The greatest pleasure is the pain we inflict on ourselves.
Disclaimer: This work contains adult materials including suicidal themes, strong language, derogatory language, parental abuse, incest, and depictions of rape. This work is not suitable for minors. Reader discretion is advised.
TSF Series #012: Boxfort – An Escapist Transsexual Fantasy
Chapter One: The “L”
December 23, 1996. Chicago, Illinois. The clattering and steady bump of the “L” has a habit of lulling me to sleep. Despite this, I never missed my stop. My body trained itself to wake up at the right time. My eyes shot open as the train crawled to a stop. Seconds later, life had returned to my body and the doors creaked open to the wooden platform. A light layer of snow remained between the cracks. I stood up from my seat, wedged between two old men, bordered by several people standing, and walked out to the platform. The heat of the packed train left me. I flinched as the freezing air blew onto my face, and my hands.
I reached into my navy coat pockets to pull out my gloves, but I was met with warmed polyester. I looked back at the train and saw that its doors had already shut. If my gloves were anywhere, chances are they were there, on the floor, lost forever. Not literally, but practically. They were my good gloves, they were gone, and I knew it would be a ripe dastard to find a good replacement pair. I bemoaned my carelessness as I looked away, and began stepping off of the platform, almost latching onto the frigid metal railing with my bare hand before common sense overpowered instinct.
Besides, it’s not like I had to worry about falling down the stairs and bursting my head open with all these people scrounging around. The loop was a claustrophobe’s nightmare, but this time of year, it was absurd. The concept of personal space was a mere fantasy as people rushed in and out of stores, schlepping bags that widened their bodies and carrying oversized boxes that they used as an excuse to act like they had the right of way over everybody else. The streets were no better, as the yahoos always came out from the woodworks during the busiest seasons, and treated these streets as if they were their own. To them, traffic lights were a mere suggestion and pedestrians were obstacles to avoid. Truly, the most wonderful time of the year, eh?
I hated going out on these streets… but I had to. Every morning and every night. Unless I wanted to add another 30 minutes to my commute both ways, I had to pass through here and up the elevated train. But, as I always told myself, it was only a few blocks away. I just had to endure this for a few blocks, and I would be back in my apartment, free from the noise. …Well, not really. The sounds of moving cars still passed through my windows, and I could hear my neighbors through the walls, but… it was better.
‘Better.’ As I lingered on that word, I brought my hands to the straps of my backpack. A turquoise JanSport. One of the only things I had from when my life was ‘better.’
As I kept my head hanging low, I reached my destination. A dingy apartment that was a decade past due for renovations, but the building hadn’t started literally falling apart yet, and the rent was cheap enough that I could afford it… barely.
I thrust my hands into my JanSport and my fingers soon found a set of icy keys. One for the building, one for my mailbox, and one for my apartment. I thrust the appropriate key into the lifeless doorknob before me, and pulled the metal slab forward, bringing me into a small lobby. I did not bother checking my mailbox, as nobody but scammers and junk peddlers knew I existed, and instead went up the stairwell. Five stories of slumping my tired body forward, I opened a frail, hollow wood door, and was met with the 300 square feet I called home.
With my body hot, fingers frigid, and breathing tattered, I took off my coat, placing it on the ‘nail coat rack’ that came with the apartment, before looking over the place I paid to live in. The kitchen was small. The fridge was empty beyond a half dozen eggs, a quarter loaf of bread, and half a jar of pickles. The flooring, both carpeted and tiled, was practically begging to be replaced. And my furniture… looked as bad as it ever had.
My twin-sized bed sat on its rudimentary frame, covered in light secondhand sheets and two blankets. A beat up dresser that contained less than a dozen changes of clothes in total, and none of them purchased within the past few months. A digital clock that I pulled from the dump, thrown away because neither the alarm nor radio worked. And on my childhood desk, there was a scattering of pens and pencils, notebooks, two library books I had to return in four days, and a portable radio plugged into the wall.
19 years… and this was what I had to show for myself.
I hunched down to unzip my boots, leaving them to dry on my dollar store welcome mat, before I walked onto my creaky floor and toward the bathroom. It was as small as a bathroom could be, with the toilet practically touching the wall, an elementary-school-sized sink with just enough room for a cup containing my toothbrush and toothpaste, and a shower stall that probably did not adhere to the legal size requirements.
I looked into the half-sized mirror before me and took in my face. My nose was crooked, my face was pale and gaunt, and my eyes were a dull brown only darkened by the bags that lied beneath them. The only saving grace to my, quite frankly, ugly appearance, was my natural red hair. Throughout my entire life, it was the only thing I was ever complimented for…
I wet my hands with a burst of cold water before I grabbed the discount soap and scrubbed my hands from front to back, before I rinsed them in even colder water, and dried them with a crusty towel.
I took in a deep sigh as I bemoaned the lack of hot water in this building, and as I did so, I smelled myself. I reeked. I looked down at my ‘festive’ green sweater and pulled it off, revealing my flat, sweaty chest, and damp armpits. I took some soap to my armpits to treat the body odor before I stripped down to my underwear. I shivered as I was reminded of how cold my apartment was kept during the nights and ran to my dresser for a change of clothes. A plain shirt, sweatpants, and wool socks.
I ran back to the bathroom to grab my discarded clothes and place them into my laundry ‘hamper.’ A cardboard box. I emptied my pockets— as I did not want to destroy my money in the washer, again— pulling out my wallet, keys, and my… bonus. A $100 bill I kept inside my pants. I needed it to make rent by the end of the month, and, unlike my paychecks, there was no direct deposit option. I took this bill and placed it inside the half-broken drawer of my desk, where I kept my GameBoy. My only true piece of recreational entertainment.
