A Mother’s Love

Ben clutched his Diploma in his hand, hardly able to believe that he had finished school and earned it. Since his Father had died, his relationship with his Mother and his grades had gone to hell. He barely scraped by with a D average, but he had done it. Now, it was time to focus on fixing things with Mom.

His Mother hadn’t even come to see him walk for Graduation. He took a deep breath at the door, hoping that the rift was not already too great to bridge. “Make peace; we need each other; control your temper,” Ben told himself and then walked inside.

“Your Graduate is home!” he announced. He heard the TV in the kitchen. A news report was talking about the escalating tensions in the Indian Ocean. It quickly turned off, and a voice flatly said, “In here.”

Ben’s Mother was sitting at the kitchen table. Her black hair with white streaks was pulled back into a tight ponytail. On the table was a closed rectangular case marked “MACR” and Ben’s laptop sitting open to the “Password Exchange” site Ben had been using to make side money.

Ben felt the color drain from his face. All thoughts of reconciliation vanished at that moment. He was in deep trouble.

“How did you find that?!” He asked with a shaky voice.

“Sit Down!” she demanded. 

Ben took the seat caddy corner to her. “Mom, it’s just for fun I…”

“It’s worse than a felony!” She exclaimed, “You have passwords to defense industry contractors here. Do you know what that means with everything going on in the world right now? Do you know what that means for me, working for the Defense Department? You’ll be considered a traitor. No cops, no trial, you will just disappear, and now that I know about this, I am obligated to report it.” 

Ben’s heart was racing. He felt nauseous. “Please, Mom! Don’t! I’ll wipe the site! No one else knows! Please, I’ll do anything!” 

Ben’s Mother put her hand on the rectangular box. “Anything?”

“I have a kill script written; just let me execute it. It’ll wipe the site and the drive. Half an hour and all traces of the site will be gone.” Ben assured her. 

“Fine.” She said, “Execute the script, but things are about to change around here. There is an outfit for you in the bathroom.” 
Ben shot her a curious look as he typed in the command. He paused for a minute to lament the stored data about to be lost and then pressed enter. Then, entering the bathroom, he saw what was hanging there.

He exclaimed, “FUCK NO!” and stormed back out. 

The chair where his Mother had been sitting was now empty. The rectangular box was open and showed the empty impression of a syringe in the foam padding. He turned to see where his Mother had gone, only to find himself face-to-face with her. He felt a sharp sting in his chest and looked down to see his Mother’s hand finish pushing the plunger of the syringe all the way down. 

Immediately, he felt warm and flushed. “What? What was that?”

“A new beginning,” She said. “Once you are dressed, I will explain what is going on.”

“But…” Ben said. 

“I made a copy of the data, Benjamin. Do as I say, or I will have no choice but to make the call,”  She replied. “No Buts, young lady!”

Ben was stammering, “What do you mean young…”

“GO! NOW!” She shouted. 

Ben looked down at her for a moment and then walked into the bathroom, looking up in disgust at the dress that hung from the shower rod. It had a white blouse with a Peter-pan collar and a high waist that flared out into a pleated black skirt.

Sitting folded on the toilet seat was a bra, panties, and black tights. A pair of silicone breast forms were lying beside the bra. “Better than prison.” He said to himself as he began unbuttoning his shirt. 

The panties were smooth but seemed too small. His balls wanted to come out of the sides of the gusset. Ben managed the tights well enough as he had watched his girlfriend Sarah roll pantyhose on after the two of them had lost their virginity to each other on a picnic blanket under the stars after prom only a month ago.

The bra was a front clasp mercifully and seemed to fit the silicone prosthetics perfectly. Once he had pulled on the dress, he took a deep breath and stepped out into the now-empty kitchen. “Upstairs, Ben!”  His Mother called. 

At the top of the stairs, Ben found his bedroom door closed, but the guest room, which she had kept locked while she worked on remodeling it, was now open for the first time in weeks.   Ben went in to find her standing by the closet. 

The walls were a bright pink with a vine and rose border. There was a canopy bed in the center of the room covered with a flowery quilt and too many pillows. Against the wall was a long dresser. A makeup table with an oval mirror was against the wall beside the door.   “Can you please tell me what you injected me with?” Ben asked as he entered, feeling his skirt brushing against the door frame.

“What do you think of the room?” His mom asked.

“Looks nice,” Ben said. “A little girly, but it’s pretty.” 

“Good. Because it’s your room now.”  She said,

“What? Mom! What is going on? Why am I in a dress? What was that stuff?” Ben demanded. 

“Remember that case I told you about?” Ben’s Mother asked,” The one with the crazy Doctor who was kidnapping men and turning them entirely into women from the inside out using some super-science formula?”

Ben could feel the blood draining from his face. “No! You didn’t!”  He said breathlessly.

“Modified Accelerated Regrowth Formula.” His mom said. “It’s top secret, it’s experimental, it’s irreversible, and over the next two weeks, it will reshape your entire body according to its programmed design.” 

Ben’s world had just exploded. He looked at the room and then down at the dress he was wearing. His hands drifted up to clutch the fake breasts in his bra. “No!” he gasped. 

“Those are C-cups,” His Mother explained. “MACR isn’t exact, but your real ones will be about that size or larger.” 

“Mom! I don’t want to be a girl! Please don’t do this!” Ben pleaded. He could feel his pulse thumping through his head. He was dizzy.

“It’s already done, dear. The nanites are self-replicating. I couldn’t stop it now if I wanted to.” she said. 

“Why?” Ben asked. 

