Alex Poppy, a transgender male.

"And have you told this to your dietician?" The phrase is becoming loathsome to you. Of all the repetitive, stock phrases you use, here in your day job as a therapist to young adults, none bother you so as asking an anorexic if they've advised their sworn enemy about their latest dodged meal.

"Of course not!" The voice is only barely masculine, just a bit too high... grating. "It's not like she'd understand... I'm... I know I'm supposed to think I'm not, but I'm so... unacceptable, so fat... and she just wants me to be as fat as her!"

She. Her. The full-grown brat sitting up straight on your couch, perpendicular to the latter's direction and purpose, fired the last therapist barely sixty days ago for calling him by such pronouns. You're told it was a slip, or so his parents said when young Alex Poppy, the transgender boy sitting in your office, told you when Alex was 17.

You contemplate the man before you, now 18, and everything you've learned:

The young Mr. Poppy, now an adult, is responsible for his own care in every way... save for every way: his parents, old money brats themselves, would do anything, anything at all, to quiet the child and not risk revealing their sordid, awful plot to one Henrick Poppy, Alex's grandfather and the super-wealthy patriarch of the Poppy family. A patriarch that, stunningly, never knew Alex was a girl in the first place... and would only give his millions to male scions, thanks to some truly early 20th-century sexism. The parents had two children, both daughters, before they decided their odds of a proper heir were too slim... until they looked upon the younger of their daughters. So they raised poor Alexa male for all his pre-pubescent years, hoping the old man would croak before Alex's tits or period started to come in... and by the time they realized it was too late for all that, Alexa had already been quite set on being male. Was this the cause of gender dysphoria? Did it merely complement the child's male identity that would have risen regardless? You're hardly advanced enough in your field to try and answer such a question definitively.

This isn't a narrative you were given by those doting, mercilessly greedy parents, of course. Alexa Poppy, or Alex as he has been known in every way save legally, dumped that plot on your lap in a sudden, thirteen-minute outburst after two full therapy sessions of silence. You couldn't be sure of its validity, given his temper when he suddenly poured it out: he was trapped in the grip of his family, the latter determined to make something useful out of him. Now that Alex is legally an adult, he can no longer threaten them with reports to child protection services (as he apparently constantly did, before). They also didn't seem ready to let Alex's transformation into a male actually happen; the ruse had become too real for those blue-bloods, and they decided they'd try to wait out the head of the family's slipping lifespan again, and again they failed. Satisfied with keeping him on specialized hormone treatments, they let Alex grow into a flat-chested woman of only 5'1" in height, tomboyish and growing light bits of hair in the male patterns (he's rather proud of that sad, thin little mustache he can now grow). Petite and masculine enough to fool the leader of the family, Alex was never allowed to go full-tilt on male hormone treatments, and surgery was right out of the question. They had hoped that the old man would at least have the decency to die before Alex turned eighteen...

... Henrich Poppy just celebrated his 103rd birthday five weeks ago. Alex, now an adult, no longer needed to obey his family's regimented control over what should have been more aggressive hormone treatments, leaving him physically a thin, slightly hairy woman instead of allowing him to grow into the man he knew he was. Enraged at learning that this was on purpose, the alleged adult before you thought it mature and wise to relapse on every dysfunction he once invented. Yes, invented: maybe you're not talented enough to identify the origin of his gender dysphoria, but you are talented enough to know you don't actually have an anorexic, chronically depressed, bulimic gender-dysphoric young man suffering from disintegration anxiety. Only his gender crisis holds up under your analysis; the rest is a tantrum, and one of which you're quickly growing bored. Alex was now off the female hormone inhibitors for almost a full month, which also meant all sorts of hormones and anger were bubbling up, likely threatening to make those conditions very real if he believed them well enough. He was also off the testosterone, which combined with awakening ovaries would mean he'd start suffering the bevy of womanhood he'd managed to avoid until now.

You're a therapist of humble means, and a magic show enthusiast on weekends. That may seem odd to some, but you've found the former helps inform and make more enjoyable the latter: you practice hypnosis, or quackery as some colleagues call it, on the stage. None of this prepared you for your first transgender patient, let alone such a whopper of a weird, and honestly abusive, case. You're open to the new interpretations of transgenderism, wary of their increased suicide rate, and intelligent enough to realize society's hand in both. Given Alex's attitude, pettiness, and all that life has otherwise thrown on his lap, you find yourself growing less empathic.

