Kenzie

The way it began was both simple and grotesque: I woke up on a Monday, and my penis was gone.

I didn't notice at first. I hit the snooze a couple of times, because I had maybe had a few beers with the guys the night before, and I really didn't want to get up. But the third time my alarm went off, my bladder let me know it was done waiting, and I needed to give it some attention. I walked to the bathroom, still half-asleep, vaguely aware that my underwear was riding a little loose, but not really able to process that.

Only once I was standing over the toilet and reached into my sweats did I consciously process that anything had changed. But standing there, with my hand in my pants, it was clear that something was different. Not that there was nothing between my legs, but that what I had there wasn't what had been there for the last twenty-six years. It took several long seconds for my sleep-addled brain to catch up, but when it did, the realization hit me like a freight train: I suddenly, unexpectedly, had a vagina.

I also still had a full bladder, so I sat down and took care of that. While sitting there, I tried to figure out what had happened. I had visited the urinal twice the night before when I was out with the guys, and I took a leak before going to bed, so I definitely still had a penis last night. Then, first thing in the morning, I had... the opposite of a penis. If something happened in between, it happened while I was asleep, so it was completely gone from me.

After I got myself cleaned up and my sweats pulled back up, I took a look at myself in the mirror. Everything else looked the same. My chest was still flat, my waist and hips were still there and maybe a little chubby, and I still had morning stubble on my face. All my secondary sexual characteristics were still clearly, visibly male. Somehow, though, I now had female genitals.

My sister was in the kitchen, pouring herself a cup of coffee. I had moved to Chicago fresh out of college and landed a pretty sweet job, and an apartment with a second bedroom; so when my sister Kenzie got a summer internship in the city, I let her move into my spare room. She was twenty-one, and two semesters from finishing college, and since I had done so well, it seemed only fair to give my sister a leg up in the world.

Although, let's be honest, my motivations weren't entirely generous. When I had left for college, Kenzie was a shapeless little slip of a girl, but the intervening years had been good to her. She'd definitely had the proverbial "glow-up": tall and lithe, with great skin, lustrous hair, and big boobs. I mean, I knew she was my own sister, so she was strictly "look but don't touch." But I certainly intended to look.

I don't just mean she was beautiful, though she certainly was. She also had an air of confidence that she hadn't had when we were kids. She walked with poise and looked people in the eye, and she had a smile that radiated self-assurance. Yet she never held it over anybody. If anybody ever didn't like her, she made it her personal mission to turn that person into her new best friend. Nine times out of ten, she did it, too.

Except, for some reason, today. She shuffled away from the coffee pot with her head down and her shoulders hunched, like she was trying to go unnoticed. "G'mornin," she said as I reached for the coffee pot, and shambled back out toward the living room without ever looking up.

I looked after her for a moment, then shrugged and poured myself some coffee. I had my own problems today.

Back in my room, I picked up my cell phone and dialed my boss. Thankfully, it went straight to voicemail; I didn't want to have to answer any kinds of questions. "Randy? It's Neil. I need to take a sick day. I have... I don't know how to explain it. I'll talk to my doctor and let you know what she says, and hopefully, I can be back tomorrow. Call me if you need anything, bye."

Then I sat back down on my bed and thought for a moment. I had just lied to my boss. I had no intention of going to the doctor with this, because how do you even tell your doctor about it? Hey Doc, my Johnson has disappeared, and I need to see about getting some details changed on my driver's license? No, I couldn't go to anyone with this, not yet. Not until I had figured out what to say.

I flopped back on my mattress and looked at the ceiling. Up the hall, I could hear my sister puttering around in her room. Her steps didn't even sound normal. Kenzie always walked with a purpose, but this morning, she was dragging her feet like a head trauma patient.

Just last night, David from work had been asking if I could set him up on a date with Kenzie. "I don't know how you get anything done with a hot girl like that around the house," he'd shouted over the jukebox and the noise of the crowd.

"Hey, man," I'd called back, "that's my baby sister you're talking about!" Pretending, for the sake of public decency, that I hadn't thought of exactly what he was talking about.

