Two Days After The Great Change-
The dark haired beauty in the construction hat and overalls walked into her bosses office to resign. Walking up the stairs into the trailer, she took off her helmet and gloves and laid them out on the bosses desk.
“I'm quitting, John. I just can't take it anymore.”
“It's Jeanne now, and what can't you take anymore?” asked fore(wo)man Jeanne Arturo, not looking her employee in the eye as she was busy poring over the new sexual harassment guidelines. Given that her workers were now catcalling and whistling at each other just as much as random pedestrians passing by, it was only a matter of time before the first lawsuit hit.
“All of it” said Oliver, still not accepting her new gender. “This shit is just too overwhelming for me. I'm having a hard time understanding how all of this shit happened.”
“Give it a few days, you'll adjust” answered Jeanne, still not looking at her employee in the eyes.
“This...this isn't something you just get over” said Oliver. “Everyone's a woman now. Everyone's a lesbian dyke now, including me, I hate it. I can't concentrate on putting this building together, seeing sexy broads everywhere acting just like the men they used to be. I woke up this morning. I thought I had left a porn movie on, but it was just me talking in my sleep. Hell, look at you. You used to be as big as a brick shithouse, and now you look like...what the hell's her name? The one who used to be on the Disney Channel.”.
The question went unanswered(Oliver was thinking of Selena Gomez), and Jeanne finally put her documents down.
“Are you not one of those women?” asked Jeanne as her eyes trailed up and down Oliver's body, her male work clothes fitting badly against her new curves. “You've got some pretty impressive knockers if I do say so myself.”
“And that's exactly why I'm resigning. I'm not going to be treated like a woman...like a second class citizen. I'm quitting John.”
“It's Jeanne.”
“IT'S JOHN!” screamed Oliver. This caused Jeanne to look up for her paperwork. “FOR FUCKS SAKE, THE WORLD JUST CHANGED OVERNIGHT, AND YOU DON'T CARE!”.
After her temper tantrum was over, Jeanne calmly assessed that Oliver was becoming unhinged. He had a habit of that to begin with. He was a pain in the ass even as a man, with an overinflated ego and noxious political opinions. After John had seen Oliver's wife with a black eye one too many times, he had grown to personally dislike him, only keeping him on because he had been there longer than he had been.
“Fine. Go ahead. There's the door.”
Jeanne waved Oliver off, and Oliver left in a huff. She turned in all of her things, and indeed was never seen by her coworkers again.
**
On the drive home, Oliver turned on the radio to get his mind off of things. How was he supposed to take care of his alimony payments now? How was he supposed to take care of his---he didn't even want to think it---his daughter now? Josh had been a sissy faggot as a kid, but he took him to the woodshed a couple of times and straightened him out. Josh maybe was a loser, but at least he had been whupped into being a man. Now she was a weak little mouse, sucking up the first blonde bimbo that gave her the time of day. It disgusted Oliver. She had been planning to kick Josh out of the house soon, as he was of age now, but he didn't think Cat could survive all out in the world alone. Being a single father...mother...father had been hard enough as it was, but with this Great Change...this gender wave nonsense, Oliver felt like he was about to suffer a nervous breakdown. She massaged her temples as the rush hour traffic on the highway began to build up, reducing traffic to a standstill.
On the radio, Alexandra Jones was on. Oliver had listened to her daily as a man, as Jones reported the truth that the lamestream media did not. Today, Jones was reporting in her husky, sensual voice about the Great Change, and how this was part of a Satanic conspiracy by the Illuminati in order to....to what? Make the frogs gay? Too late for that. Make lesbianism and homosexuality in general more accepted now that everyone was a gay woman? Possibly, thought Oliver. Just to show off their power, shoving in people's faces that there is nothing that the poor proles can't do anything to remove the evil bastards from power? Also a possibility. The more that Oliver heard the deranged woman on the radio rant and rave about imaginary power structures, Oliver took to it like a fish to water, indoctrinating herself in the most absurd of speculation in order to justify her misogyny, her bigotry, her paranoia, and her own self loathing.
It was when she had finally gotten home and parked her car in the driveway, just as twilight was transforming the sky into a beautiful medley of colors, when an idea hit Oliver. An idea so profound, so earth shattering, that it was the first time she felt truly happy in she didn't know how long. An evil smile formed her lips which were as red as blood. Listening to Jones and other nuts for years had finally born fruit.
