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10.

    Everything burned. Hot flashes weren’t a new thing for Dani, but she hadn’t had one since her hormone levels evened out. The heat caused her to thrash about, dismantling the makeshift bed. The apartment was dark. Groggily, Dani walked into her living room and forced a window open, letting the cool night air in. Roxy was so insistent on picking an older apartment that would match her antique furniture, which of course meant choosing a place with a non-functional window unit.

    Dani sat on the windowsill and stared at what remained of the life they had together. Some dishes dried on the rack. Knick knacks the two girls had collected lay scattered. The floor and walls were stained with the outlines of furniture. The cool outside air hit her back. It didn’t help. She rested her hands at her sides, expecting the cold feeling of plaster. Instead, they sank into something moist and fuzzy. A familiar lichen dotted with little red spores was growing all around the window. She tried to wipe away the red with her index finger. Instead, a line of red appeared where she touched the wood. Dani tried again, and again, each swipe adding more red lichen. The fungus twitched, like a sped-up video of plant growth. Even stuck in this nightmare-made-real, she still loved this red.

    Pushing a way from her seat, Dani inspected her body. Five streaks of fuzzy, twitching tendrils marked where her fingers touched her shirt. She stared at the stain and then at her hands. Thick red veins spiraled down to her fingers, breaking through the skin at the tip of each – ten wet, red spurs jutted out like splinters. The horrors of her changing body melded with the dull pain of her abandonment. It added up to a suffering score so high it reset back to zero. Whatever she should have felt was too far away now.

    Stripping the rest of her clothing off, Dani wandered over to the mirror. Her body bulged oddly; masses formed around her hips, neck, and stomach. Highways of raised veins crisscrossed between them. She traced them up to her face. Her jaw seemed larger and her head longer. It reminded her of the way dysphoria meltdowns contorted her reflection. Her features would appear like a funhouse mirror as she scrutinized parts of her that no one ever gave a second glance. Now, her contorted reflection was real. The lichen on the windowsill emitted a faint humming sound, urging her to reach out and touch the twitching red fuzz. A liquid pain shot up her arm into her brain as she made contact.

    Chittering, cracking, rumbling, clicking. A cacophony of jumbled, indecipherable articulations chased out Dani’s thoughts. They popped and whirled, sending searing stabs of pain into her ear drums and sinuses. Electrical pulses flowed up from the fungus into her fingers. Her limbs moved like a hydraulic machine, extending the web of tiny blood red soldiers up and down the walls, around the couch, and across the floor. The moist, blood red webbing connected to form a dense mat in the area where Roxy’s rug used to be. After the whole floor was a twitching, red mess the static electricity vanished. She collapsed on the bed of lichen. The chatter that filled the cavities of her head faded away and regular thoughts replaced them.

    Probably not a heart condition.

    Her naked body was smeared with fuzzy, red goo. Regaining control of her limbs, she tried to rub it off, but the ooze from her fingertips just made it worse. With her palm, Dani traced the raised lines on her body. They felt rough, like scabs, and extended down her arms to the nook between each of her digits. She held her left hand in the air above her face. They didn’t look like veins. What rose from her skin looked more like scar tissue, like the stretch marks on her thighs and stomach, but inverted. As she spread her fingers apart, the scars split, releasing fungus in little dribbles. She couldn’t stop herself from forcing them to split more, and more, until they passed beyond her knuckles.

    Dani’s expression darkened, eyes fixed on the wound. “Maybe Roxy will believe me now.” She grabbed her index and middle finger and pulled. A crevice shot down her arm like a tree trunk split in half, running all the way from her palm to her shoulder blade. Blood and fungus plopped onto the floor. Her voice got caught in her parched throat preventing her from letting out more than an arid, hissing scream.

    Apart from x-rays, Dani had never seen her bones before. They were so much smaller than she imagined. Now she understood why she wasn’t at risk of hitting them whenever she took her intramuscular estrogen injections. She figured they weren’t white like bleached classroom skeletons, but she didn’t think they would look black and red like hers did. One thing she was certain of was the segmentation was not normal. The sting faded, and she tried to move her mangled limb. It rose. The two halves seemed to move slightly independent of one another. She tried to make them move one at a time, but her brain didn’t like that, striking her down with a migraine for her hubris.

    As she felt her bones with her still functioning hand, she realized that all the ridges that traveled down her limbs were beginning to split. A hungry feeling filled her empty stomach; Dani began to rip them all apart, starting with her legs and then moving to the rest of her arms. When her limbs stopped functioning, she used her teeth. The gravity of what she did hit her moments after she finished. She stopped looking down at her body, now an almost unrecognizable red torso with julienned limbs. Groaning, she laid on the mat of blood and slime which pooled at the foot of the last piece of furniture she had left. Pain surged through her with each movement as she shuffled her body towards a light that beamed up from the floor. Dani craned her head just enough to read the text message lighting up the blood covered screen of her cellphone.

    Sage: Hey, Dani. I just wanted to check in on you. Didn’t see you at work today. I know we’ve had our differences, but I still hope you’re okay.

    It seemed whatever was happening to Dani’s body still permitted her to cry. She wondered if the tears came out red. They tasted funny. Some part of her wanted desperately to respond, to let Sage know she needed help. Her brain didn’t like the way her strange tube-like limbs moved. The phone went dark; Dani rested her tired head down and stared up at the ceiling.

    It was only now that she realized how futile everything had been. Dani had tried so very hard to be the perfect girl, a pleasant, unaffected trans woman that any cis person would see as just like them, someone her mom or Roxy wouldn’t have any trouble wanting to be around. Look where it got her, alone and bleeding out in an apartment that she never even got to decorate except for a tacky couch she couldn’t stand looking at. As her body spasmed, she daydreamed about getting to go back and try again. If she had just been less afraid, maybe her and Sage could’ve been friends. She looked around the apartment at the mess she made. She wondered if lylawhyla made a mess like this, and found herself wishing she had brought the girl home with her. At least then, they wouldn’t be alone while dying from whatever this was. They could have cared for each other. Her body began to convulse.

    From her vantage point on the floor, Dani could make out little of what was happening. Bones broke and liquid spilled from the wounds they tore. It stung, but not as much as she thought it should. The worst the pain got was a burning sensation that filled the crown of her head sometime after the last of her ribs broke. As it rose to a boil, a sloshing sound filled her ears. Her field of vision slid underneath her brow, through her forehead, and out the other side. Once she could see again, she lost the ability to process anything. The sun set and rose. Each time it seemed the world was just a little bit redder, until all that was left was a pure, bloody sheen which drenched the few possessions Dani had left.

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