Day 1?The most important right an Englishman has is his freedom. It was granted to him through ancient institutions, the oldest and noblest of which are nearing a millennium old. It is what makes people envy the English. As an Englishman herself, Amy holds dear what has been given to her, and she has sought to protect the privileges she’s been granted. Because they have to be protected; protected from her own mind, failing her, telling her that she is a woman, and not the man she was born and trained to be.

  It is quite funny — even in the situation she finds herself in today, she still considers her mere delusions a greater risk to her freedom than the chain around her left leg and the iron bars opposite her.

  Perhaps it is, in the long-term. But that is a long-term that Amy cannot afford to consider at this moment, not when she is as completely and devastatingly stuck as she is. She has nothing. No food, no water, no clothes. She is restrained to the wall in a manner that leaves her unable to even touch the door that could lead her to freedom, and the only thing she can touch other than herself, the bump caused by the impnt in her belly or the damp and cold stone walls surrounding her is a simple bucket on a chain.

  She’s fairly sure it is what qualifies for a toilet in this establishment. It might be more hygienic than the filth which is to be found in the men’s toilets in pubs and bars across Exeter, but Amy would still hope to be above pissing into something as lowly as that. Amy would almost be insulted by it, if that wasn’t the exact way they wanted her to feel.

  Yet she is, a little, because whoever captured her can’t even manage to get the vibe correct. Her cell is painfully well-lit due to an LED strip stuck in the ceiling of the hallway. It illuminates her in all her fws, and she’s not seen it dim even a little in the hours she’s spent in this cell.

  Amy have expected that a lonely cell — especially one as clearly meant for torture as this one is — would come with an incandescent light bulb. She imagines it hanging from the ceiling, dimmed like it’s at the end of its short, miserable life, the bulb flickering intermittently as it slowly but surely burns itself into its own inevitable doom.

  But no, they couldn’t even give her so much as mood lighting for her sufferings. They’re following energy efficiency standards, and that might be the most information she will be able to get: it’s a modern operation of some kind, or at least a modernised one, rather than an abandoned abattoir somewhere in the suburbs of a dump like Bradford or Birmingham. And that is all of the painfully little information that Amy has access to.

  Amy hates it when she doesn’t know. Because knowledge is power, and power is control. And whilst, sure, it is nice to have control over others — Amy will not pretend to be above such simple masculine pleasures — it is equally important for her to have control over herself. She needs to repress her urges. If Amy fails that, she would unquestionably lower herself to a position in society that would be insulting for anyone of her talents to sink to.

  She was not made for womanhood, and the sooner her mind would understand that, the better.

  Day 2?Amy might not know where she is, but she can draw yet another conclusion as of today. A bottle of water has been deposited in her cell. That means she is not here alone, some of the time, at least, as there is a captor who will visit her from time to time. It takes away a few of the options she had kept open in her mind, like that she had been left to slowly die of hunger, thirst or exposure.

  No, they intend to keep her alive, which means they want something from her.

  Again, she is unable to come up with expnations for this situation beyond her wildest guesses. She’s not particurly important, at least not yet, and she’s not particurly wealthy either. Amy very much knows she isn’t part of that css, as she’s rubbed shoulders with the people tasked and prepared to run this country in the past. The difference in wealth between her and them isn’t measured in multiples, but in magnitudes.

  Despite her inability to expin her situation, Amy continues to ponder it. It is normal for a person to do so when they have been left with no option but to think, for ck of other things to do. People go insane in situations like these, if exposed to them for too long, but Amy knows that deep thoughts are the best prevention of such outcomes. At least, they are for those blessed by birth to be capable of them, unrestricted by the emotionality so typical of the opposite sex.

  There is something else she can conclude: the bottle of water is out of reach. Sure, they are on her side of the iron bars, but her ankle chain leaves her immobile enough that she can’t walk over and pick it up.

  No, what Amy would have to do is get down on her knees, get down on her ft chest and crawl towards it until she can pick it up.

  Whoever decided to capture Amy should learn one thing: she will not crawl. She will not submit to humiliation like that. She will not allow herself to be filmed groveling on the floor for a simple bottle of water — because yes, she can see the cameras that have been filming her for the past two days.

