Chapter 7

A tremor crawled up his leg.

It made his knees tremble before it disappeared under the flaring hem of his dress where it touched his bare cheek and danced up his spine – to choke his throat.

“It’s okay,” a girl’s voice whispered.

October found its way to Norton’s Academy of Excellence. It colored the leaves of the ancient trees before autumn winds blew them over the spacious lawns.

It was Lucian Gaines’ second autumn there and he had changed a lot since the first one – physically as well as otherwise.

He’d grown several inches, which made him look even thinner. His ongoing exercises had stretched and toned his legs; they demanded attention wherever he went.

His hair had grown too.

The girl Mackenzie stopped cutting them. Abundant silver curls touched his shoulders now. He washed and conditioned them every day, blow-drying them while brushing thoroughly.

He’d gradually forgotten to hate his hair.

He also no longer despised his pale skin or his light-blue eyes – or his clear voice and long, narrow hands for that matter. It had become a futile exercise really, to deny what mirrors kept showing him every day.

Which didn’t mean he felt like the ‘she’ he saw.

Maybe to others he looked and acted like one – and of course they would be right. But to himself his identity had ended being an issue since he’d stopped feeling like the odd man out.

The dorm was like a safe house.

It was a place where the outward pressure to change became an inward urge to blend in. Its relaxed and non-judging atmosphere felt like a warm bath.

It was a place of boundless intimacy.

Nowhere else could he be this open about his true doubts and emotions, and share them safely. Discovering how even his most secret needs were commonplace felt like a breeze of freedom.

The boys’ dorm was a place of carefree touching and primping; of painting each other’s nails or just sit close, gossiping and giggling – commenting on videos or leafing through magazines.

Of course it changed Lucian.

It changed him more effectively than any strict program would be able to. It was evident in the way he walked and talked and behaved – at least among his newfound friends. His bearing and appearance gained an easiness he never had. He laughed and even joked, losing his fear for disapproval or physical contact. He knew he could trust his fellow Bobs – they shared a common past and a common enemy, didn’t they?

Dorm life also changed him mentally – maybe even more so.

Walking into the chaotic room after school and doing chores felt like taking off a coat – or rather a harness. There were welcoming hugs and welcoming kisses, excited voices full of excited plans.

Pleasuring a fellow Bob was as casual as soaping his hair or rubbing lotion into his body. Sucking a soft, throbbing cock was as natural as sharing gossip or searching a wet, slick body for stray hairs – ending up with fingering his tight, slippery anus or just collapsing into a bout of giggling.

It was often hard to notice where one thing ended and another began.

Dorm life was anarchy; a ball of adolescent energy – a hot steaming pool he’d gladly drown in.

Until yesterday, when after classes headmistress Parker called him to her office.

The moment he got the message a long forgotten anxiety invaded him, accompanied by memories of earlier visits, fear for imminent changes – and downright terror of losing the heady cocktail of freedom he’d just started sipping.

An old and well-remembered insecurity overwhelmed him.

Before going he spent half an hour of stalling in front of his mirror, turning left and right, checking his hair and eyes, and asking Taylor and Harper for their opinions. Taylor whispered ‘perfect’ before pecking his left cheek and squeezing his ass; Harper just shrugged, wondering what could be special about a visit to the old cow, wearing your standard top and short shorts, the mandatory long shirt and shining ballet shoes.

When Lucian knocked on Parker’s door his silver bracelets jangled. It reminded him of another visit to this same office – confronting his mother and her lawyers.

The memory still saddened him.

He hadn’t heard from or about his parents since that visit. There’d just been the crossed-out letter and Parker’s assurance that his father definitely stopped paying for his tuition.

Doing chores had been awkward at first.

He started as help in the kitchen, finding mysterious tools he’d never seen before, let alone used. Everyone was friendly, though, and very patient. Occasional accidents, cuts and burns were harmless and far between.

He was also supposed to clean and tidy the private rooms of teachers and students, amongst which his old room. Two new paying students arrived late August. One was tall and black, stirring quite some interest among the boys at the dorm; his abundant Afro caused Mackenzie a hard time to tame.

