The air inside the abandoned Blackwood Manor hung thick and cold, smelling of damp plaster and decay. Leo shivered, pulling the drawstrings of his grey hoodie tight, but the chill had nothing to do with the temperature. It was the same familiar, simmering resentment that always kept him on edge.
"Come on, scaredy-cat," he sneered, his voice cracking slightly on the last word. He was short, slight, and, even at eighteen, had the kind of delicate bone structure and wide eyes that made him look less like the tough guy he desperately tried to be and more like a prettier version of his own girlfriend. It was a constant source of bitterness, a weakness he compensated for by being cruel.
Sarah, walking hesitantly behind him, hugged her jacket closer over the bright red dress she wore underneath. Her slip-on shoes made soft, scuffing sounds on the dusty hardwood floors. "Leo, I really don't like this. It's too dark, and I think I heard something upstairs."
Leo stopped, turning on his basketball shoes with an aggressive pivot. His eyes narrowed, and he let out a short, dismissive laugh. "Oh, look at you. Gonna cry? For a minute there, I thought you were wearing that dress for me, but you're just proving you're a total wimp." He knew her soft, slightly rounded face was something she was sensitive about, and he didn't hesitate to mock the way her brow furrowed in genuine fear.
Sarah's shoulders slumped, and she lowered her gaze, used to the verbal lashings. She just wanted to leave, but Leo always got what he wanted.
Unseen by either of them, a faint green light began to coalesce in the shadows near the grand, broken staircase.
Elara, the ghost of a maid in her early twenties, manifested fully, her form glowing with an ethereal green aura. She wore a pristine black and white maid's uniform, the lace apron stark against the gloom, completed by white stockings and black heels with ankle straps. Her soft, pale face, though transparent and glowing, held a look of utter, cold disapproval.
She had been a fixture of this house for over a century, a silent witness to countless tragedies and small cruelties. But the way this small, angry boy treated the quiet girl beside him struck a chord in her eternal heart. It was a familiar, petty tyranny, and she hated it.
Elara floated silently above the dust motes. Leo's sneering face, his constant need to tear Sarah down to feel bigger, was too much. The maid ghost, who had spent her life dedicated to service and decency, felt a burning, spectral rage. He will not treat her like that in my house.
The boy was looking at his shoes, adjusting his jeans, clearly waiting for Sarah to buckle under the pressure. Elara raised a hand, and the air around them dropped several more degrees. Her green light intensified, focusing solely on Leo, the short, thin young man who didn't know that the trouble he was about to get into wasn't a punishment for looking feminine, but for acting like a bully.
As Leo stood there, ready for another verbal jab, a thick, swirling fog, tinged faintly with the maid ghost's green glow, began to rise from the floorboards. It moved with unnatural speed, snaking down the long, ruined hallway. Sarah gasped, clutching her arms tightly.
"What the hell is that?" Leo demanded, his annoyance instantly switching to a nervous bravado. He tried to swat at the mist as it enveloped his legs, but it was like hitting water--or worse, hitting nothing at all.
The fog soon completely engulfed the section of the hallway they were in. Sarah cried out Leo's name, stepping back until her spine hit the cold, peeling wall. The mist, however, seemed to rap around Leo, twisting and condensing directly around his figure like a cocoon. He swore, trying to push it away, but the grey cotton of his hoodie and the rough denim of his jeans seemed to dissolve into the clinging vapor. A tingling sensation, cold and alien, washed over his skin.
Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the fog dispersed, leaving the air clear and cold once more.
Sarah stared. Leo stood paralyzed, his arms stiffly held out as if still wrapped in the mist. His familiar clothes were gone. In their place, he wore a crisp black and white maid's dress, complete with the white, ruffled apron and lacy trim. Below the hem, a pair of pristine white stockings encased his legs, which terminated in glossy black heels with delicate ankle straps--the very shoes the ghost wore.
His short blonde hair, usually messy and unkempt beneath his hood, was now meticulously styled into a perfect, feminine bob. His face, normally pale and sharp, was smoothed out and painted with makeup: rosy blush on the cheeks, dark liner around his wide eyes, and a shade of glossy red lipstick. Even his last bastion of masculine identity was gone; the fog had stripped his boxers and replaced them with a soft, fitted pair of white panties.
The transformation was absolute, terrifyingly complete. Leo stared down at the black, buckled heels on his feet, his jaw slack.
