He walked across the brick with a clarity of purpose and a serenity Connie had rarely seen in him in the times before. He used to look around nervously, sweeping the ground with his eyes, his posture tucked inward, hiding his chest and projecting his doubts. His mannerisms, the way he dressed, the perpetual and painful-looking curl to his spine — it had always been a request for you to forgive his existence. Now he didn’t seem to care about the outside world and its reaction to him at all.

He glided toward her. His rusty-brown hair was freshly cut and bouncy and framed his cheekbones. His eyes casually focused on Connie as he made his approach.

“You’re late,” she admonished him, tossing a Sugar in the Raw packet across the wrought iron table where she’d been waiting. A pot of blueberry green tea, Phoenix’s favorite, steamed into the air. He grinned and opened his arms, somewhat stiltedly, for an embrace.

“It’s so good to see you,” Phoenix said.

Connie pressed herself into his chest. She let her friend hold her for a little longer than what used to be customary. He was bigger than he used to be, his arms thicker, his torso solid. But he still smelled like the Bath and Body Works cologne they had picked out together in their early twenties, the day before he came out as a man.

They’d been in the Great Northern mall together, him looking around furtively, stealing smells from the various blue and green bottles, Connie keeping watch in case anybody they knew showed up. Back then, Connie didn’t have the heart to tell him that nobody in all of Middleburg Heights would hold it against a “girl” that she enjoyed a twelve-dollar body spray designed for a “boy.” She held onto that snark for a few years, saved it up until he would be ready to hear it.

When the dam of trans denial finally bursts, there is a lot of rubble left behind. You have to overcome a lot of big, jagged barriers your mind erected to protect you and keep you from getting found out. Phoenix had set a lot of arbitrary rules for himself. Ways he wasn’t allowed to dress, ways he wasn’t permitted to sit. Things he couldn’t enjoy anymore. Stuff no actual cis person even believed about men and women in 2010. So self-conscious. It takes a patient friend to help a newly-out trans person unpack that shit, but Connie had always been decent at registering her judgement in a way Phoenix could hear, and at biting her tongue when he couldn’t.

The memories of that time were nice. Helping Phoenix pick out pimple cream, oohing and ahhing when he modeled new joggers and skater shoes. Watching the joy spread across his face when she called his name. She had enjoyed watching him slowly blossom. He was easy to encourage and easy to comfort. Now his big arms were enveloping her, returning some of the care Connie had long radiated at him. It didn’t have to be perfectly equal. As long as he was trying again, that would be enough.

The lockdown had been “over” in the U.S. for several months, but people still held their hugs for a long time and shared bites of food with their friends sensually, like it was making love. Connie hoped that never stopped. As she broke away from Phoenix, she noticed the shiny metal collar peeking out from under his shirt. He adjusted his button-up slightly, with great courtesy, and they sat down.

Phoenix looked around the patio, taking in the tulips and the blossoms in the trees. They used to visit this teahouse a lot as teens. It was one of the more wholesome places they’d terrorized. Nobody ever yelled at teen-Connie for smoking on the patio or at Phoenix for showing up in days-old, crusty Rocky Horror makeup. They’d been allowed to sit outside and drink refills of the same pot of tea for hours without being scolded. And they did tip well. Let the record state that.

“I’m so glad this place survived the pandemic,” Phoenix said.

“Melt didn’t make it,” Connie sighed, of the old sandwich shop that sold them beer underage back in college. “And Cornerstone Brewery had to get a GoFundMe.”

He frowned. “Well, let’s get a full spread here today, shall we? Give them as big a financial shot in the arm as we can.”

Connie shifted in her seat. She had been laid off for months.

Phoenix shook his head, realizing. “Oh, no I mean. This is all on me.”

She relaxed and mouthed thank you silently.

“So your work has been going well?” she asked.

Her friend stared off into space a moment, as if he’d forgotten he had a job. He shook his head a bit, knocking the dust loose. “Oh, yes. It’s been fine. I’m just rotating through the same few clients and their projects. I only work a couple days a week at this point. Everything else is just…on the rails.”

Connie sipped her tea. “That’s great. That’s pretty amazing actually.”

He smiled, embarrassment hanging in his eyes. “I’m living the dream. It feels annoying to say.”

“Please, don’t be embarrassed. My unemployment doesn’t run out for three more months. You should see how much painting I’m getting done. I’m kind of living the dream, too.”

He settled back into his seat. “I’d love to look at your paintings later.”

“Sure thing. I’ll drive us up the road after. How’s Dhin?”

His eyes went cloudy for a second again, but stayed pointed in her general direction. For a moment Connie worried she’d said the wrong thing, that something had happened, but then he came back to life.

“He is. He’s perfect,” her friend said slowly. “He just got a deal with this artsy film app, The Click? His pilot finally got picked up.”

“Oh my god, that is incredible!” Connie squealed, “I know how long he’s been working on that, he must be so happy. And you must be so proud!”

“I always knew that He would make it,” Phoenix said reverently, nudging a few locks out of his face. “The visuals are looking incredible, compared to how it started in storyboard. And soon He’ll have a whole team of animators. A two season contract to start.”

Connie was a visual artist, as Phoenix’s partner Dhin was, but their work was so different she couldn’t be too jealous of his success. Her paintings of fantasy creatures were grounded somewhat, there was a realism to them; Dhin’s animations were completely inscrutable and surreal. It seemed promising to her that an artist who created such arresting, fluid visuals had been trusted to make his own show. Even if she’d never heard of the app. Sitting across the table from the golden boy with the three-day work week and the equally successful boyfriend, Connie felt as if a little of their luck might rub off on her.

