This story is a bit rough.

“Magda Mayfly” was one of my first stories involving trans characters and trans experience–so reading it over now, almost ten years later, is very jarring. There are stylistic elements I wouldn’t reproduce anymore, other stuff that is no longer relevant in trans experience, and just things that don’t work anymore.

But I still love this story.

And since it was one of my first published stories (in the Lost & Found issue of Literary Eclectic), it would be disengenuous to not include it, even if there are parts I dislike now. There are still lots of things that I do like about it, and lots that I can see would become fixations in future stories. It was also a longer story I wrote, one that should/could have been the beginning of a gritty noir, rather than a creature-feature (or Candyman like villain origin story).

The idea was simple: what if there was a figure like Bloody Mary that teens tried to evoke with a coming-of-age-ritual, but the figure was based on the life and death of a murdered trans woman? And what if, instead of harming kids, she actually helped them–especially trans kids–with their transition?

That’s where X, the lead character of this story, begins. X redefines a murder as a saintification, and brings Magda out into the light–but not without paying a heavy cost inside the community.

I hope you enjoy & I hope you’re kind to the rougher edges of this tale.

---

Magda Mayfly

They had to talk about surgery today. That’s what Thursday’s group therapy session was for at the Sherbourne Health Centre. The sign-up sheet was passed around the semi-circle of orange plastic chairs. Each member was to fill in their preferred names and pronouns for attendance, take a name card off the sheet, and talk about what they all wanted to escape.

Michael Donald, as written on his birth certificate that he had not changed yet, wrote down his name as X. He debated the neutral pronouns of they/them/their, but went for the masculine set of he/him/his. People would default to calling him a “he” anyway. He may as well jump ahead of the curve. 

“I know that some of you have had your interviews,” Julia, the group leader, stated. “Do you want to talk about how they all went?”

A few people put their hands up. X noticed Cayden across from him in the semi-circle, his small hands immobile at his sides. The two of them had joked about the gender assignment interviews before. They treated the whole affair like a Beckett play, waiting for something that would never come but still forced to stay on the stage and perform. Cayden was assigned female at birth (FAAB), wanted to transition to a man, but he also liked to dress in female drag at bars on the weekend. Cayden was a Russian doll of identities and he was acutely aware that this would put him on the chopping block for the interviews that were part of sex reassignment surgery. 

And X—well, X was nothing at all. He had no identity that he would much rather embrace, but the biology he found himself tangled in was often too tiring to bear. He came to the gender clinic, and wanted gender reassignment surgery, because he had hopes that some kind of physical change would ease his mental anguish. But as for his identity, he felt as if his gender may as well have been called Godot. It was never going to show up. 

But the audience still waited.  

Natalie, a tall trans woman with pink lips, spoke first. She had had her gender interview on Monday. From her spot in the circle, the rest of the group would shuffle around and rehash their own experiences, which often felt like first dates complete with 1950 gender roles and Betty Crocker aprons. 

“I figure I have to play into the committee’s idea of what a ‘real woman’ is,” Natalie said. “So I wore a skirt. I laughed a lot. I had to appear competent, but not too competent or they wouldn’t help me. You know? So I did my make-up well, but I made sure I didn’t cover all of my stubble. A cry for help, but a reasonable one.”

A few other trans women nodded. The trans man that followed Natalie reiterated a similar story. He dressed as butch as he could, but he didn’t bind so the committee would be reminded of what he needed to remove. The group leader, Julia, a trans woman who had successfully completed her transition in the early nineties, now turned to X as part of the circle. He laid his hands over his lap, his mind distracted. 

“And how did you interview go, X?”

X sighed. He knew his had gone terribly. But there was no use admitting defeat yet.

“I went. I did the song and dance. But I’m not holding my breath.”

“Why not?”

“It’s hard when you don’t identify as either. Agender is not a concept to the committee. They want to mark you down as one or the other. I can’t lie… not like that. But I also don’t want to wait for the inevitable ‘nothing’ to come.”

“I wasn’t lying in my interview,” Natalie said. “I was just…playing into expectations.”

“I know. But you have an expectation to play with. There is no expectation for me. I’m sitting on the fence to them. Undecided. Always.” 

“And how do you feel about all of this?” Julia asked. 

“I’m ambivalent,” X said with a laugh. “I think that’s kind of the point, though.”

“Can you elaborate at all?”

“I don’t identify as either sex or gender or whatever you want to call it. I want my name to be X because that’s the only chromosome that almost everyone has. Ambivalent means being in between, right? It means I don’t have to choose. Quite frankly, I don’t exactly like my options.”

Julia glanced around at the group and then back at X. X could tell that she was worried, awkwardly assessing her position in relation to people like X and Cayden who conformed and rebelled to notions of gender. That was the problem with most of these therapy groups for X. Trans people wanted to be one or the other. Some wanted to be both, which still kind of worked in their favour. They usually just lied on the forms and embraced the other side of the spectrum, so they could get the pills and leniency they needed. 

