All of Mike’s Fears

— Good afternoon, — said the nail master named Lindsey with a smile to Mike, adjusting her white coat and putting on a mask. She already knew this client: a tall guy with a neat beard and a completely bald head, who time after time asked for a simple men’s manicure. She had gotten used to him, though at first she had been cautious — after all, it wasn’t often that men came into her salon at all.

— Good afternoon, — he repeated a little louder, and right then a short girl with a badge reading Megan came up to him. She always greeted him at the entrance, smiled, and helped with his jacket, leaving him only in a white hoodie with the words “Good Times” on it.

— Let me help you, — Megan gently pulled the street jacket off his shoulders and hung it in the locker.

He coughed awkwardly, not used to this kind of service, but over the past months he had accepted that here, in this salon right inside his own building, everything was too “girly” attentive. To be honest, by now he was coming here mostly because of Lindsey. Though of course, in the beginning it had been a bold experiment, basically a test of his own boundaries, as he explained it to himself back then.

A bald-headed guy with a beard walking into a nail salon — that alone was already a challenge. At first it was almost like a joke: ‘What if I sit in the chair, let them file my nails, and see what it feels like?’ How many cigarettes he smoked before that, glancing around nervously as he entered this pink place. And yeah, at some point the anxiety went away. The experiment could’ve ended there. But Lindsey. There was something about her. Something that pulled him back again and again. She even once admitted to him that she wasn’t much of a talker with clients, though with him she always kept a sweet conversation going and even laughed at his jokes. But did she have a boyfriend? Mike never dared to ask.

— Coffee or tea? — Megan asked as usual, squinting at him.

— Cappuccino, with sugar, same as always, — he answered in his usual calm tone.

The salon was almost empty, only someone getting a pedicure in a chair at the far end. Lindsey was already busy near the work desk, wiping the lamp and neatly laying out the tools. Mike sank heavily into the soft chair, pulled out his phone and buried himself in it.

— Give me your hands, — Lindsey said in a professional tone, sitting down at the table and adjusting the mask on her face. — How are you?

— So-so, — he shrugged, — all good. Slept little.

— What kept you up? — Lindsey narrowed her eyes slightly, moving the lamp closer to him and taking his large hand into her thin fingers.

— Watched a movie, — he smirked, — got carried away. Though maybe not the movie, maybe just… thoughts.

She nodded, habitually trimming the cuticle. Mike felt a light tingling from her touch — as if too intimate, yet still official, professional.

— What movie? — Lindsey tilted her head to the side, continuing with confident movements to run the tool along his finger.

— An “old action movie,” — Mike smirked. — Probably not your genre. Some guy in a leather jacket running around saving everyone.

— You’d be surprised, but I like action movies, — she raised her eyes and gave a soft smile. — Sometimes it’s nice to look at that kind of “hero.” Though, of course, in real life it’s never that pretty.

— There are no such heroes in real life, — Mike snorted. — Take me, for example, I’m definitely not one.

— Uh-huh, — Lindsey teased, — but at least your nails are well-groomed.

— Exactly. A real manicure superhero.

They both laughed. Mike felt how Lindsey’s laughter seemed to lower his guard, made him softer. He automatically looked at her hands — thin, graceful, with long nails visible through her gloves. And he caught himself thinking: ‘What if mine were like that too?’

— You know, — he said carefully, — long nails must be uncomfortable. Always catching on something.

— Oh no, — she answered calmly. — You get used to it. Especially when you have no other choice.

Mike smirked again.

— Yeah, probably, — he agreed, his voice a little hoarse, and took a sip of cappuccino, trying to hide the awkwardness.

— But they’re beautiful, — Lindsey added calmly, squeezing his fingers a little tighter, which made Mike struggle not to squeeze hers back. There was something intimate in that, almost like they weren’t sitting in a salon but at the same table in some café.

— Beautiful — that’s for you, — he smirked, trying to look away. — For me it’s more like… strange. Recently I saw a girl with nails. Well, maybe seven centimeters long, or even more. She took about ten minutes to make my coffee.

— Ten minutes? — Lindsey laughed softly, barely shaking her head. — Yeah, that happens. Long nails have their own rules.

— I can’t understand that… — he said, and a meaningful pause filled the salon. He took another sip of coffee, turned his head aside somewhere, and finally said, just to break the silence, — Though. When I came here the first time, I thought that would be the end of it.

He chuckled a bit too loudly, as if to show that everything he said was just a joke. But at that very moment Lindsey raised her brow slightly and suddenly said quietly, almost conspiratorially:

— And what makes you so sure it’s not?

Mike froze. He didn’t get it — was that a joke, or something serious? He asked her again:

— What do you mean, “what makes me so sure it’s not”?

Lindsey looked up in surprise and frowned, as if he had said something completely odd:

— What? No, I didn’t say that. I said about long nails and how you get used to them. That’s all. — She said it with a clear lightness in her voice, as if that was exactly the case, and tilted her head a little, like a doctor checking a patient. — Maybe you were just lost in thought and imagined it?

He blinked, trying to catch at least a hint of irony in her eyes. But no — she looked completely calm, even slightly concerned.

— Strange… — Mike muttered, and suddenly noticed that his palm felt different. As if the skin had become softer, thinner. He automatically clenched his fingers, and it seemed to him that the joints cracked with an unusually sharp sound.

