Aurum
Emily was sixteen, with long, straight hair that fell like a curtain of ebony over her shoulders, and a life that, until that moment, had been a delicate balance between rebellion and privilege. Her family was the kind that took pride in their surname, their pristine home with marble floors, and their standing in the neighborhood. But Emily had never fit that mold. Arguments with her parents were frequent: she came home late, lied about where she’d been, and her grades at school were a mess. That October afternoon, however, marked a point of no return.
Her parents caught her in her room, tangled in the sheets with Ryan, her boyfriend with unruly curls and a cocky grin. Her mother’s scream echoed through the house like thunder, followed by her father slamming the door as he stormed out, unable to look at her. Hours later, after a fight filled with accusations and tears, the verdict came: “That’s it, Emily. We can’t handle you anymore. You’re going to the Reeducation Center for Young Ladies.” She didn’t grasp the weight of those words until much later.
The drive took nearly a full day. The car wound through increasingly narrow roads until asphalt gave way to dirt paths flanked by dark forests and barren hills. When it finally stopped, Emily felt a knot tighten in her stomach. Before her stood a building straight out of a Victorian nightmare: gray stone walls coated in moss, narrow windows with rusted bars, and a perimeter wall so high the sky seemed out of reach. There were no signs, just an iron gate that creaked as it opened. Her parents didn’t look at her as they handed her over to a stern-faced woman with close-cropped, slicked-back hair parted perfectly to one side. “Welcome,” she said, her voice slicing like a blade. Emily didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.
The courtyard was a circle of dirt enclosed by the walls, and that’s where they took her as soon as she crossed the threshold. Dozens of girls, all in orange jumpsuits with shaved heads, formed a silent ring around her. Their gazes were hollow, as if something vital had been stripped away. The wardens, all women with the same militaristic haircut and spotless black uniforms, moved with mechanical precision. One of them, the tallest, stepped forward and spoke with authority: “Undress.” Emily blinked, disbelieving, but a shove to her back made her stumble. “Now,” the voice repeated, brooking no argument.
With trembling hands, Emily shed her jacket, then her shirt, her bra, her jeans, until she stood in her underwear. The cold air bit at her skin, and tears began to slide down her cheeks. “Everything,” the warden commanded. Humiliated, Emily let the last scraps of fabric fall to the ground. Someone gathered them, doused them with gasoline from a rusted can, and set them ablaze. The crackle of the flames consuming her clothes filled the silence, and the acrid stench of smoke burned her throat. Then they brought the chair.
It was an old wooden chair, its leather straps worn and weathered. They forced her to sit, the cold surface against her bare skin making her shiver. One warden tied her wrists tightly while another secured her ankles. Emily struggled, but the straps held firm. “Please, no…” she whispered, but no one answered. The circle of girls watched in eerie silence, witnesses to a ritual they knew all too well.
The tall warden approached with an electric clipper in hand. The hum of the motor cut through the air, a sound that pierced Emily’s ears like an omen. “Your hair is your vanity,” the woman said, as if reciting a doctrine. “There’s no place for that here.” She grabbed a lock of Emily’s long, straight hair, held it up before her eyes for a moment, then let it drop to the ground. The clipper descended.
The first pass was a jolt against her scalp. The hum grew louder as the warden dragged the clipper from forehead to nape, shearing off entire clumps that fell like black feathers onto the dirt. Emily screamed, a cry that echoed across the courtyard, but no one flinched. Tears blurred her vision, and she felt her identity crumbling with every swipe. The warden worked with surgical precision, leaving behind a rough, bare surface. Strands piled up at her feet, a heap of memories incinerated by the fire still burning nearby.
When the clipper finished, another warden brought a razor and a can of shaving foam. The blade glinted under the gray sky, and Emily shut her eyes, unable to bear what came next. Cold foam coated her head, and the razor’s scrape began: slow, methodical, relentless. Each stroke was a scratch against her skin, an echo of loss reverberating in her mind. The warden tilted Emily’s head with firm fingers, ensuring not a single hair remained. When they finished with her scalp, they moved to the rest of her body—eyebrows, armpits, legs—erasing every trace beneath the sharp edge. By the end, Emily was unrecognizable, a trembling shell strapped to a chair, exposed to the stares of the others.
“Stand,” they ordered. They tossed her an orange jumpsuit that reeked of disinfectant and stale sweat. She pulled it on with clumsy hands, the rough fabric chafing her freshly shaven skin. The weight of her lost hair lingered like a phantom, as if her head floated in a void.