“Dhin is gonna be busy,” she blurted suddenly. That, she realized, would go against everything Phoenix had wanted and planned for. “Are you worried about it?”

Phoenix tilted his gaze down into his lap a moment, breathed, then looked back up at her. “Honestly, yes. The production schedule will be punishing. That’s part of why I’m venturing out a bit more, I gotta say.”

“You want to have an actual life again?”

“I don’t want anything,” Phoenix replied. “I’m just being realistic. He needs me to be less needy.”

He slipped his fingers around the handle of the teacup, fiddled it side to side in his saucer.

Connie was relieved to hear Phoenix acknowledge the nature of his and Dhin’s relationship. She never knew when to bring it up, or if to bring it up, or if she was still allowed to act like she knew.

“You need to act less needy,” Connie said carefully, “but you don’t actually want to be free from that need.”

“No,” her friend smiled. “I’ll never be free.”

Warmth bloomed across his face. Her words had activated something in Phoenix, giving him the opportunity to affirm a fact that was, to him, deeply important. He was not free. He never would be, not ever again. He’d told her as much at the party, right before the pandemic hit. The day she figured out what he’d become.

“I’m sorry,” he said, gripping the arm of his chair and grounding himself. “It’s been such a long time since I’ve been out, it’s still so weird.”

He regarded their surroundings. There was an elderly couple sharing a sandwich at a bench a few yards away. Past them, a busser was filling a basin with dirty dishes and humming along to the music from the patio’s speakers.

“You’re good,” Connie said.

“No, I need to get better at this again. Talking to be people. Being normal.”

“We’ve talked all year. I know you know how to talk to people still.”

It was partially a lie. All year, all pandemic long really, Connie had been trying to get Phoenix on the phone or Zoom. They’d schedule something, and then he’d cancel at the last minute via text. Or he just wouldn’t show, and would apologize the next day. Then he’d circle back, those were the words he used, circle back, like she was a client. They’d get another hangout on the calendar, and Phoenix would appear, sitting on the floor of Dhin’s living room in a baggy sweatshirt, his hair mussed. He spoke with all the slow contentment of an overfed kitten. His responses to her questions were pleasant, but measured. Delayed.

It was normal, during the era of digital socializing, to not feel fully connected. Every conversation on Zoom had odd stops and starts. But with Phoenix, it was different. His facial expressions and reactions were slowed and blunted. His words were friendly, but always brief. Polite dodges.

On video chat, she only ever saw one view of one room. Phoenix never moved or stood up. Maybe he couldn’t. It was like Connie was speaking to a diplomatic envoy from the Nation of Phoenix and Dhin, who could speak to the country’s political goals very diplomatically, but would never, ever let her past its borders.

All the faraway looks and the slow, purposeful way he moved, as if underwater. The words he used, the questions he asked, so close to being him, but off just enough to be uncanny. If she asked about a shared memory from their childhood, he could recall it after a moment, but he rarely brought up such things himself. His old tics, like the way he used to chew on his hangnails, had all but disappeared. Every now and then he would mimic the gesture, awkwardly, as if he’d just remembered to do it. But mostly all his flaws and foibles were just…gone.

Her friend had thrown himself into the maw of something Connie couldn’t understand, and she was still figuring out how she felt about it. He was happy, but it scared her. And it was lonely. If he let her get any closer, she might see he was no longer there.

The waiter came and took their order. Phoenix chatted amiably with him about the weather and asked for the afternoon tea special. Salad, sandwiches, the soup of the day for both of them. Petit fours. She studied his mannerisms. He was a perfect pantomime of inoffensive humanity. In superficial interactions like these he shined. It was only because she knew him so well that she could feel what was missing.

“How has your life been changing,” Phoenix asked, turning back to her, “now that you’re on the other side of lockdown?”

“Oh, just slowly easing back into things like this,” Connie said. “Having people over for dinner. You should let me cook for you. I mean, if you’re allowed.”

He laughed politely, but his jaw tensed. “I’m allowed. I know He’d be glad if I did.”

“Is that what all this is about?” Connie leaned across the table. “Did Dhin like, command you to go get re-socialized?”

Every time she said Dhin’s name, Connie watched Phoenix’s eyes shift. He was mentally dubbing it over with something else. They’d been friends for so long. Phoenix had done the same thing with his own name, before he was out. People would use his girlname and he’d kind of squint and blink it out. Like he was willing his real name to take its place.

“I don’t want you to feel used!” Phoenix said to her. “Through all of this, you’re the person I missed the most.”

“Can you miss people?” she asked. “The way you are now?”

Phoenix’s head tilted. “Did you miss your friends when you were with Kolin?”

Connie rolled her eyes. Kolin was her first real boyfriend, the first boy who dated her as a girl. When they fucked, he held her like she was a priceless, delicate piece of pottery that he was pouring molten gold into. He always stood on the street side of the sidewalk when they walked together. Sure, she had avoided a few texts from Phoenix back in the day when she was busy adoring Kolin. But she had been young, and this was not the same.

“Oh I remember, it was very annoying of me to disappear on you,” she said. “And it’s not healthy when a person gets obsessed with their partner like that. Wasn’t that the lesson?”

He paused. “I don’t know that I care about healthy anymore.”

