Formula X
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

Nothing can prepare you for a blow like that – the day that my best friend told me that he had raped my sister.

My sister Bridget was the nicest human being in the world. Everybody loved her. She was only slightly intellectually disabled, but she didn’t look it. She was pretty, and she was always happy, even if there was not reason to be. She made our home, my parent’s home where I had my own space above the garage, a brighter place. My mother called her “the sunshine in my life”, and to her, she was.

It all changed, and we never understood why. I never even noticed how whenever Cade was in the room, she was gone. All we knew was that her light had gone out. Then she killed herself. She jumped off the viaduct on the south side of town. That ended my mother’s sunshine. Mom had a nervous breakdown and ended up in a care home. My father had moved there to be with her, and our happy home was now empty. Just a hollow shell. A sad place.

And Cade and I were sitting in the easy chairs of the family living room, with me feeling the sadness all around, and he was talking. Cade does like to talk. Sometimes he just cannot shut up.

“Get your shit together man,” he said. “I liked your sister, you know that. Actually, maybe a little too much. I mean she was hot, with that blonde hair and those sweet tits. I thought she was the ideal woman. You know, bimbo potential. Pretty face, pretty smile, not much going on…”.

I was pissed by those words. But it was the way Cade talked and talked and talked. He is the gabby little guy. I am less of a talker – the big silent type, I guess. I was just sitting there, feeling low, and now getting a bit fucked off.

“She and I got together you know, a couple of times,” he continued. “She was really sweet that sister of yours. She said it hurt. She complained a lot. OK, the first time, maybe, but the second time she should have been ready for it, right? But Man, did she play hard to get that time.”

I just stared at him.

“I am here for you Bro,” he said. “I always have been. I always will.”

I could see that he meant those words, but he seemed oblivious to the effect of what he said before that. He hits you with his admission and then he reminds you that nobody is closer to you than he is. Not even the family that he has destroyed. My family.

You have to understand what it was like in my home. My sister was everything. My parents knew that they would be caring for her for the rest of their lives, and they were up for it. I could look after myself. They knew that. So that is what I did from the moment that my sister’s disability became obvious. I don’t criticize them for It but leaving me to look after myself isolated me from them a bit. In fact, I admired them. What parents have to do for a disabled child can be very hard. But it’s love, right?

I don’t mean that I was physical isolated from them. I mean, I was still more or less living at home, above the garage, even at my age. I could help them with my sister if they wanted to go out and be with her when she wanted me as well, as she did sometimes. No, I was there for all of them, but not as close to my parents as maybe I would have liked.

So I was closer to Cade. We had known one another since elementary school. We did everything together. My parents were happy that I had such a close friend to get me out of the house. But we did bad shit together.

We went through school together. After school I trained in pharmacology and Cade trained in CAD drafting. We ended up working on the same block. We watched sport together, we played some golf, drank some beers, and we raped women together.

I used to tell myself that it wasn’t rape. It was another sport. Cade called it “urban hunting”. There was finding the hunting ground, identifying the target, stalking, engaging a little, and then going in for the kill. Girls I mean. The prettier the better. Not really killing them – just fucking them.

Our weapon was GHB. You know what I am talking about: Georgia home boy, Grievous bodily harm, cherry meth, G-riffic, easy lay, Formula X, the date-rape drug. It’s a liquid so easy to put in the drinks. It doesn’t knock them out. It just makes them woozy. They can still walk where you lead. We could lead them to where we could do the business. Best we get one each. Then we liked to fuck them side by side so we could compare. They weren’t saying no. They never could.

Maybe my sister wasn’t saying no either. I cannot recall her ever saying that word. But just like our victims, she wasn’t consenting. It was rape – pure and simple.

I was listening to him and I was thinking that I am never going to do that to another woman again, and I am going to make damn sure that Cade never does it either.

Any other guy would have killed the man who raped his sister. Don’t think that the thought didn’t cross my mind? Or, report him to the police? What would he say? ‘Oh yeah, I did his sister. She didn’t consent. He and I fuck non-consenting girls every weekend’. The police were not an option.

Punishment, prevention but preservation. Punish him for what he had done; prevent him from ever doing it again; but preserve the life of my friend, somehow preserve a friendship that I valued above any other, despite everything that I had just heard.

And for me, from now on, I would live a life without rape. Sex yes, but not rape.

