I wrote (pain) slut a few years ago to cope with existential feelings of gender dysphoria and sexual trauma, and how they dovetail with my kinks. it has been submitted to several anthologies, however, the extreme content has actually been a cited reason for its repeated rejection.
for Pride, I’d like to take the week off from Twisted Complex — before Act Two kicks off — and share one of my most intimate stories about transness. in some ways, this is how I felt about existing for a long time.
be well,
madeline
june 2024
Bruises. Like blossoms down my back and around my stomach.
Purple splashes of color, doomed to fade into yellow. Temporal and temperamental.
My body is their garden. Flesh, their dirt. They take root here. Gardeners tend to the crop every week. Poke and prod with their tools. Shove their fresh seeds deep into my soil. Soak me in sustenance.
Every Sunday morning I admire the floral bouquet over a cup of coffee. I stand naked in front the living room mirror and stare. My eyes get lost in the fleshy petals, transfixed by my own violets, ashes, and goldenrods. Lost in my own fields.
My dirt used to be virginal. None of the texture or color. Snow on a flat pasture. A canvas for all to trample and stain. Bland like vanilla and corn starch. Now I'm a work of art. A walking, talking testament to the genius of strangers. Something for them to conquer, to mold. To leave their mark on.
My first party made me a believer. By candlelight the masked mass made me a blood sacrifice. Buzzards for my exposed meat. One by two, they emerged. Hoods made from shadows. Blank faces and empty eyes. Like death masks.
One needle per person. Forty three pricks. I counted each one. Each red, wet penetration into my budding breasts. It was the 13th of November and pouring rain outside. Gooseflesh squeezed each needle tight into me. My own body clung to the pain. Squeezed blood from fresh holes. That's when I got addicted.
It was four times a week in those days. Every other day I gave myself to the clients. Fortune 500 mainstays and other freaks. They're always throwing weird little parties. Get togethers in discreet locations miles away from civilization. Siestas for breaking in the new show pony.
Some fillies pop a few percosets before a party. But the hurt is why I started. Purging didn't have the same bite anymore. And I couldn't keep cutting the same spots on my thighs and forearms forever. There was pain out there beyond my dampest dreams. I wanted to feel it all at once.
These people could help me feel it, feel it everywhere. Down either side of my spine, one ring at a time.
It was two months into my job as a paid punching bag for rich fucks that I did my first piercing. A nice girl with horror movie tattoos used acupuncture needles. Long, deep punctures. Stinging euphoria. I bit into my lip until I heard a "crunch." The taste of blood made my cock hard.
Then - the rings. Never saw what they looked like. Just knew what they felt like. Cold and unfeeling. Ten rings, locked into place. The girl ran metal cord through them and pulled them tight. Like a corset. Fleshy and fashionable.
She pulled my back flesh tight. Skin clung taut to my ribs. I could feel my tits being pulled away from each other. The stretchy skin on my back, yanked away from the bone. It hurt worse than anything I'd ever felt. But I didn't know real pain back then. I was a dumb little girl.
The nice girl pulled my ringed skin harness up toward her. Each cord was coiled around a thick O-ring - strapped to a leather leash. She walked me on all fours. My cock hung down, erect, ashamed. Dripping onto the cold concrete floor. Whose? I can't remember. Doesn't matter.
There were other people there. Some of them took pictures. Others called me names. "Whore." "Bitch." "Fuckmeat." Most were too scared to actually face me. To actually touch me. Pussies.
Not everyone, though. Some ran out from behind other spectators. Sadists who got off on kicking poor bitches when they were down. They drove their loafers and high heels into my ribs and stomach. Stomped on me, yanked at the piercings. Two ripped out, but my mistress kept walking me.
The real weird ones walked alongside me. Smoked their big cigars and long cigarettes. Used my bleeding back and as an ashtray. Made me thank them. "Thank you, sir. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you for using your human ashtray."
They eat that shit up.
It's hard patching up at home. Once they're done with you, there's no aftercare. You're outside in the rain, sloppy bandages already sagging. The first thing you learn is that you're not special. They don't care about you. There's some other desperate girl with less mileage out there. Just once spiked drink or white lie away. You need to take care of yourself nobody is going to.
Otherwise they don't want you anymore.
Sometimes when I get back from a party I puke. Sometimes I make myself and sometimes it comes natural. Each time it's because I lose track of the lie. The lie I tell myself. That I can keep being a pretty pony. That this doesn't hurt. That I don't feel like a used condom.
