This is an exclusive extract from Adam’s forthcoming novel.

Dr. Mortley’s waiting room felt colder than ever, but she wasn’t sure if it was her body or the thermostat setting that was at the root of the chill down her spine. Frederica shivered while waiting on the aesthetically pleasing in that bland, grey, neoliberal Succession office room kind of manner but deceptively uncomfortable couch, surrounded by fellow trannies of varying degrees of psychosis similarly under the influence of less but still quite destructive levels of pharmacological annihilation. The doctor was taking on more patients than ever. Frederica noticed that some of them waiting were all looking at her, nodding, and even smiling as if to say “thank you.” It was clear that her patient privacy had been violated somehow. But it didn’t matter. She gave up her right to privacy a long time ago.

Mirrors were everywhere. Mirrors had become to Frederica what the guards were to the prisoners in Abu Ghraib. They didn’t just torture her. They laughed at her suffering. She didn’t understand how the trannies around her seemed to be, at least in some sense, OK. One of them was even fucking whistling!

Whistling smiling at ease in a reality of smoke fuck you whore I envy you and love you.

And being caught in the mirror in Dr. Mortley’s waiting room, Frederica was forced to star at the body that used to be Friedrich. SHE was staring right at her. And what stared back at her could not, despite the colossal levels of estrogen flowing in her blood, be described as ordinarily female. Beneath the gaudy wig, she was bald. All her body hair had fallen out, including her eyebrows. She looked like Divine, if Divine had been found washed on shore after drowning months ago. All her muscles were atrophied and anything that remained of Friedrich’s physique was buried beneath vast pockets of blubber at the mid-section, the joints, the neck. Frederica was learning to no longer care. The autogynephile in Friedrich that wanted to be a beautiful woman, or at least was aroused by the thought of being a beautiful woman, was dead. The greatest comfort that Frederica found in her corporeal predicament was the profound truth that this is exactly what she, or what he, deserved.

The nightmare of death, for Frederica, had been conjured in another way. For as much as it continued to elude her, it was her state of being. What she had become was too ill-defined to necessarily ascribe life to, you see? Let alone gender. Let alone sex. No longer man and certainly not close to woman. She wasn’t even sure if her body ran on the same hormonal compounds and chemical processes of those around her, including the transes. She was a project. She was the doctor Frankenstein’s monster. She was her own monster. She was HIS monster. And just like THE monster, she reflected a humanity that was suppressed, or perhaps had never existed at all in her treacherous and egomaniacal creator. She was the sentiment, the pain, and the guilt that Friedrich was incapable of feeling. And in this sense, she was very much alive. Perhaps, the nightmare of death then was the most alive that she had ever felt. She couldn’t just feel, she felt everything. His crimes. Her guilt. The fucking pain and sorrow of the world. She felt like an electric system that was overheating. It was all too much to fucking bare, and yet… It was beautiful, in a way.

I can face it all now, every second every moment I’m closer to peace with it all to reconciliation, to freedom? I doubt it. But I don’t deserve that…

The whistling and weirdly happy tranny looked at Frederica as if she wanted to talk. Just a month ago, this social cue would have made Frederica nearly collapse in disdain and wretched anxiety, but as of now she was warmed to the idea of communication. So, she did the unthinkable. She started a conversation herself.

“Hi, I’m Frederica,” she said.

The whistler was Asian. Frederica was struck by just how much more feminine she was despite having the same HRT doctor and, assumedly, similar transition protocols. With softer features in her face that were accentuated by her head’s roundness, smaller shoulders, and budding gyno tits, she almost looked lovely. Frederica felt envious in a way, but also and to her surprise, she was glad for her. She was glad that she could experience something that she never could.

“Oh, hi!” said the Asian tranny. “I’m Bebe. Bebe Dandelion.”

What a preposterous fucking name…

“I apologize if I was staring at you a bit,” she said demurely. “I just…. I admire you so much.”

Admired. Admired? Sickness. Look away…

“Oh, that’s very kind,” said Frederica, trying not to betray her disappointment. “But there’s nothing about me to admire.”

“Oh but there is!” retorted her admirer. “It was because of you, and the way that you were able to get through your bullshit by embracing who you are that I found the strength to embrace myself, too.”

“Wait, what?”

How long has she been transitioning? How long? No, no. Why is she so beautiful?

