Girl In Your Dreams

Impressions From The Life Of A Rat (Content Warning)

by Cherry

Tags: #cw:depression #cw:gender_dysphoria #D/s #dom:female #hypnosis #transgender_characters #urban_fantasy #but_a_weird_sorta_furry #dom:nb #furry #like_mostly_how_real_life_furries_are #sub:female #sub:male #trans_egg

CW: Discussion of parental abuse, slurs, abandonment, sexual exploitation, drug use, suicidal ideation, self-hatred, depression, dissociation

You are Valor Neige. Your phone pings, followed a second later by the Telemet chime on your PC.

AlternianDidact: Hey, can we talk?

AlternianDidact: Myrrah said she would give you notice that I was coming.

KnifeWretch: Yeah she told me all of five minutes ago

KnifeWretch: You don't waste time

AlternianDidact: I was very curious about you.

KnifeWretch: Yeah I kinda figured by the way you could not take your eyes off me

AlternianDidact: I'm sorry. I was rude for staring.

KnifeWretch: Like fuck you were and I loved it

KnifeWretch: Do you think in a place where I can take any shape I damn well please I would look exactly like my flesh body if my flesh body didn't look exactly how I wanted it to

KnifeWretch: Do you think you can do anything to me with your eyes that I do not want you to do?

You are Valor Neige. You've stared at the screen for longer than feels comfortable, and you're starting to suspect that you went a little too hard in the paint.

KnifeWretch: You've been quiet for like ten minutes now and I feel like that might be my fault

KnifeWretch: Sorry I have this habit of being very intense and maybe it seems a bit edgy or cold idk

KnifeWretch: To clarify

KnifeWretch: You have not annoyed me and in fact I really liked how you couldn't take your eyes off me

KnifeWretch: Also I think you're cute especially when you blush and try to hide your attraction to people

You are Valor Neige. You hope that what you just said was extremely suave and cool and totally rescued the dumbass situation you may just have gotten yourself into.

AlternianDidact: I wanted to understand something Myrrah said you said.

KnifeWretch: Yeah?

AlternianDidact: She says you pushed her to talk to me about dysphoria because if you got the Myrrah that saved you, I definitely deserved her too?

KnifeWretch: Yeah that's a thing I said

KnifeWretch: And I meant it

AlternianDidact: But what does that mean?

You are Valor Neige. A thing that both you and your girlfriend Katie refer to as "the Darkness" wells up inside you.

KnifeWretch: Hahaha oh man

KnifeWretch: Buckle up Lucas

KnifeWretch: If you want to understand this we're gonna get into some heavy shit just so you know

KnifeWretch: Mistress trusts you so that means I'm willing to try trusting you too

KnifeWretch: When I say I'm taking you into confidence that doesn't mean you're getting any sort of secret I want to keep from the world

KnifeWretch: So even if you break my trust nothing I tell you could be used to hurt me

KnifeWretch: But if the world finds out BECAUSE of you I want you to understand you will be dead to me

AlternianDidact: I will never tell another soul without your permission.

You are Valor Neige. You are taking your heart out of your chest and putting it in the hands of this weird boy from London, and you can't fully explain why.

KnifeWretch: Good

KnifeWretch: So basically I'm gonna need three things from you

KnifeWretch: Firstly that you are okay hearing about some absolutely wild sex stuff

KnifeWretch: Secondly that you are okay hearing about some incredibly depressing stuff

KnifeWretch: Thirdly that you just shut the fuck up and just listen until I'm finished

KnifeWretch: Are we good on all three counts

AlternianDidact: Yes, on all three.

KnifeWretch: Okay good now get in the car loser we're gonna be miserable

You are Nathan DeMarco. You are thirteen, and you're reading a document from a clinic one town over. You know its name because it's always in the local news for getting bricks through its windows.

KnifeWretch: I only found this out much later but my mom tried to terminate my pregnancy

KnifeWretch: So like

KnifeWretch: I feel as if that was a bad omen

You are Nathan DeMarco. You are having the best month and a half of your life. It will end very soon.