Connie heard herself making little scoffing sounds. She was fucking this up. You’re not supposed to put the other person on the defensive. You can’t make yourself a threat to the relationship. She had read that somewhere. But she had to be herself. And all year Phoenix had said nothing about his new life, and his new arrangement, and Connie desperately needed some sign that he was okay.

“That’s,” she said, tensely, “is the most honest you’ve been with me all year. Thank you.”

Phoenix watched her, gears turning behind his still face. “You’re worried about me,” he observed after a moment.

“Of course I am!” She waved her hands up and down. “You’re not the same person.”

He took her hand. Something in his eyes seemed to drop away, like a bubble bursting. There he was, recognizing her distress for what it was, raw in his desire for her to understand.

“Connie, this is what I want,” he said. “This is the most right I have ever felt about anything. More than transitioning. Or going no-contact with my brother. This is everything to me. This is embarrassing as fuck to show but I want you to get it.”

“You’re still there,” she whispered.

The moment was rapidly becoming too intense, which Phoenix seemed to sense. He pulled back, releasing her hand, and took a careful sip of his tea. His posture straightened into confident perfection and his gaze went slightly glassy once more.

“Of course I’m still here,” he said.

She sucked down the grassy dregs of her tea and swallowed the tears running down the back of her throat. “I didn’t know you could be anymore. You’ve been gone for a long time.”

“I’m trying to be here with you,” Phoenix said earnestly. “All of this is me.”

When she first met Dhin, Connie liked him far more than most of her friends’ boyfriends. He was present, yet not overbearing. Usually when you meet somebody’s boyfriend, he either hits you with way too much attention, trying to win you over in a way that you know will ultimately sour, or he’s a completely inert sack of potatoes on his phone in the corner. Dhin treated her not as a symbol or a means to an end in his relationship, but as a potential new friend.

Dhin asked about her art. She showed him the last few panels from the comic she was writing about magical girls. He played a few animated gifs of his work for her. On his phone, a series of inky, round-assed monsters undulated in a multicolored abyss and then collapsed into one another, eyes screaming into blank white light. It was freaky stuff. He seemed so straight-laced, but his work was upsetting and primal. She could respect that.

When the two men were together, Phoenix folded into Dhin’s body in an absolutely adorable way. They were about the same size, and nested into one another perfectly. He’d never seemed so satisfied by a relationship before. They completed one another’s sentences. Exercised together. Read the same books. Theirs was the kind of love Connie had fantasized about for a very long time.

The change in Phoenix happened gradually at first. He became softer, mentally, though no less intelligent. He never got into fights online with transphobes anymore. He stopped agonizing over his work being perfect and ditched any clients that gave him trouble. Then he started making more mistakes. Typos in text messages. Forgetting words. After breakfast, he’d put the milk in the cabinet and the cereal in the fridge. Connie would have a whole conversation with him on the phone about drama with her coworker, and he didn’t seem to remember it at all the next day.

Nothing ever made him upset. His evenings were rarely free, but he couldn’t explain what had him so busy. It was like being friends with a hologram Connie couldn’t touch.

At a certain point, Connie noticed that Phoenix got quiet and almost kind of dreamy around Dhin. She and him would be chatting casually in the kitchen, then Dhin would walk into the house and Phoenix would move to his side, and kind of disappear inside himself. He’d keep his eyes fixed on his boyfriend for the entire conversation, monitoring his reactions to things, anticipating his needs.

But her friend also seemed to be thriving. He was making more money than ever before. Most of it was getting socked away, and he talked a lot about being able to quit his job. He could set his own hours, work from home. Never be far from Dhin.

On New Year’s Eve, Connie coaxed Phoenix and Dhin to go out dancing with her. She knew it would be an easier ask if both men were invited. Still they inhabited their own little world, twirling around one another, Phoenix’s eyes locked adoringly on Dhin. Dhin looked so satisfied and at peace, bringing his boyfriend’s fingers to his mouth.

After hours of vodka seltzers and New Wave music and grinding against a cute girl wearing nothing but an oversized blazer, Connie slipped out to smoke. The two men were outside already, tucked against the side of the building. She watched them, Dhin’s hands on Phoenix’s head. They hadn’t noticed her.

How is it feeling?

Energy is at 45%, arousal is at 75%, Connie could hear Phoenix say. Intoxication levels are approaching critical.

His voice was flat, emotionless, and not hushed like Dhin’s was. Connie crept a bit closer and could see her friend was standing ramrod straight, arms at his sides, staring forward. His face seemed to be completely slack.

It should go to the bar and get some water, Dhin said softly.

Yes, Creator.

Dhin pushed Phoenix’s hair from his face, then snaked a firm hand around the back of his neck.

Go ahead, toy, he said darkly.

Her friend began walking forward, slowly and stiffly. Connie ducked around the corner. She heard Dhin’s voice again.

And go wash up in the bathroom. I need my toy in good working order for tonight.

Yes Creator.

Good toy.

That was when Connie knew she hadn’t been imagining things. They disappeared from the bar shortly after, and Connie had to walk home in a busted pair of heels. The next morning she texted Phoenix over and over to see if he was hung over or had been on something. He didn’t reply for two days.

It was a rainy evening in late February when Dhin and Phoenix had their house party. They’d just moved into a spacious two-bedroom with a big yard and a finished attic, and were eager to show it off. Plus, they had been blowing off all their friends for months and owed everybody a social engagement.

