Beard

Despite what you think, I'm not a woman. Not really. I like to think of myself as one, but I'm not. I'm... something else. It's hard to explain, but I'll try.

I have a beard. I have to shave every day. And every day, I look in that mirror, and what I see isn't myself. It's some... thing... that's supposed to be me, but isn't. No, the true me is behind my eyes, like the flesh in front of me is some kind of meat-mecha that the real me is piloting.

Every day I do this. Every day I engage in a ritual that doesn't belong to me, because having hair on my face makes me feel like a man and I'd rather die than feel that way.

I have hair all over my body. My chest, my legs, even my back, goddammit. Every day I shave it, and every night it grows back. And it's dark hair. The kind that refuses to be concealed, even when I shave so close that I make myself bleed and then cover the follicles with makeup. I have to pancake the concealer on, and even then you can see it if you're close enough. And then, naturally, I start to sweat it off. By the end of the day you can see stubble poking through.

People stare at me when I go out in public. I try not to let it bother me, I tell myself that what I'm doing isn't illegal, that I have every right to be myself as long as I'm not hurting anyone, but I can only take the furtive looks and whispered comments for so long before it starts to affect my temper. Some days, I just want to run and hide under a large rock. Other days, usually during my cycle, I'm likely to get violently angry.

This one man... oh my god, I get sick just thinking about it. But he was looking at me. You know how it goes: first he looked at my boobs, then at my legs, and then at my hands. By the time he got to my face, I know what he was thinking. He had this horrified expression and his mouth was hanging open in disgust or dismay or something, I don't know, and he was about to say something but I bit his head off before he could speak.

The sickening part is how satisfied I felt about that all the rest of the day. I had tasted blood, and I wanted more. It wasn't until later that night that I'd realized what I'd done. That I'd reacted in a typically masculine way. I called in sick the next day, because I couldn't face myself in the mirror to shave.

The day after that, I went shopping for silver bracelets. I needed to punish myself, because the courts can't. I wore them every day that week, as penance. Now, whenever I start to feel too aggressive, I put them on. I used to just take Aconite herbal supplements, but ever since Andre Noble overdosed on it, it's been nearly impossible to get without a prescription. The bracelets leave a nasty rash, but I can take them off if it gets to be too much for me.

It's a good thing I have allergies. I just tell people it's contact dermatitis.

I'm completely, utterly miserable most of the time. I've tried killing myself, but at the last minute my animal nature takes over and it always wants to live. All I end up doing is finding new and creative ways to hurt myself badly.

But I have a new plan. I'm going to get a supply catalog for photographers, purchase some developer, and put it in an autoinjector. That way, when I feel the change coming, maybe the silver nitrate will kill me before I transform again.

Because I'd rather die as a woman than live one more day as a goddamn werewolf.

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