The other boy was a small dirty blonde from the Midwest. Lucian recognized the scared look in his gray eyes as new and bewildering experiences showered down on him.

Lucian and Harper took them on a tour.

The black boy called Shay was very athletic; Coach took to him like a duck to water. The blonde, Ellis, gawked at the ballet dancers and the photographed models on the hallway’s wall. The boy’s skittish eyes were at once attracted and repelled by what they saw. It reminded Lucian of his first days. To his own surprise he tried to embrace the boy for comfort, but he jumped back as if bitten by a viper.

“Sorry,” Lucian said, never losing his smile. “I just wanted you to feel at home.”

The blonde boy was pretty though chubby; he’d be stunning once Norton’s was done with him. Until then there’d be fear and struggle, Lucian mused – the futile uphill struggling he knew so well.

He supposed his own struggling days were over since he moved in with the Bobs.

Maybe the only unsettling thing was how normal life became, even to him. Just a new reality he couldn’t escape – and really wouldn’t want to anymore, he guessed.

But standing here, at Parker’s threshold, listening to his racing heart, doubt returned

His new reality seemed to have pushed the old one back completely – like a distant range of bluish hills against a hazy horizon. Embarrassment was gone, even its memory; so was skepticism.

A new and rather alien entity had replaced them – trust.

It worked on his mind like a muscle-relaxant, but what if it was just a set of blinders? He knew trust was the motor of his newfound freedom, but what if it was just another illusion?

Should he distrust trust?

He realized that his life up till Norton’s had been set by the agendas of others – his macho father, his cruel mother, the bullies at school – framing him as a freak and putting him in a prison of hate and prejudice. They’d caused guilt that all too soon morphed into self-hate and self-disgust.

His first year at the academy hadn’t been much different, Parker pushing and pulling him to her advantage. But now?

No more. No more?

He recalled how the sheer anarchy of his first crazy orgy on the dorm’s mattresses had fucked away every last frustration he might still have held on to, flushing out fear and bewilderment.

Later on he’d lain awake in his new bunk, he recalled, holding his breath and waiting for the tsunami of guilt that would surely overwhelm him. But it never came – no shame, no embarrassment, no disgust.

He remembered staring into the darkness, still glowing, as his mattress moved and a naked body rubbed against his. A second body joined him from the other side, and while a voice breathed hot air into his ear, a soft mouth kissed his right nipple.

He’d fallen asleep like that, sandwiched between bare bodies –Harper and Taylor he guessed.

Bobs don’t sleep alone, he learned in the weeks following that night. It was a unique experience for him, never being alone – one he got used to very quickly. Just like he got used to sharing: opinions and emotions; fun and experiences – and a million ways to find beauty.

Trust was built up by myriads of little things like that – slow and sweet and wonderful. Could it really be shattered in a moment?

Parker’ voice wormed through the door’s wood in response to his knocking.

The woman wasn’t behind her desk.

She stood in a back corner beside overstuffed club chairs that surrounded a low table. She also wasn’t alone; Dr. Kurtz occupied one of the chairs. She rose at his entering, looking quite formal – and cushioned – in a tight business suit.

“Please sit down, darling,” Parker said, indicating a chair across from the doctor. “Tea?”

Feeling uncomfortable he sat down, politely refusing the tea.

The headmistress sat down too. She removed invisible lint from her dark pencil skirt.

“Now Lucian,” she began, smiling the Smile. “God, it’s been over a year already, hasn’t it? Amazing.”

He closed his shirt around him, shifting on the leather seat.

Parker went into a rambling resume of the highlights of Lucian’s stay at Norton’s. The ‘lovely impression’ he’d obviously made on staff and students, his ‘struggle’ and his ‘setbacks,’ and the ‘most wonderful way’ everything had finally worked out.

Had it, he thought. Not because of her, surely.

“Norton’s is proud of you, honey,” the headmistress concluded. “Your mental strength and your delicious appearance are envied by many and an example for your fellow students.”

Parker’s voice had its usual effect on him. In combination with the utter bla bla of her words, it clouded his attention, pulling it away to other things.

Like the face of Kurtz.

He didn’t know how to call her expression. Her puffed face always looked tired, but today it seemed animated. There were blushes on her cheeks and her dubious smile was stronger. She seemed genuinely happy. Her eyes sparkled and they were fixed on him.

