“This sometimes happens with Twist compulsions,” Dr. Oldstadt said. “They are vague at first, and easy to ignore, but once they become more definite, they are harder to resist and one suffers more distress when trying to resist them. I’m sorry we did not realize that wearing feminine clothes was a Twist-compulsion for you, and not just an expression of your altered gender identity.”

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Twisted Throwback

part 13 of 25

by Trismegistus Shandy

This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in his Twisted universe. It's set about a generation later than "Twisted", "Twisted Pink", etc. A somewhat different version was serialized on the morpheuscabinet2 mailing list in January-April 2014.

Thanks to Morpheus, Maggie Finson, D.A.W., Johanna, and JM for beta-reading earlier drafts. Thanks to Grover, Paps Paw, and others who commented on the earlier serial.

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We drove into Atlanta; as we approached the Emory campus, since we had some time left before my appointment at the Twist clinic, Uncle Jack took a much more meandery, scenic route than Mom had taken, along twisty streets lined with huge old oaks and elms. We emerged out of that historic neighborhood onto a straighter, busier road lined with tall buildings, mostly part of the university-hospital-clinic complex, and found one of the parking decks — not the same one we’d used last time. “The walk from this one’s nicer than from the other one,” he said, and it was, though it was even longer — it took us across campus through the quadrangle surrounded by two-hundred-year-old buildings, through a couple of tiny nature preserves of an acre or two, and past the gravity monument Uncle Jack had told me about.

IT IS TO REMIND STUDENTS
OF THE BLESSINGS FORTHCOMING
WHEN SCIENCE DETERMINES
WHAT GRAVITY IS HOW IT WORKS
AND HOW IT MAY BE CONTROLLED

“The guy who donated that was kind of a crackpot, and that monument was apparently an embarrassment to the science department for a while. They hid it in an out-of-the-way place for a while, and stashed it in storage for a awhile before displaying it again... But now I hear they’re doing real research on gravity control, trying to reverse-engineer tricks like your friend Bobby’s.”

I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the shortest path from the parking deck to the Twist clinic, but it was fun, and it got us there on time. There were a few kids in the waiting room who weren’t obviously Twisted, and some of whom were probably too young to have gone through their Twist yet; they were probably here to get baseline pre-Twist scans and personality tests so when they did Twist it would be easier to figure out what had changed. Of the three moms and one dad (probably) waiting with them, only one was obviously Twisted, a woman with light purple hair. I’m not sure what made me think that her hair was natural — or at least Twist-natural — rather than dyed; maybe because we were at a Twist clinic, maybe because it was tied up in a bun that didn’t seem a likely hairstyle for someone who’d dye their hair an unnatural color. Uncle Jack chatted with the man and a couple of the women while I worked on my term paper.

After a while the nurse called me back.

“Do I need to change into a hospital gown?” I asked anxiously.

“No, not yet anyway. I just need to check your vital signs, and then Dr. Yarrow will see you.”

A few minutes later, Dr. Yarrow came in.

“Good afternoon. It’s Emily now, right?”

“Yes — I started going by that name last Friday, and filed the name change paperwork on Tuesday.”

“And your mother told me you’d figured out something about your trick not long after you left here last week...?”

“That same afternoon, yeah.” I told him about the incident in the dressing room at the department store, and the experiments I’d tried since then to test my trick’s range, and see if I could get conscious control of it.

“Hmm. It first triggered when you tried on feminine clothes for the first time?”

“Yes.”

“And as far as you can tell, it’s been on all the time since then?”

“Nobody’s commented on it being off. It might be on only when other people are around... actually, if it’s working on people’s minds instead of light waves, then I guess it can’t work when nobody’s around, right?”

“Yes... it sounds like you’ve done a good job of home testing, but I’ll start by verifying those things. Give me a few minutes to set things up.”

Twenty minutes later Eileen, the same nurse I’d had last time, escorted me from the exam room to the trick testing range, with its target and transparent shield. A full-length mirror had been set up near the target. She had me stand close to the mirror, and looked at me, and at my reflection, back and forth, as she made notes on her tablet. Then she took several photos of me from different angles, directly and in the mirror. Then she had me stand on one side of the shield and looked at me through it, and had me back up slowly along the test range until I was next to the mirror. Finally she told me I could relax, and left; she returned with Dr. Yarrow a few minutes later.

