Be Myself! - 34. Of Curses and Apple Pies

Thanks Lisa for the editing!
Sorry for the long hiatus (again). I had some personal problems. I hope people still remember this story. 
On the day Oliver comes out to his classmates at school, Oscar has a strange dream. And then, just when everything seems perfect, an old enemy spoils the day...
Enjoy!

I woke up in a stable. My bed was nothing more than a pile of hay covered with a thin blanket that had as many holes in it as a block of Swiss cheese. I had no blanket, but the weather was warm. Around me, a tall, poorly-made wooden fence (plus a battered-looking gate) formed a rectangular containment area of no more than three square meters (ten square feet). My bed alone used about a quarter of that space, and everywhere else the floor was covered with hay and saw dust. In between the gaps in the fence I could just make out the shape of a cow to my left and a horse to my right. They were being kept in cells just like mine, and they did not seem happy about it.

At first I thought it meant I had become an animal too, but as I examined my own body I saw a human torso, legs, and arms. The only changes were that my skin had become white, and I was a lot smaller than I remembered being. Once all this information sunk in, it did not take me long to realise I was having a very vivid dream (so vivid I could smell cow and horse droppings everywhere). I had heard that people who realise they are dreaming become able to control their dream, so I decided to try it out. If only I could open the gate…

‘What do you think you’re doing, boy?’ an angry voice asked suddenly. I had barely reached the gate’s padlock; the voice cut through me like a sharp knife. For a moment I expected to see my father standing on the other side of the gate, but when I looked up I did not recognise the man in front of me. He was blond, tall like my father, but he had an unkempt beard and a scar on his cheek. His shirt was covered in bloodstains. ‘Stay away from us, you don’t belong out here. Eat your food.’ The man still sounded angry, but he seemed reluctant to approach me. He threw a dirty sack over the gate and left in a hurry, without looking back. I opened the sack and found two slices of stale bread. They tasted like they were made out of someone’s oldest, smelliest sock.

For a dream that I could control, it was surely a very boring one. No matter how much I tried, I could not open the gate. I spent most of my time talking to the cow and wondering if it would ever answer back. It was a dream, after all. Talking cows were allowed. But apparently this cow had not realised it.

A young man came to take the horse away, and completely ignored me. The guy looked about sixteen (maybe he was the angry man’s son), and his face was eerily familiar, though my dream state did not allow me to figure out who he reminded me of. When I tried to call for him, all I got was a dirty look and spit on my face.

During the rest of the day, I saw several people come by the stable and interact with the animals while pretending I did not exist. They looked like they all belonged to one single family: they were all blond and blue-eyed, their clothes had the same ‘home-made yet decent’ style about them (whereas I was wearing something that probably started life as a potato sack), and they spoke in a language I could not understand. For some reason, I had been able to understand the angry man just fine, but everyone else seemed to speak gibberish around the animals.

Maybe that was why the cow was not talking back to me. Maybe it only knew this gibberish language. If only I could learn it…

I tried to listen more to the people when they came, to see if I could make any sense of their words. Try as I might, though, I could not understand anything. I even tried to make up my own language to talk to the cow, but since it did not answer, I probably got the gibberish wrong. Time to change tactics: get the people to talk to me instead.

It proved a lot harder than it should, though. I knew it was all a dream; I knew it was all in my mind, but I could not bend the dream to my will. I could even feel the dream resisting my attempts to change its course. So, no matter what I did, and how loudly I tried to call for people, they kept ignoring me. They passed right in front of my ‘cell’, and the most I ever got from them was a look of deep disgust.

At the end of the day, the angry man came back and threw me another sack of sock-bread. He did not speak to me this time, and got away as soon as he could. I felt abandoned and lonely, and I tried to end the dream several times, but no matter what I did I could not wake up. Night fell, the stable was engulfed in darkness, and there was nothing I could do but sit in the hay pile that passed for a bed and stare at nothing.