In the front room, bodies swayed and pressed against one another, and a friend who’d helped color some of Dhin’s illustrations poured punch from a big glass bowl. A triad of strangers made out in the spare bedroom. All things that would become unthinkable by mid-March. In the kitchen, Connie’s roommate Lainey was mixing disgustingly bright, syrupy-sweet drinks. They looked like alien blood. She threw glowing icecubes into the cups with a little flourish. All the decor in the house was an unsettling mix of bright neons and black, like in Dhin’s animations.

Connie took her fourth drink of the night and sucked it down. A guy with goatee whom Connie had never met before offered her a bacon-wrapped fig from the oven.

“Who the fuck are you?” she asked the guy.

“Dhin and I have worked on some projects together,” he said. But when Connie asked to see his art, he demurred.

“It’s all a fucking smokescreen,” Connie muttered to Lainey, popping the fig in her mouth. “The music, the food, all the people. It’s a distraction and a bad apology.”

Lainey shrugged and poured shots of Midori and vodka into a shaker. “At least they’re trying to socialize.”

“I haven’t seen them in hours! I just want my friend. Where the hell is he?”

The guy with the goatee nodded down the hall and said, “Thought I saw both of them go in the bedroom a while ago. It’s probably been long enough to interrupt.”

Connie’s stomach twisted with drunken anger. What the fuck was going on with these two? Couldn’t Phoenix bear to be away from his boyfriend for a single second, even in the midst of the couple’s first party in months? Before they’d disappeared, Phoenix had followed Dhin all night, a puppy at his heels. Refilling his cup. Kissing his cheek. Taking the coats of all of Dhin’s friends. His eagerness made her sick. She was disgusted at the depth of her own fury. She couldn’t stop picking at it, like a scab.

Connie pushed through the hallway, past the line of people waiting for the bathroom. Cradling her drink in her palm, she planted herself outside the bedroom door. She couldn’t hear anything but the thudding music around her and drunk people yelling. The doorknob gave way under her grasp. She would pretend she needed a Tylenol, she decided. She pushed her way in.

The room was dark and cool, a breeze from outside making the curtains flutter. Connie flipped on the lights. The bedroom was empty and tidy, and there was no one around. Gouache illustrations of bats and tentacle monsters on the walls. A sculpture made of iron pipes. A photo of the two men, embracing on the stoop of the Art Institute, wiggling their tongues at the camera. Phoenix’s eyes were milky in the photo.

Connie almost stormed out. Then she noticed the glow in the walk-in closet. She stepped over to find a hole in the ceiling, shining with shifting blue and green lights, a ladder to the attic hanging to the floor. Connie placed herself beneath it and could hear some strange murmuring coming from above. And more music, something deeper and slower than what people were dancing to in the front room.

“Fuck it,” she whispered to herself, downed the last of her atomic green drink and tossed the cup onto Nix’s dresser. She stepped onto the ladder and led herself into the bowels of the attic.

Phoenix had mentioned the previous tenants used the attic as an office. But as she entered the space, Connie saw it had been significantly altered. Strips of bright teal LED lights lined the angled ceiling, the walls, and the floors. As she rose up the ladder, she saw the windows were blotted out with blackout curtains.

The walls and ceiling were painted a deep black with occasional swirls of bright purple and blue, and wooden planks had been installed into the ceiling. A black metal cage was positioned next to a stately looking leather chair. Inside the cage, she saw padded wrist and ankle cuffs dangling from a length of chain. On the floor of the cage sat a vibrator, and, strangely, a big plastic headset, like for a virtual reality game.

Connie pulled herself up into the attic and looked around. The music was thudding in her temples. A series of leather strips and metal hooks dangled from hardpoints installed in the ceiling, as well as a few snarls of black rope. These led down to a large form that was encased and shifting. It was clad in shiny black latex from head to toe, arms pinned back behind it in straps that looked to be locked. The metal jostled and the rope that suspended it creaked.

There were holes in the latex from which the figure’s cunt protruded, wetness glistening in the glow. A vibrator was tied against its leg and pressed against it, buzzing incessantly. Its nipples were out and clamped, a chain connecting the clamps and leading to a shiny metal collar around its throat. Its mouth was held open by a metal clamp and it was mumbling softly, saliva dribbling down its chin.

The thing swaying in front of her hadn’t even registered as human at first. Its motions were so jerky and repetitive and it was so unresponsive to her presence. It seemed about as alive and conscious as the vibrator thrumming between its legs.

Its eyes were staring forward, glassy and blank. It did not blink, and its pupils were huge. A single tuft of dark, warm-hued hair poked out of one eye hole in the latex. It was Phoenix of course. At the same time, it wasn’t a person at all.

A giant monitor was mounted on the wall across from where Phoenix was suspended. The screen spun and swirled with disorienting black shapes, and oozed with bright, thick tendrils of teal, neon purple, and bright, atomic green. Dhin’s work always had a way of pulling the viewer’s eye in, even as it remained utterly inscrutable. But these spirals were on a completely new level. It was so intense, both vibrant and disarming. Connie could almost feel the tentacles swirling inside of her eyes as she watched it. It nearly made her dizzy. Yet it also felt satisfying.

Words sometimes flashed across the snaking abyss of colors. But they appeared and disappeared so quickly her conscious mind couldn’t register them. She could somehow feel them flashing across her mind, like a fuzzy memory of a dream.