Sarah's breath hitched, and she covered her mouth, her fear momentarily eclipsed by sheer astonishment.
Leo opened his mouth to rage, but all that came out was a high-pitched squeak of shock. He was completely, irrevocably, dressed as a maid.
Panic flooded Leo's system. He tried to take a step toward Sarah, to demand an explanation, but his weight shifted awkwardly on the thin black heels. His ankle turned, he lost all balance, and with a yelp of surprise, he tumbled backward, landing hard on his tailbone on the filthy floor.
The fall hiked the lace hem of the dress, giving Sarah a clear, if brief, view of the unfamiliar white panties he now wore.
"My shoes!" he cried, clutching at his feet with frantic desperation. He fumbled with the tiny ankle straps, tugging hard, but the leather and the heels seemed fused to his skin. He yanked at the crisp, starched fabric of the dress, trying to rip it, but it held firm, impervious to his strength. "Get this thing off me! I can't--it won't tear!"
Sarah, still pressed against the wall, was a chaotic mess of emotions. She was terrified of the supernatural event, but a part of her couldn't stifle a sudden, sharp surge of confused amusement. Her usual tormentor was helpless, sprawled on the floor, dressed in a ridiculous costume. She quickly looked away, fighting the urge to laugh, settling for a wide-eyed silence.
Leo's frantic attempts failed, and his rage turned on the only other person there. "Why didn't it happen to you?" he shrieked, scrambling to sit upright. "You were right next to me! Why am I the only one who looks like some pathetic doll?" The unfairness, the humiliation, and the sudden loss of control eclipsed his fear.
From the top of the dark, ruined staircase, the spectral maid Elara finally drifted into view. Her green light illuminated the dust-filled air, and her voice, a cool, gentle whisper that somehow resonated in their bones, filled the hallway.
"Because," Elara said, floating down slowly, her expression serene and satisfied, "only one of you needed a lesson in manners."
"A lesson?!" Leo shrieked, finally managing to scramble onto his knees. "I'll show you a lesson, you--you glowing freak!" He lunged awkwardly toward the staircase, intending to run past her, but the heels betrayed him again. His ankle twisted violently, sending him sprawling forward onto the floorboards with a cry of pain.
"Help me, Sarah! Get me out of these stupid things!" he yelled, looking back at his girlfriend with a furious, smeared face.
Sarah hesitated only for a second, the fear of the ghost warring with the deep-seated impulse to help. She quickly moved, grabbing his outstretched hand and pulling him up. Stumbling and lurching, with Sarah half-dragging him, they managed to make it past the maid ghost--who merely watched them go, her green glow pulsing silently--and into what looked like the manor's enormous, decaying kitchen.
"We have to get out of here, Leo!" Sarah whispered urgently, but Leo barely heard her.
"This is your fault!" he hissed, his voice tight with humiliation as he hobbled to lean against a peeling counter. He kicked one of the heels at the ground in impotent fury. "If you hadn't stopped, if you weren't so uselessly scared, we wouldn't be in this--this dress! I look ridiculous! You're supposed to be my girlfriend, why aren't you doing anything to help me?!"
As the cruel words left his mouth, a sudden, cold breeze swept through the room, though no windows were open. Before either of them could react, a large, perfectly formed whipped cream pie, big enough to obscure a face, materialized silently from the swirling air. It shot across the kitchen, hitting Leo dead center with a wet splat.
The unseen force behind the projectile was formidable, smashing the pie deeply into his face, leaving a perfect, sticky mask. Rich, white whipped cream immediately began to ooze dramatically down his styled hair and over the ruffles of the maid outfit's bodice.
When the momentum ceased, the empty, dull-silver pie tin remained stuck directly to Leo's face, held there by the sheer stickiness of the dessert. As Sarah stared, horrified and mesmerized, a faint green light traced itself across the silver surface of the tin. In a moment, the word L O S E R was written across it in glowing, ghostly script.
With a frustrated roar, Leo grabbed the pie tin and ripped it away from his face. The maid makeup was entirely ruined, now obscured by several inches of sugary, cold whipped cream. Large, broken chunks of brown crust were suspended in the mess, clinging to his chin and eyelashes. He frantically pawed at his face and uniform, wiping off as much of the thick cream as he could with the lace cuffs of the maid dress, succeeding only in smearing it across the black fabric and his now bob-cut blonde hair.
