“Did you truly think you could sneak into my home?” Lord Chester Wallace asked me.

“A little, yeah.”

“How quaint,” he said, “then are you prepared for what comes next?”

“What,” I asked, “you gonna call the cops and let them see all that weird shit you’ve got here? Besides, you make one wrong move I’ll shoot a hole through your fucking face.”

“Oh please,” he chuckled, “You aren’t going to shoot me.”

“That so? Tell you what. Let Molly go, and we’ll see what happens.”

“You already know I will not. She has already refused your ... rescue. Why should she not, when she is so very happy here?”

“You did something to her. Fix it or else I’ll...”

“You’ll what?”

“I’ll fucking shoot you, asshole. Did you think this was for show?”

The asshole just chuckled.

“Of course it was. I already told you, you are not going to shoot me.”

“The hell I won’t. You gonna give me some sort of ‘if you were going to you already would have’ bullshit?”

“No,” he said, “Because you cannot.”

“What?”

“Look down.”

I did.

The gun in my hand was no a gun at all, but instead a light, fluffy feather duster. Ornate, frilly, and completely ridiculous. A thing utterly harmless. Not even all that great for cleaning, much less harming someone. I must have stared at it in disbelief for nearly ten seconds before I realized it was not the only thing changed, not even remotely. My mind had simply refused to recognize what else it was seeing.

Impossible!

I couldn’t believe it, refused to accept it, but the proof before my eyes was undeniable. The thing which had once been a gun slipped from my slender, limp fingers.

There were tits! Big ones. The kind of soft, pillowy boobs you absolutely want to see when you’re staring down a girl’s dress. Perfect, bountiful cleavage that you could dive into all day long, with that lovely cream colored complexion accented by the faintest touch of blush. Utterly, absolutely gorgeous, something most women would kill for and most men would die to hold.

But I was a man, damn it, so what the hell were they doing on my chest?

Forgetting the gun, my hands scrambled upwards, refusing to believe their touch would find what my eyes already saw. They did though, the flesh I saw proved far too real beneath my fingertips. Soft and yielding, as perfect to touch as to the eye, each squeeze felt within and without. A sensation utterly alien, and yet strangely strangely arousing.

“Non, non,” I said in a lifting, Soprano voice.

There was something around my neck. A frilly lace choker. I could not see it, but I didn’t have to. My body was wrapped in a soft, clinging dress of black fabric and white lace, whose low cut bodice plunged low on my chest. The hem ended well shy of my knees, leaving my legs bare save for a pair of silken stockings that ended at the bottom of my thighs.

I knew this outfit, I had seen it before. On His Lordship’s maids, on all his servants, by my wife Molly when I tried and failed to rescue her. And now worn by me.

No. No! I refused to accept it.

I shook my head, willing this to be some sick dream. The motion set my long, braided swinging. This could not be real, I refused to let it be so. There was a pressure about me. In my head? No something deeper, etherial, almost spiritual, a force pushing against my very being. Not knowing how, I pressed back, as if denial alone could change reality. Something shifted. A blink of the eye, and everything was normal once more.

The gun was on the floor. Not some gaudy accessory, but the cold steel I had carried to rescue my wife. Once again, I wore my simple black t-shirt and faded jeans. With that perfectly flat chest and gym rat physique I had worked so hard to develop.

“What the hell was that? A trick? An illusion?”

“No,” he said, “a reality. THE reality, for it is inevitable you will accept the truth.”

“Truth, what truth?”

“That you belong to me, my dear, as my willing and eager maidservant.”

A shock ran through me, I rang like a bell struck by the force of his words.

“Non, Monsieur,” I said, “Je suis libre - Oh!”

It had happened again. Somehow, without noticing it, I had slipped back into the body of a woman. More than that. I knew somehow that it had always been so. Not a transformation, a change, or an alteration, simply the true reality of who I was. Except, I knew full well that none of it had been true just seconds ago.

How could I not have noticed? Everything felt so different like this. All of these strange, feminine feelings I was forced to experience. Even breathing was changed, in the tight, confining bodice of my dress.

Wrapped up in the horror my bosom had stirred, I had ignored another change. One no less meaningful or fundamental. A difference felt between my thighs. One I did not wish to confront, but dared not ignore any longer. I did not, could not touch, but the difference was obvious all the same. A flatness, an absence where I had once risen. No, more than that, an emptiness. Some deep incompleteness within me that cried out in its lack.

I looked now to His Lordship, locking eyes with the man who had done this to me. It stirred something now, provoking and deepening that empty longing. An old, familiar sensation, and yet utterly changed by its inescapable femininity. Something yielding and inviting now, a sense of incompleteness ready to be made whole.

What was I thinking?

With an act of will, I rejected this false vision. I knew the way, I had done this once already, but despite that it proved harder this time. Like a clutch stuck in its bearings, it shifted only with difficulty.

But it did shift.