Title: murdering the girl i used to be
Fandom: Original Fiction
Rating: Teen
Length: 444 words
Content notes: surgery, body horror, menstruation, gender dysphoria, mentions of sexual & verbal abuse.
Author notes: For Challenge 214: Murder.
Summary: About being trans and not having the best mother.

"you have nice tits," the void tells me, and i stare back at her, unblinking. and maybe i laugh, maybe i thank her, maybe i try not to cry. my skin is open at my chest even though top surgery is years and years away from me. my skin is open at my chest and i want to throw my breast tissue at the void and scream that i don't want it.

"you shouldn't take them off," the void tells me in the same tone she calls me a disgusting piece of shit. in the same tone she laughs at me for mentioning i'm trans everyday. in the same tone she doesn't correct herself when she calls me a she. i would tell her — i would tell her it's my body, not hers, but she wouldn't listen, so i stay quiet.

"it's just a phase," the void tells me when i tell her i'm a man. i bleed every month and it feels like clawing my uterus open and having an at-home hysterectomy. i bleed every month and it feels like i'm being murdered on the course of five days. i bleed every month and what we call dysphoria is ripping me apart like i'm the letter my ex sent me.

"you're too feminine to be a boy," the void tells me. and i know i'm not; i'm androgynous if anything. and i know she says this just to make me miserable, to argue. and i know she wants to make me angry, because i always defend myself even when i shouldn't.

and the void is the woman who gave me life, unblinking and unable to accept her daughter isn't her daughter but her son. and the void is the woman who believed me when i told her my cousin touched me when i was just a kid. and the void is the woman who screams at me and calls me useless and a waste of time.

"when i start testosterone," i tell the void. not if i ever start testosterone, because i know this isn't leaving, this feeling of being wrong in my skin isn't leaving. and with every step i take — saying aiden when cashiers at fast food places ask for my name, buying men's clothes and buying a binder — with every step i take i feel like i'm murdering vicenta. with every step i take i'm killing the daughter of the void, i'm killing the girl the world still knows me as.