Be Myself! - 33. Eight Legs of Wonder

Oliver spent the rest of the week worrying about his binder. He obviously wanted it to arrive in time for his coming out at school on Monday, but as the days went by with no special visits from the postwoman, his anxiety evolved to quiet despair. On Friday, he became so nervous he could not concentrate in class and had a mini panic attack during lunch.

“What if it doesn’t arrive?” Oliver asked us all as we sat outside to eat our food. “I can’t go to school on Monday looking like this.” He pointed to his chest. “Maybe it’ll be better if I don’t go at all…”

“Does it really matter?” Helena asked. “Everybody will know you’re trans anyway, so what’s the big deal?”

“It’s not everybody, just my classmates,” Oliver corrected her. His face began to take on the same shade as his hair. “If I show up without a binder, they won’t see any difference in me. They won’t believe it’s for real.”

“You shouldn’t be doing things just for the sake of others,” Helena argued. For a moment Oliver looked like he was not sure if he should answer or curl up in a ball and cry.

“It’s not just for other people’s sake!” Oliver almost shouted. “You don’t really get it. It’s for me too. I can’t stand to be here looking like this. I can’t stand thinking that others don’t see me as a guy because of the way I look like. I can’t stand being misgendered all the time, and I know for a fact that it is going to happen a lot from Monday on. At least if I’ve got a binder on me, it might be easier for people to remember.”

“Ok, sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Helena said, though it did not feel completely sincere to me. She sounded like she thought Oliver was overreacting, but knew that if she spoke up, we would turn against her.

“Cis people don’t usually get those things,” Luce commented, looking at Helena. She then turned her attention to Oliver. “The binder is going to be your shield. It’ll protect you from being misgendered by others, and protect you from your own body dysphoria.”

“Yeah…” Oliver agreed weakly. Luce smiled brightly to cheer him up.

“Maybe it arrived today after you left for school. And if it didn’t, there’s still tomorrow. Don’t lose all hope just yet.”

“I’ll try.” Despite Luce’s encouragement, Oliver did not seem much more reassured. He was silent for the rest of the school day, and during the whole walk home.

Thankfully, things changed as soon as we crossed the front door. Sam was waiting for us in the corridor, grinning suspiciously with his hands hidden behind his back. “Guess what arrived in the post today?” he asked his older brother. Oliver shrieked in happiness and tried to jump on Sam, but the little boy masterfully dodged him. Sam then put on his best poker face to speak to his brother. “Thanks for being so happy that my new headphones arrived. I didn’t think you were into this kind of thing.” Sam proudly showed us the aforementioned headphones, now grinning from ear to ear. Oliver’s face fell, but the boy seemed not to care. “I’m so happy! Now I can finally play all those shooting games and kill all the people I want and mum won’t hear a thing!” Sam beamed, and ran back to his room. Just before he closed his door, though, he spoke to Oliver again. “Oh, and by the way, your binder is on your bed. I think that’s what mum wanted me to tell you, but whatever.” Sam banged his door shut.

It was Oliver’s turn to dash to his room. It was the first time I saw the brothers be so alike. I followed my boyfriend at a much slower (and safer) pace, so that by the time I got into the room, he had already opened the package and was examining his new binder carefully.

“It feels kind of weird, and doesn’t really look like a shirt,” he said. The chest of the binder was made of an elastic material similar to those used in medical strainers for wrists and ankles. I knew this because I had to use one of those when I got hurt trying to play rugby with my father. I was seven then, and the only good thing I remembered about it was that I was never forced to practice sports again.

“Do you want to try it on?” I asked him. Oliver put the binder back on the bed and took off the three layers of clothes he wore to school even during the summer. He put the binder on like a shirt, and then tried to flatten his chest with his hands as much as possible before closing the Velcro under his left armpit. Closing the binder required some stretching and awkward movements, but he eventually managed it.

“How do I look?” Oliver asked. His chest had evened out and became somewhat smaller, but it was still obvious that he had more chest than belly.

“Ok, I guess,” I answered, trying not to sound disappointed. The picture on the website where we got the binder from showed a guy with a completely flat chest that could pass as what people generally imagined male chests to look like. The most that Oliver’s chest could pass for was that of a considerably overweight man who grew man-boobs to store excess fat. In other words, Oliver looked like a fat man who had suddenly lost all remaining body fat apart from his chest. It looked weird. “Try to put a shirt on and see what happens.”

Oliver did as I suggested. The shoulder straps of the binder showed under the shirt collar, but the new layer of clothes helped to even out the weird discrepancy between chest and belly size. The whole thing seemed considerably smoother, even if Oliver’s chest was not completely flat. “What about now?” Oliver had no mirrors in his room, so he could not see what the binder was doing to his body. “It’s kind of hard to breathe in this thing,” he added, making an effort to inflate his chest. “I guess you can’t bind your chest without binding your ribs too.”

“Are you ok?” I asked him, concerned about this side-effect of binding. What if he fainted at school for not breathing properly?