Nothing ever happened. The hours passed, and the most exciting thing around me was the sound of animal droppings hitting the ground (though the smell afterwards was not so exciting). It was so boring I could not even sleep. I begged the dream to end, but even the dream was ignoring me. In this desperate state of boredom, I decided to bang my head against the gate and hope that either the pain would wake me up, or I would manage to break free from the ‘cell’ and get to explore my surroundings.

What happened, though, was that my banging made so much noise I woke up the entire family. After being ignored for the whole day, I was not expecting to see eight people march towards me at once. They carried a lantern each, illuminating the stable and enabling me to see their faces very clearly. The angry man was among them, and the other seven people were an elderly woman, four menacing looking teenagers, and two younger girls whose faces proved that there was no minimal age for extreme hatred. The family stopped in front of the gate, but dared not get any closer. The angry man shouted at me, but I could not understand his words. Soon his children were shouting too. I had no reason to think I would be able to make out anything other than their hateful tone, but the dream was probably bent on messing with my expectations, because this time around their voices sounded crystal-clear.

‘Cursed child! I hope you die!’

‘We never wanted you! Cursed!’

‘Your curse killed mum!’

‘Go to hell where you belong!’

‘We hate you!’

‘Cursed!’

‘Cursed!’

‘Cursed!’

Their shouting overwhelmed me. The animals in the stable began to stir and protest, but the family kept screaming at me until I backed off the gate and hid under my hay pile. It seemed to be the only place safe from the noise. Thankfully they did not linger for long after I was gone from their sight. I left my hiding place when I thought it was safe, only to find the elderly woman still standing by the gate.

‘It’s ok, dear. They’re gone,’ she told me. After a whole day of indifference and hatred, I was surprised to see her smiling. ‘Grandma has something for you.’ She opened the gate and put a plate on the ground. ‘Your favourite apple pie. Eat now.’

It took me a few moments to be sure it was safe to move and approach the elderly woman (‘grandma’, she said. Were all these people my dream-relatives?). She kept encouraging me, smiling and pointing to the plate. Finally, I decided to risk it and get the plate. It had one single slice of pie, which I ate hurriedly in case she changed her mind. Grandma took the plate from me when I was done, wished me good night, and left.

I thought now, surely, the dream could end. I had learned I was some sort of cursed child with a nice grandmother who gave me pies, and there was nothing else left for me to do but sleep. Surely once I fell asleep I would wake up in my own reality?

But before I could actually sleep, I heard another person approaching my ‘cell’. I did not recognise this man, but he smiled at me and opened the gate. ‘Come, boy. I’ve just paid good money for you, and you’re about to have the time of your life.’

And just when things were finally getting exciting, I was jolted awake by the alarm clock.

“Just five more minutes…” I heard Oliver grumble beside me on the bed. His hand slipped from under the covers and hit the snooze button in one precise motion. Then he went back to sleep like nothing had happened. Unlike him, I was already wide awake, and so spent the next four minutes staring at the ceiling, trying to remember details about my strange dream. By the time the alarm sounded again, though, all I got was that I had been a cursed child who liked apple pies, and a vague sense that my grandmother was nice.

Oliver hit the snooze button again, but I got out of bed anyway. At this rate, my boyfriend would be late for school. Today was Monday, the day he was supposed to come out as trans to his classmates, so I assumed his insistence on staying hidden under the covers had something to do with preparing a good mental defence for the day. I decided it was better not to bother him until it became really necessary.

I joined Oliver’s family at the breakfast table. We did mostly small talk until Oliver himself came by, his hair sticking out in all possible directions and his face still full of pillow marks. He seemed slower than usual.

“Hi all,” he greeted us in a half-dead tone and slumped his body on the chair next to mine.

“Hi, Oliver, did you sleep well?” Mr Viñas asked. Oliver glanced at him for a second before dropping his head like he was about to fall asleep on his plate.

“No. I don’t think sleep happened.” Oliver’s voice was dragging, his mouth seemed to move too slowly to articulate the words at the speed they were being spoken. “At all.”

“Oh, Oliver…” Mr Viñas reached towards his son, affectionately ruffling his hair. “Is there anything we can do for you?”

