Alysson deMerel's Fiction

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To Die a Woman

Rachael sat on the flat slab in front of the shrine. The first light of dawn touched her flowing auburn hair, setting it ablaze with glowing red-gold. A casual observer would just have seen a woman in her forties, handsome rather than beautiful, dressed in a long, flowing robe of grey linen. They would have seen, in fact, just another of the strange women who frequented these parts. There were no observers, casual or otherwise at this time of the morning. No, the tourists would arrive in a few hours. For the moment, Rachael was alone with the spirits of this place.

For ten years she had fought to save the money, and to obtain the support of the medical professions.

Rachael Gentle, formerly Richard, had successfully lived the life of one who inhabits a body that fits like a wrong glove. Inside, she knew herself to be a gentle, loving, nurturing creature. Inside, she knew that her giving soul belonged to a woman. Outside? No, that was someone else’s body. A man’s frame.

For the past eight years she had lived as a woman. Dressing had come first, and eventually, she had come out into the world. Acceptance had come from those enlightened enough to see that she was wearing the outer form that reflected the inner soul. Others had treated her as a freak.

She sighed. Yes, She.

Rachael considered once more the findings of her psychiatrist.

"Richard, I’m sorry but I cannot recommend you to undergo reassignment surgery. I admit that you are a caring, gentle being, but a woman in a man’s body? No, I don’t think so. Come back in a few years and ask me again, and I don’t believe that I will consider you anything but a pleasantly eccentric man."

How could the man be so insensitive? Richard had used the name Rachael for those eight, long, agonising years. The man had been so callous, calling her by that hated, masculine label.

She was, in all but body exactly what the hypothetical observer would see - a handsome woman.

As the first rays of the midsummer’s sun shone into the interior of the ancient, rocky shrine, Rachael stood. She stood for the first time since the previous sunset, since she had sat in contemplation of her heart’s desire. She held out her hands in the ancient gesture of supplication.

"Oh Mother of The Earth ... Hear my prayer. Oh Goddess, I pray to you in my misery and in my hope of redemption. I beg of you, make my body that of a woman. I ask not for an extension to my life, I ask not for riches or power, I ask only for the body I know to be my own. I was not born a woman and yet inside I know myself to be one. I was not born a woman, let me at least die one."

Rachael pulled from her sleeve a small knife, and cut her right palm, allowing her blood to flow briefly onto the ground before the shrine.

Exhausted, she fell to her face and sobbed into the rich soil of that sacred place.
 

The sun was high when the first tourists arrived, and found her where she lay.

The autopsy showed that the unidentified young woman had died of a heart attack. No one could explain why she was wearing the clothes of a much larger woman, nor why her purse held the driving licence and other effects of one Richard Gentle, whose car was parked nearby and who was subsequently listed as missing, presumed dead.