father's over-reactions on the fact that the old man had once caught him dancing around the family apartment in his favorite overly sexualized female nurse costume.
In all honesty, Thomas did have to admit that the skirt that came with the costume was a bit short, but he didn't know that justified years of abuse and mental torment.
Taking one last drag of his metallic z-cigarette and smashing it under a ruby red stiletto, Thomas leaned back against a rusty railing and took a deep drag of the stuffy neon-colored city air.
Stuffing the few crumped holo-bills he had just earned into an undersized purse, Thomas couldn't help but laugh at the irony of the whole situation.
The thing that scared his father the most was eventually the thing that paid for his hospital bills.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
The bills that put his entire family into debt the second his father overdosed on Cubes that the man had somehow sourced from an eldritch drug dealer.
Thomas wanted to be a nurse
And yet somehow he ended up becoming a cross-dressing harlot that serviced whatever paying customer that made their way into his territory just to pay for food.
Slowly wobbling his way over the trash-filled streets that made up the entirety of his commute home Thomas couldn't help but continue to laugh at the irony of the whole situation.
In a world where buildings literally touched the stars and immortality was just one procedure away, no one had thought to address the poverty and trash that filled the streets.
Maybe to the people above, there was no difference between the trash that filled the streets and his feminine hips, but Thomas couldn't care.
Although he relied upon his body to make money, he was just a few steps away from achieving his dreams.
Just a few more years of digitized schooling and he would be there, up in the city proper, away from the muck and the filth and the relics of the past.
Just a few steps away from climbing out of the neon light shithole that he lived in his entire life.
But progress needed money. Thomas could do nothing without it. He couldn't afford to live without money, go to school without money, or even die without paying the proper fee.
If he did the authorities would forcefully revive him and implant an anti-suicide chip into his brain out of the "goodness" of their hearts. A goodness forcefully placed upon every human citizen in this damned city from the whims of the oh so " merciful " elite.
And that was why, when Thomas found the strange opportunity to save up just a little bit of money off of food to pay for his school tuitions Thomas took it without thinking. Over time he eventually developed a sixth sense of what was edible and what was not.
Crouching down Thomas placed his cherry red lips just above the giant neon red mushroom that was in a small clearing suspiciously free of any trash. And did the unthinkable.
He took a bite.
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Of course, he couldn't hear the poor dungeon that was screaming as it watched one of its newly gown trash destroying shrooms once again get attacked in one way or another.