The mirror taunted Frederica once more. She looked into it and saw herself, a humanoid thing, staring back at her. And then she looked at Bebe Dandelion. Gorgeous. Feminine. In a state of near passing.

“I’m sorry, Bebe,” said Frederica. “But how long ago was it that Dr. Mort started you on HRT?”

“Only about eight weeks!” she replied. “I’m still getting used to it, but I think I’m pleased with the results so far.”

This confirmed something for Frederica, or at least validated something that she already knew instinctually.

“Excuse me, this might sound strange,” said Frederica. “But as you can see, I’m suffering some strange side effects in my treatment, and I don’t exactly look what one might describe as feminine yet, but was there ever an in-between phase for you, where you might have looked somewhat close to what I look like now?”

Bebe got red, she was embarrassed to answer truthfully. “Well, ugh, I mean, it took a few weeks for my jaw line to start flattening,” she said. “And surely I’ve been in a lot of pain, but… No, not really.”

Frederica nodded and smile. “Well be well, Bebe,” she said. “But please, don’t look up to me. Do it for yourself.”

“Well, to be honest it’s just so nice to be treated well by people,” said Bebe.

“Treated well?” asked Frederica.

“It’s hard for a man like I was. Fat, not talented, not particularly bright, too online,” she explained. “The world can be very cruel. I can’t thank you enough for showing me that there might be a better way to live.”

Frederica’s heart broke somewhat, again.

“Of course, you’re very welcome,” she said, lying, again. “It was nice talking to you, Bebe.”

Frederica’s name was called by Dr. Mortley’s receptionist.

“Be well.”

Frederica didn’t recognize this receptionist, and instinctively missed the presence of the fat black woman that normally greeted her. Absent her, the office’s cold atmosphere lost its only small gift of warmth. She walked back to the examination room with her phantom tranny consort and her mind, clouded as it was by the drugs and the hormones and the regret and Katrina and Friedrich and redemption and death, ran amuck with all the things that she would say to her demented doctor. She couldn’t decide which of these statements to run with.

She was in the examination room. Its bright lights were oppressive, spotlighting all the transformation photos that Dr. Mortley had pinned to her wall. Each of them featured some fat and hideous maladjusted man as he was before next to a fat but somehow less repulsive feminine off-shoot of that man. Some were women and then became men. Everyone was becoming something. Maybe “man” and “women” were insufficient as concepts for this reality that had gone twisted and malign.

Frederica tried to push the drugs that she refused to take this morning out of her mind. The hormones in her exasperated the withdrawal, and her pain centers gushed as the drugs vacated her body in a torrent of violence.

Those who have their health, know nothing about what it is to have a body, or what it is to have a body that lacks…

This was an important morning.

I will confront her. I will tell her what I know to be true. It’s too late to turn back now I know that. But I will not be her silent victim… I’m not as weak as Friedrich was…

A knock on the door. Dr. Mortley walked in wearing a Prada nylon halter top with a turtleneck and long sleeves that exposed her mocha midriff up until the point of her chest, tits choked in the fabric and hanging over her taut, and ever more pilate-honed stomach. She was wearing Gucci Flora Gorgeous and the room wafted with its dreamy, almost Hawaiian or tropical sweetness. Dr. Mortley’s beauty was more pronounced than before, and Frederica thought she looked a fair bit like that Zazie Beetz if Zazie was actually beautiful. The potency of her femininity overwhelmed Frederica’s sense and then Frederica realized that Dr. Mortley looked like the caricature of someone that Friedrich would want to rape in her former life, and the guilt of this realization only accentuated her stress. That’s when it became clear: Dr. Mortley’s inappropriate sartorial presentation was a power play. As always, she was fucking with her.

“Hey there baby cakes,” said Dr. Mortley, with a smile as impish as that seen in DaVinci’s rendering of St. John the Baptist. “How’s my favorite patient doing?”

Given the barely human shaped morass of flesh that sat before her, the question came off as almost comical. “I’m…. I’m fine,” said Frederica.

“Great to hear,” said Dr. Mortley as she pretended to check all of her vitals. “Everything’s looking good. Sounding good. Good good good.”

“Yes… Good” said Frederica.

Dr. Mortley put her hand on her shoulder and made eye contact. “So, you ready for some big fat titties, baby?”

Frederica looked straight on, deadened by it all.