But X didn’t want pills. He didn’t even really want to dress as anything else; now he wore jeans and a black t-shirt, his normal attire. He wanted to be nothing, but in a world that measured things with either/or boxes, he knew he was going to have to pick sides. 

“Do you ever feel like something?” Julia asked.

“I feel like things that don’t have genders,” X said. “A rock. An arrow head. Insects.”

“But insects do have a sex. They have to for reproduction. And we still gender them when we speak about them. Black widows, ladybugs, queen bees. There’s a lot there.”

“But they’re not gendered in the same way we are,” X explained. “Many insects go through stages. Not to harp on the whole butterfly metaphor, but I like the notion that we don’t stay one thing very long. Identity for insects is always short-lived.” 

Julia nodded, but she still looked uncomfortable. It was a testament, really, to her limits. She could sit through therapy sessions where every last negative thing was said about someone’s self-worth and the t-word was used in excess and not bat an eye. But to give Julia nothing to hold onto, no panic to calm or oppression to work through, and suddenly she was at a loss for words. 

“I have heard of eunuchs,” X added.

“What do you mean?” she asked. 

“Online. There is a group of eunuchs, or people who identify as such. They were born male, like me, I suppose – and then wanted to get rid of anything that made their voices change.”

“You can’t get rid of that,” Natalie said, leaning forward. She whispered as she spoke. “Testosterone is a damaging hormone. It makes the vocals chords change permanently.”

“I know,” X said. “Trust me, I know. Some of these eunuchs have fixed their problem before that happened or too much of it did.”

Julia raised her eyebrows. “What are you saying, X?”

“They performed surgery. They did it themselves—totally punk, don’t you think?” X said with a laugh. He was joking. He knew that it was a dangerous procedure. Each member of the online eunuch group had warned that anyone who attempted the procedure to do it within walking distance of a hospital. There would be massive blood loss as soon as that area was cut. This was the online plan: Find a bathroom. Make sure it’s clean. Tie off your testicles with an elastic, and then, using a knife or scalpel, slice them off. Hide them, thrown them in a garbage, or just get rid of them so no one can entertain the idea of sewing them back on. Walk to the ER as fast as you can. From there, they will treat you. They have to. And voilà, a brand new you. 

X didn’t dare say any of the details out loud. No way Julia, let alone some of the tender-hearted trans people, could hear the utter brutality and desperation. Most of these group meetings were held for people who could afford the support network. They had doctors and family members who supported them, more or less. They had no idea the visceral violence that lay underneath the skin and knives of truly desperate people.  

“You guys have seen Cruel and Unusual Punishment, right?” X asked. “The documentary? Trans women sent to men’s prison do this all the time. They perform surgery on themselves so they can finally crack open the person that’s trapped inside. It’s all fairly standard rhetoric, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Julia said. “I understand that. We understand that. But those women are put into a dangerous position. We want to petition prisons to release trans women from men’s facilities so they don’t harm themselves. We don’t want to force anyone into such a barbaric ritual. It’s mutilation—in the most drastic form.”

Some of the group tittered. They had heard the world mutilation to describe the surgeries they wanted for themselves a million times over and rejected every single one. At least those surgeries (the mastectomies, the vaginoplasties, and everything in between) were done under anaesthetic by a trained doctor. The real thing that was true mutilation for X was the fact that they were all forced into this room and told to pull out the most personal parts of themselves. If being transgender meant that they had to try and access the person that was trapped inside, there was going to be some rib cracking. 

And definitely some blood.

“I don’t think it’s mutilation,” X said. “However you end up doing it.”

“Of course not,” Julia said curtly. “The surgery is part of who you are. It’s good, necessary, and needed. But to be forced into a corner like that, like a scared animal…”

“I still don’t think it’s mutilation. No matter the circumstances. I mean, all of this is about perspective and interpretation, right? Surgery is supposed to help our bodies match our minds. No matter how it’s done, the end results always matter.”

Julia’s lips formed a thin frown. This wasn’t supposed to be part of her job description. She looked out at her audience and the clock on the wall.

“Maybe, X, I can see your point of view. But I still think we should focus on what we can do in our positions. The safest and healthy ways. We’re in Canada; we’re lucky that the Canadian government recognizes this as a legitimate illness—one that they will try to help fix—”

“But only if you pass their test,” Cayden cut in. X nodded to him, relieved he had finally spoken.

The crowd murmured. X knew that not everyone agreed with Julia’s stance, but even if they wanted to disagree, it didn’t matter. They would still have to stay here and talk about their pain. These were the rules. At the Sherbourne Centre, the first rule about your gender reassignment was that you absolutely must talk about your gender reassignment.

