by Elliot Wake
“This is it,” I said. “No screwing it up this time.”
Tam raised an eyebrow, those violet lips curved. Snow sugared the lower one and I imagined licking it.
“I promise I won’t pull a gun on you,” she said.
“Likewise.”
“Or knee you in the cock.”
“I’d very much appreciate not reliving that.”
“You know,” she said, “you still owe me a rematch.”
The bus huffed up, shedding steam like an animal laboring in the cold. We waved our wallets at the fare machine and fell in a heap of legs and arms on a side-facing bench. Tamsin laid her head in the crook of my shoulder.
“Got an eye on him?” I said.
“Yeah.” Her knee linked with mine. “Nuzzle into me.”
My heart broke into fluttering pieces, like the stuff sloughing off the windows. I pressed my face into her hair. Warm almond. Her scent drugged me, and despite the consummate fucked-upness of everything, I wanted her. T works no matter how fucked-up you are, how frightened, anxious, unsure. The wildest thing is how a body continues to function no matter how battered its mind. I imagined my mouth on hers again, our limbs tangling. That smooth belly pressing against the hard rack of my abs. It took every iota of restraint to not go too far. Instead I watched snow melt into liquid glass in her hair, and wondered if I could let her touch me the way I wanted to touch her.
“He’s moving.” Her eyes flashed like flicked pennies. She pecked my cheek, hopped out at the next stop with our target. I waited one more, pulled my hood up, and followed.
Snow fell in its haunting way, a million silent impacts per second. Crito was a shadow drifting through the quiet downfall. We tailed him at a distance. He walked head down, unaware. Something I could never do. Tam either. Owning a female body in this world, even temporarily, changed you. You could never go back to that male ease, that ignorance. A female body was a raw nerve. It reacted to everything—it had to, if it wanted to survive.
Crito trotted up the brick steps of a bungalow. Windows glowed creamy gold in the snow-bright darkness.
In the alley behind the house, Tam brushed her gloved hand against my stubble, dusting off frost. She leaned up to breathe into my ear, “You look like an old man.”
It made me shiver. That breath traced my skin as if it were a fingertip.
Cressida, the girl who betrayed Troilus, her lover.
We watched the silhouette move against lit glass.
Our plan: second-floor breach. Tam made a stirrup with her hands and boosted me to the roof. I hauled her up, her body nimble, light. We wedged the window open. The attic bedroom was dark.
Below us he moved, oblivious. I counted footsteps, the creak of things opening and closing.
He’s alone, I mouthed.
My knife blended seamlessly into the darkness. We padded downstairs, two menacing bodies clad all in black. Shadows come to life.
Crito stood peering at the backyard.
At our footsteps in the snow.
I was on him in a heartbeat, my arm snaking around his neck. Hard flex, blade to throat.
“Don’t speak,” I said.
Tamsin switched the lights off.
I sat him on a chair, the knife skimming his Adam’s apple. His eyes were glassy in that way most men’s are, filmed with dull light. You saw it in trans men’s timelines. Ingrid saw it in mine. In the before pics my eyes held something tremulous and soft, a watery uncertainty. In the after pics they were hooded, hard, that animal glaze of confidence. Or uncaring.
It’s not the T, I’d said. It’s what I’ve been through.
You’ve been through T, she said.
“Stay quiet.” I took the knife away.
Tamsin began strapping him to the chair with duct tape.
“You,” Crito said, breathing fast. “You’re the ones who—”
My elbow smashed into the center of his face. Something crackled, wetly.
“Told you to stay quiet,” I said.
When Tam finished with the tape she pulled a hood over his head. He screamed through it, muffled.
“Shut up,” I said calmly, “or I’ll gag you.”
Ragged, heavy breaths.
“Relax, Jay. Don’t hyperventilate.”
His body stilled.
Tamsin frisked him for weapons, found a 9 mm. Smirked and tucked it in her belt.