Could she really be happy for him?

All through the year she’d been the distant one in the white suit, doing antiseptic things in blue latex gloves – making reassuring noises while prodding his anus, and avoiding questions.

Except for that one drunken moment on Christmas Eve.

She’d scared him then, and later on he’d decided not to believe the story about her son – the one that had been bullied into suicide. Even if it were true, it felt just too tailor made to accept as a valid excuse for the way she and Norton’s treated him.

Maybe she wasn’t really happy for him at all right now; maybe she was just ... triumphant?

Staring back at her he saw her nod.

“Congratulations, I’m so glad for you,” her sensual mouth said. “We are all proud you made it.”

He must have missed something while drifting off. Looking from Kurtz to Parker his confusion was evident.

Parker chuckled.

“Earth to Lucian,” she said.

Having heard the expression too often, together with the condescending laughter it always caused, he’d learned to hate it.

“I guess you were distracted,” Parker went on. “I told you tomorrow will be the big day: you’ll graduate to Second Level.”

She rose from her chair, soft tit flesh spilling from her bra as she bent forward. Kurtz rose too, and he presumed he should follow their example.

The hug came unexpected.

He felt the tight bones of Parker’s corset press into him. There was a cloud of perfume, and the softness of her hands cupping his face.

“Congratulations, Lucian,” she said. “It’s been an honor to help you.”

Dr. Kurtz’s face appeared next to hers. There were tears running down her cheeks.

“I hope you see now,” she said, her voice thick with emotion as her hand caressed his upper arm. “It was all really for the best.”

Flash backs of his frequent visits to her tube-lighted practice created a pageant of embarrassing moments – the injections, the probing of his anus, the milking of his sperm, the slick latex against his shrinking penis. He almost smelled the rubber of her gloves, the assault of chemicals and antiseptics.

And now she cried.

Paralyzed by his feelings Lucian looked from one woman to the other. He was as confused by the headmistress’s sick Smile as he was by the crying doctor. He could deal with the phony, superficial façade of friendliness, having mastered it himself. But the tears seemed too real, too personal after all these months of manipulation and deceit.

“God,” the doctor mumbled. “You look so much like him.”

He tore himself free from the women’s embrace, pulling the long shirt tightly around his body.

A thought dawned.

These were the two people responsible for what had happened to him this year. But they never succeeded in forging the real change they so obviously celebrated now. To the contrary, their program and chemicals had been the main obstacle causing his disgust and rebellion.

His true change had been a recent thing; and it had been the boys who’d brought it about – their true warmth, the sense of solidarity, the belonging.

Looking at the old, tired faces he felt pity.

It was a new, strange feeling, and not at all sympathetic. It came from arrogance, he knew, the arrogance of youth. He was their prisoner, but beyond their bars was a future they didn’t have. All the power they had over him couldn’t save them from their own prison of time. They’d shrivel and die in their corsets and white coats while he and Harper and Taylor and Kelly and Charlie would conquer the world.

A dizzying feeling washed over him.

It made him rise to tiptoes. His arms opened wide and so did his shirt. A smile opened his mouth, allowing the white of his teeth to dazzle the women. It was a cruel, triumphant smile, he knew, but it hit their faces. He was like the sun smashing its rays into the crumple-faced moon, forcing it to reflect his light.

The moment was sheer triumph and it stretched on.

The two smiling faces were moths, he thought, being pulled to the lamp he was, gloriously lighting this drab old office. He received them in his wide embrace, allowing them to hug and kiss him.

He felt the sting, but only for a second. Darkness draped its fuzzy cloak around him.

A voice whispered.

It sounded familiar, but between guessing and knowing was a sea of confusion. He felt like floating – wondering where he was, who he was and why he should even be wondering about things like that.

He felt too good to be bothered; he felt great really.

Drifting in and out of perfumed clouds, he saw sparkling-white mountains sail by – soft, warm icebergs on a hot tropical sea. Don’t ask for logic.

He tried to touch one and giggled as his hand passed through.

A shadow descended and he heard the voice again – a sweet voice; a friend’s voice.

