"Femme Fatale: The Fabulous Adventures of Darius Turned Darcy"

“Yo, Jimmy, do you think this blouse makes my eyes pop?” The voice was unmistakably Darius, but the face—oh, the face was all wrong. Flaming red hair, high cheekbones, and eyes as blue as the ocean on a picture-perfect vacation day.

“You... uh... you look great, man?” I stammered, still grappling with his transformation from a 6'5" wall of muscle to something straight out of a Maxime cover shoot.

“Man? MAN?” Darius—or should I say Darcy now—giggled, a high-pitched, tinkling sound that made me question every life decision which had led me to this moment. “It’s ‘girl,’ Jimmy. Get with the program!”

I rubbed my temples, trying to process what I was dealing with. “Darcy, this is gonna take some getting used to. I mean, I’m happy if you’re happy and all, but... why?”

“Why not?” Darcy twirled a strand of red hair around a perfectly manicured finger and gave a little shimmy that made her—his?—her... um... impressive assets jiggle. “I wanted to understand the other side, and let’s be honest, ginger privilege is a real thing!”

“Ginger privilege?” I questioned, blinking in disbelief. “I’ve heard of white privilege, but ginger privilege? That’s a new one.”

She put a hand on her hip and gave me a faux-annoyed look. “Jimmy, darling, when was the last time anyone crossed a redhead? We’re like unicorns with tempers. Plus, these hips? I’ve already got five free drinks and two dinner offers.”

“That’s the opposite of what you used to get,” I replied, thinking about the time Darius, in his original brawny form, was asked to leave a club for looking ‘intimidating.’

“You know it.” Darcy performed yet another twirl, this one more elaborate as if demonstrating the practical benefits of her newfound body. “Now, it’s like all the doors opened. It’s fascinating, really.”

“Okay, but isn’t it a little weird?” I couldn’t help but ask. “Like, hearing that same old Darius smack talk coming out of... well, out of you?”

She threw her head back and laughed, which was alien in its charm compared to Darius’s boisterous chuckles. “Come on, Jimmy! I’m the same person inside! It’s just that now, my outside matches my equally fabulous inside.”

I scratched my head, still in disbelief but warming up to the situation. “You got a point there. Still, I don’t know if I can get used to you asking me about dudes instead of chicks.”

Darcy waggled her eyebrows mischievously. “Oh, why limit myself? Options, baby! Options!”

Just then, Bob from accounting walked past us, eyes nearly popping out of his head. “Jimmy, who’s your new friend?”

“Oh, this is Darcy. We go waaaay back,” I replied, trying to keep a straight face.

“Hi, Bob!” Darcy said in a way too syrupy voice, before turning to me and whispering, “He's definitely into me.”

“I heard that,” Bob muttered, obviously too stunned to react normally.

After Bob hurried away, Darcy flipped her hair back in triumph. “I’ve never had so much fun in my life, Jimmy. Seriously. And guess what? You get to be my wingman!”

I shook my head, a grin spreading across my face despite it all. “Alright, Darcy. Let’s paint this town red—and busty.”

We walked off side-by-side, a muscled black dude turned busty redhead and his bewildered but loyal buddy, ready to tackle the world one confused stare at a time. Life was weird, but you couldn’t say it wasn’t interesting.

This story was generated by user zach3 with assistance by one of OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model; prompts used to help generate the story are shown below.

Images were generated with OpenAI's AI system, DALL·E 2, or uploaded by the user.

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