“But what about me?” X asked again. “I’m in the middle. On the fence. The committee will always make me choose a side.”

“Well, what do you want?” Natalie asked. “You clearly went to the interviews asking for something. At the end of the day, who do you want to come home as? How do you want your body to look?”

Like a eunuch without the singing, X thought. He wanted his testicles gone. He wanted to have testosterone no longer coursing through his veins. But he didn’t want to be known as a woman. He already lamented the fact that neutral pronouns tripped everyone up, so he was forced to use “he.” It was easier to settle for “he” than to get used to “they/them” in group and then to come home and be barraged with “he” all over again. He had already given up hearing X as a name as soon as he stepped foot inside his parents’ place. Not because they were transphobic, but because of a very typical human foible: no one liked change. X would always be his birth name to his parents, because they remembered that birth. 

“The committee will make me choose,” X said. “When I want to be nothing.”

“You can’t be nothing,” Natalie said. There was a hint of petulance to her voice, as if X hadn’t been listening during the trans 101 seminar. “You need hormones. They’re important for bone growth. If you don’t have anything, your bones will start to hollow and break at the simplest touch. That’s why even old women going through menopause start HRT. Hormones are just… natural.”

“I know all of this logically,” X said. “I just don’t want to choose. I don’t think it’s that hard to grasp.”

“Well,” Julia said. She stood up, holding a chart to her chest. “I think that’s all the time we have for now. Thank you all for coming. Those who have had their interviews, we will keep you in our thoughts.” 

X stayed seated as the group began to leave. He scanned the room, eyeing the many men and women fulfilling their gender destiny. He knew that most of them would be approved for surgery. They had done all the right things and said the right words to form the narrative the doctors all wanted to hear. If they didn’t pass, someone would step up and find them a doctor who could take care of them. But X saw himself in the middle of a field, the grass never greener on either side. 

At least there was Cayden, he thought. But even Cayden could play the field. He passed as a man now and only came out in drag at night along Church Street. Even Cayden could remove his breasts and continue to take testosterone to overwrite his former selves. 

 “Do you need anything, X?” Julia asked him. The room was almost empty now. She looked at him with her sad eyes, the lines around her face growing deeper. She put a hand on his shoulder; X shrugged it off. 

“No, I’m fine. Thanks.” 

“Are you sure? When you said you wanted to be nothing, I get worried.”

Right. Nothing was nihilism. It was suicidal. To want to be nothing meant a negation of real life. But space could be seen as a nothing; a big black void. Even in the depths of the ocean where it was so black it was a nothing, fish and other creatures lived. Being nothing was not a death sentence, X knew. Not always. 

“I’m fine, Julia. Don’t worry about me. I’m just… anxious to see the interview results. Like everyone here.”

She nodded. “Well, okay. I’m here if you need me. See you next week.”

“Sure,” X said. “Something like that.” 

***

“Michael! Oh, good. So glad you’re home now.”

X closed the door. His birth name was so innocuous—Michael was one of the most common baby boy names for 1988. He heard it all the time growing up in elementary school, to the point where he often referred to himself as Michael D. to distinguish himself from the crowd. It wasn’t until high school, when he stumbled down the wormhole of the online eunuch community, that he started to go by X.

X didn’t correct his mother. He walked over to the fridge and took out a drink.

“Honey?” His mother turned around. She stood in the middle of the living room she was cleaning, her hair a mess. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just not feeling that well.” His mother frowned and X ignored it.  “Where’s dad?” 

“At work. Where else?”

X’s father was a police officer. Toronto was a big city, but not nearly as bad as some metropolitan areas in the states. His father mostly worked on breaking up bar fights and small drug busts. It was a good living, and he was respected for it. 

“Do you mind if I go to his study for a while?”

His mother narrowed her eyes. “Only if you vacuum it first.”

X shrugged. He had been living with his parents ever since he graduated from university and had yet to find a job. The gender clinic on Thursday was the only structured thing in his life. 

“Any luck on the job front?” his mother asked after he grabbed the vacuum from the closet.

X shook his head. The last resume he sent out was six months ago. He could never figure out how to explain his therapy sessions to his bosses and why he needed time off. It was a lot easier to just not work until everything, gender-wise, calmed down. 

His mother frowned again. “You should apply more. It will help you.”

“I know. Money is good.”

“But it will also get you out of the house.” 

“What’s wrong with the house?” X asked. “I’m cleaning it, aren’t I?”

His mother’s soft blue eyes looked worried. She walked over to him and tried to adjust his bangs. X moved away from her hand, knowing that his hair was longer than she would have liked it. 

“Oh, Michael. I’m sorry. I just worry about you.”

“Well, I’m fine.”

“Are you?”