Coffee. Saltines. Tuna. I scrape clumps from the back of my throat. On my knees, in front of a porcelain pillow. Stained brown, green, red by my throat. My forehead rests on the toilet seat. The puke on it is warm, comfortable, sticky. In the toilet, I see little clumps of cum. Pre-fetuses, flushed into nothing. Lucky little bastards.
Then I'm back. My mind is on the sting in my throat. That fishy, acidic taste. The warm and thick coat of vivid sludge down my tits, on the floor. No more doubts. I flush it away. Kill the babies. Believe my lie again.
In the mirror I'm somewhere else. The vomit that drips down my stomach, clumps in my pubes, is not vomit. It's war paint. Milked from my own intestines. Black flags on pirate masts. Masks on killers. Pan-Indiginous pseudo tribal scrawl by a banker's sugar baby at Coachella.
Run, it says. Run because this one has no fears. This one will drown you in her bile.
I'm back. Just a scared, stupid slut. A bulimic tranny soaked in her own snot and puke. My back hurts. There are no more rings, no more cord. Just scars and holes where they were. Burns on the periphery. It's all used up. I can't do that again. Not for a while. Maybe not ever.
You leave a pound of flesh at the door when you agree to a job. Parts of your body will be abused until they're used and refuse to give any more. Some of them will heal. But the parts ripped away won't ever come back. Parts of you will always be missing. The price to play.
Tonight my parts will be bound, struck, penetrated. I meet the client in a five-star hotel room, but when I walk in - total blackness. Why book a ritzy joint like this if I can't even enjoy it? Weirdo.
In the darkness I hear murmurs. Whispers. Promises of pain I have yet to enjoy. Underscored by yacht rock. What a joke.
Then - a hand grabs me. Rougher, harder than usual. Then another. Another and two more. Man, woman, anything, everything. Groping and yanking me. Grasping my hair and spreading my mouth. The hands hold me in place.
My black cocktail dress and pearl necklace are torn to pieces. Nothing underneath - like the client requested. Hundreds of dollars down the drain. Poverty is its own kind of sadism.
White hands against pitch black. I'm thrown to the floor and held down. My body, forfeit, free to touch, free to use. Like I'm three years old and alone with my grandfather again. The first rich fuck who fucked me. He taught me to lie still until he was finished. Taught me to be a good girl before I knew I was a girl.
The hands bind my hands. The cord is cold. I push against it, but barbs dig into my calves. Oh, this is fucked. I struggle more. Blinding, piercing pain. Tears burble up and spill like puke.
I want to say no but I've forgotten how.
They grab my hands and hold them in place. More barbed wire. I flinch and cut myself. Scars on my wrist that I didn't make for once.
Arms and legs tressed up. The hands gone. Whispers I can just barely make out. More cowards hiding behind shadows. Pussies, all of them.
My mind is going white from the pain. Darkness swirls into fractale spirograph tapestries. Acid and a tequila sunrise don't mix. Lessons learned. Yeah, right.
I hear a swish before I feel a lash. A whip across my back. I scream. I never scream. I'm screaming. I'm crying. It doesn't matter. A giggle. A snort. Then - laughter. A sitcom laugh track. This is funny.
Another lash. I scream. Ask for it to stop. But they laugh. More lashes. I close my eyes. Slip away. The spirals are stained red and tar black with each lash, each barb in my skin. They drip with my own oily snake blood. Wet shapes suspended in the shadows as my body is broken, transformed into something else. Something less than human. A receptical for pain.
I got there at midnight. Now it's a little past 4 AM and I'm in an all-night diner. It's dim, lit by decades-old chandeliers. My back is soaked through the t-shirt and PJ bottoms I bought at the Shell station one block over.
My usual waitress pours my coffee. She's in her early 70s. Hair dyed jet black, a limp in her step. Trans. How long, I don't know. I've never felt right asking.
But sometimes I get to thinking. If she’s been at it since the Reagan years. Or maybe it's a late life discovery. I want to know but I won't ask. It's not my business.
Will I live that long? I look down at my coffee and pour in a little cream. A milky dark swirl. A spiral, like my life. I won't live as long as my waitress. No, not like this. I could become a statistic on one of her shifts. Just stop showing up one night. It could happen.
