Revenge Served Cold
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

“Patience is the ultimate virtue”. They are so very fond of saying that at Ms. Lacey’s School of Reform for Wayward Boys. Ms. Lacey herself says that all women must learn patience first. “A woman’s life is full of frustrations, and a woman’s life is what is in store for all of you. And frustration can only be overcome by patience”. I can still hear the words, being drummed into me with everything else. I have never forgotten those words, or how to fold napkins, braid my hair or walk in high heels.

I am not saying that patience was not useful, but it is not always easy. But then, my life has never been easy. I lost my mother when I was six and less than a year in school. My father had never liked me, but he was all I had. When I had just turned eight, my father married Gina, who added even more to my misery, and I was barely twelve when he left, leaving me alone with her. It was almost a relief when I was sent to a boarding school, but I was not prepared for Ms. Lacey’s School of Reform for Wayward Boys.

Perhaps my stepmother asked herself what was the most humiliating thing that a woman could do to an annoying little boy who was not even of her own blood? She may have answered that it was to have him forcibly dressed as a girl. She must have smiled when she drove off after leaving me in the hands of Ms. Lacey.

There I found myself among others just like me. Well, maybe not quite the same. Most of the new entrants were horrible boys, but (as she liked to say) there has never been a boy who arrived at that place who could not be changed by Ms. Lacey. It was even suggested that she used drugs on the most recalcitrant.

I was accepting right from the beginning. It was not that I wanted to be “feminized” and act like a girl, I was not interested in having my mind played with, but I was interested in learning patience, because I knew that one day, I would turn the tables on the people who did me harm.

I remember my stepmother Gina saying just two words - “So long,”, just before she got in her car and drove off. And it was to be four years before I saw her again. And even then, it was just to get her to sign as my guardian, the form that would see me changed irreversibly.

You see, I discovered that my plan for revenge would be better executed by a woman, and that plan had become my focus. That concentration may well have allowed me to disregard any suffering such as other boys endured, but looking back on it I suffered nothing. As I said, I was accepting, so I enjoyed six years of relative happiness. Ms. Lacey said that being a girl could be fun, and if we just let it happen, we would not know any pain or sadness. I was prepared to do that. Those who were not suffered for a while, until they followed my lead.

“Look at Thomasina,” she would say. “You do as she does, and everything will go well for you.”

When they still thought of themselves as boys, they would hate me. They would call me a sissy and a traitor – later a collaborator. But after a while they came to realize that my policy was the right one.

Sometimes I would whisper: “I am just acting this way because it is the only way to get by around here. Inside I am just as much a guy as you.” They would nod and we would check our hair and lipstick in the mirror together, as co-conspirators. But that was before I volunteered to undergo the operation. After that I could never say it, because it was no longer true. Nobody could claim to be a guy after gender confirmation surgery. Nobody sitting down to pee and changing their stent could claim to be male.

By the time I graduated at 18, all the people who graduated with me had been through the operation. The only ones who missed were those collected by their parents before graduation and taken home, although we never knew if they could fully revert to being boys after any serious length of time at Ms. Lacey’s School of Reform for Wayward Boys. Good luck to those who did. It would never have suited me.

Gina never turned up to my graduation. Nobody collected me. I was on my own. Ms. Lacey gave me some clothes and as a parting gift she gave me some of her own money. She said that I was a nice person and a prize pupil and that I should come back to visit. She said that she had never said that to anyone before, because in my own way, I was not wayward, you see?

She said that the cost of the operation and all school fees had been paid for by my distant parents two years in advance from money set aside for me by my father. I asked to check that everything was in order, but only to check that last address of my stepmother. Then I hugged Ms. Lacey and left. She was crying. I never saw her do that. I was crying too, but I had done that many times, because that is part of being a girl.

With the information I had it was easy to find my stepmother Gina. The divorce from my father had been finalized and she had married a man called Jonah. I think that it was love. I certainly hope it was, because my revenge was to set about destroying that relationship.

It was so easy I even surprised myself. But you see, men like Jonah love a truly feminine woman, and that is the only kind that graduate from Ms. Lacey’s School of Reform for Wayward Boys. Well, not women, but he was not to know that. But at Ms. Lacey’s School of Reform for Wayward Boys we were taught the skills required to snare a man and have him submit to your will. My desire was that he leave my stepmother and live with me.