**
Over the next few weeks, Oliver spent every waking moment studying the occult, demonology, black magic, and the like over the internet and occasionally at the library, a place that Oliver had never visited before in his life. Her daughter Cat had been worrying about her disheveled looking mother now that she was fired from her job. Where would the money be coming from now? Would they be out on the street at the end of the month? Would she have to move in with Hannah and her family? Whenever Cat tried to approach her new mother with these questions, Oliver scowled at her, ranting at the frightened mousy girl to stay away from things that didn't concern her.
Most of the information that Oliver had inquired about at first had been bunk, just pseudo-esoteric nonsense and new age bullshit. Much of it was simply trolling from people with nothing better to do than spread more misinformation in an already confusing world More than one webpage turned out to just be some form of roleplaying for fantasy geeks and lonely shut ins. So much of it turned out to be fanfiction or writing projects by bored high school or college students. Eventually though, when Oliver had managed to get onto the dark web, he finally stumbled upon the real McCoy. Actual occultists. People just as alienated by the Great Change as she was. People who hated women possibly even more than Oliver had, and they knew enough about the dark arts to do certain things. One poster, with the nickname “Azathoth” wrote in detail about a death curse that he had learned from his Romani grandmother. He explained the mechanics of the spell. It wasn't simply saying some magic words or something like in Harry Potter. It required careful preparation, patience, and raw materials. Sometimes the spell could be done only at certain points of the year. Sometimes a lock of someone's hair, or a fingernail, and often something more exotic than that like the heart of a goat were needed. Occasionally, somebody needed to be murdered(Or more politically correct, “sacrificed”) in order to appease the evil spirit who was facilitating the magic spell. Oliver, who was too far gone at this point, had zero compunction with this condition. Azathoth had described how he had used this death curse to murder five boyfriends of a girl he was pining after. All had died of heart attacks. Azathoth thought this would make this girl, who had in fact never even met Azathoth, emotionally vulnerable and open to Azathoth's rather weak attempts at pick-up artistry. Instead, the girl, thinking herself to be cursed and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, had committed herself to a mental health facility. Azathoth never saw her again.
“But at least you killed those assholes, right?” asked one poster nicknamed after some video game character.
“That I did” said Azathoth. “And so can you.”
**
Oliver had inquired about the Great Change, whether is was possible to transform himself back into a man.
“No can do” said HarryDresden2297. “I've tried it. It's too hard. Whoever did this has access to unprecedented magical power. Probably a Rothschild or some Jew like that.”
“Plus” added AnSJWAteMyBaby “You would be attracting too much attention to yourself even if you could turn back. I've already researched this shit myself, and I figured that it wasn't worth the trouble.”
“It was probably Shillery and her “Foundation” who turned everyone into chicks” speculated an unhelpful anonymous poster who had recently joined the forum.
“Can I at least do something to get my ex-wife back?” asked Oliver under the handle of “BoredDrunkFuck”. He hadn't' expected an answer, but less than five minutes later, he got one.
“Sure” said HarryDresden2297. “Love spells are easy peasy.”
Oliver wrote down what he needed to do.
**
Two weeks later, Kim Marston moved back in with her ex-husband. She hadn't remembered why, or how, but all of the abuse, the endless screaming matches, the paranoia from her ex-husband...all of that anger and pain and fear had just evaporated and coalesced back into love. One glorious night she had been busy watching The Bachelorette on TV, bemoaning the fact that this would be the last season of the show with any hunky men on it, when a compulsion had suddenly came over her. She couldn't stop thinking about Oliver. She had divorced originally to get away from his abuse, but all of that felt like water under the bridge now. She called him up, and although Kim was mildly surprised to hear Oliver's new feminine voice, she heard her say all the right words, all the proper contrition from Oliver in order to convince Kim that they should become a couple again.
After a night of glorious sex where Oliver had used a strap on, it was Kim who suggested that Oliver finally come up with a new name for herself. Oliver protested, saying that she still thought of herself as a man despite how little she actually looked like one.
“Honey” said Kim, her voice and mannerisms still a bit stilted due to the spell she was under, “It's a new world. We're back together now. Anything is possible. Don't you want to celebrate by abandoning your deadname?”