After slamming the drawer shut as quietly as I could, I looked at my bed and thrust myself into it. My sheets and blanket were cold, like everything in this room. But with them tucked tightly, my bed was able to retain my body heat. I had hoped that the exhaustion of a 12 hour shift would have taken me to dreamland, but it didn’t. Instead, my mind was left to linger as I took in the rambunctious ambiance of traffic and shouting. And it lingered, as it often did, on how I wound up in this situation.
Chapter Two: Hatred
My name is Nate Neumann. I’m 19-years-old. To say I had a hard life would be an insult to people who had lived through much worse, but… it has not been good. I graduated high school this past May and, when I got home from my mandatory graduation ceremony, I had to leave my home. My mother and father kicked me out, gave me $1,000, and told me they never wanted to see me again.
I had a good relationship with my parents when I was younger. For I was their only child. Their ‘pride and joy.’ But that changed once the 90s rolled around. My father lost his contract and our household income fell by roughly 30%. My mother and father worked hard every day, trying to get by, while I just went to school, not doing anything to better the household. They did not like that and they took out their frustration on me. They said I was a liability. They talked about what life would have been like if they did not waste thousands upon thousands of dollars on me. And, in a drunken conversation they shared, they said that the best thing I could do for them was… to kill myself and let the life insurance money kick in. Let them get a return on their investment.
I don’t know if it is possible for a human being to remain stable after hearing something like that. After having their familial trust severed so brutally. This transformation happened during the summer before high school, and before I even walked into the door of the school, I was depressed. I was vulnerable. I was weak. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally.
I only wanted to focus on school. On doing well enough to earn a scholarship so I could… get away from my parents. But as I tried to keep my head down, I wound up making myself a target. I was a kid who would not talk back, fight back, and would simply take the abuse thrown by the thugs who smelled my insecurity a mile away. They realized just how easy a target I was. I would not snitch on them, as I did not want to upset my parents. I would lie when teachers spotted them bullying me. And… it was easy to make me cry. To these city kids, there was no greater pleasure than to physically assault a faggot and watching it cry.
I tolerated this. I focused on schoolwork, and got some of the highest marks in my class… but even the mightiest of towers will crumble if you hit it with enough cannon fire, and mine gave way when I was 17. Back in ‘93. I… don’t remember what happened. One of my regular abusers came up to me on a day when my stress levels were at an all-time high… Then I woke up in a hospital, an IV sticking in my arm, and bandages around my body. I cried when I saw myself in this state… because I knew that my parents would need to pay for this.
I had the opportunity to confess what was going on to the nice nurse who looked over me while in the hospital. But I did not. I lied to them. And I did so out of guilt. Because… I deserved this.
Because good things only happen to good people. Because bad things only happen to bad people. If my parents hated me, it was because I was a bad person. If people abused me, it’s because I was a bad person. I suffered because I am a bad person. And because I am a bad person, I deserve to suffer more and more.
It would have been right to kill myself then and there. To go to the hospital bathroom, lock the door, and kill myself before they knew I woke up. But I did not. Because… part of me did not want to die. Because I’m a faggot. Because I am a wretched subhuman faggot that deserves not life, but death. And as a faggot, I fear justice. I fear death.
The night I got back from the hospital, my father beat me. He had done this a few times before, but… this time hurt more. Because he was right. I deserved to be assaulted.
At school the next day, I had to visit a school-mandated therapist who tried to get answers out of me… but I did not want to tell her the truth… so I told her nothing. She cried during our final meeting, and… that was it. The school never reached out to me again. In theory, this should have represented an end to my struggles… but while hope had led me to academic success, that hope was gone now.
My final year and a half at school was free from abuse, as students feared the consequences of bullying me after I ‘got someone expelled.’ But I no longer aspired to go to college, or do anything with my life. Getting a scholarship would mean stealing it from someone else. Someone who, assuredly, deserved it more than I did. So… I stopped trying. Teachers noticed my lack of effort and attention, but the silent treatment was powerful, and I became adept at it. At the act of not talking to anyone. I’m pretty sure I went an entire week without saying anything to anyone. Not my teachers. Not my parents. And certainly not my peers.
“And why would anyone want to talk to me, anyway?” I said to myself as I looked up at the ceiling. My voice was shrill, childish, and unsightly. I was ashamed of it, but there was not much I could do about it.
As my grades started slipping, my parents made it clear that I was being disowned on graduation day. Or at least verbally disowned. They never issued any paperwork or the like. My father gave me $1,000 to ‘get out of his fucking life.’ I found a job at a local supermarket and, after my high school graduation, during one sweltering day in May, I began the laborious process of moving into my apartment. From noon to midnight, I biked 5 kilometers to and from my home, carrying everything I could in my childhood wagon, and then schlepping it up five flights of stairs. I could barely move the day after. I thought I was going to die. But unfortunately, I did not. I had to start work the day after I moved, making $4.75 an hour, 40 to 50 hours a week, and less than $1,000 a month. Because I ‘agreed’ to no overtime in my contract.
Did I enjoy myself these past 7 months? …No. No, I did not. I did not know what I was doing. I did not know how to live on my own. I forgot to do my laundry many times. I ruined food I stole from the dumpster outside of the grocery. I ran out of necessities and toiletries during the least opportune times. And with my limited funds, I was unable to buy the things I truly needed. Like a laundry hamper. Life was a daily struggle… but I kept on struggling. Like a faggot.
