The End of Him

The End of Him

by Meeah Soo

  

Mark checked his face in the bathroom mirror one last time. His lips, enhanced by collagen injections, had been painted in their sexiest cupid's bow pout. His brows were plucked in delicate arches. His bleached hair was cut to shoulder-length. After several years of electrolysis, hormones, and bleaching, his skin was smooth and hairless. He looked as pretty as he was ever going to look. He felt the usual nervousness that he always felt whenever he went out on a "date," even though he'd been living as a woman for the last year, even though this was no date.

Outside he heard his ex-wife Diane and her new husband Richard talking about a vacation they were taking in a couple of weeks. How could they talk so casually? He felt a pang of sadness when he heard they were going to Maui. Twelve years before, Mark and Diane had honeymooned there. But it was far too late to change anything now.

"Let's go Monica," Diane called out impatiently from the other room. "We haven't got forever. And you have a lot less time than that."

Richard laughed at the crude joke. Mark swallowed another tranquilizer with a paper cup of water. His hand, with its delicate, pink-nailed fingers, was trembling.

His ex-wife and her new husband were sitting in the only two chairs in the dingy motel room when Mark walked in, clickety-clacking on gold, slingback sandals. It had taken him a long time to learn how to walk gracefully on such tall, thin high-heels. He heard Richard give a low, mocking whistle, but Mark had been used by enough men in enough cheesy motel rooms to recognize the hint of real desire there.

His ex-wife slapped playfully at her new husband's arm and look Mark up and down.

"Well Monica," she said archly, "don't you look the trashy cutie."

"Don't be mean," Richard said, still joking. "You've got to give her points for effort."

"Yeah," Diane said, "the worthless prick did try awful hard at being a sissy. It was about the only thing he tried hard at."

"Hey," Richard said quietly, "ease up or you'll scare him even more than he is. You don't want him to change his mind, do you?"

Mark guessed that he wasn't supposed to hear that last remark, or Richard figured it made no difference if he did. The fact was that it probably didn't make any difference. Mark was pretty woozy by now from all the pills. He didn't have much will to resist whatever they might have suggested. Still, Diane seemed to consider Richard's words and her tone softened.

"It's okay Monica honey," she cooed. "Don't be scared. It's all going to be okay. Richard's right. You do look absolutely lovely."

Mark knew his ex-wife well enough to understand that she hadn't really changed her opinion. She hated him and she'd hate him forever. But that didn't really matter either. Not anymore. Nothing mattered, but the immediate present. It was all Mark had left. He just wanted things to go easier over the next, hopefully short, moments of his pitiful life. He was glad enough just to hear a kind voice, even if it was a fake kindness, even if his ex-wife's gentleness, like Richard's, was all just an act.

Oh god, Mark thought, putting out a hand to keep his balance. He suddenly felt unstable on the heels and sat on the edge of the thin, dirty-looking bed. How can I go through with this?

"Have you written your note, sweetie?" Diane asked in sugared tones. "That's important. You didn't forget, did you?"

Mark shook his head. "I remembered."

He felt like he was going to vomit, suddenly terrified. He tried to keep his eyes on the floor. He didn't want to look at what he knew he'd see hanging from the plaster-covered beam above the open closet. That's where it would happen, just outside the closet, Mark thought, how ironic.

"Read it to make sure, will you Richard?"

Diane's husband went over to the night-table where Mark had left the suicide note. He picked it up and read it out loud. In it, Mark explained how his life was meaningless, how he'd always wanted to be something he couldn't, how the shame and unhappiness of his desire to be a woman had undone him. He forgave everyone, including his ex-wife, and accepted full responsibility for his actions. He wanted to die. He was killing himself.

"It's all there," Richard said, "just like you told him. Air-tight and legal. There shouldn't be any suspicions or inquiries."

"You did a good job Monica," Diane said, approvingly. "You got it down to the letter. You'd have made an excellent secretary."

Mark ignored her sarcasm. He had already shown her the bank statements, the stock options, everything she hadn't managed to take from him in the divorce. He showed her the signed documents that made her his beneficiary in the event of his death. She'd taken most of it already…now she'd have the rest. All Mark asked in return was to be kept company in his final moments of agony even if the only audience he could find was an ex-wife who loathed him and a man amused and disgusted by him. All Mark asked in return for the money he bequeathed them was that didn't have to die alone.

No one will ever love you, you freak, Diane had mocked him when she discovered his secret three years before. And she'd been right. All Mark had found was quick, illicit sex in rooms like this one with desperate, angry, horny men. Sometimes they paid him. Sometimes they brought him off. Sometimes they beat him. They never loved him.

"It's time darling," Diane stated flatly. "Let's go honey. Let's get the show on the road. There's no sense dragging this on any longer than necessary."

She's so hard, so cold, Mark thought, not for the first time. But it surprised and saddened him to find that she'd be like this now, even at the end. He stood up shakily from the bed. He started across the room. The rope hanging from the ceiling was unavoidable now. It was his destination, his last and only true love. He felt his knees start to buckle.

"Steady there princess," Richard said.

Sobs shook Mark's feminized body. Tears ran hot over his cheeks. But he didn't faint or falter. He was going to die soon. He had already accepted that fact. The thought was terrible but also somehow comforting. It was the right thing to do, he knew. He would never fit in this world: it was better if he left it.