I’m nothing, he thought. Nothing at all. “Can I just do this chore and forget about things for a while?”

His mother nodded. At first, she had thought the gender-thing had been X’s coming out as gay. Or bisexual. Really, either wouldn’t have been so bad. Toronto had pride, after all. His mother was used to seeing half-naked gay men parading down the street. His mother had watched Will & Grace. She was accepting and “open-minded.” But having a son that claimed to not be her son—or her daughter—threw her.

“Okay. Your sister is coming home this weekend.”

“Oh?” X asked. 

“And your brother should be back from school any minute now.”

“I’ll be quick, then. Cleaning, I mean.”

X moved into his father’s study, closing the door behind him. He kept the vacuum on loudly as he sunk into the desk chair and tried to disappear among the dust. 

***

When X’s father came home, X was still in his office. He heard the heavy footsteps from the other end of the house. 

“I was interviewed on the news,” X’s father declared, then moving to kiss his wife.

“That’s great, dear. About what?”

“Magda,” he said. “Again. I know. It’s been so long.”

X appeared by the crack in the doorway then, his skin tense. He knew exactly who his father was talking about, because he had looked over Magda’s case file—now over thirty years old—that afternoon. 

“It’s nothing, really,” X’s father said. “A small DNA strand that we were able to match to a couple other open cases. No killer yet, but we have something, Jill. We may be able to show a pattern soon.”

“So what did you say on the news?”

“Nothing much. Just reminded people of the case and the other it’s linked to now. I don’t want to forget Magda. So others shouldn’t, either.”

X moved away from the door. He didn’t want to hear any more of this. His father was a hardworking man, but he sometimes got blinded by his own accomplishments. X picked up the old case file, tucked it under his arm, and slipped out of the office. 

His father caught him as he walked across the hallway. “Hey, you! How’s it going?”

“Okay,” X said.

“Just okay?”

X nodded. He tried to angle his body so his father didn’t see him with the file. 

“You hear my big news?”

“Here and there. Yeah. Good for you.”

His father smiled again. “Anyway, I’ll tell you more at dinner. You used to show such promise as a detective, Michael. I wanted to tell you again that the door was still open. Still a possibility for your future.”

X nodded. His father’s expectations, while not a lot in comparison to other people he knew his own age, felt like a heavy weight. “I’m going to go now.”

X slipped into his bedroom after his father nodded. At his desk, he opened up the file and stared at the pictures, the reports, and his dad’s handwritten notes without a word.

In the early 1980s, before X was even born, a body had been found inside a field around the Scarborough bluffs. The woman had been identified through her clothing only. She was a drag queen singer at a local gay bar, performing under the stage name of Magda. That was it. No “real” first name, last name, bank account, or address. She had been paid in cash under the table and there was no record of where she had lived. No photograph or video of her performance out of the actual make-up and her knee-length blue dress to help provide insight to her life. 

Her body had been found wearing the same dress, though the blue fabric was torn and stained with blood around her waist. Magda had been mutilated when the local cops stumbled upon her body after a noise complaint nearby. At first, they thought she was a dog or something else that had died and attracted insect life. As soon as they saw the blue fabric, they knew they were wrong.

The first photo of Magda inside the file, dated May of 1982, showed a body that was absolutely covered in mayflies. The next image showed Magda’s face, pale and sallow after being left out during a rainstorm. A small mayfly, with its odd hooked wings, positioned itself on her left cheek. If not for her eerily pale skin, X would have thought she was alive and posing with the creature, as if the mayfly was her butterfly and this was the last stop before metamorphosis. 

Magda had always been around for X. He knew she was a woman – even if her “frank and beans” had been cut off and lost into oblivion, and no one referred to her in female pronouns – X still did. He thought it was his duty to, in the same way people lit candles for saints, though surely saints must have better things to do than answer mundane prayers.

When X was older and figuring out more about himself, he drew closer to Magda. He thought of her, covered by a myriad of insects with eyes that seemed to see into a million different ways at once, and he wondered about her life. He saw her slashed throat and the blood that soaked her blue dress from where her genitals had been cut off. There was just so much blood. If not for the jagged neck wound, X would have thought she’d bled out from between her legs alone. And if not for the vicious way men often attack transgender women, X would have thought Magda had done all of this herself. That she had lied down in the middle of a field, cut off the parts she no longer wanted to keep, and then gathered the insects so she could transform. 

But something had gone wrong. Magda had stood in front of the wrong audience and said the wrong line. She was sliced across the neck to silence her and then the rains came as her attacker left her for dead. Instead of butterflies, she got mayflies, and the whole thing was all really too short-lived. 

X sighed. He knew that his father was a trope. Each cop, no matter where they were, had an unsolved case that they kept at the bottom of their drawers and brought out during slow news days. X realized Magda’s legacy beyond death now was even larger than what had existed when she was alive. He was glad his father was keeping her image in the press, even if it did have a high cost. X thought of the new DNA strand in her case and the chance of solving one of Toronto’s oldest—but forgotten—murder cases. 