Then I saw it. Across the room was my sisters pink party dress hanging over the back of a chair. It was an old dress that she wore when she was 11 or 12. It was out because my mother had been sobbing into it after Bridget died. It had been a pitiful sight watching her hold cradle that dress. It had ruffles and lace and it was so feminine. I had an idea. Cade was not going to like it.

He would never consent to it, but then we had never let that worry us before. Gamma-hydroxybutyric acid. GHB. I had plenty. There would be justice in this.

I had plenty because I am a pharmacist. I can get whatever I want. But what I needed right then was in the house. In my parent’s bathroom there was Premarin as well as estrogen patches for treatment of my mother’s menopause. There was also spironolactone for treatment of my sister’s poly-cystic ovaries. That was enough to get the ball rolling.

It was time for Cade to take his medicine.

“We’ve got to get back out there, Buddy,” said Cade. He was still talking, as he always did. “We have to get back to the clubs and find ourselves some pussy. I am worried about you, Man.” He was. He had reason to be. I had made my decision.

That very afternoon I poured a dose of Formula X in his beer bottle. I led him upstairs in a stupor and I laid him out on a plastic sheet on my parent’s bed and I set about modifying my friend Cade.

Another drug that was available in the house was a surgical depilatory. It was not an over-the-counter thing, but I got it for my sister due to her PCOS, and my mother used it sometimes. It was very effective. I had to say that when I saw Cade laying there without a hair on his body, he hardly looked male to me at all, if you put a facecloth over his groin. He did not have a particularly muscular body, and it was not big. As it turned out, quite fortunately, his body was no bigger than my poor sister. The same size in fact, just a different shape. But that was going to change.

I had the hormones in various forms back at the pharmacy. I decided that I would go all out even though I knew there was a risk of liver damage. I mean injections and injected slow release, as well as spiking his drinks. Then, for immediate effect I had injectable polycaprolactone to go into his chest under each nipple, to produce two tiny bumps – the first sign of breasts.

Cade had longish hair, but I had no idea about hair and beauty stuff. All I could do was color it a nice shade of blonde. The pharmacy sold that too, but for some reason I had a bunch of colors I had given to my mother so I could follow the instructions and color the hair before I went out.

I went through a bunch of my mother’s magazines looking for some more ideas about how to make my friend look more like a girl.

I knew how much time I had, so I could go to the pharmacy and get some other stuff. I got back just as he was coming around, so I gave him a shot of Pancuronium. Pancuronium is a neuromuscular blocker that causes general paralysis. He regained consciousness but he was unable to move. He could see me, and he could talk, but not much else.

“What are you doing, Man?” he said. I was putting a pair of my sister’s panties on him and running my hands up his smooth legs in the process. He sounded helpless and afraid, but my resolve was firm. It may even have been that his tone encouraged me. Where was the rapist now?

“You raped my sister,” I told him. “You have just admitted it. You won’t be raping anybody again.”

“What have you done, Bud?” he said. He was looking down at his body. It was clean of hair, and I was sure that he had already noticed the lumps on his chest. They would fade within a week or so - the compounds absorbed by the body then excreted - but he was not to know that. In any event, if the hormones worked fast real breast tissue would take the place of the synthetic filler. He would have tits.

“Did you know that you are the same size as my sister?” I asked. “All those pretty dresses that she will never wear again. My mother loved to dress her in a certain style. A little old-fashioned, a little juvenile perhaps, but I think you liked it, didn’t you? The little girl look? Do you like to fuck children, Cade?”

“Hey man, your sister was no child. She was 22. And she was a good looker. She was smarter that your mother thought. She became a woman years ago. You Mom just refused to see it. Her daughter had grown up. She was leading me on, Bro. I’m telling you. She wanted it. Your Mom was just too crazy to see how she had developed.” He just kept talking.

“My mother is in care because of you,” I said. “My father by her side. My sister is six feet under. You’re too dangerous, Man. You hurt people. You’ve got to change. I’m going to change you.”

“Hey Man, we’re buddies. Best buddies,” he protested.

“That is why I am not killing you, Cade. Any brother would. Because of us, I will keep you alive.”

“I never meant your sister to die, Man,” he whined. “Ok, I did wrong. But she decided to do that herself. Honestly Man, I had no idea she would do that.”

“Well, now she’s dead and you’ve got a place to fill. The room across the hall. You’re not going anywhere. My father secured it because he was worried about my sister wandering, so once the door is locked, given that your muscle strength will only be at 20% after what I have planned, you won’t be able to get out.”

The last bit was a bluff. I knew that I could limit his strength and speed chemically, and that the hormones would do their work in breaking don his muscle mass over time, but I was playing with his head a bit. I think that it worked.

