Part Seven - She's Just A Girl ...

Kerri picked up the steaming coffee mug in one hand and scooped up her cigarettes and lighter in the other and padded, barefoot, through to the lounge. Placing her small burden down on the walnut occasional table, she unwrapped the towel from about her otherwise naked form, tossed it over the back of the sofa and stretched, luxuriously, her firm breasts rising in response to the tensioned muscles.

"Poor Marty," she whispered aloud and giggled quietly to the empty room. "Or poor Martine, I should say," she corrected herself. "But then the silly bitch needed to be taught a lesson." She turned, stooped and picked up the cigarette packet, extricating a cigarette and placing it between her full lips.

"However," she said, continuing aloud as she breathed out a cloud of tobacco smoke, "enough is enough and this isn't quite what I expected. In fact," she added, breathing out a second lungful of smoke, "this isn't anything like what I was expecting. You never got half way to telling me the truth, did you?" She grinned, addressing her question to the telephone receiver, which lay mutely in its cradle. She picked up the coffee and sipped gingerly at the hot liquid.

"How the hell d'you do it, eh?" she mused, still staring at the silent instrument. "Some kind of magic hocus-pocus? Nah!" She shook her head and sipped again. "No, not magic, but some sort of ... well, whatever, it's gone far enough. Maybe too far." She lowered herself onto the end of the sofa nearest the telephone, placed her mug alongside it and reached for the receiver.

"Most men are turned on by the sight of a pretty girl wearing leather," Adam said, grinning across the table at Martine. "Most of the men I know, anyway." Martine lowered her empty fork to the side of her plate, chewed and swallowed the morsel of food in her mouth and swallowed with as much delicacy as she could manage.

"Most men I know entertain fantasies well beyond any possible reality," she said, choosing her words carefully. "There was a time ... " She shook her head, using the fork to push the remnants of her salad around her plate. "No, what I mean to say is that men see no further than the obvious. Girl wears leather - rubber even - and that can only mean one thing."

"Which is?" Adam prompted. Martine raised her perfectly arched eyebrows and gave a little grunt.

"You need me to draw pictures?"

"No." Adam smiled and shook his head. "No, of course not. That wasn't very gentlemanly of me, was it?" He laid his knife and fork neatly down and sat back. "I'm sorry, Martine," he said, the expression in his eyes showing that it was no idle apology. "I didn't mean to imply anything, it's just that, well ... well, to be blunt, I fancied you the moment I first set eyes on you."

"I'm not surprised," Martine retorted, surprising herself with the bluntness of her reply. "You're a man, with something between your legs that runs your life and you see me, blonde, big hair, long legs, tight skirt and high heels and you think of one thing only."

"But if you're so worried about how men react to you," Adam pointed out, "why dress the way you do? Not that I'm complaining, mind, but if you already know how men are going to react to seeing this particular image, why not change it?"

"Why not indeed?" Martine agreed, her voice tinged with more than a little sadness. She stared down at the wreckage of her meal and pushed the plate slowly away. "If I told you," she said, keeping her gaze lowered, "I doubt you'd understand, even if you did believe me."

"I assumed it was something to do with your work," Adam replied, leaning across to top her wine glass from the carafe. "Presumably this image of yours is a professional thing and no, I don't mean that in any, well, any unpleasant way. I'm not implying anything."

Martine reached for the glass and tried to adjust her sitting position. Her well rounded buttocks had accommodated the thin steel band of the chastity belt reasonably well, but the little positioning prong kept reminding her of its presence in a way that was not doing her self-composure too many favours. She suppressed a little shiver and raised the glass to her lips.

"Something wrong?" Adam asked. "Look, if you'd rather, I can run you back home now."

"No, not yet," Martine said. "I'd like to get out of here, but I don't want to go home yet. I'd like to talk to you, but I'm not sure where I should start."

"Perhaps you'd like to come back to my place," Adam suggested. "I live on my own, so we won't be disturbed. And I promise," he added, "that I won't try anything. Scouts honour."

"It wouldn't do you much good if you did," Martine muttered, darkly. "Not unless you're a locksmith."