"Nah, nah, c'mon Neal," David had shouted. "This is the twenty-first century! The world has changed, and our values need to keep up! If Kenzie isn't the girl for you, that's fine, but you shouldn't let blood get between you and a good time."

That night I had flipped him the bird, and the conversation had moved on to other stuff. On Monday, lying in bed, things were different. I listened to Kenzie moving around, then heard the bedsprings creak as she, too, flopped down on her bed.

I thought of her lying there, in that oversized t-shirt she slept in. Maybe with her long, dark hair spread around her on the pillow. And maybe she was dangling one leg over the edge of her bed, and her eyes were half-closed, and she could turn to look at her bedroom door. And maybe she might see me there, and her lips might part in a smile, because she was so happy to see me. And she would raise one hand, and curl one long, slim finger, and beckon me over to where she was lying, and I...

Something felt weird, and it took me a moment to realize. "Oh my god." I looked down at myself as the feeling started to spread. I was getting wet.

For my sister.

I felt butterflies in my stomach as I realized what was happening. I could feel the skin getting warm. I was feeling my first arousal with this strange new thing my genitals had become. For my sister. I liked it, it felt intense, but it was so strange. This was my body, and it wasn't. I was terrified.

But at the same time, I couldn't stop myself. I reached down and stuck my hand into my sweats, into my boxers, and touched myself. I had been with a few women in my time, so I knew that every clitoris wasn't identical, but they weren't impossible to find, either.

The feel of my fingers on my strange new clit was like a fever. The feeling passed through my body with such intensity that I moaned, and my hips bucked. I had given such a reaction to women I'd been with in college, but this was the first time I did it to myself.

I had to know, I had to. I stuck a finger in myself, then a second. And I lay there in bed, filling myself, while thinking about Kenzie, about my sister, just down the hall, and what it would be like to lie down next to her, face to face, body to body, and to just, to just become one. And she might touch me like I was touching me, she might fill me up, my baby sister, and I could buck for her, and I could...

I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from letting out an audible moan.

When it was over I lay there, sweat drying on my body. Yeah, a woman's orgasm was fierce and cleansing, just like girls I'd been with had told me. Maybe having a vagina wouldn't be entirely awful.

Twenty minutes later I cleaned my hands on an old washcloth and tossed it into my hamper, then I got dressed. If I wasn't going to work, I could wear jeans and a t-shirt. This felt weird. I needed to get myself something to eat, and then maybe I really should call my primary care doctor and see what she had to say. Is this something that other people had to deal with?

By the time I got to the living room, Kenzie was already there and dressed too. She was wearing jean shorts and one of my old long-tailed dress shirts, untucked so the tail draped across her lap. I tried, and failed, to not think about the fact that I had just masturbated while thinking of having sex with her. Then I noticed something else.

"Hey, it's Monday," I said. "Don't you have to be at work?"

"I could say the same thing to you," she replied, without looking up from the magazine that she was flipping through without really reading it.

"Yeah, I'm... not feeling well," I said, and I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. "I'll probably call Dr. Duvall later, see if she can squeeze me in."

Kenzie nodded. "I'm feeling off my game too. Probably not the same thing you have, though."

"Probably not," I agreed.

At this, she finally looked up at me. I realized I had been looking at her chest, and abruptly shifted to meet her gaze. I realized her lips were slightly parted, looking almost like she was surprised by something. She, too, blushed, and looked back at her magazine.

Let me interrupt my story here and say: looking back, it's painfully obvious where this was headed. But in the moment, you don't think about these things, do you? Sure, I suddenly had a woman's genitals, and I couldn't stop thinking about my sister, who was acting embarrassed to even look at me, too. But how many impossible events does a guy expect to face on a Monday morning? I hadn't even had breakfast yet.

I dropped into my easy chair, the one piece of furniture I had told her was definitely mine when she moved in. I looked over at Kenzie on the couch, where she was now staring fixedly at the magazine, no longer even flipping the pages, just staring like she didn't dare look up.