My back hurts. Oh, God, it hurts. I need something to take the edge off the pain. This coffee won't cut it. Neither will the polish sausage and eggs I ordered. Not tonight.
I get up and walk to the bar. My other usual is here - a cute guy with scruff and a ponytail. Mid 30s. Piercings, lots of tattoos. Seems like he'd treat a girl right, or try to. Would he want to hurt me, too? Or would he even want me in the first place?
I order the usual old fashioned and walk to the bathroom. Empty, cold, dirty. There are two stalls and a condom dispenser with a 1987 copyright. I crinkle my nose, then duck in the first stall.
The lock doesn't work. I growl and jimmy it with my hands. My right index nail gets lodged between the bolt and then - crunch. Half of it bends back. I bare my teeth. Panting, I gnash at it. Catch it between tops and bottoms. Blood drips onto the floor as I yank. Tear it away from stinging flesh and take it onto my tongue. Like a bloody, dirty pill.
Gross. I spit it out onto the floor and wince. Time for a pick me up. In my left pocket - sunshine in a bag. I tear at the plastic baggie with my teeth, then empty it out onto my left hand. Finger held to my pierced nostril, I huff a messy mound of white powder with the other. Huff and puff until I cave my nose in.
I close my eyes. Then - white light. Blinding. Piercing. Purifying. I can hear my heartbeat. It's back. I'm back. Everything is okay. I'm hungry? I need to eat. I need coffee.
Oh... definitely more coffee.
I don't get back until 6. Then I don't leave my flat for four days. For four days I drag my oozing, half-dead carcas three floors down for Chinese food. I pick at the orange chicken and fried rice for all three meals. Then I sleep.
I'm nothing. Less than nothing. The last job all went to rent. I need groceries. I need new clothes. I need to leave this city and never come back. But my body belongs to it now. To the people in it. Without them, I couldn't even be alive.
I should be more grateful. Spoiled, ugly slut.
The next week, I'm back on the slab. In the suburbs this time. A cozy, unassuming little place. The client is a soccer mom type with - as far as I could tell - two kids. I wonder exactly how she had the money to pay for this. Doesn't matter.. All that matters is what she wants to do to me. What she'll give me for it.
I'm stripped down in the middle of her living room. Tressed up in shibari. She's got candles all in a circle on the floor. It's dark, and New Age music is streaming from four surround speakers. Just me and her. Oh, I hate clients like this. Hate being alone with one person and their weird kinks.
Before I can say yes, or even know what she's doing, the lady walks behind me. I'm dissociating. Then - cool wetness on my neck. Rub, rub, rub it raw.
Just a little something to help me relax, she says. It's what they always tell me. I've learned to not ask questions. Easier that way. But in minutes I'm more relaxed than usual. This is different. Dumbells enter my bloodstream. Every ounce of me is too much for my crooked bones to hold. My body buckles and I fall against the jute ropes.
Like a fish I flop to the floor. I fight back against my netting but it doesn't do any good. More flopping, gasping for air through a ball gag. The flickering circle above - the dying candlelight - swirls on the popcorn ceiling like a hazy yellow whirlpool. If I stare too long, it'll suck me in.
Oh, fuck. What did she give me?
My limbs are limp as she cuts them loose with an extended box cutter. She sprawls me out onto the floor, helpless and heavy. All I can see is her tacky platinum blonde dye job and her bleached teeth. Then - the almost blinding reflection of the box cutter against a streetlight. Too white. It's all too white. I want to shut my eyes. But I can't. Nothing my body wants is permitted. Not now. Maybe never again.
The first cut is in the fatty pit of my right bicep. All I can feel is something pointed dig around under my skin, tugging more and cutting deeper with each slice. She doesn't stop until she hits bone. Then she giggles. Oops, she says. Too deep.
Amateur hour. I want to laugh. This is so funny. I can't move my face.
I feel her pull back a little bit. No pain. Just cold. Then - she slices. Down the bicep, under my elbow. She pulls back when she gets down to the forearm. Doesn't want to hit a vein. Wouldn't want to kill me. Then she'd be a real sicko.
With gloved hands she pulls, tugs, yanks me away from myself. I feel my skin peel like a fruit. An orange rind for somebody else's martini. The first pangs of pain. I'm too fucked up to cry or even wince. But I can feel it. Even if I can't see it. I can feel it. A cold, creeping sting where my skin used to be.
Good bye, tattoos.
Then she straddles me. I can't push her off. Would I? Or is this what I want? I don't know. I've never known what I wanted.