“Yeah, I’ll get used to it. I read that I’m not supposed to wear this for more than eight hours a day because of it.” Oliver took a few more deep breaths and headed to his parent’s room. They were not home, but Oliver went straight for their wardrobe mirror to finally look at his reflection. He stood facing the mirror and trying out different poses for a while. Then he turned sideways and did the same thing. “It’s not completely flat.” He sounded disappointed.

“It’s mostly flat,” I tried to reassure him, but it was not very effective. “I don’t think people will see it as a girl’s chest.”

“It’s not flat enough. I knew it…” Oliver looked down and closed his hands into fists. I hugged him from behind, resting my head on his shoulder.

“You won’t know until we try it out. I don’t think most people care about how flat it is, as long as it’s not obviously two separate dangling balls.” I did my best to try cheering him up, but my choice of words made me blush and want to hide in a corner. I had never referred to breasts as ‘dangling balls’ before and it made me feel like a cheap porn writer. At least Oliver laughed a bit.

“I guess it’s better than nothing. Thanks.” He kissed my cheek and turned to hug me. We stayed like that for a while, until Sam barged into the room and caught us innocently cuddling.

“Eeeew, nobody asked to see romance here! Go do your dirty naked things in your room!” He sounded cutely outraged. Oliver laughed, and then kissed me fully on the lips. “Argh! Go away! There are children here!”

“Someday you’ll grow up and do this too,” Oliver answered, sticking his tongue out.

“Never!” Sam shouted with all his might. I thought he was going to run away, but he just turned his back to us. “I just came here ‘cause I wanted to see if my brother looks manly now, but he’s all busy with his boyfriend...” Sam made sure to make the term sound absolutely disgusting. “...and won’t even care about me anymore…”

“Hey, Sammy…” Oliver let go of me. He had not bought Sam’s act for a second, so he made his voice sound as sugary as cotton candy, and jumped from my arms to his brother’s. Sam tried to free himself from the bear hug, but Oliver was bigger and stronger than him. “I stopped kissing my boyfriend now, so you can look at me.” Oliver used the same disgusted tone on the word ‘boyfriend’, making Sam laugh. The little boy turned to face his brother, only to have his face kissed.

“Argh! What are you doing?” the boy protested. Oliver laughed.

“Showing you that there’s nothing wrong with kissing.” He let go of Sam. “Now do what you came here to do. Do I look manly enough for you?” Oliver tried to keep his tone upbeat, but I could tell he was a little insecure. Sam examined him carefully, making a cute face of concentration. The kid was making me nervous by the time he was finally done.

“You look cool. I approve.” Sam gave Oliver a thumb up and smiled. “Now you can thank me, but no kissing.”

“Thanks.” Oliver was so relieved he did not care to answer Sam’s provocation. The little boy rolled his eyes, mumbled something like ‘teenagers’, and went back to his room and, presumably, to his overly-violent games.

“See, I told you it didn’t look bad,” I told Oliver, hugging him again. The hug soon became a playful exchange of kisses on the cheek, which then turned into French kissing, and before we knew it, Oliver was pressing my body against the wall and kissing and touching every part of me he could reach.

“My bed. Now. I want to see what I can do with this thing.” Oliver gingerly led me to his bedroom and banged the door shut behind him. He was grinning very much like Jean, which meant that soon my trousers fell to the floor and my shirt was thrown to the opposite corner of the room.

“You’re going to keep the binder on? Are you sure?” Oliver took off his trousers as I spoke, and put my hands on the hem of his shirt.

“I’ll try. Now take my shirt off like I’m about to get naked with a flat chest.” I did as I was told, though it was hard to imagine what his chest would look like once the extra breast tissue and fat were removed. I ended up thinking of Jean’s body with Oliver’s head, which made me deeply ashamed of myself, but at least kept certain parts of my body ready for action.

Oliver wanted to ride me. He liked being physically on top, so I lay on the bed, waiting for him to get things ready. He teased me by trying to put the condom on with his mouth until the feeling became too much for me to bear. Only then did he sit on my lap. We had agreed to give up anal sex for the time being, so it was good to see that the binder was helping Oliver feel more comfortable using his front hole.

Oliver was quite enthusiastic at first, but he ran out of breath in probably less than a minute. I told him we could go slower, but he seemed determined to carry on to the end. Soon his face was all red and his lips gained a faint purple shade.

“Oliver…”

“Fine, fine, I give up,” Oliver managed to say between three long breaths. He stopped moving, but did not pull out. “How about you go on top and do all the work?” Oliver took a few deep breaths, still not moving or allowing me to move. “Better yet, I’ll get on fours and you fuck me from behind.” Oliver paused to breathe again. “It feels more like gay sex that way anyway.”

It bothered me a little that Oliver was choosing what we did based on how ‘gay’ it looked. I did not know how to express that feeling yet, but I had kind of taken for granted that any sex I had with Oliver was going to be some form of ‘gay sex’. It was not the kind of sex I had with Jean, but Oliver was my boyfriend now, so that meant we were two guys having sex, even if one of those guys had two holes instead of one.