“Lucy,” it said. Who was Lucy?

His world was a fragrant universe; he floated in it without worry, keeping all thoughts at bay. Water as hot as his body made him feel weightless. He was a naked, gyrating astronaut, turning and tumbling in slow motion – he was an oceanaut.

The word made him giggle again.

“Luce? Lucian?” The voice.

Ah yes, Lucian. He knew a Lucian, didn’t he? Was the voice Lucian’s?

The clouds lifted.

There were cream-white tiles in front of him, and a pale hand resting on the wet-shining edge of something. The slim fingers had painted nails. They lay on the edge of a bathtub. Were they his? He moved them to check. Ah yes. So he was in a bath, wasn’t he – wet, naked?

The water sloshed as he sat up.

“Charlie? Is that you?” he asked. “Where am I? And why?”

She stood over him in a short white bathrobe, her hair wrapped in a towel. A slight blush glowed through her china skin. Violet eyes she had, mirroring the smile of her mouth – cherry lips, pearly teeth.

Her mouth, he thought. Ah yes, hers now. Sweet Charlie.

“Congratulations,” the girl said, while closing the tap. “I am so glad for you. We’ll be sisters now, you know, real sisters, promise me.”

Memories returned.

They brought images of two old faces, painted mouths talking about graduation; tired eyes, tired skin – Parker and Kurtz. He recalled them hugging; then a sting.

“What did they do to me, Charlie?”

“Do?” she asked, causing her long lashes to flutter. “I don’t know. They asked us to make you pretty for tonight.”

Another shadow explained the ‘we.’ It belonged to the bronze tinted body of an Asian girl, also dressed in a robe. He knew her name – Nico, the waitress – the cello player.

She smiled at him and winked.

He’d never quite shed the suspicion that Nico was one of the girls who raped him on Halloween. Ever since that day her smiles seemed sardonic to him. He suspected a false bottom under her friendliness – a card up her sleeve.

“Hi Lucian,” she said, picking a big towel from a rack. “Come, li’l sis, let’s get you dry.”

Charlie reached for his hand and helped him out of the water. Big mops of foam slid down his wet body. He slightly shivered from the cool air as he stepped from the tub.

He instantly felt something was different, but the warm and fluffy towel distracted him; soft hands rubbed him dry.

Looking down he noticed a new tightness in his crotch. Something was there; something alien. When the towel parted, he saw a glint of metal. Charlie’s hand blocked his view by pushing the towel between his legs and starting to rub his groin.

The area seemed numb, but there definitely was something there.

Closing his eyes he felt the tightness turn into a muted pain in his crotch and deeper back into his lower belly. It was more like a throb really, a muscle ache. But it radiated out with a hot, slow pulse.

He reached down and pulled the towel away.

A triangle of silvery metal gleamed in the V of his crotch. It followed the slight curve of his lower body and shone like chrome. At its center was the exposed tip of his pale penis, protruding from a tight hole.

The plate lay against his crotch as if glued to it. Tight straps ran out, over his hips.

He touched the panel with a finger, trying to get around it. The metal fitted snugly; he couldn’t get behind it; nor could he pull it down or remove it. There also was no room at all between his stubby penis and the edge of the opening. It held up the head and its exposed pink-stained slit.

A rush of fear hit his chest.

Something was terrible wrong. Except for his penis everything looked smooth and tight and streamlined ­– like a girl’s crotch. The whole package was too flat ... just too flat to...

“Charlie!” he cried out. “What did they do to my balls?”

“Please stand still,” Charlie said.

She was kneeling in front of his naked body, wielding a small, humming instrument. It stung when it pulled out one of the rare little hairs that still grew on his body.

“My goddamn balls, Charlie!” he repeated, stepping back. His whining voice echoed in the bathroom. “Where are they? What did they do to them?”

As the girl looked up her curly bangs opened like a curtain, showing a violet eye and a smiling mouth.

“Nothing to worry about, Luce,” she said. “It’s perfect. Now please turn around so I can do your backside.”

He didn’t turn.

He stepped further back, disregarding her protest. Then he went down on his haunches, cupping the metal plate and the soft hot flesh at its center. He again tried to push a fingertip behind the edge, but it sat tight against his body, held in place by elastic strings that ran around his hips and up through the crack of his ass.

