Trouser Snake -9

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Trouser Snake
by Shinigami
~~~~~Ch. 9~~~~~

 
“You were the uh…boy Rebecca found in the girl’s restroom, is that right?”
I blushed a bit, “Yeah. Sorry about that. The men’s restroom was…”
“I got a report that the toilet was overflowing around that time too. Was that you?”
I had forgotten about that, “Well, yeah, but all I did was flush it. Someone had been sick in there.”
“And yesterday you disturbed the pep rally fighting with Miss LaRue.”
“I wasn’t fighting! She pushed me!”
Principal Arnold just gave me a look, and I shut up. “Is there something going on I need to know about?”

~~~~~~~~~

During the break between periods a PA announcement asked that I come to the Principal’s office. Crap, I had forgotten to see him. Mr. Green had probably raised a fuss or something.
Principal Arnold was a very tall man, even sitting down. He looked a bit like a cop in a crime drama from the 70s: curly red hair that matched the hirsute forearms revealed by rolled up shirt sleeves, face squished into a pained expression that seemed to continuously emote that he was getting too old for this shit, I always found myself checking to see if he had a gun. He wasn’t that old, maybe late forties. There wasn’t any gray in his hair yet, he was actually kind of handsome in an older guy kind of way.

I checked myself going in, as I nearly always did whenever I realized I found a guy handsome, but no, I wasn’t attracted to him, I just found him attractive. That doesn’t really makes sense, but it’s how I feel about it. There’s nothing sexual about it, I never got an erection or anything before the curse, but when I see a good looking guy I feel almost the same as when I see a pretty girl. Almost the same, although not quite. I’ve spent quite a lot of time thinking about this and what I figure it comes down to is that with girls I feel like I would like to protect them, while with guys I feel like I would like to be protected by them. One reaction’s not really any stronger than the other and so I remain confused.
“Principal Arnold?” I stood at his open door. I made sure to use my male voice, though maybe I shouldn’t have bothered.
“Yes? Oh, good you’re here. Do you know why I had you come in?” He took a sip from his coffee mug. The mug was plain navy blue. I imagined the coffee was probably black.
I scratched the back of my head “Mr. Green wanted me to see you. I said a cuss word in class.”
Principal Arnold gave me a look like that was completely not why he had called me in there, but he let it leave his face. “Ah, okay…You have anything to say for yourself?”
“Well, I had to go the bathroom pretty bad, and I had some sharp pains right when I was talking to Mr. Green. ”
“You were the uh…boy Rebecca found in the girl’s restroom, is that right?”
I blushed a bit, “Yeah. Sorry about that. The men’s restroom was…”
“I got a report that the toilet was overflowing around that time too. Was that you?”
I had forgotten about that, “Well, yeah, but all I did was flush it. Someone had been sick in there.”
“And yesterday you disturbed the pep rally fighting with Miss LaRue.”
“I wasn’t fighting! She pushed me!”
Principal Arnold just gave me a look, and I shut up. “Is there something going on I need to know about?”
I shrugged.
“Why is Mrs. Pritchard putting messages on the PA about snake curses?”
I tried the truth. Mrs. Pritchard, Karen and Coach Crown seemed to believe in curses, maybe it was something that everyone secretly knew about but didn’t talk about, like how dogs seem to like the taste of human poop and will eat it if given the chance.
I'll give you a moment to clear your mind of that unfortunate analogy...
Okay.
“Well, Shaquonda …kind of…cursed me…I think?”
“What did she do to you?” Principal Arnold’s voice was even.
“Um…it’s kind of personal?” I still wasn’t sure if Principal Arnold believed me about the curse. I didn’t want to go on about my penis turning into a snake until I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to regret it.
“Your name is Ashley Patterson?”
“Yes, sir. Bruce Ashley Patterson. Ashley’s my middle name. I usually go by Ash.”
Principal Arnold nodded. “I have your records in front of me. You’re a good student. A’s and B’s mostly, a few Cs, but you’re taking some difficult classes.”
“Uh yeah?”
“You don’t normally like to make waves, do you?”
“I don’t understand what you mean, sir.” I really didn’t. If anything I kind of wanted to make more waves, if I could somehow do that without interacting with anybody.
“I try to make it a point to know as many of my students as possible. It gets harder every year. Because of Katrina our class size nearly doubled. And the new kids have problems. Some of them have lost everything, others are struggling to keep what they have. We’ve got drug abuse up, one kid got sexually assaulted… it’s a mess. But I still try.”
I was confused. What was he getting at?
“Are you hiding from somebody or something?”
“No,” I said trying to convey as much of my confusion as I could with the word.
“Maybe…witness protection?”
“Huh? Why would I be in witness protection?”
“Okay. Let me lay it out for you. You seem to keep to yourself. You’re not in any sports, you’re not at the top of the honor roll, you’re there, but not high up or anything. I never hear from you. And then you have your altercation with Miss LaRue which apparently started when she accused you of flirting with Bobby Singh.”
“I was just joking!”
“Then you imitated a black woman and invited Miss LaRue to see your ‘trouser snake’”
“Well yeah, but…”
“Now today, only a couple of hours ago, my daughter calls Miss Garibaldi, saying that a girl collapsed in the girls restroom, probably due to anemia due to menstruation.”
“She didn’t say that.”