  Amy isn't the kind of woman they think she is.

  Day 3?Nine hundred ninety.

  Nine hundred ninety one.

  Nine hundred ninety two.

  Nine hundred ninety three.

  Nine hundred ninety four.

  Nine hundred ninety five.

  Nine hundred ninety six.

  Nine hundred ninety seven.

  Nine hundred ninety eight.

  Nine hundred ninety nine.

  One thousand millilitres in a bottle of water, which she still doesn’t want. Indeed, Amy would rather have…

  Nine hundred ninety nine.

  Nine hundred ninety eight.

  Nine hundred ninety seven.

  ***

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  … Zero millilitres of water. Thank you very much.

  Day 4?Not drinking water might have been too much of an ask, Amy realises. It’s basic biology really: humans are mostly made of water, and all of the useful bits thus require water to continue functioning, and some of them have the ability to make her crave it.

  It’s why she’s really thirsty right now.

  It makes sense too. An old rule of thumb she was taught was that humans could live for three days without water, and for three weeks without food. Amy is now on a vague fourth day in her cell. She can’t measure this accurately for the ck of tools to do so. There are no clocks and she is pretty sure that the light doesn’t dim at any point of the day. All Amy can go off is that she’s fallen asleep three times now.

  Her thirst really is insatiable. She needs to get the bottle.

  Amy gets on her knees and shuffles forwards, then gets down on her chest, and crawls even further, so the tips of her fingers can reach the bottle. She can’t quite reach them yet — she shows a middle finger to the cameras above her, both to show her disapproval and to show her disrespect — but manages to stretch a little further.

  Her hands grazed the bottle at first, but a second try just made her topple the bottle, definitely pushing it out of her reach.

  Great. She has humiliated herself and didn’t even get a bottle of water out of it. Instead, she is left equally thirsty, but newly degraded and out of hope.

  It must have been the intention all along. Bastards.

  And yet, the bottle started to roll. Reluctantly at first, then apologetically, and finally at some reasonable speed as the slight downward angle of the cell delivers it into Amy’s p, who drinks until the whole of the bottle is empty.

  Day 5?“Good morning, sleepyhead.” A woman calls out from the other side of the iron bars. Amy doesn’t flinch — at least, she tried really hard not to, given she was caught off-guard — opens her eyes, and stands up as tall as she can. Adopts good posture, crosses her arms, and tries to not allow her growing migraine to be worsened by the bright lights above her captor’s head.

  “Just thought I’d take a moment to check in on you.” The woman’s eyes scan Amy’s body — she’s aware she’s on show right now, and doesn’t really care. They can feast their eyes on it as much as they want: she never wanted this body, and it most certainly isn’t hers. It’s an ugly compromise between the delusion that is Amy and the reality of living in a male-dominated world at best.

  The woman in front of her compares much more favourably: she has lovely long red hair, blue eyes that have been made to pop through careful make-up, a cute little nose, a feminine jawline. She looks like she is about the same height as Amy, perhaps a little taller, which is uncommon for cis women — 93.8% percent would be shorter than Amy — and most strikingly, she’s wearing a bck and white maid uniform. A pretty one, though, Amy must admit.

  Useful too. Amy can comment on it to put the woman on the back foot.

  “Come to clean up rubbish, missy?” She asks in her most annoying voice.

  “I wouldn’t exactly describe you as rubbish.” She responds. “Though your behaviour certainly has been.”

  “If you’re not here to clean and would rather just have a smart mouth, maybe you could make yourself useful and get me out of here. If you do, I might not have my family’s wyers ensure you spend the rest of your miserable little life living at one of Her Majesty’s oldest and most uncomfortable facilities.” Amy had little intention of abstaining from that: if nothing else, women like the one in front of her needed putting down a bit. They’re getting too uppity for their own good.

  “I fear that isn’t an option.” She once again looks at Amy, all of Amy, with the same puzzling face, as if she’s still trying to figure her out.

  “Maybe you should do your job, then, and get me a meal.” Amy says with the most disgust she can manage to insert into her tone. Which is a lot: she’s spent quite a few years training to be an actor, and she knows how to py around with her voice. A useful skill in situations like this.