…Lately, I have thought about reaching out to my parents. But I do not have a phone in my apartment, so I cannot call them… and they told me to never return. Part of me wants to see them for Christmas, but… the only Christmas gift my parents would want from me is my death. After all, when I die, they get $30,000. Minus whatever fees the insurance company takes.
If they wanted to kill me for Christmas, would I let them? …It would be wrong for me to fight back. They brought me into this world, so do they not have the right to take me out of it? And if they do not have such a right… am I not some sort of exception? Don’t my parents have the right to kill a faggot like me?
“…I wish I was strong enough to kill myself.”
Chapter Three: Accident
Slumber took me away as I uttered those sweet words, hoping that, miraculously, I would die in my sleep tonight. Instead, I found myself in agony. A vague discomfort pushed me out of unconsciousness, and the first thing I saw was the red glare of my clock, reading back 3:20. I tried shifting in my bed, but my body refused to move. All I could do was lay there, and try to parse what was happening as I laid prone on my back.
I was reminded of two instances in my life as I tried to make sense of the sensations flowing through my body. One was the first time I got the flu, and felt like I was going to die as my body erupted in fever, non-stop, for a full week. The other was when I happened across a wasp’s nest when I was 8, and was stung… I don’t even remember how many dozens of times. My body swelled. I could barely see. I had to remain still for days, as any movement would only exacerbate the wounds that developed over my body.
I briefly wondered if this was the result of some stray disease I got while on the train. They were great places to get colds and bedbugs, and the holiday seasons are when illnesses are at their peak. Regardless, I thought this was something I could merely tolerate… only for my stomach to turn on me. I had not eaten since my ‘evening lunch break’ at 7 last night, but I guess the discount deli meat must have gone bad, as I felt something crawling out from my gun and up my gullet. I wanted to sit up to prevent me from vomiting, but not only could I not muster the strength to lift myself, I could no longer keep my eyes open, as they burned from within. Blind and immobile, I focused on the sound of cars passing by in the night and the scream-like churning of my stomach… only for my hearing to leave me too.
“It looks like I got my wish…” I said to myself in a weak, grody, and unrecognizable voice.
With those words, my consciousness left me once again, with my final thoughts behind ones of joy. Joy at the prospect of ending my own life.
…Unfortunately, I was not given death. Instead, I wound up peering my eyes open, and read my digital clock, which said the time was 10:30. My room was bright from the morning sun, and the pain I experienced last night was no longer resonating throughout my body. Instead, I felt sore. I was reminded of the time I helped rearrange the grocery, carrying every content of one aisle into another, going back and forward, up and down, and being profoundly sore the next day. My boss gave me shit for not stretching enough, but he never told me to stretch in the first place.
My body felt heavy, but I could clench my hands, tilt my head, and… sniff my nose to recognize that I must have had an accident last night. A weak groan escaped my mouth as I pondered this and thrust my blankets down… where I was met with the sight of bile staining my shirt, along with a pair of lumpy and damp sweatpants covering my lower half.
I vomited, pissed myself, and shat myself all in the same night. They all mingled together into a truly deplorable scent that, when combined with the embarrassment of lacking the bodily control to use the goldarn toilet, caused my eyes to water.
“God fucking damn it!” I shouted as I looked down at myself… only to be met with the realization that something was deeply wrong. My voice was higher pitched than before, and less… boyish, I suppose. A streak of far-too-long red hair smacked me in the face. And something about my face just struck me as… wrong, but I could not, or did not want to, figure out what.
As panic began to set in, I realized that, before I took in what happened to me, I needed to get out of this defiled bed, shed these ruined clothes, and see just what happened to me last night. I needed to get to the bathroom. With dread flowing through my system, I thrust myself out of bed, ran in my shit-filled sweat pants and vomit-drenched shirt, before making it into the bathroom, where I stripped myself of my clothes as quickly as possible, throwing them into the shower for the time being.
By the time I was done, I was naked, in the bathroom, and looking down at my body… Except it was not my body. The hair fluttering into my eyes was still a reddish brown, my skin was still as pale as a white person’s could be without looking ill, and my body was still slender. But… this was the body of a girl. One with breasts that looked massive as I stared down at them, despite barely being bigger than my hands, and a crotch bereft of the genitalia that I had always known. Instead, it looked… disgusting. It looked like there was a gashing wound that went down to the very bottom of my torso.
I looked into the mirror and I saw a girl who looked like me… but better. Her red hair was maintained and longer. She was skinny, but did not look emaciated, like I did. And her face… was cute and free of any injuries or blemishes. I would say that she looked like a cousin of mine… except there were no other redheads in my family. The height was the same, as we both stood at around 1.65 meters, and so was the age… but that just made it weirder. It was as if I was looking into an alternate reality… but looking down revealed that I was only looking at my own reality.
My tired and aching brain tried to wrap itself around this issue… But before I began asking yet another question, I realized I was shivering. I needed to warm up. My sheets were disgusting and needed to be washed. My sleep clothes too. But I could not wear anything like this. Stained with barf, urine, and fecal matter. I needed to shower… with this woman’s body.
Nudity was… something I was never comfortable with. I had never seen a naked person in real life other than myself. I never wanted to, either. To me, people’s privates were… supposed to be kept private. And when I was introduced to them in Sex Ed… they always looked wretched. They looked malformed, ugly, and like something to be ashamed of. I could never understand those who admired and idolized these things, and I had never imagined what it would be like to be with someone who showed me their privates.