As always, though, I did what Oliver told me to. He tried to show me he was having a good time with his usual noisy cacophony, but this time around he only managed a couple of grunts. After a while he gave up supporting his body with his hands and lay with his shoulders on the mattress while keeping the rest of his body up. I could not tell if he was trying to give me directions with his grunting, but it hardly mattered in the end. As he got close to climax, he thrust faster and faster against me. I did not think he would be able to finish it, but I was wrong. Oliver’s orgasm came with the only reasonably loud grunt he managed while wearing the binder and his body went limp. I pulled out and helped him lay on his back.

“I need… to… to help… you…” he tried to say, raising a hand towards me as the rest of his body tried to suck in as much oxygen as possible.

“Can you?” I asked him. He was barely able to speak. Oliver took a few more laboured breaths before he realised what he was saying.

“No. Sorry.”

“It’s fine. I think I can handle it.” I tried to reassure him. Oliver nodded, concentrating on continuing to expand his lungs, and I tried to find a more comfortable position in the bed. I closed my eyes, but the more I thought about what I was about to do, the more embarrassed I felt. I realised I had never masturbated in front of Oliver (or in front of anybody, really). All the times we had sex, we did things together and Oliver took care of things. It felt really awkward to do things in front of him while he was just watching. It was weird, and it made me feel like I was doing something shameful.

“Something wrong?” Oliver asked. My eyes were still closed, but I had not moved for a while.

“I feel kind of weird doing this on my own…”

“Aww…” Oliver tried to laugh, but had to give up in order to breathe. “Hold on.” My boyfriend sat up, took off his binder, and put his shirt back on. He was relieved to be able to breathe properly again. “I think I can help you now.”

Oliver kneeled in front of me. We kissed, he touched my chest, my nipples, and my neck before venturing further down. He did not let me touch him, but he touched himself. I did not last long once he switched his hand for his mouth.

“As much as I liked it, I don’t think I’ll ever sex wearing the binder again,” Oliver announced. We were laying side by side on the bed, not quite cuddling, but not far apart either. Oliver was sweating a lot, so he wanted distance from other warm bodies. I was almost ready to take a nap when we heard the front door opening and Oliver’s parents coming in.

(...)

Oliver said it would be fine to leave me resting in the room while he greeted his parents. He quickly put his shirt, boxers, and a loose pair of cotton trousers on, kissed my forehead, and left. His family had a habit of talking loudly to each other, so I was able to hear most of their conversation. It was so embarrassing I was glad to be out of sight.

“Did you try your binder on?” Ms Savage asked her son. Oliver’s answer was non-verbal, probably a nod. Then Ms Savage spoke again. “Good. Did you like it? Can we see it?” They were silent for a while. Maybe Oliver was talking quietly. When Ms Savage spoke again, my whole body burst into flames. “Oh, I see. Well, I don’t want to intrude on your fun with Oscar, so let us know when the binder is dry enough.”

Oliver came back to the room soon after that. He did not seem embarrassed, but he knew me well enough to be aware that I would be trying to hide from his parents for the foreseeable future. “Sorry about that. I don’t like to lie to my parents about that kind of stuff.”

I sighed. “I know.” My body still felt too heavy to move. It was the only reason I was still on the bed, and not trying to build a bunker inside his wardrobe. “I don’t understand how you can simply go to your parents and tell them you just had sex and make it a completely normal conversation.”

“Sex is a normal thing.” I could tell Oliver was trying hard not to laugh. My ‘prudishness’ towards sex amused him a great deal.

“It’s embarrassing. Your parents know we just fucked. I can’t talk to them today anymore.”

“Please, Oscar, it’s not that difficult. They won’t judge you. You know, they have sex all the time too, and you still talk to them afterwards. Like yesterday at breakfast…”

“Thanks, but I didn’t need to know that.” Oliver made me picture Ms Savage and Mr Viñas having sex on the breakfast table. It was not the kind of mental image I needed right after doing it with my boyfriend. Oliver just laughed, though.

Thankfully he soon took pity on me and decided to change the subject by texting all our friends the news that he had a binder, and that it had been approved by both of us. I tried to object to the last part, but Oliver assured me it was vague enough that nobody would think of sex.

The first reply we got was Jean’s, and it read ‘I want to approve it too. If it makes you look manly, come over and I’ll let you handle my ass the whole night long’. I tried to tell Oliver that it meant everybody had guessed what we had done, but he assured me once more that our ‘secret’ would be safe, because Jean always thought everything was about sex anyway.

Then Luce answered ‘Sex in binder is dangerous. Please be careful’, Henry said ‘hope you had fun’, Hannah commented that ‘whatever makes you happy, even if Oscar is involved’, and so Oliver tactfully avoided having to admit defeat by inviting everyone to go shopping the next day. He wanted to test the binder in a public place, thus Luce suggested we shop for our Halloween-in-September costumes. We all agreed to meet in the city centre at two in the afternoon.

(...)

