A Birthday Wish

All my life I have wished that I was a girl. Quite literally. Every birthday when it came to blowing out the candles on my cake I'd wish that I was a girl. The first time was when I was five or six. I remember my mum telling me to make a wish and that it would only come true if I didn't tell anyone what my wish was. That first time I really thought it would come true. I wished really hard and when I went to bed I knew that when I woke up in the morning I'd be the girl I thought I should have been.

But it didn't happen.

The disappointment, that first time when I woke up the next morning and found that I was still a boy, was almost unbearable. But I got used to it. Every birthday I'd wish the same thing, and every morning after I'd wake up depressed.

Well, nearly every birthday. When I was twelve I wished I was better at football. That wish didn't come true either. I did get better at the sport, but that was due to practicing harder and not down to the wish. But even then I was never that good at it, just a bit better than I had been.

By the time I was fourteen, I'd lost my faith and didn't even bother making a wish. Besides, I'd realised I was straight and tried to pretend that my desire to be female was just due to the fact that I liked girls.

But everything changed on my twenty-first birthday.

It fell on a Thursday that year. I was going to have a party with some friends on the Saturday as Thursdays aren't great for heavy drinking. So my actual birthday was a quiet family thing with just my parents and my brother. And my Aunt May came too, which was a surprise.

I always got on with my aunt, but didn't see her often. She was my mum's sister and they didn't get on very well. My parents went to church on Sundays, they weren't religious nuts but they did attend. And when May had declared herself a pagan some years before, my mum had less to do with her.

May is strange in many ways. She is flaky, often distracted, seems to live in her own little world and she dresses like a hippy. Not content with calling herself a pagan, she joined a coven and said she was a witch. I don't know if they danced naked around a fire, or had sex with demons, but I do know they made wonderful cakes. The fact that she claimed spells her group cast had helped cure people of gout and other minor ailments didn't help her cause.

Despite her rejection of organised religion didn't mean my mum loved her less. Indeed she often said she prayed for May. But they didn't see much of each other.

But none of this is important. The fact is that May came to my 21st uninvited, but not unwelcome. It was good to see her again. The last time had been something like two years earlier.

After we'd eaten a meal, I opened my presents. They were uninspiring gifts even if they were exactly what I'd asked for. It was when I opened May's present that I really felt let down. It was a candle. Not a big scented candle, but a small one like you find on a birthday cake. Only this one was slightly longer than those and was brown. It looked like someone had dipped it in shit.

"It's a magic candle," May said. "Light it with the others on your cake, and when you blow it out it will make your wish come true."

I smiled politely. Like I say she's a nut.

She could see the look of disappointment on my face and cracked into a big grin before getting an envelope out of her bag. "Oh yes, and I also got you this."

The envelope had a birthday card in it and in the card was £100 in cash. That was much better. The candle had obviously been a joke.

Anyway we talked a bit and I heard how my one surviving granddad's memory was getting worse, and how one of my grandma's hips were bad. Aunt May wrote some notes down in a book and said her coven would do a healing spell for them. Mum and dad nodded and thanked her, and then they shared a look that suggested they thought she was a bit mad. I agreed with them.

And then it came time to have the cake.

Mum bought it out of the kitchen. She'd baked it herself. It had Happy Birthday Jack written in blue icing on the top. There were also 21 candles spelling out the number 21. It was decent work. You wouldn't want to pay for it, but as amateur decorations go it was pretty reasonable.

Before my dad lit the candles, May took the one she had given me and replaced one of the others with it. "Your wish will come true," she assured me. I smiled and told her I hoped so, but it wasn't like when I was young and really believed it might. Even so, after they had sung Happy Birthday I replayed the old wish.

I felt a knot in my tummy as I thought those old words "I wish I was a girl" and blew as hard as I could. I got all the candles in one go and they all clapped.

After eating a slice of cake which was very nice, two layers of sponge with strawberry jam in the middle, we all began to depart. I put May's phone number into my own, promised her I'd stay in touch, gave her a hug, along with everyone else, thanked them for the gifts, and May for the money, and eventually went back to my flat.

I didn't think about the wish I'd made again until the next morning. You can probably guess why.