“How about pretending today is not happening and go straight to tomorrow?” my boyfriend suggested. His father sighed.

“How about I give you some extra blood sugar to wake you up? I’ll make you hot chocolate with marshmallows.” Mr Viñas left the table to do as he said, and so Ms Savage took over the task of improving her son’s mood.

“Are you anxious now? Or too tired to feel anything?” she gently asked him.

“Probably both, I don’t know. I just want this to be over.”

“It will be over soon. You’ll be fine,” Ms Savage reassured her son.

“I don’t know. What if they don’t believe me?” Oliver asked seemingly slightly more alert, now that the talking involved his coming out. Hopefully it was not just his creeping anxiety that was causing this change.

“Then the headmistress will have a busy day suspending all your classmates until they do,” Ms Savage answered. “She won’t let anyone hurt you. I trust her, and I think you can trust her too.”

“Yeah, but until she deals with the people who don’t believe me, I’ll still have to face them.” It looked like Ms Savage did not know what to say to that, but thankfully her husband arrived just then with a giant mug of hot chocolate for Oliver. He drank in silence while the rest of us finished our food. “Thanks, dad. It was yummy.”

“Do you want to eat anything else?” Mr Viñas asked.

“Not really, I’m full now. It was a lot of chocolate.” Oliver smiled slightly, and his father answered with an even bigger smile of his own. “I guess we should get ready to leave. I need to sort out the binder…” Oliver left the table hurriedly, and I followed after thanking his parents for the breakfast. When I entered Oliver’s room, he was halfway through the process of putting his binder on, trying to fit it over his head. His tiredness was probably affecting his motor coordination, because he usually did not take that long to figure out how to put on what was effectively a sleeveless shirt.

“Do you need any help?” I asked him, just as he somehow managed to put his right arm through the head opening and his head through the left arm opening.

“Maybe. I can’t believe I can’t even get this thing right!” I helped Oliver untangle from the binder and put it on again in the correct order. He squashed his ‘tumours’ (that was how he usually referred to his breasts) against his chest to make them look as flat as possible and closed the Velcro on his left side.

“I guess I need to get used to not breathing,” Oliver noted. He tried to breathe deeply in and out to see how much his ribs could expand. “Let’s walk slower today.”

“Sure.” We would have to leave a little earlier to make sure we were not late, but I did not tell Oliver that, in case it made him more stressed. “Let’s finish getting ready and go, then.” My school uniform was currently piled (along with Oliver’s) on my boyfriend’s computer chair under a weekend’s worth of still-usable-but-not-entirely-clean outfits, so getting to them required some digging. At least my uniform was easily recognisable among Oliver’s clothes because it was much bigger than his stuff. I took off my pyjamas and was standing only in my underwear when Sam marched into the room without bothering to knock. Oliver was also wearing only his underwear and the binder. I felt really embarrassed being caught in such a situation, but the siblings acted as if everyone was fully-clothed.

“Dad said you could do with some cheering up, so I want to give you something,” Sam said, trying to sound business-like formal, but failing because he was too cute for that (and because he could not really disguise his concern for Oliver, which made him even cuter in a way).

“What is it?” Oliver asked, eying his brother suspiciously.

“It’s a badge for The Manliest Big Brother. I was working on it while you guys were having breakfast.” Sam gave Oliver a handcrafted badge (really just a star-shaped piece of cardboard covered in golden paint and with a pin attached to the back) that read The Mainlest Big Broter (spelling mistakes and all). “Now you put it on your shirt and don’t forget that the people who really matter are the ones who accept who you really are. Those who don’t are just arseholes and you can kick their butts to make you feel better.”

Oliver actually laughed this time around, and Sam grinned triumphantly. I tried to feel glad that someone had been able to cheer my boyfriend up, and not get too hung up on the fact that it was not me who had done it. This whole time I had stayed silent because I did not know what to say to him. Hopefully it did not make me a terrible boyfriend.

When we finally left for school, Oliver had already proudly pinned Sam’s star badge on his jumper. He glanced at it every now and then, and he tried to pass an air of confidence when we parted ways for the first half of the morning. I no longer shared any classes with him, so I could not be there when the big moment came. Still, I wished him good luck and tried my best to concentrate in my own classes.

