Markus was doing his best not to freak out, to let his blood run cold. Oh, god. What did he do now?

  Markus forced himself away from his screen, but it was already too late. A black box with pink text had imposed itself on his vision.

  Black errors fill his line of sight, text boxes breaking and forming with erratic frequency. Markus tried to wave at them and make the boxes disappear, but his arm was already trembling. His flesh was turning red as muscle fibers began to fray, skin peeling from the meat.

  He could feel his lower body starting to melt like hot wax. The area between his legs began to melt, a vile black liquid staining his jeans as he squirmed in discomfort. A warm and grimy liquid had spilled between his thighs, uncomfortable but not searingly hot, and the changes did not stop there.

  Markus watched in horror as his hand warped into an unrecognizable claw, black and sleek. The claw's tips were sharp enough to cut through the irregular mess of hair on his head, the mats and tangles built from decades of irregular washing. Threads extended from his fingertips, and his arm was pulled to the side. He could feel the bones snap, but the puppeteering threads numbed the pain.

  The claws snipped, and his hair began to fall off in thick clumps. Fresh hair began to grow from the roots, thick and fluffy. It curled and made little swoops where it grew, framing his face in soft almond hair. Next, the claw began to run against his face, peeling off beard hair as a barber's blade might. The computer monitor began to flicker, the black screen leaking a silvery liquid as the next window opened.

  "S, stop this! Stop it!" Markus gargled at the black window, but all that came in reply was a high-pitched voice and a foul orange slime. Markus tried to feel at their neck, coughing up more orange slime and a lump of black wax. They couldn't feel the bulge in their neck any longer. Their larynx was smooth, and the lump where their adam's apple was supposed to be was just gone.

  More importantly, their voice felt wrong. "Huh? What's going on? Why do I sound so nice? No, wait? What did you do to my voice? Why is it so light and airy?" Markus let out a few more puffs of air. "That's not right! I didn't train my voice at all; I shouldn't be able to get my voice so high?!" The silvery liquid had coated most of the screen and was beginning to smooth out across its surface.

  Markus pulled and scratched at their face as their beard itch itched. Flesh peeled off in muddy patches; black claws came away with long stretches of skin, resembling the sheddings of a snake. Hair, meat, and stench were all pulled off in one clean patch, exposing a black and tarry substance. Light smoke escaped from between their lips, and the tarry substance began to wrap itself around their body and merge with the clothes they were wearing.

  The product of their merging was not a greasy shirt and a pair of jeans, but a couple of black tights and a black blouse. They clung tight to a shapely figure, one that made their owner do a double take. She stared straight into her own cleavage, unbelieving. She was undeserving of that, wasn't she?

  Looking up at the now-silvered mirror of the monitor, she had to sit down. She was not looking at Markus, the greasy nerd she started as this morning. She was looking at a warm and friendly demoness with stark black sclera, marigold eyes, and baby fat in her cheeks.

  A black claw reached up to stroke her skin. The nail didn't breach the now smooth flesh, lacking any of the body hair she'd grown so used to. While the room was filled with the cloying stench of decay as her discarded flesh began to burn away, now nothing but wisps of black smoke.

  "Is this... me?" Amanda began to tug at her curls as a new window opened up. She paid it little attention, pushing it to the side so she could continue gazing at her reflection. "Am I a... a cutie?" Her pupils began to pulse, locked into the shape of hearts.

  Some words require courage to say. Some of these words seem simple but require overcoming significant obstacles to speak into the world. This change can be undertaken step by step with therapy, kindness, and friendship, or-- like our protagonist-- an unholy and profane ritual that transforms your entire body. And those words were:

  "I'm a cutie..." Amanda whispered softly to herself, and her voice rang true with the universe. A wrong was righted that day, and someone once born into the wrong body was given a new future. A good future.