The Nutcracker

By Jenny with a G

Thomas had seen a ballet only once in his life.

It was December, close enough to Christmas that lights glowed in nearly
every window and silver garlands trembled above the streets. His mother
had saved for months to buy two tickets to The Nutcracker.

She expected him to enjoy it.

She did not expect it to change him.

From the moment the curtain rose, Thomas sat perfectly still.

When I left school the orphanage found me a job as an office
boy, where thehs. boss had a spare room that I could lodge in for a
couple of mont

When I started work I found out that all the rest of the office
workers were women. I soon settled down and found that they were
all nice to me.

There was one woman Marie who was slightly older than me,
we chatted at lunchtime and during tea breaks. As I was the only boy
the talk soon got round to as to whom were the brightest and
cleverest boys or girls.

Damien gradually began to understand that his parents were not actively looking for him, was, a good sign. What was troubling was the lack of records that would prove who he really was and whether he had been adopted as he’d been told.

I found a jacket that remembers a missing girl, and it’s rewriting my body one day at a time. Now I have to solve that girl's murder before the coat finishes its work and I disappear into someone else’s life.

Once in a Lifetime

You may find yourself
Living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself
In another part of the world
And you may find yourself
Behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house
With a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself
"Well... how did I get here?"

David Byrne and Brian Eno
https://youtu.be/5IsSpAOD6K8?si=Lv15qT47qZL_R7hu

One day my wife Sandra said to me she thought I would
look nice in one of her dresses. I said why do you think that, I
have never thought of my self dressing up in woman's clothes.
She said just to please here would I try it for just one day.

Ed Note: The story veered off in a direction I didn't really plan. It gets dark in this chapter. There is language, and violence. Just a warning. If you haven't' been reading here's a quick catch up. It's 1994, small college town, two 20 year old's went looking in the underground for Magic and found it. ASHTON has spent her life suffering from gender dysphoria without the language to express it. Her new friend Marie has a talent for knowing things that people are trying hide, and a talent for folk magic. Garrett has fell in with the wrong crowd a satanist named Rick.

Two Year Time Jump:

Backstage At AT&T Stadium, Arlington, Texas:

Hard roads and endless lines
Flow through his veins
Cold steel and hot fuel injected
Is the dream that fills his brain

But no, not slow
The speed fever grows
He rides, he sees, he knows
You've got to ride to live
Live to ride

Feel the flames burn inside
And though you know
You ride to hide

You ride to live to ride
Life's short and goes too fast
Most pages burn

The coming-out-at-work theme in Steph C's recent chapter of Perspective got me thinking of this little bit of comedy from back when I was in mid-transition. Couldn't fit it into a haiku, so a tanka it is.

Chapter Eight: Dressing the Part

Home at ten-thirty. Emily pays the cab while I get the keys. Inside, the house quiet - Jenna on the sofa with her phone, the monitor on the coffee table showing Theo's breathing steady and slow.

"He went down at nine," Jenna says. "Took the bottle fine."

Emily thanks her and counts out cash and I wait by the door. When Jenna's gone Emily sets the monitor to low and looks at the stairs.

"He'll wake in a few hours," she says. Not a complaint. Just the math of it, working out what the night holds. She takes her shoes off at the bottom of the stairs.

---

CHAPTER 58
I hugged him hard, almost bursting in my love of my son. That phrase bubbled up again: ‘This one is mine; I made this’.

“We’ve got a couple of boat rides coming up, son”

“The Reef?”

“Second one, yeah. I want to try a quieter one with LC first, let her get used to stuff before she goes all the way out there. Now, what looked good at this Italian place?”