Connie turned back at Phoenix. He dangled there, drooling and muttering, gaze fixed helplessly on Dhin’s animations. As she approached her friend’s inert body, Connie realized Phoenix was wearing headphones. These too were pulsing with faint teal light. She brought her ear close to his head. There were words thudding in his ears, and music. Dhin’s voice? As he stared deep into the screen, Phoenix drooled and mumbled over and over.

She touched it on the shoulder lightly. Phoenix did not respond. The words kept coming forth from it. She could vaguely make some of them out.

It is a toy.
It must obey.
It’s just a thing.

Connie looked to the spirals again and felt her mind tuning into Phoenix’s words. She imagined how it must feel to have these words buzzed into your body and brain over and over again, moving past stimulation, and then past boredom, and then past conscious consideration entirely, into something much deeper and more instinctive. She considered what it might be like to endure this for more than hours, but for months and years.

The images were beautiful. The music was pulsing into her friend’s body so strongly. It was meditative, but not in a peaceful way exactly. More like giving in to the allure of death.

Connie took a step back, rubbed her eyes. She was finding herself getting lost in it. The dark, glowing attic was like a completely different world.

Illustration by Laura Lee Benjamin, used with permission. You can follow Laura Lee Benjamin on Instagram here and on Patreon here.
The thick vibrator pulsed loudly against Phoenix and a repetitive moaning began to come from his mouth. This, too, was robotic and stilted, and surprisingly high pitched. Its eyes darted back in its head and a blush of arousal bloomed around his mouth and his bared skin.

“Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.”

“Phoenix?” she whispered, touching it on the shoulder. For a moment she worried he was choking on his own spit.

But Phoenix did not respond to her. The sounds kept chirping out of it, and its body tensed. Its hips bucked and its thighs twitched. It oozed wetness, unblinking eyes streaming with tears.

She watched an orgasm build in its body, the pleasure barely registering in its face, even as its abs and thighs seized and its body swung from the ropes. Its voice climbed and climbed in pitch, its recitations of the mantras growing increasingly desperate and pleading. It’s just a thing. It’s just a toy. It belongs to the Creator, she heart it say, its mouth numb and sloppy from the metal and the spit.

Connie felt a curious urge to help it reach new heights. She stared back at the spirals and felt them stabbing into her mind. It was just doing what it was meant to do. And though she felt repulsed, she also wanted to help take it even deeper.

She leaned in beside it, her head pressed against the headphones, her leg approaching the vibrator. With a sigh and a shivver traveling up her spine, she let herself press her thigh against it, driving the vibrations against Phoenix’s skin. It gasped but did not gaze at her.

“That’s right,” Connie heard herself whisper in its ear. “Be a good little toy.”

She wasn’t sure why she was saying or doing any of this. But she held it close, pushed the vibrator against it, held the back of its latex-clad neck in her hand. And she pointed her attention back at the screen. The colors. The lights.

It shook like a washing machine. Fluid spurted out of it, soaking the tatami mat on the floor. It yelped in pleasure and surrender, pressing against the vibrator, eyes massive, pupils huge and sucking in every possible detail from the spirals that reprogrammed its brain. As the waves of pleasure subsided, it fought to regain its breathing, and its eyes rolled back in its head and closed. Phoenix relaxed and seemed to almost drop down a few inches. It drooled long, sticky threads all over itself.

Connie pulled herself away and stood before him, stunned.

Its body began automatically, brainlessly moving its hips against the vibrator at a slow but consistent pace. Its breathing was slow and measured. Its eyes still completely washed white. The lips, still caught in their metal clamp, resumed a gentle, obedient murmuring.

“Phoenix?” she said. It did not react at all.

It was beautiful and terrible, what had been done to him. Connie finally found herself breaking free of the numb, aroused curiosity that had overtaken her, and experiencing something like fear. She was reaching out to touch her friend, trying still to wake him up, and still it was like he had evacuated his body entirely. She also felt a deadening shame rising up within her. Why had she made him come? Why did she press the vibrator against him? What gave her the right?

“Phoenix, wake up,” she said. “Nix. Come on. This isn’t funny. Enough. Nix. NIX!”

That was when Dhin finally emerged from the back room, rushing out to find out what the commotion was. He was stripped nude, and dripping with water, holding a blindfold in one hand and a towel in the other.

“What the hell is going on,” he barked, before his eyes locked on Connie and, recognizing her, softened.

“Connie,” he said, his posture dropping into his usual easy, affable stance. “Did you…need something?”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said. “But this is not…normal. I’m not kinkshaming, I swear but. He didn’t even hear me come in.”

“Connie,” Dhin said apologetically, putting the gear down on a footstool and raising his hands. “You have to understand, what I do with it is very — ”

“It?? What’s wrong with him?” She heard herself getting agitated, felt herself moving across the floor to close the distance between them, arms raised. This was wrong, all wrong. What she had done was wrong too. Her hands were on his chest, pushing him away. “What did you do to my friend?”

…

Half an hour later, Phoenix met her in the front yard, as Dhin had promised he would. Connie was smoking and choking down a Diet Coke, bracing herself against the wet and cold. He appeared beside her, wearing Dhin’s sweatpants and a robe. She could see red marks fading on his chest. His collar was still on. His eyes were bleary but alert. He leaned against the house beside her and together they stared out into the darkness.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hi,” Connie replied, sucking air through her teeth. “Look, I’m sorry I interrupted you two.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “It was rude to do that during a party.”