“You barely made it out of high school, and you have no prospects for the future. All you do is run around with that slut, Sarah, and those losers from your game club. If your Father was alive, he would be ashamed.”

She stepped closer and took Ben by the shoulders. “You failed as a man. So, we are starting over, Mother and Daughter.” 

“I hate you!” Ben said. He could feel tears rolling down his face.

His Mother hugged him close. “I know.” She stepped back. “For a while, at least. One day, you will accept this, pick a new name, and start your new life as a woman.”
She pointed at the makeup table. It was fully stocked with brushes, bottles, and items Ben couldn’t recognize.

There was also a tablet computer. “You are going to need a lot of practice to catch up to other girls your age. I downloaded some tutorials to get you started. Have your face on when you come down to eat.”  She left the room. 

Ben staggered backward and collapsed onto the bed. He pulled the fake breasts out of his bra and began to weep.

Ben lay on the bed and tried to convince himself that his Mother had been lying about the injection. A few hours later, he was suddenly struck with intense abdominal cramps that felt like someone was rearranging his organs.

To his horror, he realized that was exactly what was going on. His Mother had told the truth. Deep inside him, he was already growing a uterus and ovaries. As soon as he grasped what was going on, he ran to the bathroom and threw up.  

After he was done, he washed his mouth out, trying not to look at the boy in a dress in the mirror. He went back to his “new” room, fell into the flowery bed, and cried until he fell asleep.

By morning, he noticed that his body hair was thinner and his chest was tender.  

His Mother gave him space but left strict instructions on a note stuck to his makeup mirror on what he was to wear if he wanted breakfast. That day, Ben refused to leave his room. 

Ben’s attempted hunger strike clashed with the raging changes underway inside him, and by the third day, hunger won, and he was smoothing his skirt under his growing behind as he sat to eat.

Every day after, as he got into that day’s outfit, he would notice more changes. The cramps were pretty constant, his bones ached, he could no longer get an erection, and his black hair had turned dirty blond and now reached his shoulders. His Mother began to send him tutorials on how to braid, bun, and style his hair.  

He would hear the phone ring, and his Mother would say that he was not available. He knew his voice was changing, and he was thankful to not have to talk to anyone. He also knew that the day would come soon when he would have to face the world as the girl he was becoming. 

The day he woke to find that he had filled his bra without padding and that his testicles had retreated up into his body, leaving only a tiny nub of his shrunken penis, he refused to eat and spent the day crying in his room. 

The next day, when he came down, he realized that he was now shorter than his Mother. “It’s almost done now, isn’t it?” he asked. The soft, breathy voice still surprised him every time he used it. 

“Yes, dear. You’re…” She paused. “You’re a very pretty girl.” 

Ben slammed his eyes shut and went back to his room, ashamed. Sarah was a pretty girl! Not him! He was supposed to be a handsome man who fucked pretty girls! He should have been furious at being called a pretty girl, but part of him was happy to hear it, and he hated himself for that! 

The next night, when he went to pee, he found nothing to hold onto, just a gap in the crease that had once run down the center of his now-vanished scrotum. Resigned, he sat to pee. When he wiped, the crease came apart, opening his labia for the first time and unveiling a fully formed clitoris and vagina. 

Ben brushed his now slender and delicate fingers over this new opening for a moment and then spun around to throw up.

Ben was all girl now, and she spent the night crying and thinking. 

The following day, she asked her Mother. “When you were pregnant, did you and Dad have a girl's name picked out?”   Ben was wearing a black dress, mourning the boy who had vanished last night. 

“We did.” her Mother said. “Isabella” 

“Then, for him, I’ll be Isabella,” She replied, “Bella for short.”

Isabella’s Mother smiled. 

Bella shook her head. “I don’t forgive you! But.. I can’t hide forever!” 

For the first time, Isabella faced the world as a girl as they went to the courthouse to make her transition official. When they got home, her Mother turned on the news. As images of conflict and burning buildings flashed across the screen, the reporters announced a formal declaration of war.

Both women watched the news in numb shock. Bella held her Mother’s hand as reporters talked about the announcement of a nationwide draft.

“It’s going to get worse.” Bella’s Mother almost whispered and squeezed Bella’s hand. 

As angry as Bella was about what her Mother had done to her, the war brought life into perspective.  

Most of the male friends Bella had in school were drafted in the opening weeks, so Bella never had to face them as a girl. Sarah was just as happy to have a new bestie even if she had lost a boyfriend.

Bella couldn’t hate her Mother forever. In the weeks after her transformation, Bella constantly leaned on her to explain many new aspects of being a girl, especially during the first month when abdominal pains signaled the arrival of Bella’s first period. 

Bella was lying on the couch with her knees pulled up and a hot pad on her belly, watching TV with her Mom and Sarah when the first phone calls came in on the ‘gossip web” Sarah had included Bella on when she declared her “one of the girls.”

There had been a battle, and Philip, who had been Ben’s friend since grade school, was dead. 

Bella barely had time to digest this when more messages came in. Sam, Robert, Dean, Chuck, all boys Ben had graduated with all died within hours of each other. 

Sarah and Bella hugged and wept for their fallen friends when Bella looked over Sarah’s shoulder at her Mother, who was watching them with sympathy, and what Bella realized was a sense of relief. 

Bella’s Mother worked for the Defense Department. She would have known better than most what was coming. 

“Mom?” Bella asked. Unable to say more in front of Sarah. 

“It’s awful.” Her Mother replied. “I wouldn’t be able to survive losing a child.” 

Bella took a deep breath, hugged Sarah tighter, and mouthed two words to her Mother. “Thank you.”