KnifeWretch: The boy I had my first kiss with is now one of those fascist tradcore Christian conservative influencers

KnifeWretch: Which is incredibly tragic but also very very funny

KnifeWretch: A year before I met Myrrah he threatened to sue me for defamation after I outed him on Tumult until I pointed out that

KnifeWretch: a. saying we dated for six weeks did not constitute legal defamation even if it was false

KnifeWretch: b. all the bland missionary sex in his loveless tradwife marriage would never excite him the way kissing me had and deep down he knew it

KnifeWretch: c. both our full names were still carved into a tree in our hometown's park with a love heart around them in his handwriting

KnifeWretch: d. here was a photo of that

KnifeWretch: He never sued me but a few weeks later that whole half of the park burnt down

You are Nathan DeMarco, standing on the porch of the house you've lived in for one and a half decades for the very last time.

KnifeWretch: I was homeless for the first time at 16 because my dad "couldn't have a faggot for a son"

KnifeWretch: Mom didn't do shit to stop him and could barely be bothered to slip me gas money on my way out the door

KnifeWretch: I spent three months basically living in my car while trying to finish school

KnifeWretch: Which was not fucking easy given that it was a small town in the rural midwest

KnifeWretch: And everyone knew my dad had thrown me out and why

KnifeWretch: Eventually just couldn't stand living there anymore given that I also wasn't doing very much living

KnifeWretch: So I got mom to give me money one last time and just left one night

KnifeWretch: Honestly didn't really expect to last a week and didn't want to

KnifeWretch: Just picked a direction off the top of my head

KnifeWretch: There's probably a bunch of timelines where 16-year-old me went north or west and probably just offed himself

KnifeWretch: Instead I went east

KnifeWretch: I drove for two days

You are Nathan DeMarco, and you "live" in a ratty little apartment off the I-80. There is a knock at the door.

KnifeWretch: The time I was homeless at 19 I had to move in with this disgusting shitfuck in his 40s who took rent in blowjobs and interstate weed runs because I had no money

KnifeWretch: He basically never talked to me because my voice was too deep and it hurt the illusion of me being a girl

KnifeWretch: He convinced himself it wasn't gay if he didn't know I wasn't a girl which of course he fucking knew because he had to keep doing this make-believe bullshit

KnifeWretch: He took hands to me a few times for reminding him too much that I had a penis

KnifeWretch: Despite all of that I have to say the blowjobs were by far the least stressful part of the deal

KnifeWretch: To this day I still cannot believe I did not wind up in jail running dimebags across state lines

KnifeWretch: I guess when you're a skinny white kid you can get away with anything

You are Val DeMarco, and you are opening a package that arrived in the mail from a country you're absolutely certain you couldn't find on a map.

KnifeWretch: I was popping mail order hormones by 21 just to see what all the fuss was about

KnifeWretch: With nobody doing endo it's a miracle I didn't fuck my dosages up and explode my liver

You are Val DeMarco, and you're three edibles into the day wearing somebody else's costume. Twenty minutes ago, you had a conversation about economics with some dude from Australia and when you were done he looked like he'd experienced the second coming of Christ.

KnifeWretch: Living in Pittsburgh sucked immense ass except for the gay scene and the furries

KnifeWretch: Every decent queer person knows how to party but Yinzer queers know how to FUCKING party for real furries put them both to shame and the room parties the furries threw during the con were fucking lit

KnifeWretch: You simply have not lived until you've made a twink nut so hard he tears a seam in his fursuit

KnifeWretch: But any time it wasn't queers or furries it was hills high rents and hhhhhshitty architecture

KnifeWretch: You know how we're like two decades into the 2000s but "turn of the century" still means 1900s?