Even my own privates… those that I am now missing, are something I tried to avoid as much as possible. I never learned how to masturbate. Never touched them to pee. And did my best to avoid them.
Looking down at my body, at this woman’s body, I did not want to touch it… but I had no choice. There was no other way to be rid of the pee, poop, barf, and sweat that covered it. I took a hearty sigh as I looked over at the shower, moved the soiled clothes out of there, and let the water run. It was warm— inviting for once— and with my soap and shampoo in hand, I decided to walk under the nozzle and let the water flow down on me.
My shoulder-length hair soaked up the water as it flowed down on me, robbing it of volume and causing it to stick close to my skin. As I brought a hand to my dampened face, I flinched, startled by just how soft it was. And as the warm water cascaded down my body, I became more aware of how different this body was from the one I had last night. The curvature of my spine. The way my hips protrude outward. And the… breasts hanging on my chest, their areolas twitching as water first struck them.
As I focused on the sensations flowing through this woman’s body, I felt like a pervert. I did not want to focus on the sensation. I did not want to look… I just wanted to get this over with. I took my bar of soap and lathered it over my body. My soft face, hairless arms, narrow waist— everywhere except for my… new parts. I could not bear to touch them… so I did not. I felt them hanging off my chest and between my legs as I averted my gaze, blushing whenever I felt something drip near my crotch, and flinching whenever I bumped an arm against my breasts. I’m sure this was a dream come true for my former peers… but for me, I viewed this as a test of endurance, and the final step was washing my hair.
I knew nothing about true hair maintenance. After money became tight, I had always kept my hair short with my father’s electric razor. And after I left home, I simply chopped it off using a pair of scissors, keeping it short. This was far more hair than I knew what to do with… so I simply used a handful of shampoo and rubbed it from top to bottom. I could not tell if I was not washing it right, enough, or if I was making a massive mistake using cheap men’s shampoo on my hair. But it was all I had, and it was hopefully enough to remove the scent of feces.
I rinsed, stepped out, and left the shower, only for my hair to let out a drizzle of water onto the mat below. I grabbed it and pushed my hand down to release the excess water, squeezing it out onto the mat, where it let out a satisfying gush. I did this with all of my hair, smiling as I made this curious noise just from squeezing my hair, before I was thrust back into reality as a shiver of cold overtook my being. I took a deep breath as I grabbed my towel, and dried myself. I started with my head and limbs, before moving to my torso, which I wrapped in the towel before walking out of the bathroom.
A nervousness overtook me as I approached my dresser, my teeth chattering and one hand underneath my bust. I figured that the best thing to wear would be something baggy and loose, so I settled on a thick blue sweater, a baggy t-shirt, a pair of briefs, and another set of sweatpants, as I doubted that I could fit my jeans after developing an extra inch on both of my hips.
I took off my towel without looking down and dressed myself in these clothes. The way the familiar fabric brushed against me reminded me of just how different my body truly was. My arms and legs felt pretty much the same. Though, the emptiness of my crotch felt all the more pronounced as I pulled my briefs up past my hip bones and as the cotton of my t-shirt rubbed against my enlarged nipples.
After putting on another set of wool socks, I walked over to the bathroom again, and looked into the mirror… where I saw a casually dressed redhead girl. She was cute, looked embarrassed, and… once again, I had to remind myself that she was me. That I was her. Still, I let out a sigh of relief, as I at least did not look like someone who would warrant a lot of odd looks if I went outside… and I had to go outside.
But first, I had to do something about the smell that filled my entire apartment. I groaned as I began to strip my bed, and threw the soiled bedding into my cardboard box, along with my clothes from the past two days, and the clothes I wore to bed… after I rinsed the shit and vomit out of them in the bathroom sink.
With this overflowing and disgusting-smelling box and my JanSport backpack, I left my apartment and began jogging to the nearest stairwell. I winced as my breasts bobbed up and down with every sufficiently large step, and when I started going down five flights of stairs, it felt like my breasts were going to tear themselves off of my chest. I pressed the box against my torso to stop my breasts from bouncing while thrusting my face into my soiled clothes and sheets.
I was breathing heavily as I made my way to the laundry room, where I saw one unoccupied dryer churning away, but there was not a soul in sight. Relief washed over me as I realized I had the opportunity to shove my laundry into my usual washer with no one questioning or judging me. After loading the machine and inserting two quarters, the machine hummed, indicating that I would need to wait for an hour or so while the machine did its thing.
While the option to leave and come back later was always available, I had learned to not trust my neighbors, after I had a load of laundry stolen from me one day. So I plucked out a book from my JanSport and read its contents, while the hum of the washer and dryer supplied white noise and, for a few minutes, I forgot about my situation. All until a teenage Asian girl with dark skin and black freckles came into the room, carrying a woven basket in one hand. I buried my face in my book, hoping she would not talk to me… but she did as she plucked her clothes from the dryer.
“I really like the color of your hair, but did you forget to dry it?” The girl said, her tone casual and her voice deeper than I would have expected.
Shit. She was right. I did not own a comb or hairbrush, let alone a hair dryer. I didn’t even know how to use one. I did not know if I had to dry my hair in a specific way or anything, as it always dried within 30 minutes, except now, my hair was still damp, over 40 minutes after my shower.
“I, um, I don’t have a hair dryer,” I said, unconsciously raising the pitch of my high voice.