‘This is bullshit,’ flashed through his head. ‘I really need to stop sleeping three hours a night…’

— Everything okay? — Lindsey asked gently, not raising her head, but closely watching his reaction.

— Yeah… I guess, — Mike exhaled, but his voice trembled. He lowered his gaze and noticed that his nails suddenly looked… longer? No, not longer, but… sharper?

He blinked, feeling his heartbeat speed up. Under the lamp, thin plates a couple of centimeters long gleamed — nails that just a second ago had been his normal male ones.

— What the… — he jerked his fingers, but Lindsey firmly held his hand in place.

— Easy, — she said calmly, as if this was nothing unusual. — Relax. This is only the beginning.

— The beginning of what?! — Mike snapped his eyes up, and at that very moment he felt something tighten in his chest, pulling downward. He inhaled sharply, but instead of the usual resistance of his ribs, he felt softness under the hoodie. A light heaviness settled right on his chest, pressing from the inside against the fabric of “Good Times.”

‘No… no, this can’t be happening!’

He yanked at his sweatshirt with his other hand — and under his fingers he clearly felt roundness. Real. Alive.

— Lindsey… what… what did you do to me?! — his voice came out sharp, but at the same time strangely soft, and that trembling tone sent shivers through him.

She calmly looked him in the eyes.

— Me? — she lifted her gaze, the conspiratorial smile vanished, and her face suddenly turned concerned. — Are you okay?

— No! — Mike almost screamed, though he himself was terrified at how his voice sounded: too high, too clear. He swallowed hard and instinctively squeezed his breasts through the hoodie — the soft mounds yielded obediently to his fingers, sending a shiver through his whole body, and at the same time he felt strands sliding down his shoulders.

— Shit… — he shook his head sharply, and blonde hair, thick and heavy, fell across his face, tickling his cheeks. Several strands caught between his long nails, and he realized in horror that even moving them aside wasn’t so easy. At that moment, something stung in his earlobes and seemed to materialize.

— Oh, Michelle, careful, — Lindsey said calmly, not even lifting her eyes. Her voice sounded so routine that everything inside Mike clenched. — You know with nails like that you need to move slower.

— Wh… what? — he stammered. — Who the hell is Michelle?!

Lindsey raised her brows in surprise and looked straight at him:

— Are you sure you’re alright? — Lindsey’s voice was gentle, but with a slight note of surprise, as if her client was overreacting way too dramatically to a normal procedure.

— N-no… — Michelle gasped, but froze when she saw Lindsey didn’t even react to her shock. The master calmly moved the file across the nail’s surface, shaping it.

— You act like this is your first nail extension, — Lindsey chuckled, lowering her eyes. — Just a bit more, we’ll cover them with polish, and you’ll be gorgeous.

Michelle — though in her mind she still clung to the name “Mike,” it already echoed faintly, distant — stared at her hands. Under the lamp, thin fingers gleamed with claws of unimaginable length. Sharp, curved, they looked almost alien, yet frighteningly real. She carefully tried to move them, and the nails scraped across the tabletop with a dry metallic ring that sent goosebumps racing down her back.

— No… no, I’m not… this isn’t me… — she gasped, not believing she was hearing her own high, soft voice.

Lindsey suddenly lifted the corners of her lips, and in her eyes flashed that sly glint Mike had never seen before.

— Michelle, — she drawled with lazy confidence, — stop playing these silly games. You love it when everyone stares at your nails. Don’t you?

After that phrase, something inside clicked, like a switch being flipped, and all resistance just melted away. Mike was gone. In his place sat Michelle. She suddenly smiled softly, looked at her claws with that very same gleam in her eyes, as if she truly was proud of them, and laughed quietly.

— Well yeah, longer than last time… but still beautiful, — she said, lightly running her curved nails through her blonde hair, not even noticing that just a minute ago she had been screaming in horror.

…

She walked home with a light step, feeling her hips sway with the rhythm of each stride. And she liked it. Men turned their heads, women glanced with curiosity. Michelle kept brushing her hair back, deliberately moving her fingers with those long claws, and almost savored the attention.

As soon as she entered her apartment, she pulled off the “Good Times” hoodie and was left in a short top and tight shorts that suddenly fit her new body perfectly. In the hallway mirror stared back a slender girl with long blonde hair and scarlet nails. Michelle let out a satisfied sigh, twirling before the mirror and arching her back so her breasts looked even fuller.

Then came the usual chores. Warm steam from the brewed tea drifted from the kitchen. A stack of laundry waited on the ironing board. She set the iron down, picked up a gray T-shirt, and instinctively lowered her hand… but her claws instantly snagged on the fabric and scraped loudly against the metal. Michelle flinched. She tried again, but once more the nails got in the way, refusing to let her even grip the cloth.

— What the… — she breathed out, eyes widening. Something stabbed in her chest. Her gaze dropped to the absurdly long red claws that just five minutes ago had been her pride.

As if something snapped back into place in her mind. Mike suddenly realized he was standing in his own home — but in a woman’s body, with breasts, with hair, with ten-centimeter nails painted in professional crimson polish.

— Shit… what’s happening to me… — his voice shook, breath faltered. He stumbled back from the ironing board, staring at the iron and at his own claws like a nightmare he couldn’t escape, feeling the unfamiliar weight on his breasts and the fabric clinging too tightly to his new parts.