She only ever saw me once and that was at a distance. I was living under an assumed name – I thought Tiffany was one that suited my new look. My hair was dyed blonde and was in a high ponytail – the bimbo bonnet I call it. Love fades but lust not so much, and that was what I was going for. Patience and commitment are the lessons of Ms. Lacey’s School of Reform for Wayward Boys. Whether you are a woman or only a sissy, you can’t bully you way to your objective anymore. If you want something find a sneaky way.

Anyway, Gina never recognized who Tiffany really was. She was in tears when we finally met face to face. She would have ripped my throat out I am sure, but I had told Jonah that she needed to be warned of the consequences, and as it was, he was the one who held her back. Jonah did not see it, but I just smiled and turned my thumb for sideways to down, like that arena scene from “Gladiator”. It was a priceless moment. I fed off her rage.

She fled that home without her stuff, so I was able to go through her papers to find the last address of my father in the divorce. I could not have found him without that, as he was living on a beach in Belize with his latest young thing. I also found some material on the trust fund that had paid my fees.

I am not a heartless person. Before I left Jonah, I introduced him to Patsy previously Patrick, another graduate of Ms. Lacey’s School of Reform for Wayward Boys and a genuine bimbo. They are very happy now. I do not wish to see collateral damage. My target was my stepmother. It still is. I follow her religiously. I intend to make sure that she never has a lasting relationship with any man. But I did make sure that her birth control pills were replaced with fakes. Constant pregnancies take their toll and the last I heard is that the present one will go to term. The woman who disliked children will have one of her own.

It was time to move on to my next target. Once in Belize I changed my coloring to a brunette, as is my father’s preference. And I took on the name Constancia, or Connie for short. I would have preferred Paciencia for obvious reasons, but Constance is much the same thing.

They say that people are attracted to people who look like they do, and if had grown up a man I might have looked a lot like my father. There is even an acronym for it: GSA – Genetic Sexual Attraction. You might condemn my father for his incestuous desires but the way I see it, it was always going to happen. I did not even have to throw myself on him as I had done to Jonah.

Strangely, I found myself attracted to him too. GSA works both ways. Please do not hate me for it. This is nature. I enjoyed the sex too, despite the obvious taboo. I suppose that there would be some amateur psychoanalysts who might say that this is an Elektra complex and that I was basking in a father’s love at last, with every thrust into my surgeon-fashioned vagina. More likely the Greek at work here was Oedipus, but any desire to kill my own father had to be suppressed.

My target was revenge, and death was not enough for the man who had cast me aside. Once he was totally besotted I persuaded him to take me on holiday back to the States, and there I took the opportunity to go to the police and tell them the whole story. My father had paid for me to be castrated and feminized, so that he could take me overseas and treat me as his sexual plaything.

Of course, the evidence involved the payments to Ms. Lacey’s School of Reform for Wayward Boys, and the uncovering of operations there, paid for by him. I had taken the precaution of giving Ms. Lacey some prior warning and suggesting a defensive strategy for her personally. I bore her no ill will, and in many ways she cared for me and gave me purpose.

“We are just performing a service,” she said. “And we are offering angry young men the gift of womanhood. All those who like you, have accepted it, are the better for it. I had no idea of your father’s dreadful predilections!”

I was sympathetic but her institution was involved in a form of torture for many. When my father was sent to prison, she received a shorter period of incarceration herself.

The collapse of Ms. Lacey’s School of Reform for Wayward Boys seemed imminent, but I contacted her with a possible solution. I was young and I had no background in education, but I had recently learned all the lessons and I had learned them well. I would keep the school going if I was given a 50% share, and with the money collected from my father I might be able to inject the additional capital needed to restructure the facility to offer a more fulsome range of services to young trans-girls or confused young men in need of strict guidance.

I suppose that you might call that a little bit of revenge too, for any wrongs that Ms. Lacey may have done me or my fellow pupils?

What I do know is that the words are true – the best revenge is the revenge served cold. A return punch in the midst of a fight may give a little satisfaction, but a planned outcome that sees you slowly and constantly relish the misfortune of those who have victimized you, has its own special gratification.

Don’t you agree?

The End
2050
© Maryanne Peters 2025

Author’s Note: I am working on a collection of short TG stories centered on revenge. I have about a dozen stories at the moment, but I will need a few more. I would appreciate any story ideas, please?