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The chair glinted in the fluorescent lights, all volunteers desperate to stay on the other side of the room from the stalls with the hulking metal machines with faux leather seats.
Sighim tried to avoid looking at it directly, balancing on one foot to the other to find an output for the pool in dread in her stomach. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen; she was supposed to be a priestess in the church she grew up in.
Yes, she was supposed to give to a higher power through giving to others. She was supposed to give her body to God instead of a man. She was supposed to be part of a sisterhood.
Of course, Sister Marie argued that she would have all that anyway. That Proffers, (as Sighim had learned they were called through the ad campaigns that had infiltrated even her small town) did all those things and more.
Proffer as in the improper noun: an offer or proposal. As in the word she had come to know in the last few months, Proffer: an expert maid/nanny/help-for-hire willing to give away numerous personal rights. Not that Sighim really cared too much about giving birth or vanity when she hadn’t been destined –or thought to be– to care about those as a holy figure, but still.
It was supposed to be her choice.
From the beginning, the priestesses made it clear that it didn’t matter that she had been given to the Saint’s orphanage. There was no obligation to be part of the priesthood as an adult.
Okay, maybe she was favored a bit because she had always sworn she would give back to the church, but several other orphans felt no such obligation. And yet too many did, for there was no room for Sighim to be what she was raised to be.
Instead, she was faced with four options: become a medic, become a palace worker, become a Proffer, or desert higher power altogether. Squeamish at blood and with a hefty disrespect for the monarchy (one could imagine being raised extremely religiously during a time of clashing between church and state) there wasn’t an option. It was into the unknown for Sighim whether she liked it or not.
And so she went. The wagon drove on and on for hours picking up other people on the way, making so many turns it would be impossible to run back home. Eventually, she boarded the high-speed train. Her worries flipped; no longer was she nervous that the program wasn’t well-funded enough to provide food or other necessities, they could afford a train ticket for a nobody like her! But then it occurred to her how permanent her situation was. At well over a hundred miles an hour, there would be no hope of ever seeing home again even if she did manage to escape. As the hours ticked by, her surety in her theory solidified. After ten hours, she fell asleep in tears. She slept two more whole nights before the train arrived at its destination. In the two weeks since then, she’d learned everything from CPR to welding to bed-time-story reading etiquette. Each day was devoted to a single broad topic, but there was no telling of what the next day would bring. She’d heard a few men debating if it was to prepare them for their new job or just to fuck with them. It didn’t matter either way. Nobody really knew anything, though.
This group of Proffers was the first batch. Hand-selected to set the standard for all future participants.
Aina, a woman to her left, was amongst the excelling trainees. Raised on a farm, she was good repairs, and small children from her siblings’ countless offspring, who she talked about at every opportunity. But really it was her attitude. Nobody was looking for the sun in the unclear mist of a future ahead like Aina was.
Yet she was shivering in her newly-issued boots. Her long mousy brown hair was out of its usual braid, as ordered the previous night. As they had marched down to breakfast the morning, everyone had been clean-faced, perfume-less, hair-jel-less, pomade-less, and without any accessories in the slightest. Sighim herself had started veiling after puberty, and to feel her curtain of blonde hair free around her made the whole thing feel reminiscent of a dream. Or maybe a nightmare, by the looks on the faces of some of the women around her now.
Those of other genders had already been split off into other rooms, though without hair accessories it would’ve been hard to tell. The type of accessories, makeup, and facial hair were the most common indicators of gender without asking. Things like breasts and height weren’t controllable in the same way.
Everybody kept their hair long, so it was common to see different stylings to keep it away from the face, with different types more expected of each gender. Some people said hair was meant to be long because showing the scalp was disrespectful, but honestly, it was hard to tell why they did it when no one would dare to cut it short for anything other than brain surgery or if it got caught in something. Sighim had experienced that misfortune early in life when something gum-like got caught in a large section in the middle of her hair and was forced to cut it to her armpits. The year until it grew back it was all anyone would look at. Other kids avoided her like the plague or sent her get-well-soon cards, some genuine, some not.