Concrete stairs led to a basement. I dragged him down, letting the chair screech and crash on each step. Startled cries emitted from the hood. The air was damp, dewy. I positioned the chair beneath a lightbulb and plucked the hood off while Tam yanked the cord.
Blood painted frantic wings across his face, as if he’d bitten a live animal. He cowered.
“Hello, Jay,” I said. “How’s that shoulder?”
“You may speak,” Tam said. “Say hello.”
“Please. I’m out of the game. I stopped that night, like you said.”
“Good boy.” I squatted at his feet, testing his bonds. “We’re not here about that.”
His eyes rolled from me to her and back.
“We’re here,” Tamsin said, leaning on the shoulder she’d shot, making him wince, “to talk about the past.”
I fished the phone from his hoodie. Locked, of course.
“Tell me the password now,” I said, “or tell me after I’ve broken all of your fingers.”
He told me now.
I scrolled through his contacts. “It’s been a while, Jay. How’s it feel to be the victim again?”
Crito frowned. “Do I know you?”
I glanced up at him through my mask. His gaze ricocheted between my mouth, my eyes, the only features visible.
“You seem very familiar,” he said.
“Are you shitting me?”
His frown became confused.
Impulsively, I tore the mask off. Not like it mattered—he knew full fucking well who I was. “Surprise, motherfucker.”
Still no recognition, only suspicion.
Bizarre, but who knew what game Jay would play to get out of this. Back to his phone.
Tamsin said, “What made you like this, Crito?”
“Huh?”
“What made you a bottom-feeding misogynistic piece of shite?”
He shrugged. “I’m not a misogynist. I’m a humanist.”
“And I’m the bloody Queen. What do you call the way you treat women?”
“Equality.”
Tam snorted. “Your head’s so far up your arse you could lick your tonsils. What do you know about equality?”
His eyes darted to me, then away. “I know it already exists.”
“Right. That’s the height of male privilege, mate.”
“You women always talk about male privilege. But you have female privilege, and you never admit it.”
“What, pray tell, does ‘female privilege’ entail?”
“Being a victim. A martyr. Having people automatically believe whatever you say if you cry.”
My jaw tightened.
“Sure,” Tam scoffed. “Like they believed the bruises on my body. Like they’ve believed all the girls who were beaten and raped, whose abusers walked free.”
Blood pounded in my head. I focused on the phone.
The contact names were familiar: guys Black Iris had gone after. All aliases, Greek philosophers and founding fathers. Typical. To these fuckwits masculinity was a white savior jerking off atop the world.
I kept scrolling.
“Your kind,” Tam said, “will never know how easy you have it. The only way you could understand is if you’d been born female.” She grasped Crito’s jaw, made a fish face of his mouth. “Or maybe if you were transgender. If you had to enter into a world of misogyny just to be yourself. Give up your male privilege, feel what it’s like to be seen as a girl. If life were fair, you would’ve been. You would’ve suffered with a body you couldn’t stand. You would’ve felt the anguish and hatred that you bring women.”
Th
e phone screen shivered. I didn’t argue, but I thought, You’re wrong, Tam. If life were fair, nobody would suffer. Regardless of gender.
I said, “She came to see you, didn’t she?”
Tamsin frowned. Crito’s demeanor changed: no longer self-righteous, but wary.
“Answer me.”
“There were two,” he said edgily.
“Who were they, Jay?”
His gaze refocused, and I saw the moment it happened: when past and present aligned. He stuttered, then said, “Sofie?”
My hand shot out of its own accord. The phone glass cracked on his jawbone. Blood spattered the concrete.
“That name is fucking dead,” I said, my voice still soft.
He coughed red, cringed. Tongued a loose tooth. “I can’t believe it’s you.”
Tamsin smacked his cheek, and he moaned. “Answer the question. Who came to see you?”
But he was looking at me now.
“Two girls,” he said.
“What did they look like?”