“Our tests so far confirm all the tests you did at home, except for the distance test,” he said. “We’ll do another, more robust distance test in a little while — I’m waiting on some other equipment. Also, the shielding we use to protect our researchers against the more destructive tricks doesn’t block your trick — that’s not surprising; it rarely has an effect on tricks like yours.”

“Like mine, how?”

“Those that appear to affect the minds of other people directly, rather than the input to their senses. I’d like to do some other tests now. Since the trick first manifested when you wore feminine clothing for the first time, and no one has seen you wearing anything else since then... is that correct?”

“Yeah.”

“Nor unclothed?”

“No.”

“Well, I’d like to test the parameters of that — first with you wearing something androgynous, one of our more modest styles of hospital gown, and then in masculine clothes, and then unclothed. Eileen here will assist you.”

He left, and Eileen took out a hospital gown.

“Can I keep my underwear on under it?”

She frowned thoughtfully. “Let me check... Go ahead and keep your underwear on, and change into the gown. I’ll be back in a moment.”

She returned a minute or two later, at which point I’d gotten the gown on, and said: “Dr. Yarrow said let’s do tests both with and without underwear. Ah, I see.”

“Do I still look like a girl?”

“Yes. Now take everything off, and put the gown on again by itself.”

She turned her back, and I did as she’d said, squinting my eyes to keep from having to look at my out-of-place parts. “I’m ready,” I said.

She turned around. “Oh.”

“Does it still work?”

“Not quite as well... Now the masculine clothes.” She turned her back on me again.

They’d asked me to bring in a change of my old boy-clothes with me for trick testing, so I’d suspected what they were planning, and been dreading this moment. I got them out of my bag and, after staring at them with distaste for a few moments, took off the gown and changed into them. It took me the better part of a minute to force myself to put the jockey shorts on, and I finally succeeded only because looking at my horrible boy-parts for another moment began to seem even worse. It was the hardest thing I’d done since my Twist, and I felt horrible when I was done, ashamed to have anyone see me — I was glad Uncle Jack wasn’t there.

“Look quick and tell me if it’s okay so I can get into my own clothes again,” I said frantically.

She turned. “Oh, dear, you’re shaking like a leaf... Get out of those. We still have a couple more tests to do. I’m going to give Dr. Yarrow a piece of my mind after this...”

“Do I look sort of okay?” I asked, as I started to undress.

“You look like your old self,” she said, turning her back again. “Ah... for this next test, do you want me here, or Dr. Yarrow, or both?”

“What’s the next test?”

“Seeing if your trick works when you’re unclothed.”

“Oh... you, I guess. But just for a moment, okay?”

“No more than necessary. Let me know when you’re ready.”

I stripped out of those clothes as fast as I could, though being naked was not really any better, and stood there. “Okay, I guess I’m ready.”

She turned and glanced over me, then turned away again. “You can get your own clothes on now.”

I did, breathing a quiet sigh of relief when I got my panties and bra on, then getting into my skirt and blouse and so forth in a bit less of a hurry. “I didn’t look right then, either?”

“No, not the way I suppose you want to look. Let’s return to the exam room.”

She led me to the exam room, and left, and I sat down to work on my term paper again. It was half an hour before Dr. Yarrow returned, accompanied by Dr. Oldstadt.

“Good afternoon, Emily,” Dr. Oldstadt said. “I understand you saw Dr. Underwood this morning?”

“Yes. He seems like a really nice guy, like he knows what he’s talking about.”

“He’s the most experienced gender dysphoria counselor I could find who was willing and able to see a new patient. I won’t ask you about what passed between you; I just wanted to see if you were happy with him.”

Dr. Yarrow said, “I suspect the anomalies and limitations we are seeing with your trick are partly psychological. That is, I’m almost sure you can train yourself to overcome most of those limitations — not to fool cameras, of course, which would require a completely different type of trick, but all the others we’ve seen: that you can’t yet affect the way people see you in mirrors, and that wearing less feminine clothes, or none at all, disrupts your trick.”

“Eileen said you were suffering great distress when wearing masculine clothes, even for a few moments,” Dr. Oldstadt said, with a severe glance at Dr. Yarrow. “We would like to apologize. You were wearing masculine clothes at clinic last week, and said you were uncomfortable but did not seem to be quite so distressed as you were today...”