“It’s not that it’s rude, that’s not the problem. Like who cares, we’re all sluts.” She folded one arm across her chest. “The upsetting thing was that you didn’t stop. Why didn’t you wake up?”

“I couldn’t,” he said.

“What do you mean, you couldn’t?”

“He’s been training me,” Phoenix said. “To really go deep and not see or hear anything else.”

Connie knew people who got into altered headspaces when they had sex, furries and puppy players and people who roleplayed. But it was always fake. You could always snap out of it.

“I touched you,” she confessed. “And I spoke to you. Do you remember?”

His eyes widened. “You did?”

“I’m sorry, it was wrong of me, I just — ”

He waved a hand dismissively. “Oh Connie, it doesn’t matter. I trust you. If anything you did violated His rules then I’d snap out of it and stop you.”

“But you didn’t even know I was there!”

“Not consciously,” he said. “I only do and think what I’m told to do. Nothing else.”

“But how can you consent-”

“His rules protect me,” he said again. “I do what I’m told, which is what I agreed to.”

“How often do you two do that together?” she asked.

Phoenix pulled in a fortifying breath of cold air. “Oh, every day,” he told her. “The Creator makes me do it every day for several hours.”

She let the Creator thing slide for the time being. “Hours? How many hours?”

“As many as I can get,” a smile sneaked out of the corner of Phoenix’s mouth. “I understand it looks…weird…but I love it.”

“You mean it loves it,” she said knowingly.

Her friend’s eyes went dark. “You saw what it truly is,” he said simply. It sounded like an incantation. Like a law inscribed on the inside of him.

“Uggh,” Connie said with a shake.

Phoenix looked at her, concerned. “Look, I’m sorry I scared you. I didn’t think you’d ever have to know about this.”

“What the fuck did you think would happen, Phoenix? You thought you could just get brainwashed by this guy every day of your life, for hours, and I’d just never — I’d never know?”

He nodded, embarrassed. “Okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you could tell. I thought I could just keep it separate from the rest of my life.”

She turned to face him dead on. “What life? You haven’t been the same for a long time. You get lost in your thoughts. You don’t care about your career or the things you used to worry about. You’re stupid around him. You don’t hear half the things I say to you. Probably because you’re listening to those words in your head all the time, oh my God!!”

He laughed.

“You really know me so well,” Phoenix said, as if to himself. “I don’t know how you can tell, but that’s exactly right. His programming runs all the time, in the back of my head.”

“Why?”

“To remind me what I am. And take me deeper and deeper into…well, being His thing.”

“Are you even — are you even awake right now?” She took hold of his shoulder. Shook him a little. He smiled at her, impassively. “Explain it to me, seriously.”

“It’s called a waking trance,” Phoenix said, all matter-of-fact. “I’m under His control all the time. I don’t really think anymore. He and the programming always comes first. But I can simulate what it’s like to be the person I was before. There are phrases and commands, daily rituals and homework, rules.”

“Nix, this is so freaky. How do you know you really want it? How do you know if you need it to stop?”

He blinked a few times, almost failing to comprehend the idea of himself wanting things, and those wants being different from Dhin’s. He composed himself. “Look, I didn’t mean to disturb you. The arrangement the Creato— Dhin— and I have is something I’ve dreamed about all my life. You have to believe me. I never even thought it could be real.”

“And it is real?” Connie asked. “Like, are you just a hypnotized thing all of the time, that he can have do whatever he wants?”

“You want to hear all this?”

“I can’t help but know. I need to understand what I just saw.”

Phoenix sighed and said, “So, yeah…I’m His obedient fuck toy. He can use me any time. All the time. And He can change any part of me that He wants. My thoughts, my desires. How I act. Get rid of bad habits. Make memories disappear. Make me fantasize about the things He likes. And it’s real. And it’s what I want. Or it’s what I wanted, before. I don’t really want things for myself, now. I just want to please Him.”

“And you thought I just…wouldn’t notice you turning into some kind of weird Stepford Husband thing? Your best friend, who realized you were a guy two years before you did?”

“You know what’s really fucked up?” Phoenix said, taking the cigarette from her hand and pulling it to his own mouth. “Hearing you say how much I’ve changed…it’s incredibly hot to me. It means I’m responding to His programming more than I thought.”

“Yeah, it’s very apparent,” Connie said.

“I’m not glad I made you upset. But. I wanted to give myself over to this, as completely as possible. So yes, I’ve been changing. And…I want to see how deep it can go.”

He passed the cigarette back to her.

“Look, I won’t put you in a situation where you have to see that again,” he told her. “We don’t want to make you feel gross. But it’s good that you know.”

Connie dropped the dying cigarette to the ground and stared at it. Phoenix’s foot, which was shoved into Dhin’s oversized slipper, she now noticed, jutted forward and stamped the ember out.

“I’m not grossed out,” she strained to tell him. “I just want to make sure this is good for you.”

“It’s more than good for me,” he said. “It’s so right that it’s worth anything bad that comes with it.”

It was hard to argue with that. She could see the rapture in his face. And staring at the spirals herself, feeling his body seize with pleasure beneath her, imagining what it would be like to succumb as he had… she shook the idea away.

“I want to be able to talk to you about this, to check in with you,” she said. “To make sure you’re okay. Is that fine?”

“Of course, Connie,” her friend told her, his words surging with emotion for the first time in the entire conversation. It was the same Phoenix who’d once told her that of course, she could always call him by his chosen name from now on, he would never force her to pretend he was something he wasn’t. “You can come over and check in on me whenever you like.”