Would it be good or bad? To solve something like this and have no one pay attention seemed like it would hurt more. And X knew that pain; the pain of finally revealing something honest and true, only to have everyone misinterpret its meaning. He could imagine his father speaking on the news, saying the t-word, using male pronouns, and making an accidental mockery of a woman’s final legacy. 

X slid the photo back into the case file. He lay down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, until he was called to dinner by his old name. 

***

“Do you remember the game?” X’s father, Jack, asked at the dinner table. He had dominated the conversation right away with his most recent accomplishment. Shelly and Jesse, X’s siblings, had needed to be caught up on the case. They were younger than X and didn’t remember the woman’s death. When he had reiterated the facts and gotten no reaction, X’s father had resorted to bringing up the childish game school kids had thought up for the few years surrounding Magda’s death. 

X swallowed hard, remembering the chants like his own heartbeat. 

“You know,” Jack went on. “Some of the kids used to toy around. It was kind of like that Bloody Mary mirror-game.”

Shelly held her hand over her mouth. “Oh, man! I remember playing that. You just stood in front of a mirror and said ‘Magda Mayfly’ seven times and then she was supposed to appear.”

“And kill you?” Jesse asked. 

“No, that was Bloody Mary,” Jack said. “Magda just took your balls.” 

“Or breasts,” Shelly added. “Come on now, we can’t all talk about our balls.”

X’s eyes went over his plate. His mother noticed and made a small noise of disapproval. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this at the table. It’s not the right company.”

“It’s fine,” X said. “It’s one of those stories that stick with you. They never found her killer, right?”

Jack shook his head. “Even with this new evidence, it will be quite hard to prove or find anyone.”

“Maybe she didn’t have a killer,” Jesse added. “Freak like that could have done it alone.”

“Yeah and the throat cut was just an added benefit?” X scoffed.

Jesse shrugged. “Don’t know. Not exactly my department.”

“We should play,” Shelly suggested eagerly. 

“What? No, we can’t!” Jesse said, twisting his face into a frown. “I want to keep my balls, thanks.”

“Oh, come on! They can’t have even descended yet,” Shelly quipped. Their father tried to stifle a laugh while their mother merely looked horrified. 

“Kids, come on. Let’s just have a nice family dinner.”

“I apologize, Jill. This is my fault. I brought it up. With a new lead I figured…”

“Okay,” Jill said, holding up a hand. “Jack, that’s enough. No talking shop at the table.”

Everyone’s eyes went down to their plates. X blinked slowly as he worked on cutting up the rest of his steak. He kept seeing the image of Magda’s body, bloody and blue, her face pristine as the mayfly landed on her cheek. He didn’t want to think of the childish game that made her into a figure who wanted to tear little kids apart. 

But, X thought, what if it wasn’t like that at all? He thought of St. Sebastian being pierced by a dozen arrows. He was at peace as he was being mutilated. He gave himself over to God even though it meant piercing through flesh, muscles, tendons, and blood flowing from his wounds. The people in the eunuch forum tried to make the same connections to themselves when they cut off their testicles. They wanted to become holier than their bodies – modern saints in their own regard. While X appreciated their method, he didn’t always buy into the reasoning. Even if X knew that he was going to be rejected from surgery, and he would be back at square one, he didn’t want to cut off his own balls. He wanted to be honoured, in a way he hadn’t been honoured before. He supposed that was why he thought of Magda a lot. What if Magda’s fury could be transformed into something better? 

X shifted in his seat. He felt a slow burn in the base of his stomach.  

 “Excuse me,” he said. “I think I’m done now.”

His parents didn’t argue. As he walked to his room, he felt everyone’s eyes on his back the entire way.

***

Shelly knocked on his door after dessert.

“You missed cake,” she said. “It was chocolate and full of nuts. I mean… Oh God. How do I already ruin this?”

X sighed. “You haven’t ruined anything. You don’t need to walk around me like I’m a landmine.”

Shelly folded her arms across her chest. “Do you want to talk? You seem like you want to talk.”

“I talk all the time. It’s a lack of talking that I appreciate at home.”

Shelly laughed. She stepped inside his room and then sat on the chair opposite his bed. “How are you holding up, really, though? How are jobs, girls…and boys?”

X shrugged. “Non-existent. It’s hard to explain to people how I feel about my own body, let alone how they should feel about it.” 

“I get that. I mean, I hate telling some guys I’ve been with women. Because it feels like I’m a show to them sometimes. I suppose that’s like the same?”

“Similar,” X said. “But not the same. I’m not so much trapped in my body as people’s perceptions of it. That’s where the trans stuff gets lost. I’m not hacking away at my skin to get at something deeper. I’m hacking away at people’s language that tries to break me down.”