“Oh? Well, I know they can be pricey, but it’s well worth the investment. Heck, maybe you’ll get one for Christmas.” The girl said with a laugh.
“Heh… I hope.”
“Say, I don’t think I’ve seen you around here. What school do you go to?”
“I… graduated a while ago.” I said, looking away from this stranger.
“Oh? So, what do you do for a living?”
“I… would rather not talk about it.”
“Well… alright then. I’ll just leave you with your book. Toodles!” The girl said as she turned around and pranced out the door, swinging her basket along with her.
I sighed and returned to my book. The last thing I needed today was new friends, but… I needed help. I could barely handle living before I transformed like this. I could not work at the grocery store looking like this, as they hired a man with a crooked nose, and they would see me as myself. There was no way I could fool them..
I was in over my head and… I needed help. I did not have any friends or school acquaintances to call upon. No teachers who liked me or would even remember me. All I had were my parents. My parents, who said they never wanted to see me again. While I was technically their son, I knew they did not want to fix my messes… but what choice did I have but to visit them and… hope for a Christmas miracle?
I spent about an hour thinking of an alternative solution… but I had none. Other than going to the police and begging for help, which had a 0.01% chance of working. I had to visit my parents… and hope for the best.
Chapter Four: Family
My height stayed the same, but my feet were smaller, so I had to wear two pairs of socks to get my boots on. Other than that, I looked as I normally did, clad in my puffy navy coat with my hood hiding away my longer hair. I was certain that my parents would recognize me just by this coat and hoped that they would not slam the door in my face. If they rejected me… I had no recourse. No identity means no job. No job means no money. And no money means… a slow death. It was the way of the world.
I sighed as I thrust my hands inside my coat pockets. They were smaller and thinner than before, meaning they got cold more easily. Even if I still had my gloves, I wasn’t sure how much they would help, as they would be loose on my hands. Though, warmth was not a major issue, as I was on a bus, casually watching the city slowly go by. Given the traffic, walking was probably easier, but I was not sure if I could get there without passing out from the cold.
After half an hour, I finally reached a few blocks away from my parents’ home, so I pulled the wire, and hopped off the bus to a quiet residential street. I walked past a series of large and lavishly decorated houses. Colored lights flickered in the post-afternoon darkness, elaborate fixtures were caked in snow from a few days ago, and the sidewalks were… 80% shoveled. It was all a familiar sight. Almost nostalgic for me. But as the homes got smaller, and gave way to apartments, that nostalgia was replaced with dread, as my destination was near.
I dug my frigid hand into my backpack, sifting through my few keys, before I found something I had not used in 6 months. While my parents made me give them my copy of their apartment key, they never asked me for the complex key back. I thought about returning it to the landlord, but I never got around to it… and I’m glad I never did. I did not want to get rejected at the intercom.
Once in, I took a moment to relish in the heat of the lobby, before walking down a familiar path, up to the third floor, to the place I had called home for the majority of my life. The stairs squeaked just as they always had, the second flight railing was still loose, and the stairwell was still in dire need of a repainting. The only thing different… was me. The me underneath these clothes. The me whose chest bounced with every step upwards, the ‘baggage’ I needed to reveal to my parents.
I stared at apartment 303, reminded myself that I had one more opportunity to just walk away… but I still had no other alternatives. I figured that, worst case scenario, they would just shout at me and demand that I leave.
I gave a hearty three-part knock. It was quieter than my knocks normally were, but it was enough to cause the floor to creak, indicating that someone was in there. I took a deep breath, ran through a basic introduction in my mind, and was met with the sound of the door opening, slowly, revealing my father, Mr. Neumann.
My father was a gruff brick of a man. He was overweight, hairy all over, had massive hands, and, due to chronic sinus issues, you could hear him 10 feet away whenever he breathed. He was 43, but looked older than his years thanks to his coarse skin and face bereft of any emotion greater than frustration and disapproval. He looked down at me with his glassy eyes as a grown escaped from his throat, as he could tell who exactly I was from a mere cursory glance.
“H-Hello… f-father. I… I’m sorry for being so abrupt, but… I need your help. Something really bad happened to me, and… I have no one else I can—”
My whisper-like explanation was cut short as my father grabbed me by my coat and yanked me into the apartment, where I crumbled onto the floor.
My father slammed the door shut behind me. As the door clashed with the frame, I could hear him crack his hardened knuckles.
“I said that I NEVER wanted to see you again!” He roared at me.
I was still on the ground, and the first thing I saw… was a Christmas tree, with a scattering of presents underneath, all neatly wrapped. Even without me, I guess they still chose to celebrate the holiday.
“I was looking forward to tomorrow,” He grumbled. “Of being able to celebrate Christmas without you. Without some parasite sucking away all of my fucking money. Without some retarded little faggot around. But you just had to come in and demand more of me. I gave you a home for 18-fucking-years. I spent a third of my paycheck on you. And what did I get in return? A man who can barely be called a man.”
He kicked me while I was down, pounding his shoes into my face. I flinched, guarded my head instinctively, but he kept kicking me, shouting at me, calling me a pussy, and saying that I was not his son. That he never should have listened to his wife. That he never should have fucked without a condom. It was nothing I hadn’t heard before… but his kicks hurt more. Especially when he kicked my chest.
After a dozen or so kicks, my hood slid off of my head, and my hair was exposed. My father paused as he realized just how long my hair had gotten since he last saw me.
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. Not only are you a pathetic excuse for a man, but you’ve grown out your hair like a woman? Just when I think you can’t disappoint me more, you find a way. You waste.”