Oliver had thought about it. She was busy planning something big, and was so happy that he and Kim were back together, that she figured Kim deserved to be thrown a bone here and there.
“OK. Do you have any suggestions? I definitely don't want to call myself Olivia.”
“How about Ophelia?” said Kim. “Hamlet was always my favorite Shakespeare play.”
**
The newly christened “Ophelia” was now knee deep into her little community of mystical creeps. She had learned many useful spells and tricks, and was now a valued senior member of the community, offering her own advice on how to punish enemies and tips on how to force their will onto others, as well as the stuff ordinary criminals do like robbing banks and the homes of rich people(Only without ever stepping foot in one of these locations). One night, the office building that she had once been working on as a man the year before had mysteriously been set on fire and burned to the ground, killing two people who were inside at the time including a security guard. The fire was estimated to have caused tens of millions of dollars in damage. None of the tell tale clues that arsonists usually leave, such as gas cans or any fluids used to accelerate the fire, could be found at the scene. As the entire Thorfinnson family watched the news announcement together on their couch, Kim and Cat looked equally horrified at the fire and deaths, with Cat in particular having to pick up her jaw which had dropped to the floor. If either one of them had seen Ophelia's face however, they would have gazed upon a creeping grin of satisfaction.
Other, more pragmatic spells were used to protect her home from intruders. Ophelia set a perimeter around her house, essentially a magical force field. Nobody could see the force field except for Ophelia, who perceived it as a translucent green bubble beginning from the edge of the front lawn and ending at the furthest edge of the backyard. If she didn't want someone approaching the house, or to kick out somebody already inside, all Ophelia had to say was “Shub Niggurath” and picture their faces in her mind, and the offending person would be forcibly ejected onto the sidewalk.
She also have discovered a hex that instantly killed whoever it was aimed at by turning them inside out. She found this gruesome bit of magic in a genuine book on spells that she had purchased from a headshop downtown. Ophelia had paid fifty dollars for it to an annoying new age hippie born woman, the owner, who was ninety-five years old and hadn't accepted Greta Von Hauser's offer to be restored to health and youth. Two-Penny or something, whatever the decrepit hippie's name had been, had warned Ophelia that she was going down a dark path before Ophelia exited the store.
**
As the Thorfinnson family continued their tenuously happy existence, with Kim playing the role of the perfect homemaker and submissive partner to Ophelia despite knowing something was VERY wrong in the back of her mind, and Cat wrapped up in her own relationship with her girlfriend Hannah, Ophelia continued working on her “big plan” as she called it to her friends. The people that she met online were now talking to one another on the phone and even meeting one another in person, first at neutral locations like restaurants and public parks, but later at each others homes. They traded goods and materials- magical artifacts that had been stolen, materials and books needed for spells, and weapons like a modified hammer designed to allow to fly just like Thor(Which looked just as silly as it sounds). They didn't know it, but this community was being watched by the Occ-Ops and the R.O.S.S, who had implanted themselves into the community as spies after Ophelia's fire had attracted their attention.
Ophelia often had long planning sessions at her home late at night. She kept Cat and Kim at arms length from these sessions through her own forceful personality, the same personality which she had used to take control of what she now considered to be her “coven” of witches. In fact, despite still hating the new world that the Great Change had wrought, and planning to become a man once again, for the time being, she had for now accepted her new role in life. For the first time she felt powerful. For the first time she had felt in charge. For the first time she felt like her life meant something, and if that meant having to put up with boobs that put Elvira to shame for a little while longer, so what? With her black hair, pale skin, and green eyes radiating nothing but contempt, Ophelia even looked a wicked witch.
**
Present Day-
“Eureka!” shouted Aziza as she flew through the curtain of intense blue fire. She had been traveling outside of her home universe for over an hour before she had finally found it, the gossamer thin barrier that seperated space from the home of the demons who were scheduled to soon terrorize the Earth.
**
Cat heard her mother Ophelia talking with the two strangers, both of were clearly not just friendly neighbors. They were both after something, the woman in the yellow dress buttering Ophelia up with bland pleasantries and phony laughter at her awful jokes, as well as sensually touching her bare arm. Cat closed and locked her bedroom door behind her and decided to call up Hannah just in case anything bad was about to go down.