Christine – Putting Her Stamp On It

Christine Rodgers might have left already, if it weren’t for the persistent moans drifting out from deeper inside the alleyway.

Christine let out a stiff breath between pursed lips as she pulled her baseball cap down tighter, letting out just the lightest peek of the honey-blonde locks concealed within. Her crisp, blue eyes peered out from underneath the brim, scanning the adjacent sidewalk, the mouth of the alley, hell, even the sky above, for absolutely any sign of the person she was supposed to meet. He, or she, or whoever it was, was over fifteen minutes late, and she was beginning to feel a little stupid.

No, that was a lie. She’d started feeling stupid right after she’d turned eighteen, when everyone kept saying “You’re so lucky”. The girls said it because they meant it, not having a billboard strapped to her back saying “This Is What Turns Me On”. The boys, on the other hand, said it because they thought it was what she wanted to hear. “You’re almost like one of us guys!” One of her male friends had actually said to her, once, and only once. Her college recruiters had been the most diplomatic about it—calling her “All-American”. And with her blonde hair, blue eyes, trim body, and athletic build, it’s not like they were wrong. She looked like the girl down the street, the women in all of the advertisements, the person drinking a Coke on the next billboard. And for all that she could tell, she might’ve just erupted from the American soil one day, fully-formed, and started to go to school; because as far as her doctors, nurses, and therapists could tell, she had absolutely no ethnic fetish to speak of.

Christine craned her head longingly to the side as the pace and momentum of the distant moaning picked up, biting her lower lip and scraping one thigh against the next as she tried to remember the last time she’d gotten laid—never mind laid like that. It wasn’t like she didn’t have fetishes at all—she was positive it would astonish every single male in her life to find out that she did, in fact, have boobs, and that she, indeed, liked having them touched. But why settle for any girl who liked a quiet fondle, when you could have one who loved a loud squeeze? Plenty of boys liked weird stuff, but finding a boy that was okay with no stuff was like game hunting for unicorns.

None of this, on reflection, made Christine feel any less silly, especially as the moaning peaked into a yowling climax that made her feel less like an unwilling voyeur and more like a dripping stalker. Adjusting her stance through one more set of nervous fidgets, she finally struck up the nerve to straighten up, detach her back from the brick wall, and make her move to leave.

“Sorry I’m late.” came an ill-timed voice from the shadows behind her, without any other distinctive rustle or telltale movement. Christine paused, one good footfall away from putting this whole ill-advised adventure behind her, before that same pulsing cry from before practically answered for her.

“More… please…~”

“It’s fine.” Christine said abruptly, turning in place as she adjusted her hair-hiding hat once more, before running a squinting set of eyes up and down the new stranger’s form, searching for purchase on his half-shadowed shape.

“How’d you find out about me?” said the voice again, identifiably not much older than her, who probably went to the same college she did. Christine decided that was all she needed to know, and readopted her stance against the brick wall, attempting to generate an air of projected nonchalance.

“A friend. Who I trust.” She said, blowing a stray lock of hair out her face. “They say that… well. What you do is, it’s legit.”

“Happy to hear it.” The man (she’d decided it was a man, definitely) said, slipping in close. “But you should know, this isn’t for the faint of heart.”

A smirk tickled the edge of her mouth, and she had to lean her head forward to hide the look in her eye. “They said that, too.” She said, before she nodded to the paper bag, clutched loosely in his visible hand. “How’s it work?”

The figure shrugged one shoulder, casually. “Magic.”

Christine’s gaze was flat. “But how does it work.”

“Well, specifically, it reaches back in time across your family line, and alters your genome at the earliest possible point that it diverges from—”

“Okay, okay, okay, it’s magic.” Christine said with her arms outstretched and palms up, sensing a spiel incoming, before holding a hand out proper. “Let me see it.”

His other hand appeared with a small box, not much bigger than his palm. Christine stared at it hungrily. The other girls on my Vanilla Support Forum are never going to believe this—! She thought, taking the package as gently as the Ark of the Covenant while she handed him the envelope of money in exchange. Peeling open the tape and cardboard, she turned it over to pop the contents into her free hand—dislodging a small ink stamp, with a dial on the side to change the face. It reminded her of the kind you could pick up at any office supply store, save for the elements of brass and wood in the construction, like Staples was having a Renaissance Faire special. She turned it over and held the ink-face up to the light, gently turning the dial on the side. The Welcome to section of it remained unchanged, but directly beneath it, the formerly-blank face turned over to reveal America.

“That’s how you change back,” the figure supplied, as if reading her mind and progress from his place across from her, “if you ever feel the need.”

Christine managed to stop herself from scoffing and muttering an “As if…”, but only just. Continuing to turn the dial, country after country crossed the stamp’s face, the selection growing in time with her excitement—especially when it crossed the threshold where it should have logically already rolled back over to the beginning, but somehow didn’t in favor of yet more countries. “How do you use it, exactly?”

“Well, do you have a passport?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Merely open it up, flip to the section where an attendant would normally put the mark, and stamp it with the country you want.”

Christine finally broke from her stupor to look up at him, sporting a suspicious glare. “Isn’t that, like, illegal? To alter your passport?”

Her only answer was a series of genuine chuckles from the figure opposite. “If anyone arrests you for supernaturally altering your genealogy, you have my sincerest apologies.”

Christine’s cheeks burned lightly at the barb, before turning her attentions back to the stamp itself, rolling it over gently in her hand. “How long does it usually take?”

“It depends. My recommendation is to take a nap, and by the time you wake up, it’ll all be over and done with.”

“Uh-huh.” She said contemplatively, looking down to where she was knocking the stamp absently against her free palm, before clasping it in such, and looking back up at him. “But, really. Why sell something like this to me?”

A smirk sparkled in the darkness. “It was a question of need. I would’ve given to anyone, had I thought they would use it well.”

Christine cast her eyes to side in thought for a moment, before narrowing them. “Wait, then what was the money fo—” Christine looked back to find the alleyway dark and empty, and she let out an exasperated sigh. Fingering the stamp again gently, she turned around and slipped out of the alley, smoothly integrating herself back into the sidewalk traffic.

The figure watched her from the shadows until he could no longer pick her out of the crowd, before letting out a body-heaving sigh. “I just hope it works out better for you than the last one…”

Christine’s smile threatened the sides of her face as she pressed the stamp close to her chest, already imagining all of the things she was going to be able to do with it. Rushing some of the ethnicity-only sororities, reconnecting with my old friends, finally getting HIM to notice me… Christine practically squealed into the heavens at her good luck and literally supernatural fortune. There was only truly, pressing question left:

Where should she start?