He then grabbed me by my hair, pulled me upwards, and brought my face close to his. He stared at my bruised and swelling face, the face he just assaulted, and narrowed his vision. He could tell that something about my face was different, and examined it with one hand, snorting into my face as he felt my soft skin. His hands clenched my coat’s zipper, and while he fumbled to get the zipper to move properly, he eventually pulled it down. I took it off, let it drop to the floor, and looked at my father. Tears welled in my eyes as he looked over my body. My female body. It was hard to see details in my baggy clothes, but my breasts were prominent as my sweater tucked around them, and the way my sweatpants hung around my waist made it clear that I had changed since he last saw me.
“I… I turned into a woman and—”
“You go away for 6 months. And now you come back… as a freak. A man who mutilated himself to resemble a woman.”
“Please, this wasn’t by choice! I don’t know how this happened—”
“You were too scared to man up that you became a fucking tranny! Is that how you’ve been living these past months? Taking cock up your ass? I knew you were always a faggot deep down, but to think that you were this fucked in the head.”
“D-DAD! Just let me speak and tell you—”
He punched me in the face, and I went crumbling down to the floor, landing on my discarded coat.
“I fathered you, and this is how you repay your mother and me? Strip.”
“W-What?”
“Show me what you did to the body your mother and I gave you. Show me… and accept your punishment.”
With my hands shaking uncontrollably, I did as he commanded. I brought my hands to my sweater and plucked it off. My breasts bounced as I did so. Then I took off my sweats, revealing my womanly lower body. I stood up like this, in a t-shirt and underwear. My father shook his head as he looked me over.
“All the way… fuckin’ idiot.”
I didn’t want to… but I had to. I took off my briefs and my t-shirt, exposing my naked body to him. I shivered as I clenched myself, shut my eyes as I feared his reaction… and then I felt his hands on my neck and my breast, inspecting me as if I were livestock he was ready to send to the slaughter.
“…These are real… how in the fuck did you afford this, and… that’s a pussy. Nate. What the fuck is this?”
“I’ve been trying to tell you, father. I… woke up like this, and—”
“Nate! Do you know what happens when you lie to me?”
“I’m not lying! I swear! I know it makes no sense, but—”
“If it makes no sense, then it didn’t happen. Everything ‘makes sense.’ Tell me… you’re not Nate. Nate, as much as he doesn’t seem like it, is a man. So, who are you?”
“I’m Nate. Really! Please, I know you hate me. I know I’m a waste, but without help, I… I don’t know what I’m going to do. Without your help, I’m going to die—”
“HA! That’s the dream. Seeing that faggot finally die, leave my life forever… But you’re not Nate. You can’t be. However, since you are so obsessed with being him, then… I’m going to make you mine.”
My father… was not a good man. He was a strong man. An angry man. A man who women, especially young women, would typically shy away from. And a man who I presented myself to. I cowered into a corner, barely supporting myself as I stood up and looked at his face. He was showing his teeth with a wide grin. His eyes of discontent were replaced with something… disturbing. Normally when he approached me with violent intent, I felt like a hare staring down a wolf. But this time I felt… different. I still felt like he was going to hurt me. Just not in the way I was used to.
“He’s going to rape me,” I said within the confines of my own mind.
My mind devolved into a miasma of horror and masochism… but the horror won out, and I decided that I must run. He had moved himself to block the door and, with the primal part of my brain taking reigns, I fled the same place I always fled to when my father was ready to resume abusing me. My bedroom.
Before he could lay his hands on me, I ran. For as strong as my father was, he was a slow runner, and even with my new proportions, I knew how to take turns around these halls, and nestled away into my bedroom. Or, as I recalled upon entering, my former bedroom. I took all of my possessions with me as I left, and the room had become little more than storage. A giant closet with boxes of tat, a bookshelf, a dresser, and the vacuum cleaner. But it also had an open box with jackets and a window! It was a daunting concept, but… I could escape. I just needed time and… I did not have time.
A locked door would give me time. My doorknob had a lock I could trigger to give me time… but this was not my doorknob. They must have replaced it after I left…
I began grabbing boxes, shoving them against the door, but after moving a mere two boxes, the door slammed open, partially crushing the cardboard boxes upon impact. While not open all the way, the opening was big enough for my father to squeeze on through. He was blocking the door. My window was always a bitch to open. And I had 100 square feet, half of which was filled with boxes and furniture… There was no escape for me. …There was no escape.
I fell to the floor, hyperventilating as I saw him look down at me, stomping on the floor as I struggled to make a noise beyond frantic breathing.
“This is an apartment,” I thought to myself. “If I scream out ‘rape,’ then… then the police will be called, right? They’ll come and save me, right?”
He then grabbed my face, shoved me onto a box of clothes, and took off his belt. I froze as I saw that leather strap come off of his pants, and clenched every inch of my being as he smacked it across my breast, where the metal sliced my nipples.
A high-pitched noise escaped my throat… but I was too scared to even scream. When he beat me, he beat me more when I screamed. So I learned to stop screaming as he assaulted me. And even when I knew this, I could not free my throat. The most I could do was speak in a hushed tone.
“P-Please, father… it’s wrong. It…. it is immoral to have… s-sex with your own child. With your s-son.” I stammered, too scared to cry.
“You’re not my son. You’re just some retarded bitch who stripped before me. You asked for it! …And I’m happy to deliver!”
“F-Father, please. Let me p-p-p-prove myself and—” I said before he smacked my head against the wall.