And once he was locked away, I added food deprivation to the mix. I wanted to use all that I could to weaken his body and then his mind.

But these things take time. And I had to put up with a lot of whining. I am not sure whether the Propolizone injections into his voice box made it worse, in that it lifted his voice to a higher pitch.

“Hey man, this could get you into trouble. This is, like, it’s kidnapping or something. It’s assault. It has to be illegal.”

“Like rape?” I said.

“You can’t keep me prisoner forever.”

“I don’t want to keep you prisoner forever,” I explained. “I just want you to change. I was you to become a better person. Could you ever be as nice as my sister? Could you ever be a good a person as she was?”

“Your sister was a …”. He stopped himself just in time. He was powerless, and he knew it. He could move about the room, and to the bathroom when I let him, but he was weak and getting weaker. Not so much from the weight loss. The muscles were wasting away, being replaced by a soft layer of fat beneath the skin, and those swellings on his chest.

“I can’t be like your sister,” he said.

“You should try,” I replied. “Try and maybe I will let you outside. Me with you, of course.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Try on some of her clothes,” I suggested. “Brush your hair. Make an effort. If you hadn’t noticed, you are turning into a girl, so start acting like one.”

“Fuck man,” he said. “You need help. This is not normal behavior.”

“This is not a normal situation,” I said. “You know, what I should do is go to the police right now. I should tell them what you did to my sister. I could even find a few other girls to tell the cops what you did to them. I could fight charges against myself, but whatever happens to me I know you would do way more time in jail. If I did a bit, I could live with it. I would deserve it. I could handle it. But you wouldn’t last a minute in prison. Think about it. What I am doing is for you. You have to be punished and you have to be stopped. If the state can’t do it then I will.”

I think that when I had finished saying that, there was a glimmer of understanding. There must have been. There was certainly a change of attitude.

Or do you think that it is sitting in that room of my sisters all day, every day, with just her stuff and my mother’s women’s magazines, that made him change? He begged to even have the TV in my sister’s room connected to the aerial, but I wanted him under control. I had him connected only to my network where he was given limited material to view. Things that would help him to adjust to his new reality.

He was imprisoned for his crime, but it was my prison. Despite what he had done I had the humanity to protect him from a criminal justice system which was likely to kill him. I protected him and provided for him. I was still acting as a friend to him, but my object was to ensure that he never raped another woman.

I have heard that the hormones themselves have an impact on the brain – even the physiology of the brain – it’s forma and size, and the chemistry of it. As a pharmacist I am interested in such things, but this was not a clinical trial. I wanted to fix my friend, and the only way I knew how was to use those incredible drugs.

Whatever did it, a month or so in, he asked me for makeup. We sell that in the pharmacy, and we received lots of free samples and brochures about application and styles. I brought him a whole bag. He just smiled and said: “Thank you”.

H spent a lot of time in front of the mirror after that. He was wearing my sister’s dresses put he never really looked like a girl. Now he was painting his face and clipping back his hair. Maybe his first few attempts with makeup were a bit clumsy, but he got better.

But what changed things for me was the change in his emotional state. As I said, any pharmacist needs to know about side effects, and I knew that female hormones can produce depressive states. One day I came into his room to allow him to go to the toilet and I found that he had peed on the floor. He had done his best to mop it with a towel, but he was in tears. He was wearing mascara and it was dripping down his face in dark streaks, but somehow it made him look even more vulnerable. He was moaning hushed apologies.

“Hey, it’s OK. No big deal.” I led him to the bathroom. Normally I leave him alone in there, but before I could leave and close the door, he sat down on the toilet seat and tucked back to piss sitting down. Then he wiped his little dick with toilet paper and pulled up his panties. He was still sobbing.

He came back to the door to walk past me. He seemed even smaller than the man I knew as he looked up at me. His face seemed to be begging for forgiveness.

Then he sniffed: “I’m a mess. Could you just hold me?”

So, I put my arms around his shoulders, and he put his around my back and his head on my chest.

“It’s nothing,” I said. He squeezed me, as if thanking me for those words. And I realized that he was changed. From that moment I could never refer to him as her. He was now she.

I told her that she should clean herself and get herself ready, because we were going to go out.

“What you like me to wear?” she asked. And when I shrugged, she said: “Would you get me something?”