KnifeWretch: Yeah the shitty apartment block I lived in was built "at the turn of the century"

KnifeWretch: I still hit PGH up once a year for the furcon but fuck that city forever otherwise

You are Val DeMarco and you are tired and it's raining and there is no-one here and you have had enough had enough had enough had enough had enough _{had enough}

KnifeWretch: By the time I got to Philly I had fifty bucks only enough hormones for a week one change of clothes and a phone number a divorced soccer mom from Wilmington gave me after I ate her out in a bar in Cleveland

KnifeWretch: But that turned out to be for a Chinese takeout in Annapolis

KnifeWretch: So I was homeless again and at that point I was basically ready to say fuck it and jump off a bridge

KnifeWretch: But I didn't want to die on an empty stomach and there was no way takeout from Annapolis was going to arrive in time so I went somewhere local instead

KnifeWretch: And who the fuck else was ordering Chinese at 2 in the morning but Myrrah

You are Val DeMarco and you have literally seen beauty worth staying alive for.

KnifeWretch: Straight people talk about gaydar all the time but it's half right

KnifeWretch: Queers do have an instinctive sense for each other and me and Myrrah clocked one another on sight

KnifeWretch: It's like

KnifeWretch: "hey girl you look like a sapphic angel"

KnifeWretch: "oh thanks you look like a scumbeast from double hell but you accessorize decently"

KnifeWretch: Myrrah has this thing you've experienced it yourself

KnifeWretch: Where she instantly understands you're hurting bad

KnifeWretch: And she feels compelled to risk everything to help you

You are Val DeMarco and you are not worthy of this.

KnifeWretch: She had absolutely no reason to trust that I wasn't some junkie who'd steal her stuff or stab her in her sleep

KnifeWretch: And honestly I had absolutely no reason to trust that she wasn't some serial killer looking for a victim

KnifeWretch: But she took me into her home and gave me a place to stay

KnifeWretch: It was only supposed to be for a night

KnifeWretch: But then she found out I only had a week's hormones left so of course I had to stay at least until she got that sorted out

KnifeWretch: And then she discovered I'd never actually had bloods done so that added another two weeks so I could see an endo

KnifeWretch: Which she paid for

KnifeWretch: And don't you dare even think she was inappropriate at any point

KnifeWretch: She was a perfect lady and gave me all the space I needed

You are Val DeMarco and you have a roof over your head and food in your belly and this must all cost something, how much money is it costing her?

KnifeWretch: Weeks passed by

KnifeWretch: And at first I wanted to leave

KnifeWretch: I didn't feel like I deserved her kindness

KnifeWretch: Or that it was some kind of trick

KnifeWretch: Like she was making fun of me

KnifeWretch: Because after my whole life why would anyone want to waste time on me right?

KnifeWretch: I kept looking for the punchline and not finding it.

You are Val DeMarco and you are a burden, you are a burden, you are a burden, you are a burden, you are a burden, you are a burden, you are a burden, you are a burden, you are a burden, you are a burden, you are a burden, you are a burden, you are a burden, you are a burden, you are a burden, you are a burden, you are a burden, you are a burden.

KnifeWretch: After a while there was no actual need for me to stay

KnifeWretch: I got bloods done and... well they were bad but not irreversibly fucked like I had thought

KnifeWretch: I had a stable supply of actual good meds that worked and were dosed correctly

KnifeWretch: I kind of had a job and there were places I could rent maybe

KnifeWretch: But she never tried to get rid of me

KnifeWretch: After a while she didn't even bother making excuses for why I needed to stick around

KnifeWretch: She just very obviously did not set a deadline for me to leave

You are Val DeMarco and you have to do something, anything, not to feel like a burden, feel like a burden, feel like a burden, feel like a burden, feel like a burden, feel like a burden, feel like a burden, feel like a burden, feel like a burden, feel like a burden, feel like a burden, feel like a burden, feel like a burden.

KnifeWretch: I started doing things around the apartment cleaning up

KnifeWretch: just so we were "even"

KnifeWretch: so we were "square"

KnifeWretch: So I didn't feel like I owed her

KnifeWretch: Even when she told me I didn't owe her shit

KnifeWretch: Maybe she could believe that but I couldn't

KnifeWretch: How was this girl who saved me from ending it all not owed something

KnifeWretch: But instead of collecting she just invited me deeper into her weird life

KnifeWretch: She'd have friends over and introduce me and ask if I wanted to chill

KnifeWretch: When she went out she'd try to get me to come with her

KnifeWretch: I felt like I was just racking up more debt

It all starts to fall away.