“Where are we getting costumes?” Ariadne asked. Around us, many people were trying to enjoy the best of a cloudy afternoon before the inevitable rainfall soaked their new belongings. “I thought it was too early to get Halloween stuff; we still have two months to go…”

“Nah, we live in a capitalist society.” Hannah dismissed Ariadne’s questions. “Halloween is the next big holiday, so shops have already started stocking for it, and they’ll try to make you buy their items as soon as possible. Then, after everyone buys everything they need and Halloween is over, all the leftover stock will be on sale, and they will make you feel compelled to buy all that stuff you don’t need just because it’s cheaper than usual.”

Charlie nodded, looking definitely impressed by Hannah’s speech. “I couldn’t have phrased it better.”

“I’m thinking of becoming an economist. Then I’ll teach everyone about all that is wrong with capitalism,” Hannah answered, smiling pleasantly to Charlie.

“And then you’ll force everyone to be a communist?” Helena asked. It was hard to tell if she was being serious or just messing with us. Hannah was probably not entirely sure either, because she completely ignored the question.

“Or I could go into business, play the game by their rules until I’m a powerful CEO, and then I’ll make sure those rich, privileged bastards get what they deserve.” Hannah, Jean, Charlie, and Luce smirked evilly. Helena rolled her eyes. Ariadne and Henry looked somewhat scared, and Oliver seemed a little confused.

“How did we get from shopping for costumes to overthrowing the capitalist empire?” he asked the group. Most of us shrugged, but Hannah answered.

“I don’t know. I guess I just realised that you guys know me for a long time now and still have no idea what I want to do after I’m done with school, and that seemed a bit unfair. So, now you know.”

“That was quite random,” Jean commented, as he randomly grabbed mine and Henry’s ass.

“Then let’s just go into the first clothes shop we see, because that’s what we came here to do,” Luce said, understanding Hannah’s intention of getting back on topic. “Though before we go, I would like to propose that we build our Halloween costumes out of normal pieces of clothing because it is more fun that way, and because it means we can avoid the avid capitalists that want to sell Halloween merchandise two months in advance.” Luce winked to Hannah, who nodded in approval. “So let’s do our best. Let our creativity shine!”

And so, led by Luce, the nine of us headed to a shop that was famous for selling really cheap clothes made by near-slave labour in Asia. It was not the most ethical thing to do, but we were all unemployed teenagers who depended on our parents (or guardians, in the case of Jean and Hannah) for financial help. We would be able to be responsible shoppers once we could afford properly ridiculously expensive clothes.

Most of the girls, as well as Charlie, stayed on the ground floor where the women’s clothes were. Surprisingly, Luce came with us to the men’s section on the upper floor, though she explained it was because she already had her costume and wanted to see what we would come up with. Unfortunately, it did not take us long to realise that, in fact, she was there to watch over Oliver.

Jean dragged Henry to the lingerie section and they disappeared from view, leaving Oliver, Luce, and I alone with a sizeable collection of suits, button-up shirts and linen trousers. I found a flashy pink tie that made my eyes bleed, but other than that, it was all boring. We ventured to the casual-wear section, and Oliver found a couple of t-shirts he wanted to try on. He also picked up a coat that could look ‘gay porn-manly’ (his words, not mine), if it was dirty and scratched enough. I found a red polo shirt and black trousers full of pockets that could hopefully become a weird vampire costume. Happy with our findings, we headed to the changing rooms.

And all hell broke loose.

The person in charge of the changing rooms did not want to let Oliver in with me. I tried to tell him that Oliver was a guy, but he ignored me. To make matters worse, there were at least half-a-dozen people in the queue behind us, witnessing everything. Oliver froze, unable to say anything in his defence just as tears began to form in his eyes. All the nightmares he hoped the binder would help him avoid were still happening anyway, and he was not ready to deal with it.

But then Luce stepped up, and we realised she was expecting something like this to happen all along.

“Excuse me, why are you not letting my friend through?” she asked, trying to sound polite and confused. “Is the men’s changing room full? Partially closed?”

“Well, she can’t…”

“He can and he will, or we’ll just drop our clothes on the ground and find a better place to shop.” Luce dropped the act. She was furious; her voice had just the right tone and confidence to make everyone realise she knew exactly what she was doing and she was not going to back down. The shop assistant was taken aback for a moment, but tried to take her on anyway.

“That person doesn’t look like a man to me. I can’t let her through.” Oliver looked down, defeated. He was making an effort not to cry in front of the man and make everything worse.

“Well, Oscar doesn’t look like a man to me either, and you were about to let him in,” Luce countered, pointing at me. I was surprised, but decided not to say anything for Oliver’s sake. “I mean, look at his long hair! And his lack of muscles! How can you be sure he isn’t just a woman trying to sneak in there to… I don’t know, I can’t think of any reason someone would go to the wrong changing room on purpose. It’s not like we can just say it’s for sex, because then you’d have to ask everyone’s sexual orientation at the door and put the gay men with the women, and the lesbians with the men, and all the bisexuals would have to go to individual, lockable cubicles because we all know they would want to fuck everyone they see.” Luce made a dramatic pause. Someone in the queue behind us laughed. The shop assistant looked completely lost and humiliated. “That’s what you’re here for, right? To keep all those naked people from fucking each other behind the curtains,” Luce grinned. It was a very familiar grin, but I was only able to place it once she spoke again. “Ah, damn, that’s exactly what I came here for! I guess I’ll have to try my luck elsewhere!” Luce liked her lips sensually. I had to fight the urge to groan. She was the last person I would have ever associated with Jean, but she had somehow just convinced me otherwise. “I can see how hard you are trying to keep fuck ups from happening. Shame for you, though, you just fucked it up big time. We’ll go find a shop where the staff knows the basic difference between men and women.”

