Ransvestia

Jason moved about his room as if he were afloat on a mist. Familiar sights were viewed from a remove that was exhilarating but tempered with awe and wonderment. He fingered a model airplane that he and his father had spent hours building; it was as if it had all happened to someone else. As he walked, the gown moved sensually at his waist, the broad skirt swept about his legs. He felt each touch, felt truly alive for the first time.

At the mirror, he was again taken with his resemblance to Edith. He envisioned his hair a little longer, fancied a touch of make-up here and there and knew that he could, indeed be mistaken for her younger sister.

Sensing that he was in the grip of some new and mysterious compulsion, Jason struggled to grasp it completely. Bewilderment grew, for the complexities were too great for his young mind to comprehend. He could not cease groping as more questions materialized: What was the power that gave him a buoyancy and delight that he never knew until now? Why had not this peculiar sense of well-being ever come to him before? Who was struggling to be free inside him?

He was enthralled with the idea that he had become another person. Was this possible? Time lost meaning, idea chased idea while he struggled with this new puzzle of life.

The sound of Edith's car pulling into the driveway snapped the boy back into the present. In his fright, there was time to do nothing but snap off the light and scurry under the bedcovers before he heard his sister enter the house and start to climb the stairs.

Now he lies fully exposed to her gaze, the soft satin absorbing the coolness of the evening air, his deepest, innermost secret exposed to the one he loves more than all others in the world. His heartbreak deepens and the tear at the corner of his eye becomes fuller, fed from the well of abject despair that floods his soul. He dares not open s eyes. How can he ever look at Edith again?

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He senses another movement of her hand on the pillow beside him. It lifts the twist of satin ribbon that exposed his folly. It removes the tangle and gently re-ties the blow. Then, the hand softly smoothes the shimmering material beneath the shoulder support.

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