KnifeWretch: Eventually I just worked up the courage to ask her when she wanted me to go

KnifeWretch: And she looked confused like wtf was I talking about

KnifeWretch: She didn't

KnifeWretch: And so I started crying and yelling because what did she want from me if not for me to leave

KnifeWretch: Was I supposed to give her money like did she want backpaid rent

KnifeWretch: What was my stake in the transaction that was occurring between us

KnifeWretch: And she looked confused again like wtf was I talking about

KnifeWretch: She said she just liked having me around

KnifeWretch: And so I looked confused at her like wtf was SHE talking about

It all falls away. It all falls away. It all falls away. Everything FALLS into the VOID you see when you LOOK AT YOURSELF because there's NOTHING TO LOOK AT.

KnifeWretch: Lucas you have to understand

KnifeWretch: Since basically I can remember I was trash

KnifeWretch: Like in the literal sense

KnifeWretch: Something you throw away because it's no longer useful

KnifeWretch: My folks didn't want me because I was a fag

KnifeWretch: My first boyfriend wanted to erase the memory of our love so bad it (unprovably) drove him to arson

KnifeWretch: Shitty blowjob landlord kicked me out when he couldn't pretend I was a girl anymore

KnifeWretch: Which was kind of discarding me after a long period of discarding me in a different way

KnifeWretch: Double discard

KnifeWretch: Every group I'd fallen in with got tired of me because I was too gross or weird or sick

KnifeWretch: (except for the Pittsburgh Marxist Art Collective that was because I fucked both the chairman's girlfriends and then accidentally tipped them off about each other)

KnifeWretch: Even that milf from Wilmington just used me to get off and then gave me a fake number

KnifeWretch: And why wouldn't she

It all falls away. It doesn't even slip through your fingers, there was never anything to catch in the first place and you never even had fingers to catch it with.

KnifeWretch: There was literally no reason for me to believe that Myrrah would not do the same

KnifeWretch: Because what could she possibly see in me that was good and worthwhile

KnifeWretch: What stunning insight into the value of my existence did she have that everyone else in the world had somehow overlooked

KnifeWretch: Whatever purpose I was serving to her would eventually be expended and she would throw me away

KnifeWretch: Or worse worse what if she was genuinely delusional and gods forbid thought I had actual value as a person

KnifeWretch: Whatever misconception she had about me I couldn't possibly live up to it

KnifeWretch: So I lashed out

You are nothing. You are nothing. You are nothing. You are nothing. You are nothing. You are nothing. You are nothing. You are nothing. You are nothing. You are nothing. You are nothing. You are nothing. You are nothing. You are nothing. You are nothing. You are nothing. You are nothing. You are nothing. You are nothing.

You have to be nothing.

If you weren't nothing you would be something and if you were something that something would have to be defended and you've never been able to defend anything in your life. If you weren't nothing then you would be responsible for protecting something. You would be responsible for yourself. If you weren't nothing, the world wouldn't make sense anymore.

KnifeWretch: I figured if I could make her hate me if I could make her give up on me

KnifeWretch: I could at least suffer the pain and shame of being discarded again all at once instead of slowly by degrees

KnifeWretch: So I called her every terrible thing I could think of

KnifeWretch: I made threats

KnifeWretch: I accused her of a dozen different contradictory things

KnifeWretch: And finally when none of that worked

KnifeWretch: I told her she should have just left me to kill myself that night

KnifeWretch: Then she did something weird

KnifeWretch: The first and only time she ever touched me without permission

KnifeWretch: She just hugged me

Why does she have to be so nice?

KnifeWretch: I can't actually remember how long I cried

KnifeWretch: It must've been hours

Why won't she just let you fail?