Luce took the clothes Oliver and I had been carrying and dropped them on the ground. She grabbed our arms and marched us away from the changing rooms. When I looked back, at least half the queue had followed her lead, and someone called for the supervisor. Luce called Charlie on her mobile and told him we were not buying anything. Charlie understood the message and said to meet him and the girls outside. We quickly found Jean and Henry (it was not difficult; Jean was being very vocal about his need to find sexy clothing for Henry to fuck him in) and dragged them out.

Once outside, Luce told everyone what happened while Hannah and I tried to comfort Oliver. He finally let the tears flow as Luce spoke about the attendant repeatedly misgendering him. I hugged him, and Hannah caressed his hair.

“I knew this binder wasn’t good enough,” Oliver said once Luce finished her story. “I should’ve known that things wouldn’t magically change just because I look like I have slightly less things on me.”

“It’s not always going to be like that, Oliver,” Luce tried to comfort him too. “You had really bad luck with that arsehole.”

“But it only takes one arsehole to fuck it all up,” Hannah commented. I was not the only one surprised that she seemed to understand Oliver’s feelings so well. Luce and Charlie were not expecting it either, but nodded in approval. “It doesn’t matter if a hundred people do the right thing, the moment one of them doesn’t, that’s all you’ll remember.”

“True that,” Luce agreed. “Let’s go somewhere else; this place makes me want to throw up.” Luce made us all walk up the road. We were not clear about where we were going, whether we would try another clothes shop, or just give up and settle for a mug of hot chocolate in a random café; we just followed Luce and hoped she knew.

“What is this place? It wasn’t here before,” Luce asked. She had just stopped in front of Harmony Street, the place where Oliver, Hannah, and I found the bookshop with more books than one would be able to read in a lifetime. The others looked puzzled too.

“This is Harmony Street,” Hannah answered. “It has always been here, don’t you remember?” She seemed shocked at our friend’s forgetfulness.

“I would remember coming across a place like this,” Helena said. Her words were vaguely familiar to me, but I was having trouble placing them. I fully agreed with Hannah that it was strange that nobody remembered a street right in the city’s main shopping hub. Harmony Street was strange enough on its own that it should guarantee nobody forgot its existence. It was too short, too narrow, and too deserted not to be noticed. The four tenements seemed empty, almost abandoned, except for the shops on the ground floor.

“Then your memory is really bad,” Hannah answered. Helena was going to say something, but she stopped as soon as she opened her mouth. For just a split second, her eyes got a vacant look. She blinked, her eyes returned to normal, and she seemed to have forgotten whatever it was she was about to tell Hannah (which was probably a good thing).

“Of course, Harmony Street. Now I remember!” she said instead. “You’re right, it’s hard to forget a place like this.” I glanced at my other friends, and to my surprise they all had the same vacant look on their faces. They snapped out of it as soon as Helena spoke, though, and immediately agreed with her.

“We could stay here for a bit and let the peace and quiet improve our moods,” Luce suggested. And so, we entered Harmony Street as if the place had been a part of our entire lives. I could not remember a time when it was not, but at the same time I had a vague recollection of being just as confused as my friends had been. I did not believe in coincidences, though, so this suspicious phenomenon would never cross my mind again.

“They do have a clothes shop…” Charlie pointed out. The second shop on the right side of the street was, indeed, a clothes shop. Considering what we had just gone through, our first instinct should be to stay away from shops, at least until Oliver recovered. We decided against it, though, because this particular shop was sending very strong signals that it did not pay much attention to details like gender and private parts.

There were four mannequins in the display window. All of them had strong, muscular, and square bodies. None of them had breasts, two of them had beards, and the other two had goatees. They were the kind of body that would attract Jean’s immediate attention (it would not surprise me if he saw dolls as fair game too), but my sex-addict friend showed no signs that he wanted to do anything with those mannequins, for reasons that were actually quite obvious: those very manly mannequins were wearing fine red dresses. The first one wore a short and very revealing dress made of a light, semi-transparent fabric. The second wore what looked like a medieval dress in velvet and sparkled jewellery. The third mannequin’s dress looked like someone had been given a piece of fabric, made random hole in it, and called it a garment. The fourth one was a child’s summer dress, which looked hilarious on the fully-grown, muscular mannequin.

“I have a feeling this might be the place we are looking for,” Luce announced. She marched towards the shop, and we had no option but to follow her. The sign above the shop indicated it was called Eight Legs of Wonder (which probably explained why there were four mannequins in the display windows, though it would be a pun of very bad taste if it were the case).

