Cycle

You lie there and feel the first of the purely psychosomatic cramps, and groan softly, as you feel muscles tense and your guts churn. They told you about the mood swings, they told you about the soreness in your chest, but no endocrinologist told you about this. A few other trans women mentioned it, of course, but what do they know? It's only them going through it.

You roll your head on the pillow, coated softly with sweat from the back of your head. It smells like salt. You think about all the other times they told you it was in your head. Just a phase. Some silly thing you read online. You're not really, haha, c'mon, you're joking. Seriously, you're joking, right?

You want to scream.

🦷

You dream about the dog.

It's where it always is, and you're where you always are. But this time, it comes to you.

It wuffs softly and looks at you with its eyes. It's a big dog, but the eyes are so friendly. Its tongue rolls out the side of its muzzle, puffs of breath coming past its teeth.

It licks your hand. Then it trots off.

Every time you have this dream, it licks your hand.

Someday, when you can afford therapy again, you'll have to ask why.

🦷

You go to work.

You come back home.

You take your pills.

You play a video game.

You fall asleep.

🦷

You stare at where the dog isn't, and feel a profound, unsettling melancholy.

It's the right weather for melancholy: the air is just a little too crisp, clouds of exhalation dancing on the edges of people's lips. The air feels as gray as the coat of the missing dog, the washed out colors of a sunrise through morning fog. It feels cold. Colder than it should be, for summer.

Your job is waiting. You can't be late again. You have to cook biscuits for minimum wage, for customers who think of you as a robot they can put two dollars into for it to spit out food. You shouldn't be staring at this spot where the dog should be. You have to work.

You have to stay in the back of the restaurant, on the cooking line even though you're terrified of the boiling oil.

You saw a coworker's hand go in, once. You can still smell it, human skin and fat burnt to uselessness not less than five feet away. You can still hear the screams cracking her voice. In the two infinite seconds you were looking at her hand, you swear you saw the skin split in half and slide off like a sheet.

She had the most beautiful skin. You wanted skin like that.

But your manager won't let you up front. Oh, well, older neighborhood, he says. People won't understand, he says. You wouldn't want people to give you a hard time, right? Besides, you remember the last time. That time you talked back, and they filed a complaint. Can't lose that business. Customer is always right. A random stranger is worth more to him than you, a face they see every day. That's the way it goes.

You want to scream. You want to tell him you don't care what he thinks. You want to tell everyone coming in you don't care what they think, either. You want to tell them all that you’re more than a sponge meant to soak up abuse for mistakes you didn’t even make, that you’re a full person, that they are so, so small.

You want to scream it so loud, it drowns out the screaming echoes of the woman whose skin slid off like a sheet.

You want to do more than scream. So much more.

But you need the job, and so, you turn away from where the dog isn't, and go to work.

🦷

You work the fryer.

You hear the beeping.

You fold the cardboard.

You hear the beeping.

You staple the bag.

You hear the beeping, the Goddamn beeping, the beeping that tells you an order isn't finished serving, and it's so Goddamn loud all of a sudden. A drill made of noise, sinking deeper into your skull every second, the order's not done, you have to get it done, cut the cooking time somehow, the rush is coming.

You work the fryer, you fold the cardboard, you staple the bag, and you hear the beeping.

And then, finally, the rush is done, and the beeping ceases.

You can still hear it.

It's all in your head. It's just a memory playing over and over, except...

You break from the half-sleep of routine and look to where the beep comes from. You can't hear the beeping, no, but you can hear the beeper. There's a dull hiss of static that wasn't there before.

You tap the flashing light, and slide a finger down to where the hiss is coming from, and as your finger touches the speaker, blood and muscle and bone conduct the sound that much louder, that much more firmly, and you’re sure. You can hear the static. The noise it makes when it’s not doing anything.

It's all in your head, you tell yourself. Your ears are ringing from that Goddamn thing, you say.

You repeat it to yourself until you believe it, as you grab a break.

🦷

Everything in the break room feels heightened.

There is a tang in the air. Acrid and salty. Some new formula for the fries... no. It's not the fries. Those smell like they taste, thick and greasy and unhealthy. Those leave you wanting more.