“Shut the fuck up! If you want to live, you won’t say another fucking word until I’m through with you!”
This is not real. This is a dream. None of this makes sense. If something does not make sense, then it cannot be happening. The impossible is not possible. The impossible is not possible. The impossible is not possible.
I am not a girl. I cannot be a girl. I do not want this. I never wanted this. I am Nate Neumann. I am Nate. Nate is not allowed to visit his parents, so he could never return to his home. His father would never let him in. Mr. Neumann is neither homosexual nor incestuous, so he would never rape Nate. This is not happening. This can not happen. It is impossible. It is not logical. It is bereft of sense. It does not compute. It is an unreality. Unrealities cannot be part of reality.
As much as I tried to reject the reality before me… that did not stop him. He approached me, took off his pants, and, with his hairy penis erect, he… began to rape me.
I had a hole inside my body. One that went into the very core of my person. It was filled by a foreign object too large for my hole to accommodate, forcing my flesh to stretch and contort as a heat filled my being… and pain filled my lower regions as I felt something break. I looked down, and saw blood dripping onto my father’s dick, reddening his public hair a dark crimson.
I shut my eyes as I began to cry. As I began to chide myself for not knowing what was happening to me, or why it was happening. This was all beyond me. This was all more than I could possibly bear. This was a reality I could not tolerate… and I began to scream internally, drowning out any and all other sensations I could.
I was used to feeling weak. I had accepted that I was powerless against my father. But while every punch he gave me was met with a harsh sting, I always knew what he was doing. I knew how he was going to hurt me. I learned how I would feel the next morning. But here… I did not know what he was doing inside me. I could not see what he was doing as he shoved his dick inside me, back and forward, burning my innards as our flesh rubbed against each other. It felt wrong. It felt like something that humans should be biologically programmed to dislike. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than for my father to stick his dick out of me and begin bashing my head against the wall. Bashing, bashing, and bashing, until blood started pooling onto the floor. At least that’s something I’d understand. At least then I did not need to contend with the horror of the unknown.
I whimpered as he continued, let the tears run down my cheeks, all until, after several minutes of repression and agony, I felt something wet and hot coat my innards. I let out a single note, a high-pitched sound, as I felt this… thing appear within me. I thought it was blood at first, or perhaps pee, but… neither felt right. It was something I did not understand. Just like… everything that has happened to me since I woke up.
I felt things as my father pulled his dick out of me, but… I did not want to focus on them. I did not want to think about what happened. I just… wanted to disappear. Forever.
“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!?!?!” A female voice said. A female voice I knew all too well, as I had heard her shout so many things over the years.
I looked up and saw her. I saw my mother. She was in casual clothes, had her hair tied up into a bun, and looked at me with a level of hatred that… was an order of magnitude beyond anything she wore when she looked at me in the past. She would yell at me, but never hurt me. She hated me, but hated me less than my father.
My face wore a look of utter misery. Tear stains reached down to my neck. I was naked and on a cardboard box. I begged for mercy and pity… and she stomped my abdomen with her house shoes. I felt something slimy escape from my lower regions. Then, she screamed.
“You fucking WHORE! What do you think you are doing?”
“P-Please… he r-r-r… he raped me. Please, don’t hurt me any—”
She did not hear me. She did not like to hear the truth if it went against her assumptions. And while I wanted to think I could convince her… I could not.
She grabbed me by my lengthy red hair, paused for a second, and began slamming her dry hands into my face. She did not punch hard. She did not know how to throw a punch, but it still hurt. I cried, I begged, but she did not listen. She just kept shouting at me, calling me a monster, a slut, a home wrecker. She thought I had stole her husband from her… when I was the victim here… wasn’t I? Or… was this deserved?
I… I did not know, and I could not take it anymore. I pried open my eyes and saw my father pulling his pants up as he looked at me, smirking, and… leaving the door wide open. I had one chance to escape. I took it. I kicked my mother in the leg. She fell and loosened her grip on my hair. My father, shocked by seeing his wife crumble to the floor, paused, and gave me a seconds-long opening to dash for the door. I moved as fast as my sore legs could take me as I grabbed the wall for support. I grabbed my coat, slammed my boots on, and ran out the door. I left my clothes and my JanSport, but I escaped to the stairwell. I heard the door shut and, by the time I made it to the first floor, I had not heard it open.
They were not chasing me as far as I could tell. I got away. But I did not stop running.
Chapter Five: Cardboard
Cardboard is not good insulation, but it kept the wind away. It kept my body heat somewhere contained, and it gave me a surface to sit on with my bare bottom. This refrigerator box was my fort against the elements, and it was where I caught my breath after running for three blocks. Where I caught my breath… and contemplated where I should go from here.
…I thought back to the thoughts that lulled myself to sleep earlier. The answer I always told myself, over and over again, when I asked myself why my life was so miserable. Because I was a bad person.
Because I was a bad person, I deserved this.
Bad things were happening to me because bad things only happen to bad people. My parents hated me, because I was a bad person. My father raped me because I was a bad person. My mother assaulted me because I was a bad person. I suffered because I was a bad person. And because I am a bad person, I deserve to suffer more and more. Suffer and suffer until I can suffer no more. That is what I deserved. …Right? I became a girl… because I was a bad person. I shat my bed because I was a bad person. I decided to go here because I was a bad person.
I’m a bad person, and… I have nothing.