The Center wasn’t just a place of physical transformation; it was a machine built to crush the spirit. After the initiation, Emily was taken to an operating room where the real reeducation began. First came the hormones: daily injections that seared her muscles and deepened her voice into a gravelly growl. Then the surgeries: breast reduction, gender reassignment, all performed with a clinical coldness that left no room for humanity. When she awoke, she was no longer Emily. The wardens called her “Ethan” and demanded she answer as such.
The Center’s rules were an iron code, recited each morning by the inmates in a monotone chorus: “Absolute obedience. Silence unless ordered otherwise. Individual identity forbidden. The body is a tool, not a possession.” Any breach, however small, triggered brutal punishments. Once, Ethan saw a girl—number 47, since personal names were banned—whisper something to another during lunch. The wardens dragged her to the courtyard, tied her to a post under freezing rain, and left her there all night. By dawn, her orange jumpsuit was soaked, her lips blue, but she never spoke again.
Ethan made his own mistake one day. During a work session—scrubbing the stone floors with a stiff-bristled brush—he dropped the brush from exhaustion. A warden saw it and, without a word, hauled him to a basement cell known as “the Pit.” It was a dank, narrow hole, barely wide enough to stand in, with slimy walls that stank of mold. They locked him in for three days, with no food, just a bucket of murky water. Every hour, a warden banged on the iron door with a rod, a sound that echoed in his skull until he thought he’d lose his mind. When they pulled him out, he could barely walk, but he never dropped the brush again.
The “reeducation” sessions were worse. In a bare-walled room with a full-length mirror, inmates had to recite phrases like “I am Ethan, a man of discipline” while the wardens watched. If you hesitated or your voice wavered, they made you repeat it for hours, sometimes with electric shocks delivered through wrist straps. Ethan grew to dread his reflection: the angular-faced boy with a shaved head and sunken eyes staring back wasn’t him, but he couldn’t remember who he’d been before.
Time at the Center was measured in cycles of pain and obedience. The inmates worked the fields around the building, pulling weeds by hand or hauling stones under a blistering sun or cutting rain. Meals were a gray, ash-tasting paste served in metal bowls. They slept on iron bunks in an unheated dormitory, where the cold seeped through wall cracks. Every week, the wardens inspected their bodies, shaving them again if they found a single stray hair. Ethan learned to obey, to stay silent, to forget.
A year later, the Center deemed him “reeducated.” They dressed him in a gray uniform, handed him a bag of basic men’s clothing, and loaded him into a windowless van. The ride back was quiet, but his mind buzzed with the hum of clippers, the muffled cries of inmates, the echo of his own breaking voice. When the van stopped outside his parents’ house, Ethan barely recognized it. The door opened, and there they were.
His mother, Margaret, stared at him with a mix of shock and fear. “Emily?” she whispered, then corrected herself: “Ethan.” His father, Thomas, lingered in the doorway, hands in his pockets, avoiding his gaze. “Come in,” he said gruffly, like he was speaking to a stranger. Ethan stepped inside, and the marble floor felt colder than ever.
The first few days were a blur of awkward silences. Margaret tried to bridge the gap, offering him new clothes—button-up shirts, straight-cut pants—and cooking meals “boys like,” like roast beef with potatoes. She spoke in a strained tone, calling him “son” at every turn, as if trying to convince herself. Thomas was blunter: he gave him a shaving kit and said, “A man needs to keep up appearances.” He took him to the garage to teach him how to change the car’s oil, something he’d never done with Emily. “You’re the man of the house when I’m not around now,” he said, clapping him on the shoulder—a gesture Ethan felt like a blow.
His parents’ acceptance was a blend of resignation and relief. The arguments and reprimands were gone; instead, they treated Ethan with a cautious respect, as if afraid to break something fragile. Margaret redecorated his room, stripping away band posters and pink curtains for a plain bed and a stark lamp. “This suits you better now,” she said, avoiding his eyes. Thomas enrolled him in a new school, introducing him as “my son” to the principal without hesitation. At home, talk was short and practical: schedules, chores, plans. They never mentioned the Center, as if erasing it from the past made it less real.
But Ethan couldn’t erase it. At night, he woke sweating, the hum of the clipper echoing in his head. He’d stare in the bathroom mirror, tracing the invisible scars beneath his clothes, feeling a void he couldn’t name. His parents treated him as a man, and he responded in kind—with a deep voice, firm steps, curt replies—but inside, an echo of Emily screamed silently.
One afternoon, as he mowed the lawn under Thomas’s approving gaze, Ethan caught his reflection in the window. The shaved, serious boy staring back was a stranger, a creation of the Center and his parents. He wondered how long he could keep being Ethan before that inner echo tore him apart.