She had already brushed her long, dark hair, which fell in sleek cascades around her shoulders and her breasts. She wasn't wearing any makeup, and I could see her slight freckles, and a small acne scar from her teenage years, just on the point of her left cheekbone. Her skin was pale, and while she always tried to cover her freckles, I absolutely adored them. I had never told her so, though, because I didn't want to risk making things weird. I just sat back and enjoyed the fact that I was the only man who got to know what her real face looked like.

I felt the heat rising between my legs again.

Okay, this was getting awkward. I crossed my legs and reached for my coffee cup to conceal my embarrassment. I had long since come to grips with the fact that I was sexually attracted to my own sister, and while other people might disapprove, for me this was just the way things are. But today, for some reason, I was seemingly obsessed with Kenzie: with her face, and her body, and how her breasts filled out my old shirt.

Kenzie cleared her throat so loudly, it made me jump, and spill the last couple drops of my coffee on my jeans. She looked up at me, then looked down and away, blushing again. "Sorry, Neil," she said, "I didn't mean to startle you."

"'S'okay," I said, in what I hoped was a lighthearted tone.

"I just..." She waved her hand vaguely in the air, like she was trying to gather thoughts that were swarming around her head. "Like I said, I'm not feeling my best."

With that, she got up and started back toward her room. I tried not to look at her sweet, round behind as she walked past me, but as my eyes tried to go anywhere other than her body, I noticed something for the first time.

She was holding her magazine in front of her groin with both hands.

"Hey, Kenzie, wait," I said. "Hold on a minute."

She paused just as she reached the hallway back to the bedrooms. And when I say she paused, I mean she froze in place. She didn't turn around to look at me, she just held herself there, motionless, almost paralyzed. Almost, that is, because I could see her knees were trembling, almost imperceptibly. Her smooth knees on her long, slender legs, which reached up to her round, firm butt, which she had pointed right at me.

"When you..." I had to swallow a tightness in my throat to get the words out. "When you say you aren't feeling your best today, what do you mean?"

Kenzie turned her head slightly, just enough that I could see one green eye looking back at me.

"Would it be fair to say," I continued when she didn't speak, "that you don't feel like your normal self today? Like there's something different about yourself? Down deep?"

That one green eye got wider, and I knew I was right. And I could tell she knew too. Something had changed, in both of us, and it wouldn't go back to the way things were if we didn't deal with this right away.

I stood from my easy chair, setting my empty coffee cup aside, and I could see her shoulders get tense. I took a step toward her, and she watched me. I put a hand out toward her shoulder.

"Don't touch me!" she screamed, throwing her magazine aside and running down the hall. She got to her bedroom and slammed it, and I heard the flimsy lock pop into place.

I stood there, not daring to move. She had confirmed it to me without having to say anything. Just like I had a vagina, my sister had a penis. And she couldn't bring herself to look at me for the same reason I couldn't stop looking at her: because we both couldn't stop thinking about having sex.

After several long moments, I finally pried myself from my spot and walked to Kenzie's bedroom door. I raised a fist, then froze before I could make myself knock. This wasn't an ordinary day. I had to go about this differently.

"How long have you been attracted to me?" I asked, softly.

Kenzie was silent for so long that I thought maybe she hadn't heard me. I wasn't going to ask again, because even asking once had been weird. You know how it is, we internalize rules from an early age, and one of the rules we internalize is that normal people don't even think about having sex with their siblings. And the fact that I definitely thought about it, a lot, made me a bad and dangerous person. So I never acknowledged it out loud, not even to myself.

"Since you were eighteen," she finally said, her voice small through her bedroom door.

So, she would've been thirteen. I opened my mouth to speak, then thought better of it and waited.

After another long pause, she went on: "You were getting ready to leave for college. And I thought about all the parties you were going to go to, and all the girls you were going to meet, and I thought it wasn't fair because I wanted you all for myself. And then I realized what that meant. I realized... I realized I wanted my own brother."

Behind the door, I heard Kenzie take one small, shaky step, and then another. She unlocked the door, and opened it enough just to peek out. I saw her run her eyes up and down my body before she spoke. "Same question for you. How long have you been attracted to me?"

"Since you were fifteen," I said, "and I was twenty. I came home from college for the summer, and you had gotten taller, and you had... filled out. I thought, I wonder if a beautiful young woman like that would be interested in a dorky older man like me."

