She took off her sunglasses and thought.

 

It was nice to be able to think again. For a change.

 

How on earth could she ever have believed it was not something that he had planned? Everything else had been his idea, his project, his execution, why had she believed this wasn't?

 

Well, for a while thinking had been harder, it was easy to believe anything in that state, but even so …

 

But that had only been a year. She'd still been smart for a long time before that.

 

It had started five years ago.

 

Maybe it had started earlier?

 

But her memory of it started five years ago.

 

A growing pain over six months

 

First unease, something wrong

 

"Hi Julia!"

 

Growing to an inner, unexpressed cringe, that's not me

 

"Happy birthday Julia"

 

Then wanting to snap at people whenever it happened

 

"Julia, can you …."

 

Thinking "That's not my name!" but biting her tongue every single time.

 

Having to introduce herself had been the worst

 

"Hi, I'm … Julia" [ugh]

 

Taking 5 minutes to fill out a form when meeting a surgeon for a consultation. Not wanting to write anything down, but knowing there was nothing else to write down

 

FIRST NAME: …

 

But who am I then? If that is not me, who is me?

 

And then one morning after about six months she had woken up and her name, her real name, her true name was bright and golden in her mind. Everything was so obvious.

 

And a middle name too? She had a middle name on her birth certificate, but it had never been part of her identity. She could go years without thinking about it.

 

But now she absolutely had a middle name

 

Elation. Her name revealed to her.

 

It was beautiful.

 

And it was her.

 

But, she didn't tell anyone. She suffered for another three months.

 

She engaged in occasional unknown petty acts of rebellion.

 

Going to the coffee shop when she knew no one was there, making her order, giving her name, "Coffee for …", walking out with her trophy, sometimes her name hidden, pointing towards her, sometimes pointing to the world, depending on how brave she felt.

 

Baristas with bad writing were her favourite. No need to hide the name.

 

One morning, she snapped in front of her husband

 

"Julia, we'll start the …"

 

"NO!"

 

He said nothing, waiting

 

Oh my God, was she really about to tell someone?

 

"What's wrong"

 

All the words came out at once

 

"Thatsnotmyname ImeanIknowitismyname butIhateit Idontwantit itsnotmyrealname pleasedontcallmethat Icanttakeitanymore itisjusttoomuch everyonecallsmethatanditismakingmeinsane ItriedbutIcantlivelikethisanymore"

 

"Ok, I'll call you anything you want"

 

Oh God, here it came, she paused too long

 

"Is there another name you'd prefer?"

 

"My name is Sweetie, with an i and an e at the end"

 

And the weight was lifted, and she was now Sweetie to him, and a few weeks later she even told him her middle name.

 

And he had loved her new name, and delighted in using it

 

And things at home had been wonderful

 

But it was still only him who knew

 

The world did not and she hated the world for it and she was at least a little bit sad in it all the time

 

And he told her she would have to tell people her true name.

 

And she had.

 

And though some people accepted it, a lot of people had hated it.

 

She understood that it was … a non-standard name, one which carried societal meaning. But that was society's fault, not hers.

 

One of her friends refused. They weren't friends anymore.

 

Others were slow to adapt, but they did.

 

Her parents were a bigger problem. She wasn't prepared to cut them off over this, yet, but she did reduce contact.

 

Eventually they came around.

 

They still didn't understand.

 

But they understood enough to know that it wasn't important whether or not they understood.

 

On her birthday they baked her a cake with her name in icing.

 

Her middle name wasn't included.

 

But that was OK.

 

She reserved its use for more formal settings. Like work. Friends and family could just call her Sweetie.

 

But her husband knew how much she loved the middle name too and would call her that and she loved hearing it from him.

 

"Sweetie Muffins" he would say to her in the morning, when he felt her stirring, and she would sigh happily.

 

Sometimes just "Muffins" to be cute.

 

Things got better.

 

She looked at some pictures on her phone.

 

Here was dinner and champagne to celebrate her new legally-changed name.

 

Pictures of each of the days her driver's license or credit cards arrived.

 

Sweetie Muffins Baudin

 

Middle name included, her old middle name never having been.

 

She was finally herself, Sweetie to her friends, Sweetie Muffins to the wider more formal world.

 

Occasionally she met resistance to her name from strangers, but that was their problem. Not hers.

 

Then other big changes came.

 

It got harder to think or to focus.

 

But she knew that was because of him.

 

And she knew he wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't what she really wanted.

 

She never remembered a hypnosis session, but over the years it had become clear to her that he brought her under nearly every day.

 

And then she had to leave her job.

 

Which was good. She used to love her job long ago but now she hated it.

 

But she hadn't told her job she wanted to leave, her job had told her she had to leave.

 

She kind of remembered the conversation in her boss's office.

 

She had been confused. She was always confused. But OK.

 

It was nice like this.

 

Everyone was so nice to her.

 

People smiled at her more, or told her not to worry, or that it was going to be OK.

 

People did things for her.

 

She could just be nice to people and no one expected anything of her.

 

Then her boobs got bigger, again

 

She remembered the pain and the recovery but not much about the decision.

 

Her husband had took her to a doctor where she had smiled and pretended to understand, but focusing on long sentences was hard

 

How had he done that to her? So delicious.