It's not the burgers, but they smell different too. The meat smells sharper, like there were aromas buried underneath that faint air of careful neutrality, that focus group tested idea of what one single unit of burger should smell like. 

The chicken actually smells good, for once. The taste of the soda machine is worse, though: metallic and sharp. Too much carbonation, except you ask and no one else has noticed.

Maybe it's the hormones. They said there would be weird cravings and mood swings and you've noticed all that. You hate pickles, bucking the cliche, but you find the things you like to put on a burger have shifted. Less cheese and fewer veggies, but more ketchup. Maybe an extra patty, like you have right now.

You bring up your hand to take a bite, and then...

You pause, and set down the burger, and simply sit there. You are surrounded by a couple other fellow wage slaves, and they don't notice you. Unnoticed and unremarkable, you try not to cry.

None of them will understand it. You have no friends like you in this city; they're all far away, on computer or phone screens. None of them will get why you're tearing up as you look at the back of your hand, as you notice the hair already growing back.

This isn't fair. You have a routine. You've always had a routine. Your doctor was impressed by how strictly you stuck to the pills. You blurted out how you’d always lived your life by routines and habits and cycles, it all coming out in an embarrassing rush as you finally found someone who was impressed by it instead of thinking it was weird.

Until now, it's worked. It's all worked. You gritted through a thousand tiny hairs being ripped from your flesh because it wasn't supposed to be visible until your day off, Goddamn it, God Damn It—

You take a deep breath. You exhale. You think of the beeping, and the static, and how it sounded so much like the high pitched whine of the epilator, ripping at your— 

Ripping— 

Without realizing it, you grip your own hand. You flex it.

You look down. Same as before. There's hair on it that you say you don't want. There's the shredded cuticles you nervously pick at. There's the hand itself, which is too big, so they tell you. They can always tell by the hands.

Same as before. But it shouldn't be.

It's not stiff. It doesn't ache. But it should ache. There's no scab. But there should be. You remember there being one.

And you remember, with a rush, when exactly you last saw the dog.

It was when it bit you.

🦷

It's where it always is, and you're where you always are. But this time, it comes to you.

It wuffs softly and looks at you. It's a big dog, but the eyes are so friendly. Its tongue rolls out the side of its muzzle, puffs of breath coming past its teeth.

So friendly, and then— 

It lunges— 

You stagger back— 

You curse— 

The dog just looks up at you

Its eyes so huge

Its teeth so sharp

You look down at your hand, at the semicircle shaped gash, good God, there is so much blood— 

The dog looks to where it bit you

You can't move

The dog sniffs your hand,

And the dog licks your hand,

And then it trots away

And you look down

And the gash is gone.

🦷

Not a dream.

A memory.

🦷

On the way home, the cramps kick in.

They're worse than ever; they seize your abdomen, and you nearly double over on the train. You know everyone's watching you grit your teeth, trying to ride them out. You don't care; you only feel the pain. Your body is about to fold in on itself. The memory plays over and over in your head.

The dream that's a memory feels familiar, and not just because you realize it's a memory. It's because it feels like that realization is sitting on top of another one, one you don't want to think about. It reminds you of the time you dreamed there was a girl in the mirror. It reminds you of the week you wandered around in a daze, thinking you couldn’t possibly be transgender, and knowing that you were.

The sounds on the train are head-splitting. Someone has their music up too loud, headphones be damned. The train hits that one rough patch and there’s the high pitched screech of metal that makes your neck hairs stand up. Someone asks if you're okay, and you can't find the air in you to answer. Their voice is concerned. Their breath is fresh.

And then, the cramps spread.

Outwards from your abdomen, your muscles slam into each other, and you try not to scream. You fail and let out a whimper. Your breath is ragged. That burger is trying to climb its way back up. The salt from the sweat on your brow stings rolling into your eye.

Someone, a couple of feet and a universe away, once again asks if you're all right.

You say "menstrual cramps."

You hear silence for a few moments, then: "Huh. Didn't think you people got those."

Didn't think you people got those.

You're not really, haha, c'mon, you're joking.

The pain is pushed aside by a violent fantasy of all those muscles that are currently fighting each other suddenly working together, coordinated in perfect concert as you rise, and grab this person by the neck, and hoist them high, and shout you're not faking it, it's real, and then the lecture turns into a scream, and then...