(...)

“So, how was it?”

“Did it go well?”

“Were your classmates arseholes?”

“How are you feeling?”

As soon as we saw Oliver approaching, my friends jumped on him to ask about his coming out. It seemed everyone was just as anxious about it as I was. Jean was the only one who did not bombard my boyfriend with questions. Instead, he stayed behind to cop a feel of my ‘behind’ for as long as he could get away with. I did not stay as close to Oliver as my other friends because, if it were me in his place, I would not like so many people so close to me at once, so I tried not to do the same with him.

“I think it went well,” Oliver told us. His cheeks were slightly flushed, but he seemed overall happy and relieved. “My classmates still remembered Charlie’s speech, so they asked if I was like her. I told them I just wanted to be seen as a guy, and they promised they would try to do it.”

“So nobody gave you crap about it?” Hannah asked. She looked like she was ready to murder anyone Oliver accused of treating him badly.

“Not so far. I got called the wrong name and pronouns a couple of times, but they apologised when I called them out on it.”

“It can take some time for people to get used to the change,” Luce noted. She stepped behind Oliver and began to massage his shoulders. My boyfriend groaned in pleasure, and his face reminded me of completely different (and much more intimate) times. Hopefully nobody else would realise Oliver’s massage-receiver face was identical to his orgasm face. I felt embarrassed for him (even though I knew something like this would never make him embarrassed). “It’s hard, it’s horrible, but people unfortunately need time to adjust.” Luce kept massaging him, making Oliver moan louder and louder as it went on. Luce did not seem to notice any erotic subtext in what she was doing, though.

“But if it has been a while and they’re still making the same mistakes, then you can see it as them not taking it seriously, and you can complain about it,” Charlie added. “But let’s hope it won’t get to that.”

“Yeah, let’s,” Oliver agreed. It was followed by another moan from the massage. “Holly shit, Luce, where did you learn to do this?”

“I used to bribe my brothers to do things for me in exchange for massages. I just got lots of practice,” Luce answered, grinning triumphantly.

“You’re really good! I don’t think I feel my shoulders anymore!” Oliver smiled, or at least tried to between one moan and the next. This whole thing was making me quite uncomfortable, but I tried to convince myself there was nothing wrong going on. This was not a sexual situation, neither Oliver nor Luce behaved like so, and even if they did, it was Oliver’s life and Oliver’s body and he had the right to do anything he wanted with them. Still, Oliver’s loud moans made me feel exposed. I felt like he was showing people a side of him that only I got to see, when we were alone in his bedroom. By being like this in front of everyone, it was as if he was showing our intimacy to other people.

“How about I make you moan like that?” Jean suddenly whispered in my ear. My face immediately heated up and I tried to show him how appalled I was by his suggestion without alerting the others.

“No! What are you thinking?” I shushed him, though Jean only grinned more.

“Aw, but it would be so fun! And it wouldn’t be your shoulder I would be touching, obviously…” Jean insisted. I could not walk away without the others realising something was going on, so I had to make him stop talking right there and then.

“Don’t! This is not the time or the place for that.”

“So there will be a right time and place in the future? That means you still want me to make you moan like your dear boyfriend over there. It’ll be an honour!” Jean’s hands discretely explored the area immediately below my waist. Rationally, I wanted him to stop, but his touch was making my reasoning slowly disappear in a fog of good feelings. Jean leaned over my back while his hands ‘explored’ the front of my body, and he whispered in my ear again. “And after all of this you can fuck my ass really nicely. We could even have some creampie fun…”

“Cream pie? Like the food? What?” I looked at Jean, trying to make sense of his food and sex idea. Was this his way to invite me to eat dessert with him once we were done?