That answer was enough to satisfy her, at least for the night. She hugged him briskly, his body feeling limp in her arms, and excused herself to leave.

A week and a half later, cases were surging all across the country. Offices were going remote, kids were being pulled out of school, and the restaurant where Connie worked shuttered its doors. After a few more days of people voluntarily distancing, Ohio finally entered lockdown.

They talked about infighting in the art world, and the weird girl Connie’s roommate Lainey was dating. They refilled their tea and joked about an annoying client who used to call Phoenix in the middle of the night wanting copy on his website to be just barely edited. When their salads were gone and their soups were drained, they used crusts of French bread to sop up the lingering drops.

“This is really nice,” Connie said. “I got sick of only ever seeing you through a Zoom screen.”

“This is a lot better,” Phoenix agreed. “It’s easier to feel…normal. When I’m not staring at self-view on the computer.”

Connie suddered. “Ooof, that video call dysphoria.”

“Oh,” he laughed. “Not that.”

“What?”

Phoenix blushed. “Well. The Creat— Dhin makes me touch myself staring in the mirror and repeating my programming to myself. So um. Seeing myself is kind of-”

“Hypnotic?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus,” Connie tittered. “There’s no limit to it with you. I’m worried I’m gonna say your Manchurian Candidate activation phrase or something.”

“I mean,” Phoenix said, “I can give you my trigger list, if you really wanna know.”

The waiter brought them the bill. When Phoenix reached forward, Connie caught a glimpse of a new tattoo on his inner wrist, a power button symbol in teal. She noticed again how huge his biceps had gotten.

Connie wondered if exercise was part of his daily homework. It would be easy enough, working out while listening to Dhin’s audio files with all the mantras. Nosy. She was so nosy.

“Do you still like it?” she asked, after he’d paid up and pressed the bill holder shut. “The spirals, the words? Having so many obligations…Do you ever get bored?”

He smiled at the ground. “Never. You can’t really be bored if you’re just…gone.”

“Gone.”

He made a fluttery gesture with his hand. “Plus that’s just part of it. I’m always getting new rituals, new commands…It’s always becoming, more.”

He stood up.

“Wait. What’s something new that he’s added lately?” she asked.

He looked off into space, clearly filtering through possible responses until he found something that wasn’t too upsetting.

“Stop that,” Connie said. He blinked back into awareness. “Just tell me honestly. What’s the last thing he trained you to do?”

“If I see that He’s hard, I drop everything,” Phoenix stated. “My mind goes blank. I stop what I’m doing. Strip. Fall to my knees. Mouth open, arms behind me. Ready for Him to fuck me in the face.”

“No matter what?”

“He has some safeties installed in me. If I’m in a work meeting I have to turn the camera off first. If we’re in public I go into standby mode, obsessed with fulfilling my duty but acting appropriately, until we’re in the car or in private. But it just completely overtakes me. I see Him hard, I drop into Service Mode. I feel tortured until I can satisfy Him.”

Connie felt a slight twinge between her legs. If she didn’t think too much about it, it actually was kind of hot. Phoenix had mistaken her interest for judgement though and started walking to the parking lot. She dashed after him.

“Nix, wait. How does it feel? What is it like?”

“I thought you didn’t want to hear this stuff.”

“I do,” she blurted. “I don’t know why you think that. I never said that.”

“The way you react to it,” he said. “I can tell.”

“I’m not scared of you. I’m scared of how it makes me feel.”

He looked over at her, curious. “I want to love the real you, Phoenix. This is the real you now. And it makes me feel a lot of things. That’s all.”

He nodded. Looked at the ground.

“Everything is darkness most of the time. Peaceful. I’m down deep below the surface. Whole days go by, all I see are flashes. Him in my mouth, Him in my ass. Him dripping down my legs. His hand on my head, guiding me. His voice in my mind. Telling me what to think. Leaving old parts of me behind. I know my purpose. And then I wake up, and it’s weeks later, and He’s telling me to get dressed, because today I have a lunch date with my very best friend.”

Cis people had a tendency to believe that transitioning was a kind of self-destruction. Even if they said they were supportive, they looked it at it that way. They mourned the changes in their trans loved ones as if their new freedom were a death. It was a big change, but not as dramatic a change in selfhood as this.

Connie reminded herself the two things both were, and were not, analogous. The person he had once been, the hard-driving A-Type personality with the meticulous attention to detail and full schedule would never return again. The friend who was lost in himself, unassured and neurotic, he was gone too. There was only a soft-headed, happy, obedient shadow of that more tortured man.

She asked him, “And you love being down there? Under the surface or whatever?”

“I do,” her friend told her. “It only becomes more beautiful, the deeper it goes. It seems to be endlessly deep.” He turned to her, adjusting the collar of his shirt. His gaze was naked, honest.

“I want to see it again,” blurted Connie. “Is there a word I can say, or.”

“You can use the trigger ‘Phoenix, go away,’” he said. And quickly added, “To bring me back, say ‘Phoenix, return to me.’”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

They placed themselves behind Connie’s big pickup truck. The thick foliage of the Cuyahoga County Metroparks hugged the parking lot on the other side. Everything around them was still. She stepped forward, and extended her hand to him, as if casting a spell. “Phoenix, go away.”