KnifeWretch: I told her everything

KnifeWretch: I told her my whole life story

KnifeWretch: Not this abridged version you're getting

KnifeWretch: Everything from start to finish

KnifeWretch: If I couldn't scream her away if I couldn't make her hate me through abuse I'd disgust her

KnifeWretch: I'd make her see I was nothing

KnifeWretch: I'd make her see she was wrong to value me

Why won't she just let you die?

KnifeWretch: She didn't stop hugging me the whole time I was talking

KnifeWretch: She just listened occasionally asked questions

KnifeWretch: I wanted to ask her to stop but I didn't actually want her to stop

KnifeWretch: It felt nice

KnifeWretch: It was the first thing I'd felt other than numb purposeless grief in longer than I could remember

The river within you has run dry. There are no tears left to cry.

KnifeWretch: And after it all came out every sin every fuck-up every mistake every abandonment

KnifeWretch: After I'd unfurled my whole sorry existence and laid it before her

KnifeWretch: She asked me what I wanted

KnifeWretch: Not what the world told me I should want

KnifeWretch: Not what I thought I was entitled to

KnifeWretch: Not what I thought I deserved

KnifeWretch: What I wanted

KnifeWretch: I said I wanted to stay with her

You want to stay with her.

KnifeWretch: She said yes

SHE SAID YES!

KnifeWretch: To understand me you have to know that broken things exist and I'm one of them

KnifeWretch: That's not self pity that's not despair that's not me devaluing myself

KnifeWretch: That's just a statement of fact

KnifeWretch: You don't live a life like mine and come out of it with all your pieces in place and pristine

KnifeWretch: The identity I have sought to create for myself is one of new purpose

KnifeWretch: There's not much happiness to reconcile with or reclaim from my past that's a write-off

KnifeWretch: I was a broken thing that was useless to society and constantly thrown away

KnifeWretch: But I was found and though I can't be put back together the way I was before

KnifeWretch: I can make myself into something new that has purpose

KnifeWretch: I'm not trash I'm recyclable

You are Valor Neige. You just relived all the worst experiences of your life for someone two steps removed from a total stranger. You figure, hell, we're way past the point of worrying about oversharing, let's overshare some more.

KnifeWretch: You might not get how "wretched disgusting filthy ratwhore THING" could possibly be an uplifting, empowering and entirely positive sexual identity for me

KnifeWretch: Especially after what I've been through

KnifeWretch: And I don't fucking blame you

KnifeWretch: Sometimes I still don't quite understand it myself

KnifeWretch: But I think it can be broken down to the concept of choice

You are Valor Neige. You're currently answering questions about yourself you're pretty sure the person you're talking to didn't and probably would never ask.

KnifeWretch: You might think the way I like to be called a thing or a wretch or a rat is demeaning

KnifeWretch: And it can be when I choose to be vulnerable with the people I love

KnifeWretch: But it is also armor

KnifeWretch: I'm not evil for being broken

KnifeWretch: It's the society that broke me and discarded me that's evil

KnifeWretch: If I'm disgusting to that society then good I hope they feel sick when they look at me

KnifeWretch: It actually owns to think I'm making some conservative scumbag miserable when he sees me

KnifeWretch: I made a Nazi so mad he maybe did arson just by being very good at kissing

KnifeWretch: Imagine the sheer power of your mere existence giving objectively bad people brain aneurisms

You are Valor Neige. You are, if nothing else, very good at kissing.

KnifeWretch: And you also might think it's fucking weird for me to get horny over being treated like dirt

KnifeWretch: Especially by the people I love and trust the most in my life

KnifeWretch: And don't get me wrong it absolutely is fucking weird

KnifeWretch: But it's a way of reclaiming agency over what I went through

KnifeWretch: I am not being tortured by an uncaring universe

KnifeWretch: I am choosing to experience pain on my own terms

KnifeWretch: It stops when I want it to stop

KnifeWretch: It is inflicted only by the people I allow

KnifeWretch: It has no power over me anymore

KnifeWretch: I have power over it

KnifeWretch: Also look being called a filthy ratwhore and having my mouth spat in just SLAPS okay I make no apologies for what turns my crank

You are Valor Neige. You hold no illusions about that.