“You know? Breast augmentations?” said Dr. Mortley. “You said you were ready for surgical interventions.”

“Yeah, I know what I said,” said Frederica. “But I have a question.”

“Oh, baby, you and your existentialism. Always inquiring, always asking. Can’t ya just go with the flow?” asked the doctor.

Frederica wiped the sweat away from her temples.

“Yeesh,” said Dr. Mortley. “Looks like you’re in some withdraws. You want some fentanyl lollipops? They’re bangers.”

“I met another of your patients in the reception area,” said Frederica. “Her name was Bibi.”

“Oh, Bibi, ain’t she just FIERCE?” said the doctor, kind of swirling around the room, clearly whacked out on an assortment on pharma goodies.

“Yes, she’s nice,” said Frederica, “But I learned that she’s been transitioning less than half the time that I have. How are her results already so different.”

Dr. Mortley’s eyes went malignant and her body posture stiffened to that of an SS inquisitor. She rolled out her chair from below the desk and sat in it, closing her noteless notepad.

“Do you know what I like about liars?” asked Dr. Mortley. “Because they can endure anything, so long as the lie stays in-tact.”

Frederica shivered as the evil doctor put her cards on the table.

“Do you really think I’d have any interest in giving a sick toxic white male rapist his escape route if I wasn’t going to get anything out of it?” asked the doctor. “Hells to the no. I knew you were desperate. I knew you had to make this look real. So, I took you on as a patient, gave you your exit, did what you needed. But, I had a little fun for myself too.

“Fun?” asked Frederica. “What do you mean? What am I taking. Am I even on HRT?”

“Oh hells yes you’re on HRT,” said Dr. Mortley, grinning again. “You’re on what we said, twice the legal limit dose of HRT, plus some other fun little hormones that I may have mixed into the batch for a little science project.”

The terror pulsated out of Frederic’s pores as rapidly as the opiates and the benzos. She already knew, on some level, all this to be true. But the confirmation of it still stirred a horror in her that brought her situation down to a new low.

“What fucking chemicals?” asked Frederica.

“Oh you know, some trenbalone some dianibol some trilclosan some dioxins some weird shit that I don’t even know what it is – basically every hormonal disrupting compound I could fit in these vials,” said Dr. Mortley.

Frederica was profoundly confused. She wanted to break out of her chair, and crack the doctor’s neck. It was the first violent impulse that she had felt since Friedrich had went away.

“But I was getting them from a pharmacist!” insisted Frederica.

“You were getting them from my pharmacists,” said Dr. Mortley, laughing. “I always make sure my pharma pals get taken care of.”

“You, you fucking psycho cunt!”

“Whoa, whoa, watch that tone baby cakes,” said the doctor. “I don’t like that one bit. Let’s not make this worse than it has to be.”

“And how could it be any worse?” asked Frederica.

“Oh, like I could go to the press or social media and tell everyone that you are a fraud and that you aren’t a trans at all and that you belong in prison,” shrieked the doctor. “And off to jail you’d go, in your new mutant, semi-human, semi female body. Unable to defend yourself. A rape target no doubt, but maybe to disgusting even for that.”

Frederica started crying. Hands in her face, snots on her hands. “YOU’RE FUCKING EVIL,” he screamed.

“What did I say?” asked the doctor. “Keep the tone down. Evil? What’s evil? You’re evil. I’m evil. Well baby cakes, I guess we deserve each other. Oh there there.”

Dr. Mortley hugged her wailing patient, and for a second it almost felt tender. Then, the doctor laid on the patient’s table with Frederica, removed her panties, and slapped Frederica across the face. “Now snap out of it, baby,” said the doctor. “You’re mine. Eat it.”

“Huh?”

Before Frederica understood her face was pressed between the doctor’s hairy cunt..

“More tongue, baby cakes!” said the doctor. “You’re mine.”

Frederica ate the doctor’s pussy for what seemed like hours. She could sweat that the doctor laughed with the cliched evil typically reserved your young adult cartoons.

“You’re mine, baby cakes!”

After it was all said and done, a humiliated Frederica walked towards the exit of the room, before the doctor, still wearing no pants or underwear, stopped her.

“I penciled you in for your tits for the 17th,” she said. “We’ll get rid of that dick of yours real soon after. OK baby cakes, you have a good day.”