I slept soundly. I had some dreams, I often do, but they were not unusual or sexually explicit. I didn't dream about my body changing or anything else of note. I was on a train, and when I stepped out of the door I was in the office at work. And then I was back at my parents. It was as confusing and aimless as my dreams usually are, and when I woke up in the morning everything seemed normal.

I sleep on my side in a foetal position, and that was how I woke up. Everything was just as it should be. The alarm clock was beeping. It was a Friday so normally I would be going to work, however as a present to myself, I'd booked the day off, but hadn't turned the alarm off to allow myself a lie in. As I reached out to turn it off, I felt my arm brush against my tit.

For a moment it didn't register. I am not at my best first thing. It usually takes me several minutes to wake up. But then it suddenly struck me. My arm had brushed against my tit. I had felt the contact in two places. My arm had brushed against a fleshy mound, and the fleshy mound of my right breast had felt an arm rub against it. I thought for a moment that I must still be dreaming, but then I moved my hand to my chest where I felt not one tit, but two.

Suddenly I was wide awake.

I sat up in bed. The duvet slipped down from my neck and I looked down at two perfectly formed breasts. My breasts! I had breasts! I'd always wanted to have breasts, had often wondered what it felt like to have them slowly grow as I got older. I had looked at the girls at school with envy as their busts grew, wishing I could feel that development. And now I had them.

I reached up to touch them and noticed that my arms and hands were different too. I looked at them. My hands were smaller than they had been, the fingers thinner. and my arms were thin and frail-looking and had no muscle. I'd never been overly muscular, I didn't work out other than playing football once a week for a very low-ranking non-league team where I paid my dues. But there had been some muscle there, but now it was gone.

I lifted the duvet and looked down at myself. My muscle wasn't the only thing that had gone. I reached between my legs pushing my boxers down (I sleep in my shorts and change them in the morning, usually) and under the shorts I felt a slit hidden beneath a hairy mound instead of my penis.

I'd always thought that this was what I wanted, but my dick wasn't there. It was my old friend, my favourite toy since I reached puberty. It had gone and I instantly missed it.

It was at this point that I began to panic. My breath came in short bursts and I could feel my heart racing. I was terrified. You may think that since all my life I had wanted to be female, that this sudden realisation of my dreams would be a wonderful moment. But it wasn't. It was scary. Very scary.

I said, "Oh shit! Oh shit!" And I could hear that my voice had changed. It was higher than it had been.

When I wake up I usually need a piss. This day was no different only the need to piss was intensified by the adrenaline that now coursed through me.

I leapt out of bed and when I stood up it seemed that the room had changed. Everything was still in the same place: my computer by the far wall, the dirty pile of clothes heaped in the corner and the poster of Buffy menacingly holding an axe above my bed, but the room was different. It looked bigger. No, the room wasn't bigger, I was smaller.

I've always been average height for a man, but now it seemed that I was average height for a woman, perhaps even shorter. My mum is only 5foot 2, and Aunt May 5'4". Was I something like that now? I didn't know, could barely think. All I knew was that I badly needed a piss.

I went to go to the door and then stopped.

The flat I live in is in a late Victorian house. It's a big place and when it was built it would have had a wealthy family living there, probably with a few servants. Now it was split into flats. On my floor there were three of them. I lived in one, and across the hall was Oliver. The other flat had a woman whose name I'd yet to learn as she'd only moved in a few weeks earlier. But we all shared the same bathroom. There were no en suite facilities for us. People didn't stay long, a year or two at most. I'd been there for six months and was already looking for better options. So I couldn't just blunder out of my room topless as I normally did when going to the toilet first thing. I had to hide my breasts. My breasts! I had breasts! I touched them again to be certain that this wasn't some crazy dream. But they were still there, pert on my chest.

The boxer shorts I was wearing were tight around my hips. They didn't come up all the way to my waist as that was now higher up my body. And they were tight because my bum was bigger. I ran my hands down my hips and said, "Oh Shit!" again.

I really needed the toilet now, so I put on the t-shirt I'd worn the day before. It was now much too big for me. It came down past my hips almost like a short dress. But I couldn't wonder what I looked like. I needed to go.