KnifeWretch: Think of it like a sword that I carry but can only give to others

KnifeWretch: When my enemies wield it it cannot cut me

KnifeWretch: When my friends wield it it can cut me

KnifeWretch: But I know my friends will only cut me in good ways

KnifeWretch: In a very literal way because I am kinky af and love pain

KnifeWretch: But also in an allegorical way which is like spiritually fulfilling or something idk this metaphor is getting away from me

You are Valor Neige. You have a habit of talking like this.

KnifeWretch: So like my gender identity is wretch

KnifeWretch: My pronouns are it/its

KnifeWretch: And what this means is with the people I love and trust

KnifeWretch: I am to be treated as a thing

KnifeWretch: A vessel to be reshaped and imbued by them with purpose because that is what I want from them

KnifeWretch: And to the whole rest of the world it means I am to be left the fuck alone because it had its chance with me and it blew it

KnifeWretch: I've seen what the rest of the world values and it's more disgusting than I could ever be

KnifeWretch: You are currently part of the rest of the world

KnifeWretch: But I think with time and effort you could be someone I love and trust

KnifeWretch: If that's what you wanted

KnifeWretch: Don't get me wrong it'd be weird to packbond with some rando from London who my mistress accidentally dreamwalked into during a major depressive episode

KnifeWretch: But all the genuine love in my life has come from unexpected places in weird ways so why the fuck should you be any less viable a candidate

You are Valor Neige. You've said a lot of presumptuous and overly forward things in your life - and in this conversation - but this one is certainly up there.

KnifeWretch: I never suffered that much with gender dysphoria

KnifeWretch: I started popping girlpills half as a joke

KnifeWretch: As a big fuck you to society

KnifeWretch: Fuck your gender norms I'm gonna have a fat cock and fat tits and give an evangelical christian a sexual awakening so traumatic it becomes an urban legend

KnifeWretch: Fuck you dad not only do you have a faggot for a son now you have a tranny hope you get a heart attack you shitbastard

KnifeWretch: Fuck you Phillip you're not just gay for me you're like double reacharound extra gay for me your wife could never

KnifeWretch: I sometimes feel as if I became trans sort of as the ultimate act of shitty early-20s spite and only discovered that I liked it later

KnifeWretch: But then again "hahaha what if I began taking illegally-sourced HRT for the meme" is probably not a thought that occurs to every spiteful 21-year-old emo kid

KnifeWretch: There was definitely some deeper shit to that decision that I maybe still have not fully unpacked years later

KnifeWretch: But I guess what I'm saying with all this is that our experiences are not identical

You are Valor Neige. You feel a kinship with this strange British person, for reasons that you cannot adequately explain, even to yourself.

KnifeWretch: But most assuredly you are suffering from SOMETHING

KnifeWretch: Mistress hasn't told us what you've been through because she keeps your confidence

KnifeWretch: But trust me six queer as hell genderfucked heavily traumatized trans people sitting around a table felt kinship with you

KnifeWretch: We're not sure on what because you haven't told us your life story and you don't have to

KnifeWretch: And maybe you're trans maybe you're not trans

KnifeWretch: (FWIW you're probably trans but that's just my opinion)

You are Valor Neige. You just poured your entire heart out to a stranger in the hopes that it'd... do something for them, you're not even sure what, and you're feeling really raw right now, and this was meant to be about them, not you, and, and, and god you hope they're on the same wavelength or this is gonna be the worst thing you're ever going to say.

KnifeWretch: Sorry Jesus Christ I've been talking at you for like an hour now without letting you get a word in edgeways

KnifeWretch: Um

KnifeWretch: Do you wanna like

KnifeWretch: Fuck it

KnifeWretch: Fuck it

KnifeWretch: FUCK IT

KnifeWretch: Do you wanna meet up in the dream and fuck like the world's going to end

AlternianDidact: GOD YES.

You are Valor Neige, and you've still got it.

Val is absolutely the kind of rowdy queer person who really has seen it all before 30

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