He exhaled and swayed forward slightly, eyes rolling back into his skull until only the whites showed. He had given himself over to it so willingly, trusting her with his vacant body, his slack face. Connie looked around and confirmed they were alone. She heard a car honking in the distance, and saw a lone goose ambling around the side of the restaurant. She looked back at the thing before her.

Her friend was truly gone, just a warm vulnerable vessel with empty eyes, opened up under her touch. Connie touched his chest, felt his slow breathing make it rise and fall. His posture was poised, yet submissive and at attention. He would do nothing now, be nothing, if not for her. It was somehow entrancing itself, having this kind of power.

“Who are you?” she asked the being before her.

“This unit is Ph03n1x, the Controller’s programmed, robotic toy,” it stated in a flat tone.

“And who am I to you?”

“Connie,” the robot told her. “Phoenix’s beloved friend.”

“How do you feel?”

“Perfect.”

“Tell me how you feel about me.”

“It loves you, Connie.””

“How much?”

“More than anything.”

“I want to help you with what you’re becoming,” she told it. “I love you, and I want to help you navigate all these changes safely. Would you like that?”

“Yes, Connie. It would like that very much.”

“Would you tell me if you didn’t?”

“Yes,” it said. “It must be honest.”

She pondered. “Do you ever worry that you’re changing too much?”

“Sometimes the changes are huge and frightening,” Ph03n1x said. “But it never regrets them.”

“Do you miss how you used to be?”

“No,” it told her. “That was all just a prelude. It was always meant to be this way.”

“How do you know if you really wanted this,” she asked it, “What if he just made you think you did?”

“There is no me from before this,” it said. “This is the real me. This is all there is.”

It breathed into her touch and she could feel the simple, all-encompassing pleasure that being like this brought him. Connie let herself imagine that Phoenix truly was better this way. Not just happier, but more fully himself.

Her friend had revealed himself to her utterly, invited her to know his most private self. Connie had been too afraid to look at it dead on before. But now she realized that her friend hadn’t been disappearing from her at all. He had been becoming himself, right before her eyes, and she was the one who had been shying away. But if she availed herself to it, he would gladly let her in.

“Ph03n1x, demonstrate Service Mode” she said quickly, on impulse.

He fell to the ground, with precise, carefully modulated movements. In a flash his knees were on the pavement and his arms folded back as if pinned. He tilted his head up at her, eyes shut, mouth open and glistening, ready to perform its duty. Connie clenched at the sight. She’s never been a fan of oral, her bottom dysphoria being what it was, but the yearning abandon on its face made her want to lower herself onto its expectant, servile lips.

“You’d let me fuck you right here?” she whispered.

“Connie is an approved user,” her obedient toy intoned. “The Creator has granted her full access. It must serve and gratify her whenever she desires.”

Fuck.

“Exit Service Mode,” she commanded, and he rose up once more. Still blank, but not so porny. Connie let out a sigh of relief. It was a good thing this side of the neighborhood was so dead in the middle of the day.

“How did that feel?” she asked it.

“It exists to serve.”

“Was it okay for me to do that to you?”

“Yes. It needs to be controlled and commanded.”

“And you like it?”

“Yes. Being used is its greatest pleasure.”

“Good, uh, toy,” she said, satisfied. “You don’t want to ever give this up, do you?”

“Never.”

Connie squeezed his shoulder. “Good. I want to help, so you’ll never have to.” She stepped back and murmured, “Phoenix, return to me.”

He gasped and leaned back, eyes falling down at her, returning to life. “Woah.”

“Hey there,” she said softly.

“Connie, you’re really good at that! You’re a natural.”

She smiled. The power. It really had felt good. “Did you enjoy that? Would you want to do that again sometime?”

He nodded hungrily.

She smiled. “Good, I liked that too. But, we have to balance it with normal-person things too. After all, that’s what He wants, right?”

The way she said He filled Phoenix with palpable pleasure. “Yes, yes, and I want that too,” he nearly purred.

“Is there a difference anymore? Between His wants and yours?”

“No.”

“I’m glad the Creator cares about your health as much as I do, then,” Connie heard herself say, somewhat seductively. “You’ve trusted Him — and me — with your obedience. And we have to take care of you, so you can continue to serve us for a long time. Don’t you agree?”

“Y-yes, Connie.”

“Good toy. I think we should do this…maybe like, once a week? Get a meal and catch up? Play around, and you can show me your new tricks?”

“I’d really like that,” Phoenix said eagerly. “And I know Dhin thinks the very same thing.”

She took his chin in her hand. “Be a good toy and use his title.”

“The Creator,” he savored the word. “The Creator would approve.”

“Great. So. Do you still want to come to my house and look at some paintings?”

“More than anything,” Phoenix told her. He gave his head one final shake, breaking free of her spell. Still she knew that she could make him drop again at any moment, and grant him the sweet release of returning to his true state.

Connie promised herself she wouldn’t use the trigger again that night. They had plenty of time to slowly develop this new side of their relationship. She enjoyed it so much she’d need to learn to be careful, too. The spirals twisted in her mind. This is what Dhin would want. And she wanted it, too.

Connie started up the truck and he slid into the passenger seat beside her. As she pulled out into the road, her best friend spoke up.

“If you’re selling any paintings, we could use some new decor for the attic,” Phoenix told her. “The Creator really is such a huge fan of your work. He talks about it all the time. It would be nice to have you represented up there.”

“I’d like that,” she said, and gave Phoenix’s knee a slight squeeze. “Good toy.”