“Alright,” The voice of one of the trainers cut through. “These machines that will help us bring you all up to code as Proffers. We’re looking for a standard appearance for each gender, so while none of you will be leaving the same way you walked in, you will look similar to each other and not your Men and Nonbinary colleagues. The standard is easily identifiable, so once you are sent out into the word you will instantly know if you have a teammate with you. Any questions.” Her voice was so smooth that if you were to hear a hint of it from another room you would have no idea the shockingness of what she had said. Not that anybody would care if they had heard; the whole building was dedicated to churning out people like what Sighim was becoming.
The Traner looked around for a raised hand or anyone trying to get her attention. “Any voleenteers then?”
Even the suck-ups didn’t say anything. You could hear a pin drop, although all of those had been confiscated the night before.
“Ahem.”
Suddenly, everyone started pushing towards the doors they had entered from, despite the locking sound clearly audible after they had walked in. There was pushing and shoving and if she didn’t know better Sighim would think they were schoolchildren. That was, if she weren’t pushing towards the back too. But she hadn’t started fast enough, and soon she tripped. A hand reached down to her, and without thinking she took it. The smiling eyes of her superior gazed back at her.
“Take a seat. The stall door will close after you, when you’re finished exit the door on the other side of the stall.”
Sighim turned her back to the chair to object face-to-face with the woman, who promptly tripped her again. Landing her right in the very chair she was looking to avoid.
As soon as her weight fell on the chair, the door quickly slid shut, and padded cuffs forced her feet and arms into position on the armrests and footrest. A whirring sound followed as metal forced its way around her midsection to below her breasts and lightly around her neck. She took a very deep sigh and steeled herself for what was to come. It couldn’t be shorter than her shoulders, could it? How could they help people when they looked sick?
After a small beep, a green light flashed in the corner of the room. Mechanical fingers undid the ties of her hospital-gown-like garment and a blade followed that left her panty-less. The fingers held her labial flaps apart as an object of some sort was inserted inside her. A brief panic started in the back of her mind, but she reminded herself that she was no longer part of the church and wouldn’t face punishment for whatever type of sexual action this was. She had always assumed that if she were to have sexual relations it would be with a human man, but really she assumed it wouldn’t happen for her at all. It was the only real upside to her new job position, that she might be allowed to have sex.
A comb descended, brushing her hair to fall evenly in every direction without a part. It fell in straight lines to her hip, a little about where her butt touched the seat. Once smooth, there was a slight pressure about two inches back from the middle of her hairline, and a section was split off from the rest of the hair from that point to the two highest points among the hairline on either side of her face. The rest of her hair was brushed away, heavy behind her ears. A pleasant vibration had started in the phallus-esque object, creating a building sensation she wanted to lean away from and grind deeper into all at once. If not for the restraints, she would be rocking on it. Distracted by the new feeling, she didn’t notice two pairs of scissors coming from above.
Almost before she could register it, silky blonde strands were cascading from above into her lap, forever exiled from her head. She cried out in alarm, and the dildo started vibrating faster, simultaneous with the blades cutting a path from a fourth of an inch at the points into a steep V-shape that reached its tip at her eye level. So angled were the sides of the bang that they didn’t touch her eyebrows.
Unbeknownst to her, the outer ring of the machine moved in closer. It would form a sharp pair of blades with the inner ring, not touching just yet.
Sighim let out a breath of relief at what she thought was the end of the haircut, the wave of her very first orgasm crashing in as the metal edge zoomed in and chopped off about two feet of knotless buckwheat color hair. Her body attempted to shake with the stimuli, but the strong metal held her in place.