“I like that,” Shelly said. “You should write a book, then.”

“All trans people write books. I don’t want to add to the noise.” 

Shelly frowned. She looked at X’s desk and spotted the file with a groan. “He’s going to need that back, you know. Especially now that the case is evolving.”

“I know.”

“You trying to help him solve it?”

“There’s nothing to solve. Another trans woman murdered. It’s the easiest case in the book.”

“So who killed her?”

“Everyone. She probably knew she was in danger before this happened. We want to think it’s some supreme evil that killed her, when it’s really a chain event. Someone doesn’t take her seriously when she reports a threat. They convince her she’s going to be fine. Then a guy appears from behind a corner. She calls out, no one listens. Cut and die. Simple and horrible.”

There was an icy silence between them. Shelly opened up the case file and hissed slightly at the first image. “So many bugs. I would get the heebie jeebies just looking at this stuff. Thank God I didn’t do criminology.” 

X remained quiet. He tried to battle away the idea of Magda dying the way St. Sebastian had. There was nothing honourable, X knew, from all the stats he had read about trans women and murder. But there was that small bit of hope that Magda was not a statistic, but a saint, that still lingered. 

Though X tried to ignore Shelly, hoping that maybe she’d go away, she flipped her blonde hair out of her eyes and smiled at him again.

“What’s up? More than just the usual shit is upsetting you tonight. Mom and dad are fairly good constants in that they’re always dense and don’t always get the gender stuff. So there has to be more.”

“Therapy sucked.”

“Therapy always sucks. Therapists are terrible. You know I won’t go anywhere near any profession that has the word rapist hidden inside of it. It’s a trap.”

“I don’t really have a choice, though. I have to go. They may give me what I want.”

“Okay, fine. We all have to make tough choices. So why does it still upset you?” 

“Because I know they won’t give me what I really want.”

Shelly nodded slowly. “You think you’ll be denied for surgery.”

“I won’t pick a side. So they can’t pick it for me. I’ll just look like a crazy kid, going through a phase.”

“Well, are you?” 

X sighed. “Isn’t everything a phase? Our life is made up of a series of phases, changing from one thing to the next. We must go through phases in order to survive. It’s not a valid reason to deny me surgery.”

“Okay, okay,” Shelly said, holding up her hands. “So why do you want something as permanent as surgery? It’s a huge decision M—X. I’m sorry. But that’s true. You can’t just go backwards and undo it.”

“You can, though. More or less. That’s what HRT is for. Maybe I’ll want hormones. But I know right now, I don’t want this.”

X didn’t gesture or specify what “this” was. Shelly didn’t ask. X shifted and spoke the next part quietly. 

“Show me a permanent part of the self—that’s all I’m asking for. Show me a permanent anything. We all grow and change. So why can’t I?”

“I don’t think our eyes change size,” Shelly said after a pause. “That’s the only part of us from when we were born that stays the absolute same. Just the eyes.”

“Okay then. I won’t change my eyes,” X said. “But everything else? Yes.”

“You should ask Magda then,” Shelly suggested with a smile.

“Don’t you think I’ve already tried?”

“Oh, man!” Shelly gasped, her eyes wide. “Have you? What happened?”

X was quiet. In truth, he hadn’t asked Magda for anything. He had forgotten about the childish game until his father brought it up at dinner. X caught a glance of the crime scene photos in front of Shelly, who also followed his gaze. They both considered the image for a moment.  X felt the overwhelming aura of being pierced by something greater than himself – while Shelly just shuddered.

“That’s so painful though. I can’t believe anyone would be suckered into doing that. It seems worse than dying.”

“It’s not,” X tried to say. “It’s not mutilation. It’s… honour. Like St. Sebastian.”

“Huh. I guess I can get that. But while I understand it, X, I don’t support it.”

“What do you mean?” X demanded. He had felt so close to Shelly not five minutes ago. Out of anyone in this house, she was the closest to a friend. Now she was setting up a limit to her sympathy.

 “You’re not a saint, X. Don’t even try. You’ll only end up getting hurt.”

X laughed lightly under his breath. He was already hurt. He was already trying to be something he wasn’t and whenever he didn’t measure up, each group he visited had their own interpretations on who that person should have been. X suddenly thought of the bugs covering Magda’s skin again, leering out at the people who had once leered back at her. At least her death had allowed for some kind of poetic justice. 

“I don’t want to be a saint, Shelly,” X said. “I want to stop being a specimen.” 

“So get a job. Move on. You’d be quite surprised at how quickly your life changes once you make the first step.”

X’s smile was harsh on his face. He walked over to open his door and then extended his hand out. “I’ll keep that in mind, Shelly. Thanks so much for you input.”

