The Clock That Turned Me into a Woman Every Halloween
Halloween night fell over San Andrés del Valle like a damp sheet. The cobblestone streets sank beneath a heavy sky, and the air smelled of cempasúchil, cheap incense, and something older than the town itself. Mateo Rivas dragged his feet toward his building, hunched over, head down, as if asking the ground for permission was the only thing he knew how to do.
His life fit inside a room with peeling walls. By day he stacked papers in a gray office where nobody remembered his name; at night he drank warm beer in front of a cracked mirror. At thirty-eight, he had never touched a woman who truly desired him, had never once felt that his body was worth anything. To the world, Mateo was a hole shaped like a man.
—So who are you? —he asked his reflection, voice breaking—. Nobody. A wretch nobody gives a damn about.
Not even me.
That night, in front of his door, he found a package wrapped in black velvet. No sender, no note. Inside was an antique pocket watch, with an obsidian face engraved with runes that seemed to pulse with a reddish glow. The hands were stopped at midnight. When his fingers brushed the key, a low, warm whisper filled his head, like breath against the nape of his neck.
—Wind it, mortal —said the voice—. For one week, every Halloween, you will be a woman. Free to enjoy yourself, free to charge for your body. But pleasure has a price. On the final night, the shadows will come to claim what you took.
—A week as a woman? —Mateo murmured, trembling, the watch barely burning his palm—. I’ve got nothing to lose, damn it. Nothing.
He wound it frantically. The ticking burst out like a second heartbeat. The hands spun backward and a violet mist flooded the room, thick, smelling of musk and of candles just blown out. A brutal heat ran across his skin. He felt his bones rearrange without pain, his flesh soften and then tighten again into another mold. His shoulders narrowed, his hips widened, his chest filled out until the skin stretched over two firm curves. What had been between his legs drew inward and became something else, soft, warm, beating with a new pulse.
When the mist cleared, a woman stood before the cracked mirror. Dark, long hair. Full mouth. Eyes that finally shone. Her name would be Marina; the name rose to her lips all on its own.
—Is this me? —she whispered, and her voice came out deep and velvet-soft—. My God. I’m beautiful.
***
Marina stood staring at herself for a long while, running her hands over her body like someone exploring a house she had never expected to inherit. She still had the same mind, the awkward curiosity of a man who had never had a body like this up close, and now she had the whole thing, hers to understand from the inside.
She let the shabby clothes fall to the floor. She touched one nipple with the tip of a finger and the brush sent a shiver down to her belly. It wasn’t anything like what he had known: slower, broader, a current branching through all her skin instead of focusing in one point.
—There’s no way anything can feel like this —she said, almost laughing, almost frightened.
She lay on the bed with her legs open and explored without rushing. She learned where the center of everything was, how slow circles ignited a different heat than quick ones, how the whole body responded more to anticipation than to hurry. The first orgasm surprised her from the side, without warning, a long wave that left her trembling and gasping into the pillow.
—I’m a genius with this body —she panted, staring at the stained ceiling—. It’s like having an instrument that plays itself.
She spent the night discovering herself. Every corner of that new skin was an unmarked map, and she followed it until dawn found her exhausted, sunk into the sheets, with a smile Mateo had never been able to hold.
***
She woke still a woman, the watch motionless in her hand. It hadn’t been a dream. She looked for something to wear and found only one of Mateo’s white T-shirts, so thin it showed the shadow of her nipples, and a pair of boxers that clung to her hips. She looked at herself and laughed alone.
—I need clothes that live up to this —she said.
She went out into the street under the midday sun. She could feel every step, the fabric brushing her skin, men’s gazes stabbing into her the way they had never stabbed into Mateo. She went into a boutique and chose a black lace dress with a neckline that barely contained her. In the fitting room, in front of the mirror, the mere thought of what that dress would provoke outside quickened her pulse. She slid a hand under the skirt and stroked herself until she had to bite her lip not to scream, the reflection giving her back the image of a woman on the edge, beautiful and dangerous.
—This body wants to play all day —she murmured against the glass, before pulling herself together, paying, and leaving with her legs still weak.
***
But pleasure didn’t pay the rent, and Mateo was still waiting for her on the other side of the week, broke as ever. Marina did the math with the coldness of her old office-worker brain: she had seven nights, a body men looked at like a miracle, and a whole year of misery ahead of her. The idea of selling herself lit her pride and, at the same time, churned her stomach. Because inside, she was still him, and the mere thought of a man on top of her filled her with an old, stubborn disgust.