The inside of the shop looked much bigger than its exterior suggested. It was not a labyrinth of clothes in the same way that Games & Gambles, the bookshop, was a labyrinth of books, but it still had a considerable variety of stock. Most of the clothes were red or green, and they were separated by size rather than gender, so that tuxedoes and long dresses could be found in the same general area, far away from children’s dresses and baby onesies.

“Is anyone there?” Henry asked. The shop was completely empty. Just as the emptiness was beginning to feel creepy, however, the shopkeeper appeared seemingly from thin air to greet us.

“Hello, how can I help you?” he asked in a tone that was hard to say whether he was being polite or pretending to be polite. He was smiling, but there was something not at all innocent about it. Henry was not expecting his call to be answered so suddenly, so he jumped on Jean by reflex. The blond held him protectively, taking special care to make sure Henry’s ass was adequately covered by his hand. Jean was the one who ended up speaking to the shopkeeper.

“We’re looking for clothes for a Halloween party. Some people at the cheap shop were really mean to our friend, so we ended up here.”

“I see,” the shopkeeper came closer to Jean. He ignored Henry’s slightly mortified face clinging to Jean’s chest, and stood as close as he could to the blond. He was slightly taller than Jean, so it was easy for him to stare at our friend deep in the eye. They stayed like this for an uncomfortably long time, until the shopkeeper finally broke contact. His smile returned, but this time it felt even creepier than before. “Well, as you can see, I have plenty of choices for you here. What kind of clothes are you looking for?”

“Something that can be turned into a costume,” Luce answered.

“And something that’s preferably cheap, because we are on a low budget,” Hannah added. The shopkeeper’s smile grew.

“Then you came to the perfect place! This shop is not one of those for-profit monsters out there, so I’m willing to give you very cheap things if you can entertain me enough.”

“Entertain you?” Helena asked. I could tell by her posture I was not the only one whose ears had been dominated by the sound of alarm bells. “How?”

“Oh, don’t worry, it’s nothing creepy!” the shopkeeper apparently read our worries. “I just want to see what you choose and what you intend to do with your purchases. The more I like your ideas, the less they cost.”

“I see.” It was Hannah’s turn to face the shopkeeper. “What if we lie just to get cheaper clothes?”

“Then I’ll make you pay even more than what they’re worth. I can always tell when people lie to me. It’s a gift, so to speak. Want to test it?” Hannah hesitated to answer, but the shopkeeper took her hesitation as a ‘yes’. “Each of you tell me a truth and a lie about yourselves, and I’ll guess which one is the lie.” He looked pointedly at Jean, singling him out to go first. My friend seemed tense under the shopkeeper’s stare, and took a while to think of something.

“I want you to fuck me here and now. You freak me out.”

“Telling two truths to trick me is a good strategy, but it will not work,” the shopkeeper answered immediately. Judging by Jean’s surprised face, he was right. I tried not to think too much about Jean’s desire to be fucked by someone who freaked him out. I tried not to think that we were facing someone who freaked Jean out of all people. “Have a think about what you actually want to say, and I’ll get back to you later.” The shopkeeper turned to Ariadne. “What about you?”

“I… I don’t like school and Helena is my girlfriend.” Ariadne sounded terrified of the shopkeeper too. Everyone was probably thinking that someone who affected Jean so much could only be dangerous.

“As unlikely as it is that you and Helena should ever get together, I know that you, in fact, love your school,” the shopkeeper answered just as Ariadne finished speaking. “Next!” He turned 180 degrees to face Oliver just as Helena tried to punch him. His movement was so fluid that it looked like he knew exactly what Helena was going to do, and knew perfectly well how to avoid her.

“I had vaginal sex and I’m a girl.” Oliver’s choice of words surprised just about everyone in the room. He had to be really willing to trick the shopkeeper if he willingly referred to his body that way. The shopkeeper just laughed.

“Aw, it’s cute of you to try tricking me with cissexism. I know you sometimes doubt yourself, but you’re not really a girl.” It was the first time the shopkeeper’s smile seemed genuine. His statement had a powerful effect on Oliver, who smiled for the first time since the changing room incident. I did not have much time to appreciate my boyfriend’s change in mood, though, because the shopkeeper indicated that I should go next. He looked closely at my face, and I noticed briefly that his lips were surrounded by small, round scars, like his skin had been pierced by thick needles. It was not a pleasant sight, so I looked away as soon as I could.

“I… I…” I could try to tell him the secrets that my friends did not know, hoping it would be too difficult for him to guess right. But if I did it, he still had a fifty percent chance to randomly guess correctly. I had to say minor things, but I struggled to come up with them. And I was a terrible liar anyway, so I ended up making the lie pretty obvious just by my tone of voice. “I play viola and I… I never had sex in the school toilet.”

“Rest assured, you’re not the only one who appreciates a quick shag in public places.” The shopkeeper’s answer was to wink to me and Jean. Any leftover good feelings about his attitude towards Oliver evaporated. He had to be a real-life Sherlock Holmes to figure out what Jean and I did. That, or there was something more to him that we would never have guessed. “Next!”