I don’t have any hope for the future. I don’t have anyone who loves me. I don’t have any goals or aspirations. I don’t have any skills. I don’t have access to what little I had, as I can’t even get into my apartment. I don’t even have any clothes other than this coat.
Going to bed last night… I said that if my parents wanted to kill me for Christmas, I would let them. They had the right to… but they could not. Because I ran away. Because I was scared of death. Because I am a bad person. So… I had to die another way.
If I stay out here, I will die of hypothermia… and there is nowhere else for me to go. All I have left to do in my short life… is to die. That is all that remains for me, and… I have two options. Let the world kill me and die a slow and arduous death. Or end my life by my own hands. End it faster. End it like a faggot.
Eventually, my body will be found. ‘Nate’ will be proclaimed dead or missing. And my parents… will get their return on investment. Their $30,000 in insurance money. That would be the only ‘good’ thing I did with my life and… the sooner I die, the sooner they get their money.
I peeked out of my boxfort and into the grimy alley I found myself in, where I saw a green bottle, shattered into two pieces. I grabbed the neck from the street and moved into my boxfort with the jagged glass in one hand. It was a crude tool, but… all it takes to end a life is a cut in the right place. Slitting wrists does not work. But the throat… that is vulnerable. That is where you rob someone of their life. And it is where I aimed my weapon as I pressed myself against a wall, craning my neck up as my shaky hands clenched the shattered glass.
Killing is easy. Death is quick. Suicide is easy. Suicide is for cowards. Suicide is escapism… and I wanted to escape. Escape this life, this reality, this nightmare I had been living for the past day… if not the past 6.5 years. I hesitated. I hesitated because I was a faggot. Even amongst faggots, I was a faggot. I was a retarded little faggot who did nothing with his fucking life, would do nothing with his fucking life, and deserved nothing but fucking death. Because all he has done was waste resources and serve as a cancerous tumor that has done nothing but steal from those more worthy of the gift that was existence. It was a gift… but in my hands, it was a curse. A fucking curse I had to end. Here. And. Now.
…The bottle sliced into my jugular, and I kept it in my neck. Blood seeped onto my hands, and breathing… became difficult. It was dark in the boxfort. Pitch black. But I felt like it was getting darker as my hands got redder and my senses became… numb. The blood trickled down my arms, into my coat, and even reached my legs.
There was no great kaboom. It just kept going, and going, and going. Noise left my ears. Cold left my body. And as my beating heart crawled to a stop, I was, for the first time, in so many years… happy.
Happy that I would never suffer again. Happy that my parents would get their return on investment. And happy that this nightmare known as life was finally over.
Das Ende
Afterword
I occasionally encounter what I have dubbed “suicidal panic attacks.” Instances where, due to stress, I become unable to handle whatever task was assigned of me, and become filled with panic and a desire to hurt myself. I’ve had these since I was 13, where I made a habit of crawling down onto the floor and bashing my head against a brick wall until someone forced me to stop, and go through my panic until the energy left my body.
During these attacks, my mind has always been filled with thoughts of suicide, hatred, and how I am a fundamentally bad person, and this is something I have continued to express even into my adulthood, albeit at a far less common rate, and minus the attempted head trauma.
When writing fiction, I try to take in broad inspiration from a wide variety of sources, and the inception of this story concept came to me as I cooled down from a particularly nasty instance of a suicidal panic attack. I forget when exactly this was, but it was an idea that I carried with me for at least two years before I finally decided to write it. A story that is dark and completely bereft of any levity. It is a story where bad things happen, and a story with no message greater than facilitating a series of events where a mentally abused person prays for death and, after losing what little he had, ends his life in a painful and inglorious manner.
Boxfort – An Escapist Transsexual Fantasy is a story based on my own mind, and fleeting feelings of self-hatred. A story where the protagonist is a blatant self-insert of myself. And a story that reflects a cornucopious amount of personal issues I have. A desire to be abused. A desire to be hated by those who are supposed to love me. A sense of guilt over the academic and career-based success I have amassed throughout my 20s.
It is a story that I put myself into more than any other, and I did not mince words or express an ounce of subtlety in its execution. It was a venting exercise as much as it was a creative one, and if it offended or made anyone upset… sorry. This is just how things are within the confines of my slowly rotting mind.
Now, based on this text, one might get the impression that I am in some ways a miserable person who lives a sad life, but that is not necessarily true. Much of the core of this work comes from my own sense of guilt over how good my life is and has been. I am 27-years-old. I succeeded academically and worked a good job. I live with a mother and father who love me and never abused me, physically or otherwise. I make enough money that I do not need to worry about my personal finances. I was able to undergo my gender transition several years ago without facing rejection from anyone. And, by all accounts, my life is great. But that greatness comes with a sense of guilt. With a sense of an imposter system. A sense that something is or is not deserved.
The term escapism typically refers to leaving an unpleasant reality, but when your reality is pleasant, then what is escapism? A problemed reality where things are going poorly for oneself. In my darkest moments, my escapism is found in imagining a worse world. A world where I am worthless, and a world where I can justify ending my life. To me, that is a pleasant fantasy. It absolves me of the responsibility of success, and calms me down with the comfort of failure. The comfort of not needing to prove anything. Of knowing you are dumb, ugly, and useless. Of knowing that you can die… and it would be a good thing.
This was the crux of what drove me to write this story… and while I do not know if it is a good or even all that readable story, I felt like it was something I, as a person, needed to write one of these days, and I’m glad to have done it. Because this fantasy of mine is now completed, and I achieved this much-lusted-after death in some way, shape, or form.