Principal Arnold held up his hands. “You’re right. Ms. Garibaldi said that you probably didn’t have anemia because you would have known about it. Then she over heard you say that maybe it was anemia after all.”
“Okay, that’s possible I guess,” I said, still wondering where this was all going.
“So like I said, I have your records in front of me. Everything looks good. Your birth certificate says you are male, and as you’re talking to me now I can almost believe that you are a young man. And yet three different people swear they heard a girl, not a boy talking. You say you left Mr. Green’s class because of pains, and you didn’t seem to have any compunctions about going to the women’s restroom. You got upset at Shaquonda when she said you were flirting with a boy and only belatedly did you make any reference to being male.” Principal Arnold took a sip from his coffee. “So what it looks like to me is that the jig is up. I don’t know why you’ve gone through so much trouble pretending you were a boy, but it’s only going to get harder. And I have enough to worry about without all the trouble keeping your secret would cause.“
I was dumbfounded. Principal Arnold was so wrong I didn’t know where to begin. Still, I felt I had to try to set him straight.“Uh, I’m a boy, sir. I can just make my voice sound like a girl’s because I like to do skits and stuff.” I switched to a girl’s voice. “See this is my girl voice. I based it off some female singers I listen to.” I switched back again. “It’s not my real voice.” It was strange how when I said all of this it felt like a lie.
Prinicipal Arnold blinked. “That is amazing. It’s like two people talking. You have a gift, Ashley.” Principal Arnold put my papers into a stack. “Look, I’ll leave things as is for now. There must be a good reason why you and your parents have gone through this much trouble, but I’m sorry, you aren’t fooling anybody. The truth is going to come out eventually.”
I sat there with my mouth open until Mr. Arnold said I could go. I shuffled out of his office. Trying to work out all the ramifications. Would reality change to fit Mr. Arnold's explanation? How could I convince him he was wrong? I could just drop my drawers, right? Surely he would see then. See what, though? A snake wedged in an otherwise female looking crotch? Just thinking about it, it seemed like a mix between a bad prank and a disturbing attempt at blackmail.
I just moved on autopilot for a while, stunned by the whole thing
In Spanish class, Senora Paredes corrected me. She asked me in Spanish why I wasn’t paying attention and I responded, “Lo siento, estoy un poco cansado”
“Un poco cansaDA” Senora Paredes corrected. “Unless you want people to think you’re a boy.”
Several people laughed. I looked around the room and tried to figure out whether they were laughing because of what Senora Paredes said, or because she thought I was a girl. I felt the snake move against the small of my back. I had my hoodie on again, just with the arms rolled up my sleeves. No one noticed the snake. But surely that situation couldn’t last for long.
After class I went to the restroom, the girl’s restroom this time, to see my reflection. I hadn’t changed my hairstyle or my clothes, and yet the person in the mirror was a girl, not a boy. My hair, which as a boy was more or less normal, now made me look like some sort of rocker. On the plus side my gut was almost completely gone, I lost that after my run I guessed, and that might have been why I was feeling so hot, because of an increased metabolism. I still felt like running around a bit. I was feeling very jittery.
I went to a stall and pulled out the snake. It wrapped around my leg, which I was fine with. My leg was a bit thinner than I was used to. I examined myself as I had before. I wasn’t a gynecologist, but as far as I could tell I was now the owner of my very own vagina.