“They wore masks, like you. One was tall, blond. Other was short with dark hair.”
Tam and I locked eyes.
A tall blonde and a short brunette.
What a coincidence. Just like Blythe McKinley and Laney Keating.
“Did the blonde have tattoos?” I said. “An accent?”
“I don’t know. The other one did the talking.”
“What did they want?”
He spat a glob of blood on the floor. “To deliver some flowers to your place.”
The bouquet, with my deadname on the card. “Which you did.”
“Nah. I’m out of the game.”
“Lie to me again and I’ll knock the rest of your teeth down your throat.”
“I’m not lying, man. I’m retired.” Crito shrugged uneasily in his bonds. “This shit isn’t worth my life. You ever had a bullet in you?”
I didn’t answer. Instead I stood, half turned. “They asked you to deliver flowers. The way you used to do, to threaten girls.”
“Those weren’t threats.”
“What were they?”
“Reality checks.”
Tamsin cracked her knuckles. “He could still chew with a few less teeth, don’t you think?”
Some catastrophe was happening inside me, a feeling of bones snapping, collapsing inward. This conversation was leading to a place I’d hoped it never would.
“Why did you pretend not to recognize me, Jay? You know who I am.”
“I didn’t know you were . . . her.”
“Liar. You and Adam have been after me since he came back.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t play dumb, you human garbage fire. Are you working with the Wolf to ruin my life?”
“The hell you talking about, man?”
“Those girls who came to see you. Why did they ask you to do this? To use my deadname, to threaten me?”
Crito looked me in the eye. “Because that’s how women are. They hate us.”
A part of me remained there while another part went back to a memory. The morning after it happened, my body both tight as wire and unraveled like frayed thread, while Ingrid paced in the dawn light, silvering the sunbeams with her smoke. Only once did I voice the question screaming inside me:
Why? Why did this happen, Inge?
She stopped pacing. Her face was cold wrath. Because that’s how men are. They hate us.
All these years, it sat inside me. That othering. There were men, hateful, violent, and on the other side, us. Girls.
But she was wrong. I was never really either, was I? Not a girl, not a real boy. Just this other. This defective, fucked-up thing.
“Why did they come to you, Jay?”
“They’ve been after me for months. Picked off my officers one by one. It was just a matter of time till they got to me. So I preempted them—I made a deal.”
“Let me shut his lying mouth,” Tamsin said.
I waved her quiet. “What kind of deal?”
“You know Adam’s back?”
“No fucking shit.”
“Well, I asked him to help me out. To get those bitches off my dick.”
I frowned. “You sent him to . . . meet with her? With the Little Wolf?”
“Yeah.”
My thoughts raced. “Why would she make a deal with you? You have nothing to offer except going away.”
Crito shook his head. “She didn’t. The deal’s with Adam.”
Adam, sitting there in Black Iris HQ. As a guest.
A partner.
“What was the deal?”
“Don’t know. You’d have to ask him.”
“What did you get out of this?” I pressed.
“She let me go.”
“After everything you’ve done, all the people you’ve hurt—she just let you go?”
Crito smiled. For a moment I saw the old Jay, that sly, knowing grin he’d shoot at me when I was her. As if he could see right through me. All the conflict inside me, the boy’s name I hid from my boyfriend, the longing to start T. One night when we were alone together for a moment at a restaurant, Jay leaned obscenely close and said, So, are you a tranny? His tone was faux friendly. My heart spiked into my throat. What are you talking about? I’d said, stammering, so obvious, and he said, still cheerful, Did you have the surgery? You know, cut your dick off, make a slit? It had taken every ounce of restraint in me to not show my relief. He was calling me a trans girl—interweaving homophobia and transphobia, implying I wanted to trick straight men. In the most insane way, his awfulness was a blessing. It was so maliciously ignorant that it hid the truth. Shut up, you creep, I’d said, and Jay laughed. If it’s real, he said, sliding a hand between my thighs before I could stop him, why don’t you like dick in it the way you like it in your mouth? Before I could react, Adam returned to the table.