Everything I do is distraction. Distraction from the thing I hate most. The whorething abomination that lives in windows, compacts, rearviews. My flesh, tainted and made ugly by the abuse I need to survive.
She slides the blade under my forehead like she's cutting the Christmas ham. In the end this is what I am to her. To everyone who uses me. Meat made for amusement. My flesh is even disposable. I'm disposable. Trash to degrade, cut up, tie up in bags and leave for the men to take away.
Skin slices away from muscle as the mom - so carefully - carves down my jaw, under my chin, and up my other cheek. With another pass, she pushes further, towards my nose and up under my brows. I can feel cold air through the cuts.
My mouth hangs open. Tongue lolled out like a hungry bitch. She yanks from the bottom up. As she tears I can feel my own flesh with the tip of my tongue. It flails, helpless, and I lick the underside of my own face. An obedient dog. Pavlov's wet dream.
Like a mask my skin is lifted up past my nostrils. Over my eyeballs, where my eyelids are torn from. Eyes with no face. One final tug. It's over. That's the ballgame. The lady lets out the first noise she has in ages. Or has it only been a few minutes? She laughs. High pitched chipmunk chirping. Demonic shrieking. Like needles on a chalkboard. My head pounds. My head is pounding? Feeling returns slowly. Stinging and burning in the distance.
My face hangs above my face. I see all the little things I hate. Moles and freckles and that small patch of stubble no laser can kill. But there are the things I like, too. Thick eyeliner wings, chiseled to a point. And my natural brows all plucked into place. My lips - my soft, gummy bear lips.
All of it on display. Paraded before me. Like a trophy. A trophy. Atrophy. Fire in my gut. Something more than apathy. Anger. It's hot. I'm hot. Burning all over. Flesh, screaming. Each pore, a mouth. My body is screaming, burning, bleeding out on this plastic sheet over an ugly carpet.
No. No more.
I scream. She yelps in surprise. I'm not supposed to be able to do that. She lunges for more of her wonder drug. Drugs can't kill this pain. I roar. Howl. Bark. Push myself up. It's like lifting sand at first but it comes easier with each passing second. She's trembling, crying, muttering to herself. Something racist. About cheap Chinese drugs.
Don't buy your roofies on Wish, bitch.
Arm and face naked I get to my feet. I stumble at first. Almost fall but turn it into a lunge. Mommy jumps and turns to run but she slams into a doorframe. Tumbles to her knees. It's where I want her. Where she put me.
I grab a fistful of her thin straw hair and drag. Then - my leg gives. The drugs haven't worn off yet. We tumble to the floor. Her head lands right in my lap. The box cutter is to my right and I reach for it with my hand - the only part she didn't skin. My fingers coil around it and I bring it with a swing into her howling face.
The blade stabs through one cheek and out the other. I hold her in place. Like a fish. Then I get on top. Her eyes are rolled back into her skull. Blood gurgles up from her quivering hole, through her teeth. Gagging, choking, sputtering. The noises I make when I purge.
When I stabbed her, I must have cut off her tongue. Whoops.
Mommy doesn't weigh enough to get me off her. I just stare down at her convulsing face, just a few inches away from my cock. Seconds pass. She tries to scream. Nothing comes out. Nothing will. The silence is killing her.
After a few more seconds, she stops kicking. A few more - her body loosens all at once. She's dead. Everything is quiet except for the New Age music. Just me and a Casio harpsichord.
Then the front door clicks.
I dart my head over to the tacky red piece of oak. Time to disappear.
After the deadbolt opens, her son walks in. A little guy. Can't be more than eleven. Twelve, tops. Toe-headed little blondie. Just like his mommy. He's all dressed up in his Boy Scouts' gear. Forgot his knife for the camping trip. Billy's mom brought him.
Mom? Are you here? Mom? Why are you laying on the floor? Oh, god. Oh, mom! No! Oh, no! Oh, God, mom! Say something. Say something!
He can't see me behind the door.
I smile as he kneels down in front of me - back turned. Crying. Whimpering. He'd be crying more if he saw the freak without a face and a box cutter. Right behind him.
Puppies make the prettiest fur coats. And veal tastes best if the calf is scared before they kill it.
Say something, mommy. Say something.
"Something."
Then I close the door.
in some ways, they will always see us as freaks with false faces that want to hurt their children. at least, that's what this is about.