I was a girl.
I was a girl with a snake attached to her crotch. “I’ll be tons of fun at parties” I thought to myself. I thought of Blade Runner: that one scene where the announcer with a voice like Peter Lorre says “Watch her take the pleasures from the serpent.” Of course you never see what she does. I imagined what sorts of dance moves I could do with a snake attached to me as it was and I started feeling a little…giddy.
The snake bit me in the leg.
I let out a small scream. It would have probably been a yell if I were still a boy, but it hurt. I didn’t want the skin to tear like Dubois’s nose; so I pinched the snake’s head carefully and pulled up and out of the wound along the curve of the fangs. I wondered would happen if I killed the snake. Could I kill it? Maybe it was a magical zombie snake that could not be killed. And supposing I did kill it, would it all fall off then, or would I be stuck with a piece of snake hanging off me the rest of my life. Or would it revert back into a penis after it died like a werewolf killed in wolf form turning back into a man?
I needed to talk to Shaquonda, but what if she just got angry. What if she cursed me again? One curse was bad enough. The Janitor, Carl Locley. Coach Crown said he could help. Unfortunately Janitors were a bit like cops. Always easy to find except when you need one.
It wasn’t that big a problem as things go. I just had to go around the school and look. But, I don’t know. It was one more thing. It just pushed me over the edge. Like I had my quota for the day. It all kind of hit me like a bat to the gut. I was completely out of my depth. I might never be a boy again, and I had no idea how to be a girl. On top of that even if I did want to be a girl what was I going to do about the snake? What was I going to tell my parents?
My back against the wall of the bathroom I sank down to the floor and cried. Even as I was doing it I tried to tell myself that now was not the time; I had a mission; I just had to do a few more things. But none of that helped. The tears just kept coming. I wasn’t able to move other than to wipe the moisture from my face. I couldn’t even get up to get a piece of toilet paper to take care of the snot that started to make its way out my nose. It was cry time, and everything else was on lock down.
And then, like a receding storm, the crying jag passed. I got up, blew my nose, and splashed some water on my face. I took a breath and it came out in a shudder, like an aftershock, but still underneath that, I felt better. “You can do this,” I told my reflection. My voice was girl’s voice, and it was still shaky from me crying. I swallowed and I repeated in a stronger, more assured version of the same voice “You can do this.” The spiky-haired girl in the mirror had eyes that were steely with determination.
I believed her. Even though I wasn't entirely sure what "this" was.

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Comments

A little weird

but a very nice story. I like it.

One thing though, that Shaquonda is one mean bitch. I don't believe Ash will get much help or sympathy from that immature nasty teenage 'princess' of the dark, when you think about the lengths she has gone already to exact her revenge. That reaction is way over the top.
I mean, come on.. She had already thrown Ash from the bleachers in retribution, and in my opinion is rightfully punished with some detention. It should've been settled by that. But Nooo.. miss teenage drama queen has to go the extra mile and use her hoodoo without thought of responsibility or maturity to punish a little runt who was a bit fresh and way funnier than she'd ever might hope to be.

I sincerely hope this malicious use of magic will turn around and bite her in the ass, if not literally then at least figuratively in the hopes she´ll get some hard lessons to learn about when and where to use magic and for what. I hate power abusers.

Thanks for your story though, I really like it.

Jo-Anne

you totally rock

rebecca.a's picture

this is a great story. I especially like the editorial asides like "i'll give you a moment to clear your mind of that unfortunate analogy". you've got a real gift for narrative voice.


not as think as i smart i am

Shaquonda Is Due For Some Kind Of Punishment

jengrl's picture

Shaquonda is due for some kind of punishment. In other incidents where magic is used in a vindictive manner, the person casting the spell faces consequences for abusing their powers. Shaquonda deserves to have something happen to her befitting of her misuse of this power.

PICT0013_1_0.jpg

Oh wow!

This story is so freaking weird mew... I LOVE IT!!!!!!! YAY MEW ^^ WEIRDNESS RULES!!!

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I know who I am, I am me, and I like me ^^
Bisexual, transsexual, gamer girl, princess, furry that writes horror stories and proud ^^

I know who I am, I am me, and I like me ^^
Transgender, Gamer, Little, Princess, Therian and proud :D

Waiting

Hello Shinigami,

Please continue the story. I've been checking back every day for updates, and now I'm panicking because you haven't updated for a few weeks.

Never before have I routed for the main character to transform back to a guy, but this feels like such a tragedy, like we all know what is going to happen, and yet it is inevitable... so sad. Yet so enjoyable, I can't stop reading!

So please keep doing what you're doing, and I look forward to the next chapter!

This is really well written

This is really well written and really fun. I hope, someday, there will be more. Even if not, thanks for sharing!

Abandoned?

But is definitely imaginative enough to deserve continuation!

Help! I've fallen too, and now _I_ can't get up!

Aljan Darkmoon's picture

“Hi, I live by a cliff; drop over, some time!”

Wow, when you invited us to “drop over” and read, I had no idea you were writing from the top of the same cliff. I’ve really fallen for your story, and the abrupt stop at the bottom sure does hurt!