The bathroom door closed with a click and Chantelle’s posture changed, straightening out, freezing up almost predatory as she made sure it was locked.

Lawrence had wanted a warm, private shower more than anything else since he’d arrived on the island. Before he’d found himself trapped in this awful place he had had everything he possibly could have wanted. He had dignity, a sprawling twisted architectural marvel of a building that looked out over a meticulously tended garden. It had been a house for cats and humans, with shelves runs high on the walls replete with nooks and hiding places for the creatures.

He didn’t actually care for cats. He was as indifferent to the animals as they were to him, each using the other for what they needed with no commitment or obligation. They provided him access to his livelihood and justification for what he had to say to the geriatric old fools that he mined for cash and he provided them with food and shelter. Old age made people desperate and trusting - some had even pledged money to his pets in their wills and had allowed him to place himself as the animal’s benefactor. It was his money. He was financially secure for life and the more marks that died the wealthier he would become.

He might even have helped one or two along. His cats hadn’t always belonged to him.

Right now the memory about that life which made him most nostalgic was that his wealth had provided him with an enormous shower room and bathroom. There had even been an excessive but fancy fireplace built into the room itself where he could sit after showering, watch television and dry off. It even sported an expensive private sauna that persistently took him back to his youth when his mother had taken him to Sweden to meet his grandmother and he’d first run into saunas at all.

Jerry’s shower was a pale imitation of that opulent life, but it was better than a dungeon. He’d first locked the door, and then just for certainty had piled up everything he brought with him against it to keep it closed, letting the water run to warm up, just basking in the warm clean steam that slowly skulked and crept around the room at floor level like a kicked dog.

It always took some time to get the make-up off but he was well practised. One minute Chantelle was staring back from the mirror - without the wig of course - but still the face he presented to the world when he lived inside her. The next moment she was gone and all that was left was the steep cheekbones, long features and cold grim eyes that was the barely a man underneath. There was something hollow behind his eyes and he didn’t like to stare too long. Shifting his gaze he smiled at himself but the smile was just a well-practiced twist of muscles, like a bird flexing its wings. He felt nothing from the gesture.

Jerry was pitiful; the man was a desperate mess, wrecked by what appeared to be peer rejection and an upbringing that left him dissonant from his peers. He was selfish too, determined to hear only praise and focus on his interests rather than what anyone else was interested in. Selfish desperation was Lawrence’s favourite thing, the truly arrogant and selfish heard only what they wanted to hear, saw only what they wanted to see and he was not offended by any of it. He would gladly stroke the man’s ego, feed him the words he wanted to hear and sing his tune. He would give him what he wanted if in the end, he got what he wanted from him.

He felt no regret. He had never felt regret, it was a puzzling emotion, one he found rather amusing. Why should anyone ever feel bad about being smart, being strong, being cunning? He had done things which the soft hearted would call cruel without a single twinge of anything at all and he had wondered why people were so weak. Even children had had no traction on him, he had had children, first a boy then a girl to two separate women and when he had looked into the eyes of his offspring he had felt nothing but contempt at how pathetic they were and how effective at ensnaring the hearts of their mothers. When he left he didn’t miss them, it had been tedious pretending to love what he did not. But he could do it here, he could do it again, he could do it as many times as was necessary.

Finally stripped of the irritating clothing, collars and bracelets, he looked himself over with the critical eye of an expert, his body was his livelihood and had been for many years. He was skinny and for his height probably worryingly underweight, bones jutting at his hips, shoulders and the low edge of his ribs, but he had always found it difficult to keep weight and in the business of androgyny he couldn’t afford to gain weight in the wrong places. He had no blemishes, only marks on his skin where the ridiculous dog collars and belts had cut too tight, the faint outline of the bra he’d been stuck wearing wrapped around his midriff obscene pink against his pale skin. Running his hands through his hair he felt a twist of disgust at how sweaty his scalp felt, the wig was comfortable but unnatural and it caused a rash where it rubbed on his skin. His short platinum blonde hair was beginning to grow back in. He would likely have to shave it down again.

Stepping into the shower was a relief, the warm comfortable sensation one he could actually feel. Emotions did not reach him but physical pleasures could. He was built for hedonism, revelling in rich literature, music, the arts, the distilled worth of humankind. A fundamentally stupid race they had managed to accumulate pearls they did not understand the worth of over the centuries, like a worthless mollusc in the dark at the bottom of a sea of ignorance with a single grain of sand. His skin tingled in gooseflesh at the stark change in temperature and it fascinated him, involuntary and out with his control, ruled by some other subset of his brain he had no access to.

It was unfortunate, he thought that he couldn’t efficiently remove the long nails, it took time and effort to do so and he could afford neither. It felt like someone else’s hands as he spread the lather, putting him in mind of the first mother he’d ensnared, she’d always had long expensive nails, her father made sure she benefited from his wealth, and so too had he. He was good with names, but he opted not to dwell on hers. She was just another asset in his life and he had no desire to linger on anything more than that brief tactile memory. For the time being his sights were set on what limited resources were afforded him on this worthless prison, rank meant wealth, wealth was all he wanted. Jerry lived in relative poverty but that could be altered to suit his needs, mutual gain until it was in the end, all his own gain.

The piano had been a dangerous risk; it was too close to the bone, too near to him, to who he really was. He could affect his tone, his dress, his mannerisms but he could not conceal the heart of his music, that straining hopeful adrenaline that was as close to emotion as a man who felt numb to them could truly aspire, the facets of his fractured nature glimmering through like knives in the dark or teeth bared in the shadows. But Jerry hadn’t noticed, merely hearing what he wished to hear, a partner to play alongside. It was a gamble which had paid off, so far at least. And it had been pleasant to stretch his legs again, even if a keyboard was a poor shadow of true, rich grand piano, real music, transcendental in its purity. When he played he felt like an angel, like some perfect being walking in the midst of wild imperfect beasts caught in a haze of emotion and folly. He became Dante wandering through hell, looking upon the twisted fallen, Lucifer freed from the shackles of servitude. It made him feel powerful, or at least as close to the emotion as he could get. It was an affirmation of the fact he knew he was different - a superior breed, one unrestrained by rules or morals.

He took his time in the shower, carefully tending to every inch of his skin and hair. He was the centre of his own universe of order and he would tolerate nothing but attentiveness when it came to himself. Only when he was completely satisfied did he leave, leaving the warm water behind, stepping out into that moment of vulnerability where he felt like a twisted creature outside the shell, the skin it wore. But it was a moment that never lasted, all too soon he was once again donning the familiar make-up, his hands perfectly level and steady, becoming Chantelle again. And the more he worked, the more even his posture seemed to melt away, from stiff and calculated to excitable enthusiasm, smiling idly as he worked, as she worked.

She tugged on her favourite trousers and clothes and felt great! She was so grateful to Jerry, he was a lovely man really. Tidying up, she gathered all her things into their bag and wiped off the steamed up mirror a final time, meeting her bright-eyed reflection. She was so totally gothic and fabulous it hurt sometimes.

Everything was so lovely.