She produced a handful of the magazines that had been her only reading material. She had marked some pages. There were some clothing options and some cosmetics that she said she needed. I suppose what surprised me more than the fact she had gone to this effort, was just how feminine all the choices she had made were. These were not the choices of a reluctant woman. What she wanted to wear, and how she wanted to present herself, was very … girly.

“Wouldn’t you like to see me in this?” she said.

There was something about the way she asked it that made me feel very strange. Minutes ago, I had realized that she was no longer Cade, now I was wondering what I had become. Had I become gay?

“I’ll go out and get you this stuff,” I said. I needed to leave the house. I needed to collect my thoughts, and I could not do that in front of her. But as I left, I asked: “So when I get back, what should I call you?”

“Call me Candy,” she simpered. She gave me a look. I cannot easily describe, but any man can guess. My cock was starting to swell, so I turned my back on her.

I was back within an hour, but she took more than that to get herself ready.

My story started with the blow I experienced when I discovered that the man, I considered to be my closest friend had committed a despicable crime, one which had caused huge pain to my family. But the blow I reeled from that that afternoon seemed even more momentous – in a very different way.

Her door was open now and she was free to roam. She could have run past me and out the door and disappeared. In some way I was prepared for that to happen. In fact, it would put an end to something that I now felt had become very complicated, and a little disturbing.

Instead I heard her come down the stairs, so I turned around. There she stood.

She had used the underwear I had bought her to create a bust, she wore a tight white knit dress to show off all the curves that the drugs had worked to develop. Her legs were long and smooth, and she had even painted her toenails in the wedge heeled sandals. Bit most of all, she had done her face and hair in a most feminine style – shaped eyebrows and light makeup, and a bow in her hair.

Had I been able to see Cade in her I would have thought it a ridiculous look. But there was no Cade. There was only Candy. And she looked enchanting. I use the word deliberately, because was the effect of her.

“Is this look OK,” She said, glancing in my direction and the shyly looking away.

We went out side and I opened the car door for her. She sat as if she had been born in this body, swiveling her legs inside, with a silently mouthed “thank you”. Form that moment on, her performance, if that was what it was, was complete. Nobody in the shops or the restaurant could have known that the woman clinging to me arm was not really a woman, but a man and a rapist. The thought seems utterly crazy. This could not be the same person.

She insisted on getting some ingredients for a recipe that she had found in one of her women’s magazines. It was a Greek dish. We also bought her a frilly apron which she put on as soon as she got home, where she spent some time in the kitchen improving her skills.

I watched her. The truth is that I could not take my eyes off her.

The end result was delicious, and I told her so. She beamed.

I had drunk most of the bottle of wine that we shared. I felt more tired than usual, perhaps because of all of the thoughts and emotions running through my head. They can affect you physically. We just watched TV, Candy and me, sitting on the couch together. She drew closer as the night wore on. When we were finally ready to go to bed, it just seemed natural that she would come into mine. She longer belonged in my sister’s room.

We had sex. It was not the kind of sex that I was used to, but it must have been closer to it that it was to the sex she had enjoyed before. Still, she seemed prepared, and also to enjoy it. But that was only the first time. After than she was hungry for more.

In the morning I found myself cuddling her and kissing her tenderly.

“You told me that you wanted me to be like your sister,” she said. “Am I like her?”

“My sister had disabilities,” I said.

“Would you take me to visit your parents?” she said.

“After just one date?” I joked. But she looked at me seriously.

“I took your sister away from your family,” she said. “I know that I can never replace her, but let me try to fill the gap somehow. I have been locked in her room for months now. I don’t know how many weeks it was but look how long my hair has grown. In all that time, among her things, I feel that I have got to know her. I never really tried to when she was alive. Now I understand.”

“Do you?” I said. “My sister was pure. I don’t mean a virgin, although she was that too, I mean that there was no bad in her. How can you be like that?”

She lay back and looked at the ceiling. “By starting again,” she said. “If you will let me.”

I pulled the sheets away from her, revealing the top half of her body. The hormones had worked their miracle. Her breasts had grown to a respectable size and the nipples were large and pink. Her body was smooth and pale, and soft to the touch. All the muscles that had been used for violence had wasted away.

“Although I am in the trade, it never ceases to amaze me what hormones can do. Instead of Formula X you are using Formula XX now?”

“Formula XX?

“XX is the female chromosome structure. You are almost there. What hasn’t been fixed by chemistry can be fixed by surgery.”

“That’s what I want,” she said.

“Alright then. We’ll book the surgery, I’ll buy you a ring, and then we will visit my parents.”

The End

© Maryanne Peters 2026