So yeah, I kinda screwed up…Okay, maybe I screwed up big time. Really, really, REALLY screwed up. But I can’t be the only person who pretended to know what they wanted. I just wanted people to notice me! I just wanted to be a baller! Sipping champagne with the stars and banging super models. I used to get all kinds of play in the rap game, but now…. I don’t think anyone wants to bang me after this…

People used to make fun of my face tattoos but damn — ain’t nobody going to be cool with what I did. You can’t expect people to love you when you’ve turned yourself into a monster but I did, at least in the beginning. It all started when I lost a few thousand followers from a social media post promoting my love for dragons. WTF! Why does that make me weird? Am I not allowed to have other interests than money, bitches, and getting F’d up?

My publicist was pissed. My album sales were failing and I was slowly dropping off the radar. I needed to do something to boost my career and public image. I needed to do something crazy. Not like I could get anymore face tattoos. But in the same strip mall with the tattoo shop was a genetic beauty shop. It wasn’t exactly top-notch but it did offer typical beauty modifications, like eye-widening, skin and nail pigment changes, and genital alterations, or anyone looking to transition from their born gender identity, which always seemed strange to me. Since once you made the change health companies, and the shady “Redesign Yourself” place, in the strip mall, aren’t allowed to revert any changes. Too much of a liability, but whatever. Once you decide to become a woman, you are a woman for life. I don’t judge though.

I’ve been known to wear all kinds of crazy crap, like rhinestone cowboy hats, gold-trimmed coats, and any other weird fashion I can get my hands on. It’s fun for me. But it never felt good enough. How am I supposed to grab people’s attention if every other shmuck starts dressing like me? Then I thought about what it would be like to become something else entirely, something I’ve always wanted to be.

My friend, Russ, helped me but he’s not to blame for what happened. It was my choice to hack into the medical robot of Redesign Yourself to change its code to fit what I wanted to become, which likely wouldn’t be in the genetic modification database. Russ just gave me the hacking tools to do it. I did the rest when I started the process by walking into the “medical center” on 3rd and Stoney, across from that all-you-can-eat buffet.

Russ had given me a thumb drive with the genetic code that I wanted to use, code he hacked from the local zoo, from the reptile house, I guess. When I went into Redesign Yourself it was pretty much what you’d expect. It was a small shop with a small counter –something like a dry cleaner without any hanging clothes. Cheap holographic signs showcased the ideal person –models with perfect hair, perfect teeth, perfect bodies, perfect…. chests. I wasn’t interested in all that, at least not to become something like that. It wasn’t hard on the eyes though.

“Good day, are you ready to become the person you’ve always wanted?” the robot attendant didn’t even notice that I was a celebrity. Pathetic.

I asked him if any sort of genetic modification would hurt and what the recovery process would be like. The robot turned around to grab some bandages and I quickly tapped his neck with the pen-sized disruptor rod, which sent an electric shock through him and froze his motor functions. This gave me a few seconds to undo the back panel of the robot and insert the USB. It was easier than I thought it would be. Probably should’ve checked for sec cams before I did it but I realized after that there were none.

The robot turned around after a few seconds of re-calibration and seemed to have short term memory loss. I told him I was there for tattoo removal and asked to see a list of procedures. The list appeared on his display port, on his face, showing the typical procedures but there was one that read “#custom-from-russ.” My finger wavered over the selection. I pressed it and let out a sigh. I was finally going to become the person I always wanted.

I don’t remember much after that. I woke up in a plain, white room with bandages all around my body like a mummy, except for my eyes, which were covered with sunglasses. I felt pretty cool and unique but my skin was burning. Russ showed up at the place and gave me a ride home, cringing whenever I groaned and struggled to breathe. He could barely look at me, or maybe he was looking at me through the corner of his eye. After all he did design my new body, my new genes, he knew exactly what was under the bandages.

Fluid was dripping down the inside of my bandages, down my legs, when we walked inside my apartment. Fluid, or blood. I couldn’t tell which. I could barely feel any other part of me, trying to sense any differences but everything was either numb or racked with pain. Even my mouth was sedated. When I tried to speak only quick gasps of air came out. I’ve done many, many drugs throughout my musical career and I’ve never been this dazed. It was like walking down a tunnel, towards a bright light while your body was split apart by every fiber and molecule.