“Good! Can I get you some cake then?”

“Sure,” X said. “Why not?” 

***

As the days went on, X’s thoughts of Magda grew in frequency and ferocity. The news report Jack Donald was on aired, and suddenly, everyone else seemed to remember the game kids played from years ago. Like Bloody Mary and Candyman, kids were staring into their mirrors again, tempting fate by repeating a name, and then turning around to see what lurked in the shadows. X thought it was all harmless at first. People were living in the rumours of killers and victims, playing good and evil for a while. 

But when X walked to group a week later, he saw the ambulance outside of one of the local apartments. He knew it was Cayden’s place. He approached the complex, weaving in between the small crowd that had begun to form behind the police line.

“What happened?” X asked.

“A kid was stabbed or something,” a woman answered without taking her eyes away.

“Is he all right?”

“I don’t know. At first someone said that a person had been shot. I didn’t hear any gunshot so I wanted to be sure. But now people are saying it’s arrows? I don’t even know. None of it makes much sense.”

X felt a chill pass through him. If this really was Cayden, then X knew it was far more likely that someone had found out he was trans and stabbed him. That was the most likely horror, even in Canada. But the hum of the crowd turned into a million little insect wings inside X’s ear. He heard in the back of his mind a small child chant, “Magda Mayfly.” 

X looked at the entranceway of the building. Paramedics in blue walked back and forth, trying to make a pathway. X strained his eyes to see beyond the front door. When he glanced up to find Cayden’s second floor apartment, he could have sworn he saw a faint reflection of a woman in the window. A woman with long black hair and a blue dress. Someone he had seen before. 

“Who was hurt?” X asked. “Does anyone know their name?”

“No, but I see him – or her?—all the time at the bus stop. They look odd.”

X nodded. He knew it was Cayden then. Even as the paramedics brought down the stretcher and kept his face covered, the green shirt gave him away. And the seeping blood stains over his chest.

“I don’t see any arrows,” another woman said.

“That’s because they probably took it out,” the first woman said. “But I know what I heard.”

X kept his eyes fixated on the front hall. Kicked into a corner, he saw a brown package with a stamp on the side. The gender clinic. X held onto his backpack strap tightly. Cayden had gotten his response from the interview. And if things had ended the way they seemed to, the answer must not have been good.

The ambulance pulled down the driveway and into the street. The lights flashed blue and red, siren piercing. When it disappeared, so did the crowd. X moved towards the door and grabbed the brown package. 

CAYDEN MARSHALL was displayed on the top. Inside was the form-letter they sent for denied patients. Dear Cayden Marshall, we are sorry to inform you… X stopped reading. Buried deep inside the envelope, hidden in the corner, was the empty shell of an exoskeleton.

X ran down the next street, away from therapy, and towards his parent’s house.

***

Dear Michael Donald,

The letter set X’s teeth on edge. He could sense the form-letter of denial that followed. He thought of Natalie and wondered if her song-and-dance routine had worked for the committee. He wondered if he should have lied in his interview—just to get what he wanted. What was so important about honesty if it never got you what you wanted? If it only ended in blood?

We are sorry to inform you, but we are denying your request for surgery. Due to the limitations…

X didn’t want to read anymore. He crumbled the letter in his hand and then tore it in two. His skin was hot as anger flowed through his veins. He knew this was not necessarily the be-all or end-all of his life. This was the first deny he got. He could reapply again. And even if they kept rejecting him, he could always pay for the surgery himself. He would find a doctor, one that would take the money, and do what he wanted without questions or qualms, without autobiography or mythology of his own gender.

That was it, wasn’t? The committee wanted a story they could tell. They wanted an inspirational tale of hope and redemption after X found his true self and went towards it. But he had no true self. All he had was a body he was forced into and perceptions that didn’t make sense.

Maybe Shelly’s right. Maybe he should just get a job and move on with his life. Pay for the things he wanted. Try to find a different name, other than X. Move from one phase of life into the next. Grow up instead of transform.

X turned over these ideas in his mind. No one was in the house. He was relieved, for at least something was going his way. The more he thought about his life in the future, the more it didn’t look like a Lifetime movie, but something dreary. A horror film, a surgical spectacle. He didn’t want to become like the people in cages, tearing themselves apart just to become whole. That was what happened to Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs, wasn’t it? Bill didn’t skin his humps; he made a woman suit because no one took him seriously. The times may have changed, X thought. We may have Laverne Cox and World Pride in Toronto, but X knew he was still living at the margins. He was a horror story, etched and stitched onto his body, for everyone to see.

Alone in the house, X debated in sheer moments of blinding panic, what he could do. He logged onto the eunuch forum and read the instructions for self-surgery again. Find a bathroom. Make sure it’s clean…. The whole thing made him gag—but it also gave him a faint flicker of hope.