The remaining hair shorn to chin length was immediately brushed through again as she processed what had happened to her. Not only had years of careful care been brutally removed but she’d been definitively cast out from society in the same movement. Who would accept someone who would do something like this? Who would hire a miscreant the person they were turning her into? Her eyes started to burn at the thought of what everyone she’d grown up with would think of her now. No, she couldn’t return. Even if they found space for her back home, she wouldn’t dare let them see her this way. They didn’t want the Sighim who was perfectly societally acceptable, how could they ever want someone as odd as she would find the next time she looked in a mirror? She couldn’t bring herself to look down at all that had once been connected to her, not even collected that one might hope. It lay forgotten on the floor like old rags. It was a declaration: her pride and her status were useless. The actually sick wouldn’t wigs from the Proffer she was being made to be, for she was always destined to be a Proffer!
The machine paid no mind to her crisis, syringes filled with numbing agents shooting into her and a small antiseptic wipe coming down to her upper nose. She kept perfectly still, terrified that the pain from the injections was a sign of even more ways she would be horrifically reformed.
While the numbing took effect, mechanically hands worked a dark, gloopy dye in her whole head but her new bangs, ensuring every less drop was put to use. Just before tears began to spill over her waterline, a needle and bar descended. They were foreign to Sighim, who only knew about ear piercings common from the uber-rich who occasionally visited her old home trying to get endorsements from religious folks on their business practices.
To her amazement, the instrument positioned itself at the bridge of her nose. With white-hot pain it incrementally wedged itself there, a sphere keeping it in place on either side. The tears began to run free down her face, with no reaction from the computerized process.
At the other end of her body, a churning made itself known in her lower abdomen, slightly painfully. The dildo was removed quickly, leaving Sighim with an empty feeling that she soon forgot about as a small wand came to circle her clitoris slowly. As a material quite like the period she would never be visited by again tumbled out of her. She faintly recognized that it was her uterus and ovaries, spoiled by whatever else she had been injected with.
She began to sob, knowing that another option had been taken from her. Somehow, she was able to find a calmness in it too, knowing she would never have to worry about an unwanted pregnancy. She wouldn’t have to worry about pregnancy at all, it occurred to her in a wave of relief. On top of being physically sterile, her makeover made her close to being socially sterile. Who could want her sexually? By the time of this realization, the clitoris stimulation had started to speed up. Sighim understood that the wonderful climax feeling from a few minutes prior would soon return.
Not as soon as the sharp blade that jutted out of the constriction under her boobs, tearing open the sacks and greedily digging out tissue from the wounds they had created. Sighim was numb to it all, having long since dissociated away from the mess she was becoming. Once a sizable amount of tissue and skin had been excised, she was methodically stitched back up.
After about twenty minutes of the dye sitting, cold water came to wash it out as well as her bloody vulva. When the water ran clear, her bob was sectioned yet again. This time, a horizontal line was drawn, sectioning off all the hair on the back of her head below the middle of her ears. A low buzzing sound filled the air as she reached her second-ever peak. Some pieces were less than an inch long, but all the same, she mourned the loss. The clippers made their way up and down the path, leaving an eighth inch in their wake.
A beep sounded. The chair took the additional liberty of tilting it’s seat so she was forced to get up, the door behind her opening as it had been said it would.
The room Sighim found herself in was absolutely covered in mirrors. Aside from that, there were a few showers and a table with some sandwiches. Not ready to confront the mirror yet, she grabbed one. However, the choice was made for her as another door opened from the same wall she entered from.
Aina was stark naked, but that was far from the most abnormal thing about her. Two glittering balls decorated either side of the bridge of her nose, right under the point of her extremely sharp ‘V’ bangs. Her hair had been cut into a bob at precisely chin length and dyed pitch black, the underside completely shorn. Without facing the mirrors on the opposite wall, Sighim knew the only difference between them was the natural coloring of their bangs. For Aina’s D-cups too had been replaced with A’s, and her legs dripped with water from the same procedure Sighim had received.
Sighim the would-be profit had been turned to Proffer, and there was no going back.