Helena was his chosen target. “I want to punch you and I want to throw your body under a truck.”

The shopkeeper was not fazed by her open threat. “I’ll say the second one is the lie, because you wish you could throw my body under a truck rather than want it, but you are preparing to punch me as soon as I stop paying attention.” Helena cursed. The shopkeeper had got it right.

Charlie was called next. He said, “The security guards followed me around the clothes shop today, and I ate blueberry muffins for lunch.”

“You are not the kind of person who eats junk for main meals, though I wouldn’t be surprised if you had muffin for dessert.” Everyone stared at Charlie, probably trying to imagine why he would be followed around by security in a shop. I decided not to say anything, even though I knew exactly why.

It usually happened to me too.

“I broke my arms playing basketball and I love someone who doesn’t love me back,” Henry said when his turn came. The shopkeeper stared at him sympathetically for a bit before answering. “I don’t think the person you love would ever be able to love you back. It’s not personal, though. Don’t blame yourself.”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop suddenly. Henry and Jean’s faces drained of all colour and they stared at the shopkeeper in palpable fear. Little by little, their feelings spread to us, until we were all mortified, watching every movement of the shopkeeper as if he were about to kill one of us.

“Guys, you can relax. I’m not here to harm anyone. We’re just playing a game.” The shopkeeper turned to Luce. “Shall we carry on?”

Luce seemed uncertain if she wanted to speak or not, but after a while she decided she might as well play. “I have wonderful parents and wonderful neighbours.”

“Your neighbours are horrible,” the shopkeeper deadpanned. He turned to Hannah.

“I’m not afraid of you. I think you’re friendly.”

“What am I doing wrong?” the shopkeeper asked, seemingly hurt. “I really want to be your friend, why don’t you think I’m being friendly?”

“You’re scaring the shit out of my friends. Get to the point soon or we’re leaving,” Hannah answered. Impressively, she did sound like she was not afraid of him. Despite how horrible she usually was to me, I had to admire her at that point.

“Fine, fine, I’ll leave you alone as soon as your friend plays the game. Do it right this time, ok?” The shopkeeper turned to Jean. They stared at each other again, until Jean gave up.

“You remind me of someone. I want to go home.”

“Oh, another tricky one! You’re very good at this!” the shopkeeper smiled at Jean. “I think it’s unfortunate you can’t quite remember where you’ve seen me before. Your life would’ve been much easier if you could. As for wanting to go home… the only reason it’s a lie is because you think you don’t have a home. That’s why you run away all the time. But once you figure out where your home is, you’ll want to go there.”

Nobody spoke for a while, letting the shopkeeper’s words sink in. Like every time Jean mentioned something about his mysterious past, the air around us became heavy with the sense of foreboding. It was like we were glancing at a big, ugly secret, something we were not meant to know. Jean’s face went pale once again, and he fell on his knees. No matter what we did, we could not snap him out of it, until the shopkeeper took him in his arms. It was a wonder that he could lift Jean at all, since he was just as thin and frail-looking as the blond. He carried Jean to a chair at the back of the shop and sat him there.

“You can look for clothes if you want, I’ll take care of him,” he told us, smiling with the (by now) usual creepiness. I was not sure leaving Jean with him was a good idea, but none of us seemed able to object. Hannah stepped forward, but gave up whatever it was she wanted to do as soon as the shopkeeper stared at her. “Remember, the better your reasons for wanting my clothes, the cheaper they will be!”

None of us was in a mood to look for Halloween clothes, but we did not feel like we could leave the shop either, so look for clothes we did. Eventually I found a green shirt that looked like it had been chewed by three varieties of animals and trousers that had weird fish tales sewn to the rim. I decided I was going to be a merman who had been attacked by a shark. Once I had decided on my outfit, I tried to find the shopkeeper to tell him my reasons and see how cheap he could make the clothes, but he was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Jean. Alarmed, I called Hannah and we tried to look for them without alerting the others. If Jean was in danger, we better not make it too obvious that we were trying to save him.

We looked everywhere, until finally, after getting tangled in a section of the shop that sold old, moldy capes, we found a door that probably led to the storage part of the shop. It was not locked, so we went in.

The lights were not on and there seemed to be no windows around. Everything was dark and covered in fabric. We tried to go forward, but we often slipped on pieces of clothes that had fallen to the ground.

Someone screamed.

We tried to hurry, walking as fast as we could while touching our way forward. We did not stop to think that it would be impossible to go back on our own. Hannah might not have been scared of the shopkeeper, but she seemed pretty scared for Jean now.

“He’s very good at surviving shit,” she whispered. It was a kind of reassurance that rang hollow as we tried desperately to reach Jean. The screams became more frequent and louder. There was no more doubt they belonged to Jean.

The screams seemed to be coming from another room. We could see the door ajar because it was the only bit of light in the whole place. Jean was there, and so was the shopkeeper. We were not sure what we could do apart from storming the place and hope he would somehow let Jean go in peace instead of attacking us, so we did not think twice before barging in.

(...)

