THE CONVENT, PART 3
by Zenna Swallows
As Ryan hobbled towards his modest chamber in the novice wing of the convent, he tried to remind himself for the umpteenth time that his chance would come. Sooner or later there would be an opportunity to escape - and not just to be free of the building and the nuns who had imprisoned him, but to reclaim the manhood they had steadily stripped from him over the months he'd been in this hellish place. It was just a question of waiting...
Of course, that assumed there would be anything left of the man he'd once been, if and when that ever happened. The reflection he could dimly see in the windows he was passing certainly gave no hint of it. There was just an attractive nun in white robes with daringly bright and glamorous makeup that could just as easily have graced a stripper on her way to entertain a stag party. The sort of stripper he'd once have taken great delight in turning into a whore, simply by offering a large enough sum of money to overcome whatever scruples she might have had.
He didn't have to pay for sex, back then: there was always plenty of available pussy for a man with his wealth and privileges. But he'd always enjoyed doing so anyway, just because he could.
Now, he was the one being fucked as a routine part of his job. Only he was doing it for free...
"Are you okay sister?" asked an anxious voice. He looked up to see Agnes, the youngest and possibly the prettiest of his fellow novices, her angelic face alight with concern.
Looking that way wasn't very smart, he thought - she wouldn't want any of the senior nuns to see that. He wondered briefly if he'd let any of his own deep-rooted distress show. But he'd become very good at keeping the blank expression that the senior nuns expected of everyone else working for their Order. So he suspected she was simply noticing his awkward gait, an expression confirmed by her next question.
"Another class with Sister Felicity, I'm guessing?"
He nodded. She glanced around quickly to check there was nobody else nearby. "You might though, er, want to get a mop?"
She gestured behind him and he turned to see a series of wet blotches on the stone floor trailing all the way back to the door through which he'd just exited.
He wanted to roll his eyes. But he simply inclined his head to thank Agnes, then headed for the nearest broom cupboard, trying even harder to clamp his legs together and stop the flow from his abused ass and sodden panties.
Behind him, Agnes cleared her throat. He glanced back at the young novice, his eyebrows arched. "We, um... It's you and me. You know, tonight. I just saw the roster." Her voice sounded uncertain, yet with an undercurrent of anticipation.
Ryan would dearly have liked to leave it there. But he really couldn't. Keeping onside with the other novices was important. Not just because if the time came to escape - or when, he told himself firmly - he might need help from one of them. But also because of what they could do to put him in the bad books of the women who ran the convent.
He already had enough experience of being punished for marginal or imaginary failings. He didn't want them thinking he was anything other than a compliant sissy who was fully cooperating in his feminisation.
"Thanks sister," he forced himself to say, a brief smile flitting across his otherwise serene features. "I'll see you then." Without giving her any chance to respond, he resumed his awkward progress down the corridor.
He genuinely wasn't sure what was worse - having to sleep with Agnes, or to listen to the sound of his own voice.
When he'd been summoned to see Sister Mercy two months before, for the test that would determine whether he embarked on training as a novice or was consigned to menial servitude for the Blessed Order, he would have leapt at the chance to get his voice back and once again share his bed with beautiful young women.
It would have been a lesson to be careful what you wish for...
He could still recall his reaction after the end of his test - or ordeal, to be more accurate - as he was being half guided, half carried to his new living quarters. The shock when Teresa, one of the novices who was helping him, asked if he was "bleeding from, well, you know" and needed medical attention.
He understood the question well enough and was not surprised that they might expect him to have suffered some damage. The chances were pretty good that they'd been through something similar themselves, when they completed their initiate's training.
No, what astounded him was that Teresa could talk. He had thought that the novices, like him and all the other initiates, not to mention the servants, couldn't speak. That their voices had been ripped away by the mad women who ran the convent, as a means both of reinforcing their servility and making it harder to plot any escape.
Seeing his obvious confusion, Angela, the other novice, had quickly explained that novices were forbidden to speak except when in the presence only of another novice, or of a senior nun. And the prohibition was absolute when in certain parts of the convent - like the ones to which Ryan had been confined during his initial period of captivity. But where they were now, talking was fine.
And yes, Teresa had added, Ryan would soon be able to enjoy that privilege as well. As that revelation sank in, all the pain, exhaustion and humiliation he'd just suffered seemed to melt away. He still had enough self-control left to hide his elation. The iron discipline that had got him through his initial training and won him the opportunity to pass on to the next stage of his re-education still held. But inside, he was celebrating. He was going to get his voice back!
Only it wasn't his voice at all, as it turned out. It was Amanda's.
The name was one that Sister Mercy had bestowed on him as what she called a "reward" for finishing his initiate's training and showing himself worthy of becoming a novice. Along with the white tunic and wimple that would now become his daily uniform, she told him solemnly, it would be an important reminder of his new status.
He hated it, with a passion.
It was strange, but while he certainly resented the way he had been so callously deprived of his former and very privileged life, he had somehow managed to avoid getting consumed with ill-feeling towards any of his captors. It was simply too dangerous. Any animosity he showed would be returned tenfold, of that he was sure. So better to just avoid making it at all personal.
He had also tried to reconcile himself to the lingerie, makeup and high-heeled shoes he was forced to wear, to the way in which his genitals were concealed beneath a pussy-shaped prosthetic, even to the body changes that constant doses of hormones had caused. Not to like them, or in any way accept their permanence. But to avoid thinking about what they were doing to him, as far as he possibly could. It was just self-preservation.
But he loathed the name Amanda. And the senior nuns knew it, he was sure. Even though he was positive that he was suppressing any overt reactions, he could just see the delight they took at saying his new name at every possible turn. Although maybe too, he conceded, they simply wanted to condition him to the new gender he was being forced to assume.
In any event, Amanda's voice did not make an immediate appearance. The day after his test, he was taken to the convent's small surgery, given an injection... and then woke up in his new bedroom, swathed in bandages, and with no recollection of what had happened to him in the meantime.
He had the sense that quite a lot of time had passed, and he speculated that he might even have been taken somewhere offsite. But with nothing to mark the passage of days within the convent, and no link at all to the outside world, he couldn't be sure.
It was not until a further ten days or so had passed that the bandages were taken off his throat and he was allowed to talk again. At first he just sounded a little croaky, understandable given the months that had passed since he had last been able to speak. But as the croakiness eased, he realised to his horror that his voice had been altered.
The pitch was much higher, but what really mattered was the change in timbre. There were simply no lower tones left. His baritone had become a soprano. It sounded thin, breathy and indisputably feminine.
So he now had a girl's voice. Amanda's voice.
Paradoxically, the silence that was still expected of him in large parts of the convent had now become something of a boon, not the restriction he had until so recently lamented. But there was no escaping the sound of his transformed tones in the lessons he was now undergoing, classes in which he and the other novices were being taught to speak not just with the tones of a young woman, but with their rhythms and emphases.
And whenever he was in the novices' common room, there was no relief at all. Far from silent contemplation, the "girls" were expected to chat to one another more or less incessantly, not just about the fashion, lifestyle or celebrity gossip magazines they were also encouraged to read, but about each other's pre-convent lives.
Not their real ones, as men - as Ryan was now more or less certain they had all been - but an assumed life they were being carefully coached to construct.
To give them an incentive to develop and remember their fake histories, the novices were constantly being tested by the senior nuns. If they were caught out in some inconsistency or lack of knowledge - such as the name of the high school they had attended, or of their favourite teacher - they would be soundly spanked and a note taken.