“No, silly Oscar.” Jean’s ‘exploring’ hand became even more daring. I did not mean to, but I ended up letting out a short, embarrassingly agonising moan. Thankfully everyone else was still too entertained by Oliver and Luce to notice us. “The creampie I’m talking about is a completely different kind of pie. It’ll be my pleasure to show you.” Jean’s mouth moved from my ear to my neck and I had to bite my lip to stay silent. “For the record, though, if you ever invite me to eat pie, it has to be apple pie, or no deal.”

“Why apple pie?” I asked him, curious and thankful for the distraction. If he kept playing with my neck and nether region for any longer, it would probably be impossible to pretend nothing was happened.

“It’s my favourite. I love apple pies, though right now I think I want creampie more…”

I never felt so grateful to hear the bell signalling the end of the break.

(...)

The rest of the school day was relatively uneventful. During lunch, some of Oliver’s classmates came by to wish him good luck with his transition, but other than that, we did not hear any other comments about his coming out. As to be expected, this made Oliver leave the school a lot happier than when he came in. Throughout our journey home he turned into a talkative, enthusiastic companion, who stopped to point at silly things like colourful insects on walls and overgrown weeds on the sidewalk.

“Aren’t they cute?” Oliver asked me, referring to two butterflies that had landed on a tree branch just ahead of us. We were passing by a small park, which at this time of the day was full of school children hanging out after class, as well as a fair share of drunken men of dubious integrity.

“I guess…” I definitely did not share Oliver’s enthusiasm for insect life, though I did think he was cute for pointing it out. Oliver was about to say something else when a vaguely familiar voice shouted from behind us.

“Hey, look who it is! It’s the girl who thinks she can be a guy!” Oliver and I turned towards the voice. I recognised the young boy as the one who beat Henry up. He was standing barely ten feet from us, had his arms crossed over his chest, and stared at Oliver with clear hatred.

“Shut up! I’m not a girl!” Oliver shouted, though his eyes began to water. Even though the boy was smaller than me, what he did to Henry was enough to put me very much on edge. I tried to catch Oliver’s eye so we could run away together, but my boyfriend kept staring at the boy.

“Yes, you are! You think you can be a man just by saying you are one? That it’s that easy?” The boy got closer to us. I grabbed Oliver’s arm, but he did not let me move him away. He was about to cry, but he was also obviously angry. I, on the other hand, was more scared than anything else.

“Identifying as a man is enough! My identity is none of your business!” Oliver snarled. The two had started a shouting match, through which the boy was getting closer and closer to us.

“You’ll never be man enough. You’re girly, effeminate, and your boobs are so big no binder will ever be able to hide them! Nobody will take you seriously! Give up your silly dream before more people like you decide they can become guys too!” The boy was less than a foot away from Oliver now. Oliver kept staring at him, his whole face as red as his hair, his lips shaking in anger.

“Who do you think you are to tell me those things? What do you know about being a man?” Oliver retorted. On some level I found it impressive he did not seem scared, but mostly I feared for our lives at this point. The boy looked ready to strike Oliver and beat him senseless.

“I certainly know a lot more than you! I’ll show you what a real man is like!” Just as I feared, the boy punched Oliver in the face. My boyfriend stumbled and fell to the ground. The boy jumped on him, obviously intending to do to him what he had done to Henry. While all this was going on, my body became as heavy as stone. I was so scared I could not move or even shout for help. I could not turn away either. I was forced to watch as the boy punched Oliver’s face over and over again for what seemed like an eternity. I saw blood flying out of Oliver’s mouth, and I still could not move a muscle to help him.

But just then, when it seemed like Oliver would meet the same fate as Henry, an unexpected help arrived. Jean popped out of nowhere and jumped on the boy, grabbing him from behind by his shirt. The boy gagged, and Oliver used the opportunity to run towards me. I cradled him in my arms, checking the extent of his injuries. His face had been reduced to a bloody pulp and he did not seem able to talk or see much, but otherwise he seemed ok.

“Here you are! I had been looking all over the place for you!” Jean beamed, pulling the boy in a tight frontal hug. He sneakily immobilised the boy’s arms while doing so, ensuring he could not attack or try to run. “We need to finish what we started at the pizza place!”