  “I am doing my job.” The woman responds, copying Amy’s bitchy attitude and leaning into it in an attempt to hide the fact that her voice cracked, with what must have been an old masculine one sneaking through ever so slightly. She looks uncomfortable: whatever she expected from Amy, clearly it wasn’t what Amy was doing right now.

  Amy presses her advantage.

  “Rare for a tranny to have a job. Is the creepy old man you work for the only one desperate enough to hire someone of your kind?”

  The woman gres at Amy. Clearly, she’s struck a nerve, because a cis woman would be confused: only a trans woman would be left speechless after being clocked that quickly. Especially one so desperate to pass as this particur hon is.

  Maybe she underestimated her, though. Amy wasn’t ready for the next thing her captor would say, especially not the sly little grin it came paired with.

  “‘Your’ kind? We both know that the aforementioned category — though I would describe it in much nicer terms — would include you just as much as me.”

  She’s got to be quick: don’t give them any reason to think that her intuition could be correct. “Clearly, obviously, I’m a man. I mean, look at me. I’ve got a penis and all. Maybe you’re confused by the modern ideology that insists a woman can have a penis, but a true transsexual would know better.”

  Too quick: she’s left multiple obvious avenues to be confronted with there in her desperation to deny the accusations. Her old rhetoric teacher would be very disappointed in her.

  “Would you describe yourself as a true transsexual?” The woman asks, looking at her in with a predatory smile, because she knows she’s already won. Which she wouldn’t have, unless she is privy to certain information that she shouldn’t be able to find.

  “Ew. No.” Amy rolls her eyes. “I have no interest in being a— a woman.” She tries to put as much venom as possible into the st word. Not hard: she does hate women with a passion. Rather a shame, then, that she was cursed with the inclination to be one.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Quite. I wouldn’t want to be associated with women. Especially modern women: they no longer know their pce in society. Women are meant to be submissive — your dress reveals you as just that — and I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but submission is not something I am keen to take to.”

  “Submission mightn’t be, but you would enjoy femininity, wouldn’t you, Amy?”

  The name hits her like an asteroid, wiping out all life on earth. Or in her case, any doubt that they are privy to information that they shouldn’t be. Because she’s never identified herself with that name, the one she limits merely to her self-conception. Sure, she’s dropped it a few times, only in conversations with the very few other girls suffering from gender dysphoria she’s found worthy of bothering to socialise with. The others who know that their condition is shameful, disgusting, and one that they must never enable. The others with whom she has shared her struggles when the temptation did get too much to bear at some points, and who then reminded her of why they could never even attempt something as vile and unnatural as transition.

  Her best friends.

  “That is not my name. My name is—”

  The woman interrupts her. “Ms. Amy Finch. Born on the third of July, 1997, at St. Michael’s Hospital in Bristol. Attended Bristol Grammar School from 2001 until 2015, her parents paying tuition totaling nearly ￡180,000 for the privilege of sending their little girl there. Excelled in the performing arts, including acting and singing, forgoing the more traditionally masculine option of sports; I wonder why. Received excellent marks despite spending a disgusting amount of time on various repulsive forums, including the /v/ and /lgbt/ boards on that vile little website of yours.”

  “If you think that’s proof of anything—”

  Her captor continues. “Went on to study Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Exeter University. She continued her involvement in acting and singing, joining the drama society and the student choir. Amy also got involved in the debate club and local Tory society, running to be the chair of the tter but losing that race because she is — and it must be said, as it is what her peers thought — a total weirdo. She lost to a repulsive man from a proper public school — much more suitable to the party than someone of her lower standing — and did so despite winning the majority of the male vote."

  “But unsurprisingly we could verify just one woman who voted for her to be the local chair, and that woman was Amy herself. She really didn’t ingratiate herself amongst her own kind! So she made an angry post about her loss to her little friend group, implying the man she lost to regurly masturbates to himself whilst dressed as a woman, and indicating that he should just ‘troon out’ if he’s going to be like that—”

  Yeah. Yeah. Amy gets it. They’ve done their research. An incredible amount of it, to a point they probably know more about her than she knows about herself. She knows for a fact that they’ve done a blood test, for example, and wouldn’t be surprised, at this point, if they had enough bckmail to ruin her life if she did try to escape.