Kerri replaced the receiver with a petulant slam and threw herself back into the sofa cushions. Five times she had dialled the number and each time the result had been the same. Number unobtainable.

"Shit!" she exclaimed and put her hands up to her face in a gesture of frustrated helplessness. "Now what do we do?"

The number, the woman had told her, was ex-directory and a private line which went direct to her mobile phone, during shop hours as well as outside of them. However, with the shop gone, what exactly were `shop hours' anyway? This whole thing was becoming very confusing, not to say frightening.

The outfit had been a bit of a joke, as far as Kerri was concerned. Stunning as it was and knowing Marty's penchant for dressing up, she'd known he wouldn't have been able to resist trying it on and the prospect of it trapping him for a few days was more than a little appealing. Having to stay dressed as a female for the better part of a week, with no respite in between, that would certainly teach him a lesson, as the woman had pointed out.

"It'll get his thinking processes straightened out, dear," she had told Kerri and Kerri had seen the logic in the scheme. It was one thing for him to dress up and swan around as Martine for a few hours at weekends, but having to remain trapped inside that corset and boots for five days, unable to go outside dressed as a man throughout, that might make him stop and reconsider.

But this was now altogether something different, something much darker. Whatever that outfit was, it was nothing normal, far from it. Maybe it was impregnated with something, some hormone or drug, but if it was, it was like no hormone that Kerri had ever heard about. Okay, she'd read about men taking female hormones which changed their bodies from masculine to feminine, but not within a space of hours and certainly not to such an authentic degree. To the best of her knowledge, that required a skilled surgeon and involved a long operation, a considerable degree of pain and a lengthy convalescent period.

This was truly scary and now, as she sat and analysed the situation properly, Kerri began to realise the awful import of what she had done. Whatever the explanation for the outfit, however bizarre, unlikely or far-fetched, there was one inescapable fact that was refusing to go away.

For whatever well intentioned reason, no matter how she could try to console herself with the fact that no one would have believed the consequences, even if the woman had explained them in the first place, she, Kerri, had helped to turn her ex-boyfriend Marti into a woman. Worse still, into a woman with a body that seemed unable to resist any intimate contact, with either sex.

She stood up, padded across to where her bag lay open in the armchair and fumbled inside for her purse. Taking it out, she flicked the snap and withdrew the tiny steel key to the chastity belt, holding it in her right hand in a grip that became increasingly fierce ...

"Bloody hell! That's positively medieval!" Adam was staring in amazement, his gaze rivetted on the thin steel chastity belt, where it passed between the tops of Martine's thighs. At her feet, the leather miniskirt lay entangled about her boots, where she had let it slip to the floor and now she stood, hands on hips, in a blatantly defiant attitude.

The silence screamed around the room, echoing off the art deco furniture and lamps and slapping against the two large impressionist prints with an almost audible crack.

"You let her put that - that thing on you?" Adam said at last, his voice dropping to something little more than an awed whisper. Martine gave him a wry smile.

"Not exactly," she replied, striving to disentangle her feet from the little pool of leather, which seemed to have developed an affection for her spiked heels. "Let's just say that I wasn't quite in a position to have my democratic say in the matter."

"And this is a friend?" Adam rolled his eyes in a melodramatic way. "With friends like that, as they say," he added, shaking his head.

"Kerri's more than just a friend," Martine said, carefully, finally stepping clear of the skirt and the PVC panties that were hidden within it. She was only too aware of the effect her booted and stockinged legs were having on Adam, now that she had revealed them in all their glory and the vertical band of the chastity belt covered barely enough of her sex for decency's sake.

"This," she said, tapping the gleaming metal waistband, "is to protect me against myself."

"You need that sort of protection?" Adam's voice sounded hoarse now and there was a slight tremor when he spoke, too.

"Putting it bluntly, yes, I reckon I do," Martine replied. "But it's not quite what you think."

"It isn't? Er, no, I don't suppose it is," Adam corrected himself. Martine grinned, steeling herself.

"No, it isn't," she confirmed. "But then the truth is something you wouldn't think, not if you lived to be a million years old ... "

Kerri came to a decision - at least, a decision of sorts. She stubbed out her cigarette and made her way back through to the bedroom, where she quickly raided both dressing table and wardrobe, laying out her choices across the end of the bed.