“Get away from me, fag!” The boy tried to free himself, but Jean’s grip was too strong. “Go fuck your momma and leave me alone!”

“My momma is dead,” Jean deadpanned. His tone sounded so dark and serious it gave me goose bumps. He switched his tone to cheerful again on his next sentence, though. “And anyway, I don’t do women. I want your dick deep in my ass! You’re such a dickhead yours is probably huge!”

“Let me go! Or I’ll kill you!”

“I would like to see you try!” Jean seemed to be having fun with the struggling boy. Oliver was hugging me tightly, burying his face in my jumper as much as he could under the circumstances, so that he did not have to watch what was going on. “Many guys bigger and older than you have tried to kill me already; I’m not scared of you.”

“I’ll kill you! I swear!”

Jean rolled his eyes, sent the boy a pitiful look, and turned to me. “Oscar, take Oliver home or call an ambulance already. I want to go fuck in private, and you’re getting in the way.”

“You want to fuck him?” I pointed to the boy, who was still struggling to get away. As much as I did not like him, it was pretty clear he was not willing to participate in any sexual activity.

“Not really, I’m just showing him he’s not the hot stuff he thinks he is.” As if to prove his point, Jean hugged the boy even more tightly, effectively cutting his struggle. “He should stop hurting my friends, or he’ll really regret it.” Jean looked at the boy eye-to-eye, and his tone turned cold once more. “I think we both know who’s got the balls here. If you ever lay a hand on my friends again, I’ll find you, and I’ll show you things that you definitely don’t want to see.”

Jean threw the boy on the ground, away from Oliver and me. He landed on his butt and quickly got up. Without sparing us a second glance, he ran away.

“Thanks for your help,” I told Jean while still cradling Oliver. My boyfriend sounded like he was crying, but his face was so bloodied it was impossible to see any tears. “What are you doing here anyway?” Mr Smith’s house was far away from here; I did not think there could be any reason for Jean to come this way on a Monday afternoon.

“I’m meeting some friends at the park. We sometimes have fun around here,” Jean answered. I decided it was better not to ask who those friends were. “Get some first aid to Oliver, his face looks horrible.”

“Danks,” my boyfriend managed to say. He sounded like he was trying to be sarcastic, but his voice came in a whisper and his facial expression was non-existent, so it was hard to tell.

“You’re welcome. Go home, get some bandages and some ice, and you’ll look as good as new in the blink of an eye! Believe me, I know from experience!” Jean winked to my boyfriend. He sounded way too cheerful for someone who had just threatened the scariest kid I knew. “As for what that arsehole said about you not being manly enough, get your self-esteem in working order and it won’t be just Oscar’s sexiness you’ll have to worry about.”

Oliver tried to laugh, but it hurt his face, so he settled with hugging Jean instead. The blond patted him on the back and let his hand fall slowly and deliberately towards his ass. Oliver noticed this, and made an appreciative throat noise.

“It looks like my work here is done. I’ll go have my fun now. See you guys tomorrow!” Jean let go of Oliver and entered the park. He walked towards the group of drunken men, greeted them all with passionate kisses and groin grabs, and disappeared with them towards the bushes. Oliver and I turned our backs to the park, agreeing to pretend we had not seen any of that.

We decided to go home first, tell his parents what had happened, and ask them what to do next. Ms Savage and Mr Viñas were horrified by our story, and insisted on driving us to the closest Accident and Emergency hospital. When we got home again, it was nearly midnight, Oliver had a total of fifteen stitches distributed around his face, and Sam would not stop talking about all the bloody injuries he saw at the hospital.

“Hey, at least now I’ll have scars on my face too,” Oliver told me as we cuddled in bed. He was smiling as much as he could, considering that six of the fifteen stitches were sewn around his lips, and his cheeks had another three each (the last three were on his forehead), and for some reason it made me feel all warm and fussy. “You’re not the only scar-face around anymore.”

Considering the day’s events, I should be the one trying to make Oliver feel better. However, he somehow made it be that I was the one who ended up being comforted. I smiled at him too, and we fell asleep while still cuddling. I had no strange dreams.