  There’s plenty she did that could be used against her.

  Fuck. They have the logs.

  “Her parents were quite proud of her when she graduated top of her css just a few months ago. Amy’s future in the Conservative party seemed quite bright. Perhaps not in Exeter, but certainly elsewhere. Of course, that was until the local student press wrote an article on the extremely misogynist views held by one of the most prominent members of the local Tory society. Amy’s parents weren’t very proud when they heard about that. It didn’t stop them from being devastated when they heard their te daughter had disappeared and presumably ended her own life. It’s a shame, really: they didn’t even get to know Amy because she insisted that she was a man. We’ll keep the fact you’re alive a little secret between us, okay?”

  The woman in front of her has absolutely zero reason to be telling her the truth. She’s been decred dead? It’s more likely that she is lying in an attempt to break her resistance and to get something out of her. She isn’t sure what they’d want — she doesn’t even have access to her family’s wealth — but she isn’t going to give them anything.

  “That doesn’t work on me, you know.” She spits out.

  “Oh, darling, it doesn’t have to. As long as something does. We have got the benefit of time on our side. And that means I can say with absolute certainty that you will, eventually, come to see our point of view and agree that we did the right thing.”

  “What even is that point of view?” Amy gres. It’s probably some total bullshit, but at least she’s got someone to talk to right now, and discussing vague ideas is a much more comfortable position for her to be in than discussing her own gender identity.

  “That there shouldn’t be any pce in society for the man that you pretended to be. Their privilege, the way they held themselves in retion to that privilege, their particurly disgusting views on the roles of women, their incomprehensible opinions on transitioning and their hatred of trans women must be utterly erased and repced with more wholesome alternatives—”

  Amy rolls her eyes. They can fucking try. She’s correct on all counts. Able to see the degeneracy of society and comprehend the proper position of women within it despite the fact that she is — regrettably — one of those. At least she still maintains the intellect necessary to have that understanding, unlike the woman across from her.

  “—and perhaps most importantly— Give me a moment.” The woman walks around a corner, grabs a rge pstic bag, and removes from it a number of items that Amy hates the instant she sees them. Her captor then opens the cell door, holding a taser in her right hand and aiming it at Amy as she enters, squats, and leaves the items on the floor for Amy to presumably use.

  “Most importantly, we believe that Ms. Amy Finch ought to live as what she is. A woman. And that is our job to elevate her to that greater pne of living, rather than allowing her to wallow in her misery and self-hatred for the rest of her life. These points are non-negotiable to us.”

  Amy looks at the bra, knickers, maid uniform and leggings id out on the concrete in front of her. They’re very much non-negotiable to her as well. She’s never going to wear any of that garbage.

  “If you cooperate with the programme and complete your extensive rehabilitation, your freedom shall be restored.”

  Amy will not cooperate. “I’d rather die.” She retorts.

  “That,” Her captor says gravely. “will not be an option. You will comply, and see your freedoms restored, or you shall be coerced into complying until you do.”

  “I’m not wearing this garbage.” Amy wants to kick it away, but finds her ankle chain too short to do that.

  “You will. Eventually.”

  “I think you’ll find that I won’t.”

  She rolls her eyes dismissively. “You’ll be missing out on a lot if you do not comply with this programme.”

  “Being a disgusting little tranny? I think I can miss that.” Amy puts on her most confidently rebellious face.

  “You must be hungry, aren’t you?”

  Is this woman really going to py it like that?

  “Given that you think it’s a woman’s job to bring you food when you demand it, it’s only fair to expect you to act like more of a woman before you receive it. If you wish to eat, just put on these clothes, and I shall be sure to bring you a meal.”

  Yeah, she is going to py it like that. And that means the situation hasn’t necessarily developed to Amy’s advantage. But Amy will weather the hunger, the cold, and the misery. Like they said, death is not an option, so they must be bluffing. They just want to intimidate her.

  And that means she’ll outst them. Easily.