Kenzie pinched her lips, and nodded. "If you had asked," she said, "I would've said yes."

I felt winded, like someone had punched the air out of me. "Really?" I asked, and my voice sounded squeaky with shock in my own ears.

She nodded again, and didn't say anything. Now she was staring at me the same way I had been staring at her. The awkwardness had passed; for the first time, we were acknowledging the attraction between us.

"I never would've been bold enough to ask," I said. "I thought, you were so beautiful, and you were learning how to be so brave and confident, that you must've had boys lined up around the block for you."

"Maybe I did," she said. "I dated a little, I admit it. But I compared every boy to you. If he was handsome, he wasn't as handsome as you. If he was smart, he was a pinhead compared to you. Meanwhile you, you treated me like a lady, and not just a sex object. And that only made me want you more."

The whole time we were having this exchange, my eyes were going back and forth between her face and her chest. The door was open just enough that I could see her cleavage. She had left a couple of buttons on my old shirt open, so I could see just a short distance down. But as she got to the end of that statement, she reached up and undid one button, letting my shirt fall open, revealing the trim of a lacy black bra.

Again, I swallowed the tightness in my throat before I could speak. "I have one last question, Kenzie, and I need you to be totally honest with me, okay? Did you wake up with a penis this morning?"

She opened her mouth, but no works came out, just a tight, strained chirp, like a starling. When words failed her, Kenzie pinched her lips so tightly together that they turned white, and nodded. Then she looked me square in the eyes, and apparently she found her voice again, because she said, almost in a whisper: "I gather you woke up with a pussy?"

"I don't like that word," I said, "it sounds cheap. But yes, I did. It sounds like, maybe, we swapped?"

She nodded, reduced to silence again.

But I had words that needed to come out. "These thoughts I'm having right now, Kenzie, these feelings... they're not new." I raked my fingers through my hair, just to have something to do with my hands. I felt like I must have five or six arms just dangling, suddenly useless. I felt like a freak. "No, Kenzie, I've wanted you for years, but never with such intensity. It's like a fire inside of me right now. I... Kenzie, I need..." My words sputtered out.

She dropped her gaze, and she spoke, so small and soft that I almost couldn't hear it. "You have to be the one to say it, big brother."

I sucked in a deep breath, held it for several seconds, then just blurted it out: "I need to feel you inside me, baby sister."

And there it was. The words were out of my mouth, and the one secret I had spent six years trying to bury was now out in the open between us.

Kenzie hesitated just a moment, then she threw her bedroom door open, reached up, and grabbed two fistfuls of my t-shirt. I felt like a puppet being dragged along by an invisible string as Kenzie walked backward, pulling me toward her bed.

When we reached her bed, she flopped backward, pulling me down on top of her. Her thick dark hair fanned out around her, and I felt her breasts squish between us as I landed so hard that it knocked the breath out of both of us. The moment had absolutely no grace in it, yet it felt like the sexiest moment of my life. I gather Kenzie must have felt the same, because I could feel her hard-on against my thigh.

I pushed myself up just enough that I could put one hand over my sister's breast. While I made fingertip circles around her nipple, I leaned back in again and kissed her full on the mouth. Our lips parted, and our tongues came together, exploring and testing each other's mouths. We were both experienced kissers, and here we were, showing each other everything we had learned about how to stimulate our partners with our mouths.

I felt a prickling sensation running up and down my back. At first I thought it was my skin flushing with arousal, but then I realized it was Kenzie's fingernails as she raked them up and down my spine. Even after everything, after I believed I couldn't possibly get any more turned on by my sister and her beautiful body, my arousal now went even higher. I was already starting to sweat.

At last I broke the kiss and brought my lips down by Kenzie's ear. "Be a man," I whispered, so close to her that I could feel my own breath blowing back on myself.

Kenzie turned her head to look at me. "What do you mean?"

"You have the dick in this relationship, apparently," I said. "Do everything to me that you ever wished a man would do to you. Seriously. Don't even bother to ask. I hereby consent to anything you want to do."