Russ threw me on my couch and I passed out. I’d like to make it clear that before I made this choice, to make this transformation, I did a lot of research. Transgender people who went through gender change operations generally came out feeling different, not just physically. They were happier, assertive, confident. When I woke up on the couch, I was feeling the same type of change, although not quite as positive. My eyes opened with an alertness that I had never felt before. The grogginess was gone. I was hungry and agitated, not uncomfortable, just annoyed and bitter –like I was on coke or PCP. I tore apart the fridge and kitchen looking for scraps of food. My fingernails broke through the bandages but they weren’t fingernails anymore…. they were claws, hard and black, just like I wanted. I didn’t care though. My mindset had changed.

I didn’t want to rap anymore. I shut myself in and turned the heat to 99. I didn’t care about social media, my homies, getting crunk, or any of that pointless garbage. I wanted the aching feeling, the hunger, the need to snap at any sudden movement, to hunt in the darkness, the desire to sit and wait for something to happen, to go away. I would spend days lying in the hallway, under the air vent, letting the bandages slowly break apart and fall off. My skin was scaly and green just like the way I designed it, or how Russ designed it after I gave him the blueprints of what I wanted.

It was then that I remembered that Russ would be coming to check on me any day now. He had told me that he didn’t fully understand why I wanted to become a reptile but he didn’t care much. I gave him a few hundred to create the gene hacking program. That was all he needed.

I knew that he would be disturbed by my appearance so I hid my face behind a surgical mask and stayed in the closet, waiting for him to arrive, using a space heater to keep warm. It was soothing, calming. I don’t know how long I spent in the closet but I remembered feeling empty, cold, without concern and without motivation to do anything but lick my lips with my long, thin tongue.

That calm was cruelly interrupted when the front door opened and I heard my name being shouted by Russ. I grinded my narrow, sharp teeth together. Why couldn’t he have given me a few more days? He walked into the bedroom, sneaking cautiously, his head was low, looking around. He held out a baggy of pills that he probably illegally obtained and said “Hello?” when I didn’t come out.

I tried to respond but could only hiss and snarl. Drool and pus leaked from my open snout. Russ turned and straightened his back, facing the closet. When he saw the crack in the door his eyes became wide, almost as wide as my new ones, peering back from the darkness. It must’ve been a scary sight but I couldn’t remember how to empathize. As I opened the door wider Russ’ face became brighter with a horror that I’d never seen in him before. That was when I realized that I also smelled his fear through my long reptile snout. It was exciting, but also kept me empty and numb.

I removed the face mask slowly and a mucus substance caused it to stick to my face like a band aid.  That must’ve freaked him out. He asked what happened through choked words and I tried to respond but only hisses came out, along with my pointed tongue, when I came into the light from the closet.

As he tried to apologize and explain that he didn’t intend for me to end up like this he was inching his way towards the bedroom door. He said he was only there to check on me and tell me that my social media was gaining more followers. In part due to a social media challenge that called for fans to lip sync to my music. My music sales had apparently skyrocketed and people were wondering where I had gone. That was when Russ started crying, maybe for feeling responsible, maybe for fearing for his life.

A knot grew in my stomach, the part of my body that may have been partly still human. It wasn’t supposed to go this way. A rush of emotions hit me like a ton of bricks, like they had been buried deep down for so long. This was what regret felt like, like a thousand stabs to the chest all at once, like electricity going through my body, my new, fake body. I couldn’t see through the tears as I fell to my knees. Russ abandoned me in that moment and bolted out the door, leaving me to suffer the thumping in my chest and the fluid that leaked from my mouth. I tried to wail but only gurgling clicks came out, as the weight of what I had done finally set in and the human side of me wished I hadn’t been so weak. So vulnerable to my own eagerness and ego to realize that this wasn’t truly what I needed. I simply thought I could have a better life as someone else, as something else. But in the end, I knew I never truly understood what I wanted. Everything I had ever loved, my face, my hands, my body, was gone. And I was left rotting, mutated and genetically mutilated, on my apartment floor.