I immediately wished I had not done that. What we saw in the room made me feel sick: Jean had been handcuffed face-down to a bed. He was completely naked and all his scars seemed to glow red in the room’s strange light. The shopkeeper was kneeling on the bed, holding Jean’s body by his hips. There was no question about what they were doing, and as soon as I realised it I ran out of the room, though I was still close enough to hear them talking inside.

“Oscar is very easy to scare,” Jean said.

The shopkeeper laughed. “It does seem to be the case,” he agreed.

“What are you two doing?” Hannah asked. She sounded bored and unimpressed, as if she had caught Jean in this kind of situation plenty of times before.

“Your friend wanted to know where he knows me from, so I thought I should give him a clue,” the shopkeeper answered. If tying Jean to a bed and fucking him like a desperate animal were ‘clues’, I definitely did not want to picture the solution.

“He said I won’t be able to figure it out no matter what he does, but it’s still fun to try,” Jean agreed. He sounded happy, not at all hurt or traumatised. “I haven’t been this well-fucked since that time I met you and your sexy drug dealer. That was quite a night…” he presumably told Hannah. She said nothing. “I mean, he gave me scars and everything!”

Something nasty made its way up my throat. I could not stop it, and so I fell on my knees and proceeded to cover the floor with my partially digested lunch. The others heard the noise and came to check on me (or at least Hannah and a partially naked shopkeeper did, Jean was still handcuffed to the bed).

“Oh, someone has a weak stomach, I see. You can clean yourself with anything you find, I’ll get you some water once we get back to the shop,” the shopkeeper said, touching me on the shoulder. I jumped at the feel of his hand, and somehow managed get back on my feet while avoiding the vomit.

“Don’t touch me,” I said, feeling the nausea returning. The shopkeeper, his shop, and even Jean, had become part of a strange world where I definitely did not belong. My head was spinning because of the things I heard and saw; I lost my sense of balance just as I tried to walk away from everything. Thankfully Hannah was there to hold me. She caught me by my arms and helped me go back to the shop.

“How can you act so normal?” I asked her as she dragged me along the dark room. I had no idea how she knew where we were going, I was just barely conscious that we had left Jean behind. If I tried to listen really carefully, I could probably still make out his screams.

“I’ve seen worse,” Hannah replied, dryly. Even as she helped me, she acted like I was nothing more than an unpleasant louse in her hair. “I used to be horrified of the stuff Jean did too, but I got used to it eventually.”

I decided not to comment on that. I did not want to encourage my brain to try to imagine what could be worse than what I already knew about Jean. Hannah thankfully did not say anything else until we were back in the shop.

The rest of my friends had already finished choosing their clothes, and thus had obviously realised that the four of us were missing. Henry was the first to spot us once we came through the backdoor. He understandably panicked once he spotted me being half-carried by Hannah.

“Oscar! Are you ok?” He hurried to my side and tried to help me stand, but he gave up as soon as I started putting too much weight on his still-healing arms. “What happened? Where’s Jean?” The others started to gather around us. I was in no condition to speak, so Hannah gave them the news.

“Jean is fine. He’s doing some business with the shopkeeper, but they should be back in a bit, and then we can all get out of here.”

“You look sick, Oscar. Did something happen?” Oliver asked. Thankfully my clothes had stayed out of the way of my flying vomit, but I still felt (and therefore looked) horrible.

“Nothing he won’t be able to forget,” Hannah answered for me. I really hoped she was telling the truth, but I had a feeling it would not be as easy as that.

Thankfully Jean and the shopkeeper returned soon afterwards. Jean was in very good spirits and seemed very pleased with himself. The skin around his wrists was red and bleeding a little, but he masterfully avoided all of Henry’s questions about how they became that way. The shopkeeper told us to queue at the check-out and, one by one, asked our reasons for picking the clothes we wanted. Like Jean, he was in a very good mood, so he ended up giving ridiculously low prices to everyone. I was the last one in the queue. After he charged me five pounds for the shirt and trousers, he leaned close enough to whisper in my ear “I was trying to help him. He’ll need a lot of help soon.”

“What are you talking about?” Why did he have to tell it to me? Why not Hannah instead? She knew a lot more about Jean than I did, and she did not feel sick thinking about his creepy past.

“Just help him as much as you can, and tell your friends to do the same.” The shopkeeper got away from me and addressed our whole group. “It was good to meet you all. Have a good life, and come back if you ever need more clothes for special occasions!”

Jean was the only one who answered. He blew the shopkeeper a kiss and dragged the rest of us out. He seemed disappointed our visit to Eight Legs of Wonder had come to an end, and he complained about it until we arrived at the train station and went our separate ways.

I desperately tried to forget the shopkeeper’s last words to me. I did not want to be involved in Jean’s life more than I needed to. I did not want to be dragged in whatever horrors he was hiding from his past. Yet, the more I tried to forget everything, the more vivid the memories became. It was as if I did not have a choice, like someone else had decided it was to be my role, and forgot to ask me about it.

But I did not believe in this kind of thing. It was the only belief of father’s that I never thought to question.

It is a shame that, ultimately, he was wrong about this too.