The North Pacific Current gently warmed the BC coastline, pushing back the bitter cold which froze the land East of the great mountains. On Vancouver Island, the pleasant suburb of Saanich awoke to mild mid-winter morning. As the sun rose and kissed the dew laden grass, a visitor from the Prairie Provinces would have been forgiven for thinking it was April or even May.
While not a warm morning, it was not cold by the standards of any stout Canadian and the residents took full advantage of a third day without thick coats and mittens. A young mother jogged behind a stroller, in a never ending quest to maximize her daily number of steps. She wound up and down the streets of her idyllic subdivision smiling at her new neighbors and greeting them whenever possible. It was a nice place to live and she was grateful to be there.
The lady and her husband, Reese, had recently purchased a split level bungalow on an anonymous cul-de-sac, and this was her way of getting the lay of the land. Their young family had found good fortune in the midst of tragedy and used the proceeds to buy their way into one of the most pleasant suburbs of Vancouver. Her father in law had died three years prior and left her husband a small inheritance in his life insurance. Reese used his connections as an Associate Professor at the local University to wisely invest the small sum in a local tech startup, which got them out of a two bedroom, third floor walk-up in the city.
Still jogging, she fought back a tear as she remembered her father in law's funeral. He was a lifelong policeman who only got to enjoy a couple of years of his retirement before heart disease claimed him. His wife was completely destroyed by his passing, eventually having to sell her house of 40 years and move in with the two of them. She truly was the perfect mother-in-law and proved to be invaluable when the baby was born, but it took every minute of a very difficult year to adjust.
The lady rounded the corner onto the main road and saw she was approaching the stoplight. There was a large man standing at the crosswalk waiting for the light. His shoulders were hunched over and covered in a generous layer of blubber. Not overly fat, but certainly obese, the man was wearing a too-small shirt with a rainbow striped fox on the back. His shoulder length hair was a messy gray-brown and caught the morning sun forming a sickly, pathetic halo. She should have been intimidated but wasn't. Even from behind she could tell that he posed her no threat.
"Good morning, sir!" She chirped cheerfully, as she slowed for the crosswalk. He looked over at her but would not meet her eyes.
"It's ma'am," He brusquely shot back. Never looking up, he jutted his healthy chin forward as if willing the light to change. It did not.
Caught off guard, the lady shook herself visibly. This was not the way to make friends in the neighborhood and worse still, she would never misgender another woman. That was harmful. Violent even. She collected herself and tried her best to make eye contact, "I am terribly sorry, ma'am. I'm just a bit out of breath and I wasn't watching very closely. That was very stupid of me,"
"It's okay, don't worry about it," the man replied quietly in a practiced falsetto. There was no challenge in the words and his harsh demeanor had softened considerably. If there was any glimmer of a flight in him, the flame had extinguished itself as quickly as it sparked.
The sight of this broken husk sickened her. He was like the foam around a dead fish on the beach. Large in size but no heft. A smelly ephemeral existence fueled solely by decay. Still she steeled herself to right the wrong. Perhaps she was about to initiate the first conversation of the rest of his - sorry, her - life.
"Look, let me try that again. My name is Veronica and it's a pleasure to meet you," She smiled sweetly and held out her hand.
The man's eyes lit up and finally turned to meet hers. "What a small world, my name is Veronica too," he said flatly. Slowly turning toward her, the man extended a tattooed, sausage-fingered hand sporting chipped rainbow nail polish, "Doctor Veronica Ivy," he finished, over-pronouncing each syllable. Locking her gaze for a moment, he examined her slowly and deliberately; measuring. "It is a pleasure to meet you too. On which street exactly do you live?"
A primal fear shot up her spine and her grip on the stroller became white knuckled and sweaty. Why the fuck wouldn't the light change? She tried her best to keep calm but her eyes had reflexively widened. "Umm, uhhh, I forgot something at my house, I gotta go. Have a good morning, sir!" She managed to spit out before breaking into a full sprint back the way she had come.
The man looked back as the lady ran away in fear. "I still got it," he said audibly to nobody in particular. He watched her perfectly sculpted ass bounce under dark spandex until she turned down the nearby side street and disappeared behind a manicured hedge. "Never misgender me again, bitch!" he shouted back, now that she was safely out of earshot. Hot milf or not, he would not suffer terfitude to prosper.
The light finally turned and he crossed the street with the signal, his feet slightly lighter than before, despite his tight diabetic socks. Not only did he get all of his steps in for the day, he managed to put the fear of the Goddess into a terf bitch. Not a bad way to work off the morning's hangover. If every day was more like this one, he would be thin and athletic again in no time. He checked the fitness app on his phone to remind himself of his progress: two kilos lost in the last 30 days, 30 more kilos to go. Next time he would be the hot bitch in black leggings.
Halfway across the intersection he reached into his purse and pulled out a celebratory Red Bull. Despite the recent victory he could still use some wings to round off his morning walk. Squinting into the rising sun he would strategize how to best publicize his win. Surely Mastodon would be hearing about this, but perhaps Instagram should too. So many happy decisions to make, so many ways for him to enact his revenge.
The lady managed to sprint all the way home even though she was sure she wasn't followed. Panting, she slammed the front door shut and flipped the deadbolt solidly closed. She tracked mud into the living room but she didn't care. The baby needed to be close to her and she needed to sit down on the sofa. She held her phone out, shaking as she dialed her husband.
"Good morning, my love! I was just thinking about you!" Reese musically answered the phone. She could hear the adoration in her husband's voice. Still catching her breath, she let it calm her. "Sweetheart? Are you there?"
"Yes, yes Reese. I umm... I didn't want to ummm...." Suddenly she felt foolish for being so scared.
"Need a minute to collect you thoughts?" he chuckled back, "The class is almost ready for me to begin. Can I call you back in a couple minutes? Today my grad student is doing the mandated LGBTQIA2S+ presentation and I'll be free once it starts"
Once again her blood ran cold, but this time with annoyance instead of fear. First some neighborhood weirdo wants to jerk off while wearing her skin and then her own goddamned husband makes her wait for the government ordained twink speech speech to start. Bullshit! "Reese, I've decided we need to get a gun. When you come home tonight, get your balls of the shelf and take me to go buy one."
She gave her husband a few icy seconds before hanging up the phone. Exhaling sharply, she looked down at her baby still in the jogging stroller. "If you grow up to be a faggot, I'm disowning you" She said coldly to the mildly bewildered child.
As if understanding, her baby smiled back broadly and began to laugh. "Fig-it! Fig-it!" was the mimicked reply.
She stared at the amused child for a long minute and then couldn't resist laughing too. "Fag-got, fag-got," she corrected, "Fah-got!"
And mother and child laughed heartily together in their first shared dirty joke.