"You think I'm being melodramatic, don't you?" His words ring true, but it's only because some part of him must know the truth of it. "My mother's always-" You're counting the days before you get yourself fired during one tantrum or another, along with the nutritionist and whatever other quacks are investing time on these faux health concerns.

Truth be told, you tune out for most of this one until you're expected to chime in. "I understand your concern about your mother's opinions of you, but we've talked quite a bit about how you're an adult now, Alex, and neither your parents nor I can tell you that you have to stay with the doctors you currently visit. So what's really stopping you from telling the nutritionist about your **** vomiting?" The words come out too direct, too hostile for your role in this. His grating voice is getting to you, it seems.

Alex notes it too; he's stunned by your attack for a time, then stutters his response. "I... well I want to... to get better... but she'll just..."

He looks away when he says it, to the floor and to your office's sparse decorations and to anywhere where your honest gaze isn't. A lie, perhaps. Shame? Alex is so clearly on the precipice of just admitting that this is largely bullshit, and letting you tend to his real issue of gender... but you have no orthodox tool to get him to stop-

An alarm goes off on your smartwatch. You flick it into view, and note the text:

CARL BIGSBY: Your show this weekend got cancelled. Stage fire burned half the damn bar down, and we don't have a backup gig.

Fuck. Manipulating drunks was usually an extra layer of fun, and the extra money (now evaporated) never hurt. Plus, there's that new technique you developed, one that even put an old skeptical friend of yours and Carl's under your temporary command. Hell, that Carl seemed influence at all is a miracle; he was, until then, immune to all forms of hypnosis you knew, stage or couch-based. You were hoping to explore this new technique with a wider audience, but-

Another text comes in.

CARL BIGSBY: You're lucky that therapy shit can keep a roof over your head. I'll be working some shithead's coffee shop for tips to make up the gap. We'll talk about our next gig on Monday. Take it easy, Lord Frank.

Right, you can't let yourself be caught reading texts mid-session. "Then you should get a second opinion, just to make sure you're getting better... would that make you feel better about the nutritionist's advice?" Alex takes a moment to consider his answer to you- wait.

Wait... Lord Frank?

You tap your watch and review Carl's text... and he did. He called you Lord Frank... he'd never call you Lord Frank. Except you told him to refer to you that way henceforth. It was a stupid joke, a jab at Carl's pride and general disrespect for you (you were friends, after all), but you told him that last weekend, while testing out your new method... no hypnosis lasted six days. Was it a trick? Carl was the paranoid type, and he'd never text anything he'd want to take back or deny later. So did... did it really work? Was he permanently... or at least for a very long time... hypnotized?

"Whoa..."

"Huh?" You blink. You interrupted her... his... chain of thoughts with your outburst. His brow furrows; looks like he caught you reading text messages. "Really?! Y'know I could be doing plenty right now... l-like killing myself!"

That's perhaps the emptiest threat of suicide you've ever heard... but you also can't afford to let this overgrown brat get you on the news as tormenting 18-year-old patients towards faux suicide attempts... presuming the news would care about you. Well, they'd care more if you came out with a sudden breakthrough for hypnosis-

... no. A sudden breakthrough... treatment. A treatment for anorexia. Bulimia. Suicidal thoughts. Chronic depression. Gender dys- no. No you couldn't... could you? But you don't even know how long it would last, if...

"Alex," you interrupt his tirade of self-threatening, "have you ever been hypnotized?"

An eyebrow raises. Eyes widen. Jaw drops half-syllable. It takes him a moment. "N-No... but... that's not real, right?"

You smile. You'd have your guinea pig for your latest stage act, and maybe be hailed as a new age Freud if you could cure all those designer dysfunctions teenagers tended to crop up. But was it that powerful? Thinking back to Carl's pride... you wonder if there's anything it couldn't do. It's almost like you're giving them... well, obviously not Absolute Gullibility Syndrome, because that's a genetic neurological disease or some such, something beyond your field of study... but maybe something like AGS? It's the closest analog you had.

"I'd like to spend the remainder of the session attempting a session of hypnosis for you... and if it makes you uncomfortable, we'll stop for the day, and if it helps you feel more comfortable, more at ease, well... maybe we'll regiment this treatment. Would you like to try it?"

Alex shifts in his chair, and suppresses a widening grin. He was still too feminine in your hunting eye to pass. "... S-Sure... I mean, it probably won't work... I have a strong will, you know."