"Here," Richard said, "let me give you my chair."

"Ever the gentleman," Diane said drolly.

Richard laughed, turned, and winked at Mark. "Don't listen to her. You're doing fine, honey. Don't forget to put on your bracelets. They match your outfit perfectly. But do it after you get up on the chair and put the noose on. I'm afraid I can't take the risk of helping you up. Sorry…" he held up his gloved hands and grinned. "Touching is out. Can't leave any fingerprints on your pretty little body."

"Thank you Richard," Mark said quietly, slurring the words a little. "Thank you for being so kind to me."

"Think nothing of it honey. Now up you go."

Mark steadied himself with a hand on the back of the chair and stepped onto it as gracefully as he could. It was difficult in the suicide outfit he'd chosen: a tight white sheath dress, slit up the side and the gold sandals. He'd taken the handcuffs that Richard had left on the chair for him. Now, standing on the chair and trying to keep his balance, he quickly slipped the noose over his bowed bleach-blonde head. He reached up with slender white arms and tighted the knot. He felt the rope against the soft flesh of his throat and felt a sob catch in his throat. He took a deep breath and realized it would be one of his last. He slipped a slender wrist into one of the cold cuffs, put his arms behind his back, and snapped the other cuff closed.

Click.

He was finished. He put his head down again and saw through tear-filled eyes the soft white mounds of his breasts beneath the silky fabric of the sheath dress. Beyond that, his ten pink toes lined up together as he stood wit his feet demurely together on the chair.

"Go ahead," Diane said, "step off. Go ahead, do it already, for crissakes."

Helpless now, there was no turning back for Mark, and Diane knew it, and that meant there was little need to even pretend to care. There was nothing now but cold, heartless cruelty.

"I have to use the bathroom," Mark gasped. "I have to do pee. Please let me go to the bathroom."

"Goddammit I've never heard anything so ridiculous," Diane spat. "Richard, kick the fucking chair out from under him and let's get this over with."

"Wait a sec Diane," Richard said. He turned to Mark. "It's okay honey. You're just afraid. It's natural. If you squirt a little while you're dying, no one will blame you. I promise. Now just step off the chair, baby. Come on beautiful. Do you want me to help you?"

The pills were beginning to really take effect by now and Mark wanted nothing more than to lie down, to rest, to sleep forever. He wanted to go to sleep in this nightmare world and wake up in another where all his dreams would come true. He could barely stand upright any longer, but each time his knees bent he felt the tug of the noose, reminding him, waking him back to the nightmare. Richard's voice came to him from far away, but it sounded so kind, so friendly, so sweet.

"Do you want me to help you sweets?"

"Yes, help me," Mark whispered "please, please help me…"

"Okay princess…I'll help you."

Richard kicked the chair out from under him. Mark felt the crushing pressure against his throat immediately. His eyes closed on an impenetrable wall of white pain. His legs kicked spasmodically and he quickly lost both of his pretty gold sandals. He was hanging, barefoot, his painted toes stretched in vain almost a foot above the floor.

"It's happening," Diane said, excitedly, clapping her hands, "finally…I didn't think the stupid bitch would ever do it…"

Richard laughed huskily. He watched, fascinated, the strangely erotic dance of the slowly strangling sissy. "Dammit," he said, "dammit that's fucking sexy."

Mark's eyes, closed on the pain and the tears, squeezed open. He saw his ex-wife and her new husband standing up, pressed together, wildly fucking. They came several times, growing excited all over again, with every crisis Mark seemed to endure. He wanted to cry out for help, beg them to take him down, but he knew it was too late, and they'd never help him even if it weren't. His struggles had all but ended by now, anyway: he was almost there. It would be stupid to turn back now.

In spite of his effort to hold back, Mark's bladder suddenly released. The loss of control stunned the dying sissy. Hot urine splashed over his smooth thighs, soaked his white dress, and dripped off his already cold, curled toes. From somewhere, through the crackling congestion thickening inside his head, he could hear Diane barking with laughter. He closed his eyes and felt a series of involuntary seizures shake his body. In spite of the fact that his penis had been gaffed backwards, he felt himself cum in short, truncated bursts. This must be the end, he thought, the end of him.

Lights sparked and flashed behind Mark's closed eyelids. His whole body reverberated with the final beatings of his laboring heart. And then his mouth gaped open and no air came in…and no air went out. He was strangled, suffocated, and his tongue pushed out between his bloodied teeth. The congestion in his head had grown unbearable—it felt as if his brain were about to explode. Mark shuddered a last time and he lived just long enough to experience one final humiliation. He felt his bowels open and the soft, warm feces push through the thong panties splitting the smooth, perfect globes of his creamy white ass.

He was alone and long dead when they found him. His face so occluded from his ordeal on the end of the hanging rope that the detectives filling out the initial report paid the dead sissy what he would have considered the ultimate compliment if he'd been alive. He was taken to the morgue and put in a cold metal drawer and until the coroners stripped off his dress and had at him the tag on his pink toe was like a belated valentine. They had mistaken him for a woman. For a little while, anyway, he'd gotten his wish: he had died a girl.