...into something else...

And then the pain is gone. The muscles relax. You stay hunched over as long as you can, but then you hit your stop, and you have to rise to your feet. You have to get home. It's home cooking night. It's time to catch up on TV. It's...

...not epilator night. But maybe, as you look down at your hand, forcing a sob back down your throat, maybe it's extra epilator night.

You stagger out of the train, and the night air is a blessing, the morning's cold snap having stuck around and cooling the sweat on your skin instantly. The night is bright, with barely any need for street lamps. You take the stairs, and for once, the connecting bus is on time.

As you sit in your seat, you're filled with fear, your nerves and anxiety suddenly having so, so much material to work with. Did your doctor prescribe the wrong drugs? Did he not balance things correctly? The body hair should be thinning by now. What if he screwed it up, what if you get blood clots, what if, what if, what if.

For seventeen stops, your thoughts tumble like rocks in a clothes dryer, bouncing off each other, going nowhere, and making a lot of noise. You're determined, that the first thing that you'll do when you get home is call your doctor. Right after you pop two painkillers. Maybe four.

You make it to your stop. You stagger into your apartment. You open the door to the bathroom, and grab at the medicine cabinet. You shake the tablets out and dry swallow them, and then— 

Then you turn towards the doorway and stop dead.

The dog is here.

The dog is standing in your apartment.

And it speaks.

🦷

I know you

Even without knowing you, I know you

The world told you the shape of your flesh

And you said no

The world told you your place in it

And you said no

The world tells you it's all in your head

And you say no

And you are right to

Because this is real.

I am here.

I bit you.

Because I am like you.

And now

You are like me

🦷

You stumble backwards, and you grab for the sink, and you knock the epilator to the ground. It bounces, making that noise that plastic on tile always does, the head popping loose and landing in the far corner of the bathroom. You look to it, and to the dog...

No.

It's too big for a dog. You see that now. The gray hair, so thick, and the eyes that look at you, saying I call no one master.

You look back to the epilator, and you reach out, and you pause, and look at the hair on your hand, which was not that thick before.

You want to scream.

You want to scream at your body for growing this hair, but then the deeper truth swims its way up from underneath: you don't hate the hair. You hate how much it hurts when you rip it out. You hate that the world hurts so much more than the epilator does.

Your hand clenches into a fist, and when you flex it open again, your nails have grown. And then, the cramps return. 

You double over, as the beast in your apartment watches you impassively. New scents and noises flood you. You smell the bleach you used to clean this bathroom, and you smell all the faint smells, of toothpaste, of shaving cream, or your pills, or everything that's ever gone into the toilet. You hear the rattle of the pipes and the buzz of the overhead light.

But your eyes stay the same. Complimented by so much more, but still the same. You look to the dog— 

No, to the wolf—

And it looks back at you, and the understanding grows alongside the pain.

Every muscle is fighting for space under your skin, while over your skin, the hair grows, and grows. It's thick now. It’s gray.

Your shirt is uncomfortable. And suddenly, it's tight. Your legs twist underneath you, your feet growing in length, as you try to balance on growing toes with sharp, sharp nails. There is a weight behind you and a glimpse in the mirror dispels all doubt. It's just like the one the other wolf has. The other wolf wags theirs slightly.

Everything hurts.

But the world hurts more.

You stagger backwards, and underneath your feet, the epilator is crushed into a dozen plastic and metal shards. There is the tang of blood from a fresh cut in the air. The other beast here smells it too, for they are like you, and now, you are like them.

And suddenly the pain fades, with speed like you've never known, gone in an instant, faster than any painkiller. Every muscle is now in concert, but now there are more of them, many more; every part of you that felt like a mismatched jigsaw puzzle now feels seamless and complete.

You open eyes burning with golden intensity. You grab at the shirt and it tears away as easily as the skin that slid off your coworker’s hand. You toss the shirt aside, and stand up straighter, and look down a freshly grown muzzle at the other one like you. You bare much sharper teeth, as do they, and you know the fullness of the truth.

The world told you it was all in your head.

You want to scream.

But you don't scream.

You howl.

🐶🐺