So, the little shop was gone - or at least closed down and emptied - but it was the only connection she had and there seemed little alternative. Sitting on the sofa, dialling a dead number ineterminably offered no chance at all, whereas the empty premises ... well, at least she would be doing something.

She picked up the rubber catsuit and began dusting the inside with talcum powder, sneezing as some of it drifted up into her nostrils. It was, she reflected, as she sat on the edge of the mattress, easing her left foot into the cloying fabric, a bit "Modesty Blaise", but at least the suit was black and, with the black rubber miniskirt, her black ankle boots and Martine's black leather bomber jacket over the top, she would blend easily into the dark shadows around and inside the place.

Always assuming, she thought, grimly, that she could get inside.

"You're not having me on, are you?" Adam said, quietly, when Martine had finally finished speaking. It wasn't really a question, but she could tell from his expression that he was struggling to come to terms with the reality of the situation as she had explained it to him. But then, she thought, who wouldn't?

"Every word is the truth," Martine asserted, firmly. "I'm really a man - no, I was really a man. God alone knows what I am now."

"Well, you look every inch a woman, from where I'm sitting," Adam retorted, in a half-hearted effort to lighten the situation. "Whatever else that steel belt might be doing, it's certainly not hiding anything ... well, you know what I mean?" Martine laughed, despite herself.

"You mean it isn't hiding a cock and balls?" she said. "No, it certainly isn't. So, where do we go from here?"

"Go?" Adam looked blank. "I'm sure I don't have the first idea. I'm still trying to get my head around this thing. I mean, you sit there and tell me, calm as you like, that you're really a bloke, but my eyes and every other sense I possess are telling me a totally different thing."

"You mean you still fancy me, despite what I've just told you?" Adam looked uncomfortable.

"Well," he began, "it's not as though you've just stripped off and shown me - well, shown me proof, for want of a better way of putting it. I'm still seeing what I saw the first time we met - more, actually," he added, grinning again.

"And, judging from the way you're sitting, not only have you got in your pants what I used to have in mine, but it's raising its eager little head in anticipation." To Martine's delight, she saw Adam's cheeks redden immediately at this. "Perhaps you've had little fantasies in the past?" she suggested. "Wondered what it might be like to take a transsexual to bed? After her operation, of course."

"Well, it wouldn't be any different from taking any other woman to bed, surely?" Adam reasoned. Martine sighed.

"You don't understand at all, do you?" she said. "But then maybe neither would I, not if something like this had happened to me even a few days back."

"Maybe we'd better change the subject," Adam suggested. "Perhaps you should put your skirt back on again."

"You still fancied me with the skirt on," Martine pointed out. "And if I have to sit here frustrated, why shouldn't you?"

"Frustrated?" Adam echoed. "You don't mean you, well, ... ?"

"Maybe not up here." Martine tapped one finger against her temple. "But then my brain and basic logic system doesn't seem to have the casting vote where this body is concerned." She closed her eyes for a few seconds, considering carefully.

"Do you have a pair of handcuffs here?" she asked, suddenly, opening her eyes again. "And don't go all coy on me. These days almost every red-blooded male I know has a pair somewhere, just in case he gets lucky enough to meet the right girl."

The window pane was old and the diagonal crack across it made it a simple matter for Kerri to prise out a triangular segment of the dirt encrusted glass. Laying it carefully to one side, she reached in with one arm, her fingers seeking, then finding, the ancient catch. For a few seconds, the dust, rust and moss of years resisted her efforts, but then suddenly the metal moved, scraping around through ninety degrees with a rasping sound that fear amplified out of all proportion to reality.

Breathing hard, Kerri paused, ears keened for any sounds that might indicate that she had attracted untoward attention to herself, but, apart from the sound of an occasional vehincle passing through the deserted market place at the front of the building, all remained quiet.

"Here we go then, girl," she whispered to herself and turned back to work on the rotten sash frame. To her surprise, her efforts encountered little resistance and the lower section began to rise clear of the sill ...

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