The plate was way to tight to also hold his balls.

They were gone.

He looked up into Charlie’s eyes. The girl slowly shook her head, making the wet curls dance.

“They’re not gone, Lucian. As they promised you, they’re still there,” she said. She rose to her feet and parted her robe to show her perfect mini-penis, protruding from smooth white skin.

She lifted it with a pink-nailed finger. The tiny one-inch knob with its exposed baby-pink head was all he saw. No balls, no scrotum, just tight, smooth skin.

A chuckle from behind distracted him from Charlie’s crotch.

“Comparing cocks, guys?” Nico said. She’d opened her robe too, showing another inch-long button rising from her soft olive skin. Fondling it she chuckled again and said:

“I bet mine is the smallest.”

Charlie laughed with her; Lucian let his eyes travel from the girls’ crotches to his own.

Despite Charlie’s words his panic didn’t subside.

“They castrated me! They castrate us all,” he insisted.

Grabbing Charlie’s shoulders he repeated the lines even louder while shaking her.

“They goddamn cut off my fucking balls!”

The girls closed in on him. He tried to shake them off, but they didn’t budge. Hugging him they gave off soothing sounds.

“Shhh, Luce,” Charlie said. “Nobody cut your balls off. They never do, with anybody. Like they promised, they’re still there, believe me.”

He pushed her away, screaming. Spreading his legs he gave the girls a clear view of his capped crotch.

“Believe you?” he said. “Look! Just look and tell me where they are. They didn’t promise me anything; they didn’t even tell me anything, as usual, and now my balls are fucking gone!”

Sobbing he sat down on the tub’s edge.

Two bodies joined him on each side, arms wrapping themselves around his shaking shoulders.

“Didn’t they tell you, Luce?” Charlie asked.

She paused to wait for his sobbing to end.

“I guess they didn’t,” she went on, sighing. “I don’t know why. You see, they do it to all Bobs when they agree they’re ready to graduate. It’s a reward, really, a sign of progress – something to be proud of. Most Bobs ask for it.”

Lucian snorted. Charlie looked past him to Nico, who shrugged. She pulled Lucian tighter.

“They did it to me a few months back,” she said. “But they explained what would happen. They had Nico there and another Barb and showed what they did to them. How they still could come and make sperm and all that. I really don’t know why they sprang it on you like this.”

She reached for Lucian’s crotch, but he crossed his legs to hide it. The metal cap pinched him.

“We can only graduate,” the girl went on, “when our balls are small and soft enough to be pushed back up into our body. It’s harmless and it looks so much better on us, don’t you agree?”

She spread her creamy thighs to show. He didn’t answer, still hiding his face behind his hands.

“But yes,” she went on, shrugging. “It’s a hurtful procedure, so they anesthetize you.”

Lucian lowered his hands and turned his cried-out eyes to her.

“For a whole day?” he asked. “Knocking me out for a whole day just to kick my balls back up?”

Charlie’s eyes were wide and calm.

He had no reason at all to believe her, of course. This whole year had been one long stretch of lies and betrayals. Why should he believe anyone? For all he knew they could have taken his balls and his damn penis as well.

That was when he recalled Drew.

She’d told him how her testicles had never lowered from her abdominal cavity like they do with most newborns. She was a freak of nature, she said. Was that a lie? She couldn’t have been castrated, could she? There had been sperm on his hand, and later in his mouth, but what did that prove?

What did he know anyway?

“You don’t believe Charlie, do you, Lucian?” Nico asked, bringing him back from his musings. The mocking undercurrent he heard in her voice didn’t really help.

He rose from the tub’s edge, letting his robe close over his body. The tight metal pinched his skin as he walked away from the girls.

“I never asked for this,” he said. “But they did it anyway. I never asked for being turned into ... into this. But it never stopped them, did it? I goddamned never asked to be here at all, did I?”

Both girls looked up at him, helpless.

“I’m sorry,” Charlie said with a tiny voice.

Her sadness kindled new sparks of anger – at Parker and Kurtz who not only operated on him without his consent, but let this innocent girl pull every goddamn glowing chestnut out of the fire they lit.