 

And the doctor had smiled at her and she had smiled back. And said "yes", or "I need to think about that" but not much else.

 

Later, (how much time had passed?) she was in surgery.

 

And then pain and weight for a while and then bigger boobs.

 

She liked them a lot.

 

Everybody else seemed to.

 

Some of her friends would squeeze them for luck, and she would giggle, and her friends would laugh too and then pat her head or stroke her hair and smile at her and say "Awwww!".

 

And there were other changes.

 

Like her first boob job, he'd already made changes to her face, before, when thinking was easy.

 

But now he made more.

 

She looked at some old pictures.

 

She had always thought of herself as beautiful before, before she met him even.

 

But now ….

 

And then one day her husband had told her she would be getting a tattoo on her ass.

 

He'd picked her other tattoos of course, just as he had when she had been smarter.

 

She had tried to think of something to say in reply. She pursed her lips.

 

"What will this tattoo be of Daddy?"

 

"Your name"

 

"My name?"

 

"Sweetie Muffins"

 

"I love my name!"

 

He had laughed warmly. "It's a great name"

 

"I really love my name!"

 

"Well, if you ever forget it, and its possible with that silly head of yours, you can just look at your ass to remember it"

 

"Ok?" she had smiled back, replaying what he had said. He had said a lot. A knot appearing on her forehead. "Oh! I get it!"

 

She had her intelligence back now

 

Four months ago he'd stopped performing whatever conditioning he had been doing that made it hard to focus.

 

She'd been back to herself for a few weeks now, adjusting.

 

She said she'd like to be turned back, made stupid again, he had promised he would.

 

But for now, he wanted to see the light of understanding in her eyes.

 

"And there is a different pleasure you will get in comprehending. So we can have fun with that too"

 

Later; "maybe I'll just make you dumb for other people", he had mused

 

"If you want, but it was nice to be dumb for you too"

 

She came inside from the patio and looked at herself in the mirror.

 

So gorgeous

 

He had told her yesterday he'd be pumping her lips back up.

 

"Back up", she had asked? "They were bigger?"

 

"They were a lot bigger last year, they've come down since. Look at your old Instagram pics"

 

Those were big

 

Seeing made her remember

 

They had been huge in her field of vision.

 

Her lips were still big, well beyond her natural size, still visible in her field of vision.

 

But not like those old ones.

 

"I'm remembering something, uh, did I have trouble talking or something? I seem to remember … a feeling … it was difficult …"

 

"We had a bit of botox placed behind the middle of your top lip. It made it harder for you to form the shapes needed to pronounce certain sounds. You were adorable"

 

"I remember, … uh, can we do it again? I mean, I'd like to experience it now"

 

He had winked.

 

"Will you do that again, I mean, if you make me stupid again will you make changes to me I don't understand?"

 

"That's a guarantee. I'll make some temporary changes that go away like those lips. But I'll make permanent changes too like your tits"

 

"uhhhh, yes please, whatever you want"

 

She took off her dress and looked at her ass in the mirror. At her tattoo.

 

She got a second hand-held mirror so she could see what other people saw. Without mirror writing.

 

It occurred to her now that this might be the very first time she was seeing it as other people saw it. Certainly she had never had the thought before that she could just get a second mirror.

 

Sweetie Muffins

 

It was her name.

 

Nothing felt more real to her than that.

 

She was Sweetie Muffins

 

Funny how a middle name had never mattered before. Now it was just one grade below being the second part of a double-barrelled first name.

 

She had always been Sweetie Muffins, even when she had been Julia Falkner, or Julia Grace Falkner according to her birth cert.

 

She would always be Sweetie Muffins.

 

She didn't want to be anything else.

 

She loved the tattoo.

 

It was cute and sweet. Like her.

 

Visible in a bikini, or in the gym changing room.

 

He had installed a small gym at home, but she wasn't allowed use it.

 

Now that her smarts were back, it had occurred to her that it was weird that she was still going to a gym when there was one here.

 

"I like that you have to work out around people in your sports bra and booty shorts", he had said.

 

"Besides, you need things to do all day, and going to the gym can be one of them"

 

That was true. She'd been getting bored as her intelligence came back. What had she done all day before with no work to go to?

 

Clothes shopping certainly. She hadn't asked him about it yet, but she hadn't found any of her old clothes.

 

Everything she had now was more colourful, attention-attracting.

 

And the only more-plainly-coloured items were all tighter, shorter, lower-cut.

 

She'd taken to wearing these items - like the black cocktail dress she'd just taken off - just to not feel like an explosion in a paint factory

 

She looked from the dress on the floor back to her tattoo

 

Sweetie Muffins, the tattoo said to her

 

"That's you", it said to her.

 

"That's me", she said aloud.

 

"I'm Sweetie Muffins"

 

The name was intrinsic to her

 

Everyone should know who I am.

 

All this was true for her

 

All this would always be true for her

 

Even now having learned the truth.

 

She had never seen herself under before.

 

But he had shown her a video of the first hypnosis session where he had began the work of changing her name.

 

Making her feel disgust at Julia

 

Implanting her need for Sweetie Muffins.

 

And she knew it never would have taken, her mind would have rejected it, had she not wanted it

 

She was Sweetie Baudin

 

Sweetie Muffins Baudin for more formal occasions.