The Ghost of Tomorrow

Foreword

I’m a trans woman who came late to the realization that I was a
woman, due to a number of factors—not the least being that society’s
views towards trans people at the time I was growing up were so warped
and divorced from reality that I had absolutely no context for what
transition actually was. So it took until Covid-19 forced all of us
indoors with nothing but our thoughts and social media for me to finally

The Ghost of Tomorrow

Chapter 1: Aftermath

It’s the first Monday in February 1983, and I’m looking in the mirror
of the dresser that Dad dug up at a garage sale last year, after Mariska
kept complaining about me hogging hers. I’m in my light green checked
summer uniform dress, and I’m fiddling with my hair. Finding a style
that keeps my curls under control, out of my face, and won’t
make me look like a weirdo has had me fretting all week. Never mind that

A continuation of ‘Vanishing Point’

CHAPTER 1
It had been a long drive back to Booker, through the familiar stop-go around the M25 until we lost most of the traffic on the M40. Mary had looked at me as I sat next to her, the sundress riding up over my thighs, and tutted.

“Put my coat over those legs. It’ll take a while for the heater to warm us up. And… I need to think, but I need to concentrate. Can’t do both”

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.

Readers may remember a story I did a few years ago, set in a a Spanish Brothel. This one has been sitting around on my computer for a couple of years, and I thought that it was time for it to see some daylight.

Part 1 Anything to turn a Penny

I suppose it was all my fault, right from the start. I was totally lazy, but I also had expensive tastes. The fact that I liked to dress well, eat well, and live well was my downfall.

In the morning I get up.

Not immediately — I lie still for a moment first, the way I've started doing, taking stock of the day before it begins. The chest there, the weight of it against the mattress, familiar now in the manner that things become familiar when you've woken to them for over a week. The mild awareness of last night's underwear, which has done what underwear does now, the slight damp of it, and I get up and deal with this in the bathroom before I do anything else. The mechanics of this have become unremarkable.

I shower. I dress.

Chapter 30 – High noon

It was Millie. Yes, Millie!

Chapter 29 – On the trail

The following morning, I was woken by my hostess entering the bedroom carrying a laden tray.

“You’re awake at last. I’ve brought us breakfast and most importantly coffee. You must have been exhausted, darling. Last night you fell asleep in my arms.” These words were accompanied by a reproachful moue of disappointment across her lovely features.

“What?”