“It’s okay,” I said, not really meaning it. “I mean, I understand I have to do some uncomfortable things to figure out the limits of my trick. And last week, well, I didn’t like the clothes I was wearing but I didn’t know what else to wear. Now... a few minutes ago it felt a lot worse than it did the first couple of days after my trick.”

“This sometimes happens with Twist compulsions,” Dr. Oldstadt said. “They are vague at first, and easy to ignore, but once they become more definite, they are harder to resist and one suffers more distress when trying to resist them. I’m sorry we did not realize that wearing feminine clothes was a Twist-compulsion for you, and not just an expression of your altered gender identity.”

“I like wearing girl clothes,” I said. “It doesn’t feel like something’s forcing me to wear them.”

“Not all Twist-compulsions do; it varies from person to person. But compare it to something else you enjoy doing, both before and after your Twist — some favorite food, for instance. You enjoy it, but do you feel distress when you aren’t eating it, or when eating something else?”

“No, not like this.”

“Well. Dr. Yarrow says, and I bow to his thaumatological expertise, that there is no inherent reason your trick should stop working when you are unclothed or wearing androgynous or masculine clothes.”

“There are things that can make a trick stop working, temporarily or permanently,” Dr. Yarrow put in; “a head injury, or brain surgery to remove a tumor or cure some neurological disorder, or various drugs, or simple fatigue. But not wearing different clothes.”

“It seems far more likely that your unconscious deployment of your trick depends on you feeling a certain level of confidence in your feminine presentation. You convince yourself, to some degree, that you look like a girl, and your trick takes it the rest of the way, making you look feminine to other people as well. Wearing masculine or androgynous clothes, or nothing, undermines your confidence, and you unconsciously stop using your trick.”

“So if I get more confident about being a girl, maybe it will work even when I’m undressed or wearing — other stuff?” I couldn’t see any reason to wear boy clothes, even if I could make myself look like a girl while wearing them. But there might be times when I’d want to look like a girl when not wearing much of anything.

“I suspect so. Building your confidence will not only make your trick more effective, but make you happier overall; it’s important even if it does not affect your trick. And there are other techniques we can use to help you gain conscious control over it.”

“Aunt Rhoda suggested some stuff, and I’ve been trying it, but it hasn’t worked yet.”

“Keep practicing. It may take some time. And here are some other techniques that may prove useful...”

They taught me several exercises to use, and I went through them a couple of times, but still didn’t get any immediate results. I felt a lot more hopeful, though.

Then they had me read a short poem aloud into a microphone, and played it back; it sounded to me pretty much like my recorded voice used to sound, except maybe slightly higher pitched, but Dr. Yarrow was surprised, saying it sounded exactly like when he listened to me reading directly. He took the recording into another room and listened to it again and came back, and said:

“When I listen to it when you’re not in the room, your voice sounds more masculine. I think your trick is affecting not only the way we hear your voice, but the way we hear recordings of it, if we are within range of your trick.”

That might be useful, I thought, but probably not. If I was talking on the phone with somebody, they’d always be out of range.

“Now for the distance test,” Dr. Yarrow said. “About how large would you say your grandparents' back yard is? You were standing in one corner and your cousins in the far corner, correct?”

“Yeah. I guess it’s a hundred and fifty or two hundred yards long on that diagonal.”

“I think we can test a greater distance. Wait here; Eileen will escort you to the next testing site.”

A few minutes later Eileen opened the door and said, “You ready?”

“Sure,” I said, putting my tablet in my bag and standing up. “Where are we going?”

“Outside, and a fair walk across campus. I’ll show you.” I followed her out of the clinic into the waiting room. Uncle Jack stood up when he saw me.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

“Not just yet,” Eileen said. “We’re going for a walk, if you want to join us.”

“Sure.”

Within a couple of minutes Uncle Jack and Eileen were chatting like old friends. We left the clinic by the back doors and walked across campus — not quite the same way we’d come, but in the same general direction. Soon we arrived at the deck we’d parked in.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Up to the roof. Most of the buildings around here, the roof isn’t accessible without jumping through a lot of hoops with the maintenance department, but the roof of the parking deck is accessible enough.”

Once we were on the roof, Eileen led us over near one of the walls and we looked over the railing. We could see a fair way in that direction. She got out her phone and called someone. “We’re in position. Okay, let me know.” She hung up and said, “Now we wait.”