Then he heard the buzzing. Soft and insistent, like a fly caught inside the blinds desperately trying to get out. X walked around the house and touched each window, trying to set free whatever had gotten inside. He found nothing by the time he got to his father’s study, where the file for Magda sat in the centre of the desk. For a brief moment, he smiled. 

Not a multination, he thought. But honour. 

He moved into the bathroom and closed the door. When X looked into the mirror, he didn’t see himself, the way so many trans kids do in transgender fiction. Instead he saw his future laid out before him, finally within his grasp. He counted backwards from three, before he began to speak.

“Magda Mayfly.” It rolled off his tongue like larva and landed into the air like the flutter of wings. “Magda Mayfly. Magda Mayfly.” 

This would eradicate himself. This would remove the testosterone from his body. It was not irreversible, but it was a huge change. Did he want this?

“Magda Mayfly.”

He thought of the therapy groups and the surgical lines. The money and the time. He had already spent so much of his life waiting. Waiting to be solved, waiting to be called next, waiting to be interviewed. He could be closer than ever before by just saying a name.

“Magda Mayfly.”

He thought of the actual mayfly now. The final moult of the naiad is not the adult form, but instead a winged subimago that resembles the adult form. Some species only last a couple minutes in this stage before rocketing towards adulthood. The mayfly’s short life span is imperative to its survival. 

“Magda Mayfly.” Six times said. X waited on the balls of his feet. He said the last words like a sigh, “Magda Mayfly.” 

His eyes closed. He waited. 

Nothing. 

No sound, no light, no nothing. He opened his eyes and looked into the mirror. He expected to jump, seeing the dead-eyed expression of a murdered trans woman looking back at him. But there was nothing—the kind of nothing that bred nihilism and suicide. The kind of desperation he didn’t want to tread on in case it bruised his skin. 

“Fuck,” X said aloud. He walked out of the bathroom, his skin heavier on his body. He had dared himself to think of a better life. Now that everything remained the same, his disappointment was infinite. He wasn’t quite sure what to do. 

He lay down on his bed. Staring at the ceiling, his lungs suddenly felt heavy. His stomach was upset. Something between a sob and a scream come out of his mouth. When he opened his eyes, a single fly moved between his lips and out towards the ceiling. The subimago mayfly did a quick loop above his bedroom and then landed on his cheek. The wings grow larger against him, its lifespan almost complete. 

X smiled. He imagined the bugs covering his body, before he fell into a fitful sleep. 

***

X woke up in the emergency room. Pain like a pressure point throbbed at the centre of his body, expanding lower towards his legs and back. He couldn’t hear anything distinct, only buzzing and beeping of machines. Lights danced on his eyelids; red, and then blinding white, before it was dark again. The smell was harsh, antiseptic and copper; a patina of thirst coated his mouth. 

But he smiled in spite of it all, because he knew it had finally happened. 

“Don’t – no, don’t try to sit up in bed,” someone called to him. A heavy hand on his shoulder, pressing him back down. “You’re been through quite an ordeal, Michael.”

“X,” he coughed. “I’m X.” 

“Right.” His mother’s voice now. “He wants to be called X. I thought it was a phase. I thought…”

“It’s okay.” His father’s voice now. Strong and stoic, probably gripping his wife’s hand. “We didn’t know. We shouldn’t have left him alone.”

X opened one of his eyes. Shelly and Jesse were by his side. Jesse looked bored, but Shelly’s blue eyes were wide with awe. 

“I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“I didn’t,” he said. “I had some help.”

“Who?” his father asked. His mouth was hard, the lines deep around his eyes. His cop-face. “Who?”

X smiled again. He lay his head down on the pillow instead of answering. 

“You know, you’ll have to take hormones. You will have to decide,” Shelly said.

“Maybe,” X said. “But not now.”

He looked back up at his family. He thought he saw Julia in the corner, speaking in hurried tones to some of the nurses, along with a few other people from group. There was light behind them, like an aura. 

“Where’s Cayden?” X asked suddenly. He tried to sit up in bed again, but the nurse held him down.

“I think he’s at a different hospital, not at St. Michael’s.”

“Okay,” X said. “So long as he’s all right.”

There was more chatter around him. X felt the sudden release of pain as morphine kicked in.

“I think you should leave him alone,” the nurse said. “He needs to sleep for now.”

His parents looked at him with concerned eyes. They eventually nodded and followed Jesse out the door. Shelly’s gaze lingered, half in exalted joy and half in horror. When she exited, Julia followed without another word. The nurses left, too. 

“Is that it?” X asked. Though it was difficult, he gazed around the hospital room. When he saw a familiar body with a blue dress and dark hair step forward, X smiled again. 

“Thank you.”

“Not at all.” 

She left without another word, her voice and image always short-lived.

END