I went out of my room and into the bathroom. I walked to the toilet and put my hand down my boxers, but of course my old friend was no longer there. I had to put the seat down and sit for a piss. I tried to calm myself while I went. I tried to tell myself that this must all be a dream, or perhaps I'd taken some hallucinogen by mistake. I tried to take deep breaths.

Eventually I finished, so I took some paper and gently wiped, but I still didn;t have my cock back.

There had to be some sane explanation. I'm a reasonable man. So when I went to the sink to wash my hands I tried to think of some reason, something sane. It was then that I looked at me reflection.

There was a mirror above the sink. I don't have one in my own room. I don't really have a reason for one, but the one in the bathroom confirmed what I already knew. A girl looked back at me. She looked a bit like me, a similar set around the nose, although that was smaller and slightly upturned. The cheeks were fuller and the forehead flatter. But the thing that confirmed the girl looing back at me was me was the hair. I don't keep mine cut short, it comes down to my ears. It's a little longish for a man, but short for a woman. But it was my hair sitting on the head of the woman who looked back at me.

She, I, wasn't stunning. I looked fairly plain, but not ugly. Much as I had done as a man. I shook my head and for the first time that morning I smiled. The smile lifted my looks. It was a wide grin. It lifted my looks be several degrees. I still wasn't a babe, but I wouldn't say "no".

I set about washing my face as I normally would, although now I also washed my vagina. My vagina! This was all still very fucking weird. It had to do with the wish I'd made, something about the candle May had insisted on. I decided I'd phone her once I was back in my room.

As I cleaned my teeth (another part of the morning ritual) there was a knock on the door. I heard Oliver's voice shout.

"Jack, get a fucking move on or I'll be late for work."

I spat out the toothpaste, wiped a towel over my face and took one last look at myself. Was I just imagining all of this? Was this just how I was picturing myself? If I was then Olly would say something when I opened the door.

He did. He said, "At long fucking last...oh I'm sorry, I thought it was Jack."

I was about to say I was Jack, but thought better of it. Even if I tried to explain, he wouldn't believe me. Hell, I didn't believe it myself. I smiled at him and said, "Sorry Olly."

As I'd already noticed, the smile lifted my face. It didn't make me truly beautiful, but it did make me look prettier. And smiling at Oliver made him smile back.

"Have we met?" he asked.

"No," I replied. Explanations would be far too difficult.

A moment of realisation crossed his face. "I suppose Jack told you who I was."

I nodded.

"Are you his girlfriend?"

"No." I was about to say I was his sister, but I knew that Oliver knew I only had a brother. "A cousin," I said.

"Oh." Oliver looked at the door to my room and I saw the smile slip from his face as thoughts of incest crossed his mind.

"Don't worry, it's nothing like that. He's not in. I stayed last night. It's a long story." Too right! It was a long story, an unbelievable one too.

The smile came back to his face. I hadn't noticed it before, but Oliver ad a nice smile. He was handsome and quite athletic with a broad chest and very attractive eyes. I'd never noticed any of this before, but I noticed it then. He was a dish, tall and handsome.

Realising that I was looking at my friend (we'd known each other for six months and become reasonably friendly) in a sexual way made me blush.

"Anyway, I'd better let you go," I said hurrying back to my room. My breathing had become rapid again talking to Oliver.

I glanced over my shoulder as I went into my room and saw that he was still looking at me. He wasn't just looking, he was ogling my backside. The thought that a good-looking guy was staring at me lustfully made me feel good. And feeling good about that scared me even more.

Inside my room I sat on my bed and tried to control my breathing and order my thoughts. There had to be some logical explanation. No. There was no logic behind this, it was madness. And so thinking of madness, and the wish, and the candle, I picked up my phone and called Aunt May.

"Hello Jack," she said.

"May, can you explain what's happened to me?" I asked.

"Who is this?" she asked.

"It's Jack."

"I know you're calling from Jack's phone, dear, but you're obviously not him."

"It is me, May."

"No. I can hear that you're a girl. Can you put Jack on please?"

I began to cry. I'm not normally emotional, but it had all become too much for me. "Auntie May, it is me. It's Jack. I know I sound like a girl, well, that's because I am. I made a wish when I blew out the candles on my cake. And when I woke up this morning, I found that I'm a girl," I blubbed. "Please help me."

