Nosy detective

Carlton had always known that the profession of a private detective demanded courage — but not madness. There were monsters you should never poke, not even with a ten-foot pole; names that circulated the streets like prayers and curses all at once. And yet, faced with the promise of so much money, he accepted. He agreed to investigate the infidelity of Herrera’s wife — Herrera, the name that made even the hardest criminals lower their voices.

It was quick. Perhaps too quick. There was no cinematic chase, no dramatic shootout. Just an ordinary night, a path that seemed safe — until it wasn’t.

Herrera knew. He had always known.

The detective didn’t even have the dignity of resisting. When he woke up, strapped to a hospital bed that reeked of disinfectant and fear, he no longer owned himself. Surgeons moved around him with the cold efficiency of those who had done this a hundred times before. Subtle cuts, invisible molds, silent interventions that, little by little, dismantled what had once been Carlton. They didn’t ask for his consent. The answer had already been written in his sentence.

He lost weight. First in pounds, then in identity. In the fogged mirror of his cell, he watched his round face, his rough features, his calloused hands disappear. In their place, new, unsettling forms emerged: a delicate chin, fuller lips, lashes that seemed unreal, breasts that weighed strangely on his chest — every detail crafted with meticulous cruelty.

For months, he was bombarded with training sessions, behavioral lessons, practices he didn’t need to understand — only obey. After all, the show had to be complete. It wasn’t enough to change the body. Carlton had to be erased from within, too.

When they finally released him, he no longer knew whether it was an act of mercy or merely the final step of his punishment. They dressed him only in a worn trench coat and a black lingerie set that screamed tragedy with every forced curve.

It was a cold night, but the greater chill came from within, from the echo of all he had lost forever.

Nadine, they told him he was called now.

And as he crossed the streets back to the house that no longer felt like his own, one question persisted like a thorn in his shattered mind: how to explain to his wife that this strange, sensual, humiliated body carried the worn-out soul of the clumsy husband she once knew?

Or, perhaps, the crueler question: what if, all this time, what remained of Carlton had learned to love the new reflection?

In a city where no one is truly what they seem, who would dare blame him?


The key still fit the lock. A small detail that should have brought relief — but only made everything more painful. The home Carlton — or Nadine — had known seemed frozen in time: the worn rug at the entrance, the sweet scent of old coffee in the kitchen, the slightly crooked pictures on the walls.

Everything was in its place.

Except him.

The awkward click of his boots echoed on the wooden floors as he moved through the house. The lingerie, still hidden under the tightly fastened trench coat, was a cruel reminder of what he had become — or rather, what they had made him. Every step felt fake, choreographed for a stage he had never chosen.

Then she appeared.

The wife. The woman to whom he had promised love and protection, to whom he had sworn to come back every night as the same man who had left in the morning. Her eyes widened for a moment — shock, fear, perhaps disbelief. But there was no scream. No running. Only a heavy, dense silence where questions floated unspoken.

Nadine — or what was left of Carlton — stood there, motionless, feeling the silent judgment that burned deeper than any scalpel that had touched his body.

Explanations? How do you explain the inexplicable? How do you ask to be recognized when even you no longer know who you are? There was a thin hope for recognition, a fragile thread that snapped the moment the wife took a hesitant step back.

The home he had known was no longer his.

Maybe it never had been.

And as he stepped out the door once more, with the trench coat billowing in the cold night wind and his skin shivering under the weight of a new life, Nadine wondered if that journey — from man to woman, from detective to shadow — was, in a twisted way, a form of freedom.

Or was freedom just another lie he now had no choice but to believe?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Doing business

FeMMCorp (interactive caption [working again!])

Our New Bond: From Friend to Stepmother