“For someone to look at Emily from a good ways off?” Uncle Jack asked. “One of those buildings over yonder?”

“I can’t tell you yet,” Eileen apologized. I stood there looking at the campus spread out below us for a minute or two, then got out my tablet and worked on my term paper.

A few minutes later Eileen’s phone rang. “Yes... just a moment.” She lowered the phone and said to me, “Walk back and forth next to the railing here a couple of times. As far as that blue car and back again.”

I did, and then she said: “Okay, stand here, and look over at that building there — no, that one — you see that tower? Look at the second row of windows from the top... then the, um, the fourth window from the left. Dr. Yarrow’s watching us from there.”

The window wasn’t transparent from this side at this distance, but I waved at him. Eileen, still listening to her phone, said, “Huh. Is that all, then? Okay.” She hung up and said: “Well, back to the clinic now.”

“Did he say whether Emily’s trick works at this distance?” Uncle Jack asked.

“It didn’t work until I told her where he was watching from.”

“Huh.”

We returned to the clinic, and Eileen told Uncle Jack to come on back to the exam room with me. A few minutes later Dr. Yarrow came in. He told us what Eileen had already told us, about my trick not working on him at that distance — a little over a mile — until I knew he was looking at me and where he was. Even though I couldn’t see him (it turned out he was using a borrowed telescope to look through that window at the parking deck roof), I could still use my trick on him once I knew about him.

“That suggests one more test I’d like to try before you go,” he said. “But first, let me tell you about the exercises I’ve given Emily to use. She should do them every day, if possible...”

A few minutes later, I was sitting in a chair in the trick testing range with a heavy black sleep mask over half my face. I was still wearing my own clothes, for which I was thankful, but the blindfold made me a little nervous, even though I trusted Dr. Yarrow and Eileen.

“Is that secure?” Eileen asked me. “You can’t see anything around the edges of it?”

“No. It’s pitch black.”

“All right. We’re going to leave the room for about five or ten minutes, and then we’re going to come back. Just sit and relax.”

“I’ll try.” I sat there and thought about the articles I’d been reading, figuring out which details were important enough to use in my term paper. I heard distant sounds, muffled voices, footsteps — none very close, none in the same room. Just before they’d blindfolded me, Dr. Yarrow and Eileen had propped the door of the testing range open, but set up a privacy screen just inside it so someone walking by in the hallway wouldn’t be able to see me.

I lost track of time, of course. After thinking about my term paper for a while, I started wondering if they’d forgotten about me, or gotten busy with an emergency. Maybe I should just take the mask off and go. We wanted to be out of Atlanta traffic by dark, if not already home. How much longer should I wait? I decided to count to three hundred; that would be about five more minutes.

I’d counted to eighty or so and gotten distracted thinking about Rob when a sudden voice startled me: “Emily?” It sounded like Dr. Yarrow.

“What is it?”

“We can take off the mask now.” I reached up to remove it, but someone was already untying the straps behind my head, and I lowered my hands. Moments later Eileen lifted the mask off.

“Well, that was interesting,” Dr. Yarrow said. “When we entered the room, you looked like your old self. Only when I spoke up did you suddenly look like — your new self. Eileen?”

“It was the same for me. She looked like a boy until you spoke up, and then instantly like the girl she is now.”

“Great,” I said. “Now I have to worry about people spying on me...”

“The exercises we gave you may help with this as well,” Dr. Yarrow said. “But I’m not sure. Even after you have conscious control of your trick, you may not be able to affect everyone who is perceiving you, if you aren’t aware they are doing so.

“I suppose that’s all we have for you today. Keep doing those exercises... Do you have any more questions for me?”

“Yes... how are you going to describe my trick for my driver’s license? I mean, I’m going to look even more unlike my driver’s license photo than most people.”

“Yes, there’s a code for that, for people whose appearance may not match their photo. Someone can scan the bar code on your license and look up the relevant details.”

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If you've enjoyed this and the other free stories I've posted here, you may also enjoy these novels and short fiction collection -- available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format.

Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes	Smashwords	Amazon
When Wasps Make Honey	Smashwords	Amazon
A Notional Treason	Smashwords	Amazon
The Weight of Silence and Other Stories	Smashwords	Amazon