"Is this some sort of prank?"

"No."

"Look, dear, Let me speak to Jack."

"Auntie May, I am Jack."

"But why do you sound like a girl?"

"Because I am a girl. It's what I wished for when I blew out your candle."

"Why would you wish for that?"

"Because I want to be a girl. I've always wanted to be a girl and..." I broke down, the tears pouring out of me in a torrent.

"Oh," she said. Then added, "Oh," again.

"Please help me," I begged.

"Alright dear. I'm not sure I believe you, but if you come over to my place then..."

"I can't. I haven't got any clothes."

"Why not? Jack's got lots of clothes. He was wearing some last night."

"They don't fit," I told her.

"Why not?"

"Because I'm a girl. I'm a different shape to how I was last night. I'm shorter, and I don't know, everything's different. Please help me."

"Alright dear, calm down. I'll come to you. Where are you?"

"At my flat."

"Where's that?"

"May, you know where I live. You sent me a card at Christmas."

"So you're at Jack's flat then?"

"I am Jack."

"Well calm down Jack, or whoever you are. I'll be over shortly."

It was an hour before she arrived. I had composed myself by then. I had even probed and prodded my body, even running my fingers along the slit of my vagina, not in a sexual way, just to feel what it felt like. When she knocked on the door, I let her in. And once she was in I threw myself at her hugging her.

Eventually I let her go. She took a deep breath and looked into my face. "You've got Jack's eyes," she told me.

"I am Jack," I stated again.

"But that's not Jack's body," she said calmly.

"No. But it is mine."

She shook her head and then began laughing. He laugh was usually infectious, but that morning I was immune. I didn't see anything funny about my situation.

"What did you do to me?" I asked when she finally stopped laughing.

"I did nothing. If this is real, and I have to say it doesn't seem very real at the moment, then it was you that did this to yourself."

I couldn't argue with that. "How do I change back?" I asked.

"I don't know. I don't know how you changed in the first place."

"It must have been the candle. You put some sort of spell on it and..."

"I did nothing. I bought the candle in a shop that sells pagan stuff. Well actually it mainly sells paraphernalia to do with smoking dope, the pagan thing is a nice side-line for the place."

"So it wasn't a magic candle?"

"Well that's what it says. There's a sign saying 'Magic Candles, Make Your Wishes Come True' or some such rubbish. I just bought it as a joke."

"Oh."

She shook her head. "You see I bought one for one of the women in the coven a month or so ago. She had some financial difficulties and she wished she could win the lottery."

"Did she?"

"She got three numbers and that gave her thirty quid. And then her husband, her ex-husband, gave her the money she was owed. And so since she was okay for cash, she bought one of these candles as a thank you for me a couple of weeks ago. I wished that I could win the lottery too."

"Did you?"

"I got three numbers, the same as her. We didn't think there was anything to it. People match three numbers all the time. We thought it was just a coincidence. And that's why I bought one for you. I didn't think it would work. I don't think it works. Magic is all bull."

"But you're in a coven."

"And that's why I know it's all bull. Sure we do spells to help with some minor ailment, but if they get better it's probably due to any medicine the doctor's given them."

"If you think it's rubbish, why are still in the coven?"

"It's because they're my friends. I don't think any of us believe in it, well maybe Sandra, she's a bit of a fruitcake, but the rest of us don't. At least I don't think so. We do it because it's a bit of harmless fun. Don't get me wrong, some weird stuff has happened, but it's probably just coincidence. So we do it because it's fun. And we get to swap recipes."

"So this..." I ran my hand down my body.

"Is beyond me. But I think the girls will be interested to hear about it."

"So what do I do?" I asked.

"I don't know."

It wasn't what I wanted to hear. We were silent for a bit while I made us cups of tea. My room doesn't have a bathroom, but there is a small room off to the side which has a tap and a sink and an old electric cooker that I've never used.

"So you wished that you were a girl?" May asked.

"Yes."

"And you've always felt this way?"

I explained that I had and that every birthday I'd made the same wish.

"I'd never have guessed," she told me. "You always seemed like a normal boy. I did notice that you never went out with girls. I just thought you may be gay."