This person was the abomination who Adam had let indoctrinate him. Let into his head, his heart. He’d let Jay turn him inside out till his monster parts showed, too.
They’re both dangerous, Inge had warned me. Your boyfriend’s “bestie” is poisoning him.
I know the feeling, I’d said.
And I’d paid the price for that. For not trusting the one person who really loved me.
“Why?” I said now. “Why would they make a deal with either of you?”
Crito lifted his good shoulder. “We’re not the biggest fish in the pond. They don’t want us as bad as they want someone else.”
“Who?” I said.
He merely shrugged that shoulder higher. He didn’t know.
But I had a pretty good feeling I did.
———
Tamsin and Ingrid and I stared at the whiteboard in my apartment. At the diagram of my ruin.
There was a reason Laney Keating had taken me under her wing. She’d sensed it in me: that festering resentment, an eager willingness to believe the worst about men. To punish them. Our misandry fueled each other. I know how it makes you feel, she’d said. It’s the same for me. Catharsis. As long as I’d been her consenting cat’s-paw, she’d tolerated the fact that I was one of them, too.
Until now.
Until I pushed too far, showed myself too aware of her motives.
When I told her I’d seen Adam in town, tried to guilt-trip her to get what I wanted, to satisfy my own agenda—then she decided I’d grown too bold.
Laney was no different from Norah. Both girls who’d accuse a man of the worst crime. Foment loathing and indignation against him. Because who wouldn’t believe a guy would do the worst thing? Of course he would. Rape culture, patriarchy, misogyny: these words had leaped from academic discourse into the common vernacular. Norah’s accusation needed no proof. Just her tears, and the whole history of men hurting women behind it.
“You’re not seeing this clearly,” Tamsin said. “Why would Laney do this to you?”
“Because I’m a loose end. And I threatened to use my leverage against her.”
“But she gave you that leverage as insurance. As a token of trust.”
Ingrid sniffed. “And she broke it. Surprise, surprise, the diabolical mastermind is diabolical.”
“Paranoia,” Tamsin said dismissively. “Ren, the point of that leverage was so you’d trust Laney someday when you wouldn’t want to. This is that time.”
“How do you know?”
“Because your faith in her is being bloody tested. When else could it be?”
“No. Don’t you see, Tam? I’m the biggest threat to Laney now. I have real shit on her, and I planned to kill someone without her permission. She wants to silence me more than she wants vengeance on a shitbag like Crito.”
“That’s wild speculation—”
“Did she tell you to get me drunk that first night?”
Tamsin bit her lip.
“Did she, Tam?”
“Does it matter now? I’m on your side. You know that.”
“That’s a yes.” When Tam didn’t refute it, I went on, “Laney kept me in the dark about Jay being Crito. She’s smart—she doesn’t throw away an opportunity before she uses it. And she doesn’t reveal anything until she’s forced to. When Adam came back, she knew I’d want him dead. So she kept him and Jay on a leash, to sic them on me if I demanded vengeance, used my leverage. Which I did. Now here we are.”
“She’s not after you. You’re complicating things.”
Ingrid sighed out a blue cloud of cigarette smoke. She would not quit smoking indoors. I had half a mind to toss her cigs in the trash, for her own good.
“It’s not complicated,” I said. “It all adds up. Laney must’ve been planning to dispose of me for a while. You know her—she sets up the dominoes long in advance.”
“This is designed to look like something it’s not. Someone is playing you.”
Inge raised an eyebrow. “Have you checked your bloodwork recently?”
The interruption was so random I snapped, “How the hell could I afford to?”
Both girls stared at me.
“Sorry. Touchy. I’m not sleeping well.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Why do you ask, Ingrid?”
“Because paranoid thinking is a symptom of androgen overexposure.”