In God’s Image (Part 7)
Religious school and LGBTQ subversion — A Story
Dr. Gusev was running late, so I helped myself to some of the saltwater taffy in the reception area. Callie liked the pink and blue ones. Whenever I encountered a dish of the stuff, I would take some for her.
Now that she was dead, she could not enjoy the taste. I saved some pink and blue ones for later and took a green one for now.
It wasn’t sour apple.
It was cherry, of all things. Cherry. Was it the flavor or the color that was wrong? I found a yellow piece. Banana-flavored. An orange and white piece tasted like the creamsicles Callie and I enjoyed in the summer. God, whatever I am, please make sure Callie didn’t die in vain, I prayed silently as the receptionist showed me in.
“Sorry for being late. I had to visit someone in the ER.” Dr. Gusev took his seat and noticed that I tried to discreetly throw away my taffy wrappers. “I have some news that you need to hear. It’s not exactly going to be pleasant, but you’ll be better off for hearing it.”
What is he going to tell me, that I’m an early onset paranoid schizophrenic?
“You’re showing signs of depression stemming from religious trauma.”
“Trauma?” What I went through was hardly traumatic.
“Trauma. When religion is misused, it can eat someone from the inside out.” He slid them towards me. I skimmed one of the pamphlets.
“What about my teachers or my parents?”
“I’ll try my best to work with them. Can you have them come in next time you see me?” He took another deep breath. “Moreover, you have gender dysphoria. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have deliberated your diagnosis, but I needed to be absolutely sure about my conclusion.”
I didn’t hear anything else after that. This had to be some kind of sick prank. I was transgender? No, that couldn’t be right. I knew I was a girl. I knew I had a uterus, ovaries, XX chromosomes, and more estrogen. Transgender people are the ones who can’t accept their biology, right? Pamphlets in hand, I went home. My mom was home from her exercise class, so I slipped her the pamphlet. She read it thoroughly like it was a legal document.
“Where did you get this?”
“From the therapist.”
She didn’t say another word. I went back up to my room and started packing a black messenger bag that was in the back of my closet for some reason. I added some toiletries, a pair of jeans that I liked but my mom said weren’t feminine enough, and a few shirts that I liked, but didn’t wear often, for some reason. I was acting on pure instinct. I also packed a little notebook and counted every cent I had. Around two hundred dollars: enough for a bus out of town, a week in a dodgy motel, and a couple of decent meals.
I called Lana and told her my plan. She told me that my plan was good, but I would need some sort of marketable skill so that I could support myself in college and pay tuition if my parents cut me off. Like what? I couldn’t pinpoint any special talent that I had, especially nothing that I would think of as marketable. I told Lana that I tried to make a webcomic once, but it was just me messing around and moaning about school. She even asked how the therapy was going and I laughed about how I was supposed to have ambitions if I didn’t even know what should be in my pants.
“Well…do you have any name ideas? I can’t call you ‘kid' forever.”
“Can you call me Em as a placeholder?”
“Sure.”
“By the way…what got you into ethical hacking?” I could feel the hair on the back of Lana’s neck stand on end.”
“I don’t want to talk about that right now.”
I heard my dad’s car pulling into the garage, so I hung up. He looked happy, like he just received a promotion. Two things in life give him joy: my achievements in school and promotions at work. I went back to the LGBT helpline despite my fear of the weird answers.
At the other end of the line, I was called a couple of slurs and told that I should die. Isn’t this chat supposed to prevent suicide instead of encouraging it? I took screenshots just as I was redirected to the Genesis International website. That was weird. I tried to exit. No luck. I tried to shut off the computer. No luck either. I unplugged it. Still no luck. I listened to the distorted Morse code, this time in plain English:
NOT SAFE TIME TO RUN
NOT SAFE TIME TO RUN
NOT SAFE TIME TO RUN
NOT SAFE TIME TO RUN
NOT SAFE TIME TO RUN
As the Morse code was playing, I went downstairs and turned on the TV. There was another school shooting, but those seemed almost normal, and some sort of political thing that I didn’t understand. What I thought was a gore site photo of Callie showed up next, but it wasn’t a photo. It was a video of maggots crawling in and out of her mouth. The next shot showed her clouded eyes up close before everything went back to normal.
How am I going to explain the paranormal hacker situation to Dr. Gusev if it seems that I’m the only one who sees it?