—If this body’s a miracle, then it can pay me —she told herself in the mirror, adjusting the dress—. Even if I have to grit my teeth through every one of them.
She stood on a corner near the bars, where the neon flickered and the air smelled of liquor and sweat. Dressed in black lace, leaning against a post, she didn’t have to wait long. A man in his forties, shirt open and breath reeking of tequila, came up to her with blazing eyes.
—How much for a night, queen? You’re a dream.
—Two hundred —she answered, with a smile that cost her—. And fast.
He took her into an alley. He pushed her against the wall and entered her clumsily, thrusting without rhythm. Marina’s body responded despite herself, lighting up on its own, but her mind stayed apart, counting the seconds, enduring the smell of alcohol and cigarettes. When he finished and left the crumpled bills in her hand, she was already calculating how much she still needed to get what she wanted.
—Your body doesn’t disgust me —she said through clenched teeth, pocketing the money—. You do. Get lost.
Every night the pattern repeated. Men of every age, stale breath, hurried hands. Marina’s body climaxed like a machine beyond her will, and that intimate betrayal was the worst thing: finishing trembling with pleasure on top of someone she despised. But the bag of bills grew, and that was the only thing that truly kept her on the corner.
—Each one’s hell —she muttered at the end of the sixth night, counting the wad under a streetlamp—. But this money is my whole life. One more day.
***
On the seventh night, the air changed. The neon turned sickly, the alley shadows thickened until they had edges, and the watch in Marina’s pocket began to beat with a slow, hungry ticking. The runes on the face burned red as embers. The voice that returned was not the warm whisper from the beginning; it was a roar rising from some bottomless pit.
—The pleasure you took has a price, mortal —it thundered—. Your orgasms are ours. The ticking has come to collect.
—No —Marina said, clutching the watch to her chest, the money bag pressed against her body—. The body is mine. I earned the pleasure.
The shadows peeled away from the walls and took shape: tall silhouettes, broken at the edges, made of smoke and something older than night. They surrounded her without touching her yet, and the cold they gave off seeped into her bones. Marina backed up until the wall cut off her retreat.
—We gave you the body —the first one crackled—. Now you give back what you felt.
What came next Mateo would never be able to tell completely. The shadows closed over Marina like a tide and tore from her, one by one, every wave of pleasure she had accumulated through the week, emptying her from the inside until she was hollow and shaking. She felt the skin the watch had given her come undone, the borrowed body becoming clay again in hands that were not hers. There was pain, there was a scream that got caught in her throat, and there was, above all, the vertigo of losing something she had finally felt was hers. The violet mist returned, this time icy, and swallowed her whole.
—Take your damn pleasure, but leave me the money! —she managed to sob before everything went dark.
***
Mateo woke in the alley at dawn, a man again, his body aching as if he had been run through from the inside by blows. The watch was still motionless in his hand. At his side, untouched, the bag of bills. He sat against the dirty wall, crying without knowing whether he was crying from relief, from horror, or from the absurd nostalgia of a body he no longer had.
—Give that back to me —he murmured, looking at the black face—. Give me back what I felt. At least… at least I have the money.
With that money, he changed his life. He left the peeling room, rented a bright apartment downtown, bought clothes, a car, and then a small business that prospered. Outwardly, Mateo became a prosperous man whom the town began to greet. Inside, he kept counting the days until the next Halloween.
Because the watch would not let go. Every year, on the same night, the violet mist returned and he became Marina for a week. And every year he learned to make better use of it: rich clients, upscale bars, high rates negotiated with the cold blood of his old office-worker head. The disgust never went away, but neither did the money, and between the two things, money always won. Until the seventh night came and the shadows returned to collect, emptying her of everything she had enjoyed, dragging her back to Mateo’s tired flesh.
The neighbors whispered about “the cursed woman” who appeared every Halloween, seduced the town’s most expensive men, and vanished before dawn. No one linked her to the quiet businessman downtown. Mateo grew old rich and alone, trapped in a cycle no amount of money could break.
On his deathbed, surrounded by luxuries bought with Marina’s body, the watch vibrated one last time on the bedside table. The runes glowed, and Mateo understood that the contract did not end with life.
—I only wanted to feel something —he whispered, with his last breath—. I only wanted my body to be worth something. And look at the price… look at the price I’m still paying.