He sagged down against the tiled wall across from the tub, wrapping his arms around his knees. The floor was cold and wet, but he didn’t care.

“What more is there that I don’t know about?” he asked. “What’s the metal cap for? You don’t have one, do you?”

“We had it; it’s just temporary,” Nico said. “To protect your stitches.”

Stitches?

Repeating the word loudly he pushed himself up and off the wall, opening his robe and watching the contraption.

The girls shied away from his sudden aggression.

“So they did cut me!” he cried out, tugging in vain at the metal shield.

Charlie rose and also opened the flaps of her bathrobe. Lifting the short stem of her penis again she showed him the tight, smooth skin under it.

“When the eh ... balls are up,” she said, “You still have this ugly little sac of wrinkled skin, you know. Well, they cut it off and stitch what’s left nice and tight together – smooth and invisible, see? Don’t you think it’s beautiful?”

Stepping closer and turning to the light she showed him her immaculate white skin. It only had an almost invisible hairline running from the base of the penis to her crack.

He looked back to his own crotch, and then to Charlie again.

“Is that all they did?” he asked, leaning back against the tiled wall. Looking from Charlie’s porcelain face to Nico’s bronze oval he wondered how an ugly place like this could create so much beauty.

“Luce,” Charlie said, turning from him to a shrugging Nico and back. “I do hope they told you about your prostate?”

The room got out of focus as he felt a new nausea rise. His view became a tunnel, closing in on the girl’s talking mouth. It formulated words and sentences, he saw, but he had to really concentrate to hear them.

“I guessed so,” she said. “And I’m so sorry. But you have to know they’re not bad, Lucian, believe me,” she said. “They do everything to save us from the horrible life we had, and give us a better future. They make us beautiful, and prepare us for a life of joy and success – and of pleasure.”

The tunnel widened and the buzzing stopped. The lovely girls’ faces gained focus against the shining wall.

“Bullshit,” he said – or croaked, really.

Charlie shook her head with a sad smile.

“They really should just have told and shown you, Lucian. Why didn’t they?” she asked herself more than him. “It would have made things so much easier afterwards.”

Nico shrugged, spreading her fingers to study her nails.

“Of course it wouldn’t!” Lucian said. “They didn’t tell me because they know I would have refused.”

“You wouldn’t have,” Nico said, taking over from Charlie. Her voice was flat, disinterested. “Why would you? Deep down you know. You saw Drew; you even fucked her. You’ve known it all the time; you’re just in denial. Dr. Kurtz has been stimulating your prostate for months now, ever since you arrived. That must have rung a bell, surely? Come on, Lucian ... no one can be so naïve to believe that all the pills you took were vitamins – and all the dressing and making up just theater?”

She chuckled before going on.

“You have been unconscious all night and most of today because they needed you to lie perfectly still while one drip’s needle was in your prostate and others ... well, look at your lower arm.”

The words were there and his ears could hear them; but his mind refused them entrance.

He looked automatically at his bruised arm, imagining a cool white room, a high bed with a deadly pale patient wearing his face. There were tubes everywhere, and beeping machines. Nurses and doctors slunk around the bed, whispering gibberish. Parker was there no doubt, wearing her corset and smiling sardonically.

It was Frankenstein revisited.

He knew what a prostate was for and where it sat in his body. There hadn’t been a medical inspection without Kurtz prodding at it, and taking samples. He also knew about intravenous drips. Nico was right: he’d kept denying what was overly clear to anyone else.

He decided to ignore it again.

Sinking down the slick wall he sat with his arms around his knees – staring at the girls.

“What more didn’t they tell me about graduation?” he asked instead. “What are you girls supposed to prepare me for?”

They looked at each other again, before Charlie retook the word.

“I’m not sure we’re allowed to tell you,” she said.

She blushed deeply. He looked away.

“But they told you, didn’t they, back when you graduated?” he said.

Again they looked at each other. Now Nico rose and walked off, leaving the bathroom. The short white robe shifted on her moving ass.

“Yes,” Charlie admitted. “But I was ready for it, you know? I wanted it. I’d been looking out for it since forever.”