Sarah, who had swiftly put her phone back in her pocket, watched him with a wide, innocent expression, trying to suppress the laughter bubbling in her throat.
"Why?" Leo cried, the last vestige of his composure snapping. His voice, high and strained, cracked with genuine despair and anger. He looked at Sarah, his face a terrifyingly angry, cream-caked mask. "Why did I get pied and not you?"
As if answering the rhetorical question, the maid ghost, Elara, reappeared. She floated silently behind Leo, her green glow illuminating the sticky mess on his back. In her transparent, white-gloved hands, she held another large, fresh whipped cream pie, this one even more voluminous than the last.
Elara moved the pie slowly, deliberately, in front of the back of Leo's head. He was so consumed with fury at Sarah that he never saw her approach. With calm, supernatural strength, she drove the second pie deep into his face, smothering him completely.
Leo let out a muffled, gurgling cry of shock and frustration, his hands instinctively flying up in a frantic, useless attempt to push the pie away. The creamy explosion, coming from behind him, was total. Elara leaned in close to his ear, her spectral lips inches from his cream-soaked makeup.
"Because," her chilling, gentle whisper echoed in his ear, "you are the one who needs to learn a lesson." She twisted the pie tin one final, grinding turn before dissolving back into the shadows.
Leo tore the second tin off. His head, face, and the front of the maid uniform were now completely saturated. The whipped cream was thick, cold, and heavy, matting his blonde bob and dripping in chunky white rivulets down his neck. He frantically wiped the worst of it from his eyes, leaving messy trails across his cheeks.
He looked at Sarah. She wasn't scared anymore; she was laughing, holding her phone up and taking video, her face alight with an enjoyment he had never seen her express before--certainly not for him. The sight was the ultimate provocation.
"Stop it!" he roared, a wet, spattering sound, and lurching toward her. The heels, the slippery floor, and the sheer weight of the cream proved too much.
His center of gravity shifted precariously, and Leo began to fall forward.
Just as he was about to hit the floor, a third, freshly-made pie materialized from the green-tinged air directly beneath his collapsing body.
He fell face first into the dessert with a sickening SPLAT! The impact was cushioned but thorough, sending a shockwave of white cream exploding outward, coating the peeling baseboards and splashing up onto his already ruined dress. He landed belly-down, the full volume of the pie tin wrapping around his head and shoulders, burying his face deep in the sweet, cold filling.
Leo struggled, his gloved hands flailing in the thick cream, but he couldn't push himself up. It felt impossibly heavy, like someone had placed a crushing weight on his back. He grunted, his face sinking even deeper into the pie until the smooth, cool metal of the pie tin pressed against his cheeks.
Hovering silently above the scene, Elara, the maid ghost, watched her pupil. One of her glossy black heels--the exact same style of shoe Leo was forced to wear--was pressed gently but firmly to the back of his head, pinning his face into the delicious, degrading prison.
"How many times will we have to do this?" the ghost asked, her voice calm and pedagogical, as if addressing a particularly slow student.
Sarah leaned against the counter, clutching her stomach. The fear of the manor was entirely gone, replaced by a pure, liberating mirth. The humiliating tableau in front of her--Leo, the bully, completely silenced and plastered to the floor by dessert--was priceless. The hold Leo had exerted over her for months was slowly, irrevocably fading with every shutter click of her camera.
The pressure suddenly vanished. Elara lifted her spectral foot, and Leo was able to push himself out of the pie tin with a loud, sucking sound. He scrambled to his feet, cream dripping from his bob and eyelashes, his small frame trembling with furious, helpless indignation.
He turned on Sarah, his ruined, painted face contorted with pure hatred. "You know what," he hissed, spitting a chunk of crust onto the floor. "You can stay here with your new friend! I am leaving!"
He pivoted on his heels--a slow, careful turn that showcased his lack of practice--and attempted to flee the kitchen. The heels forced him to mince his steps, making his furious escape look like a ridiculously slow, clumsy dance.
As he reached the doorway, a low, ominous gurgling sound echoed from the high ceiling. Leo looked up just as a large, viscous wave of thick, sticky pink slime poured down. It hit him squarely on the head, drenching him completely.
The neon-bright, girly pink slime, smelling faintly of bubblegum, mixed instantly with the melting white whipped cream, turning his already ruined maid outfit into a catastrophic, pastel mess. The heavy slime coated his blonde hair, seeped down the ruffles of the apron, and painted his entire upper body in a vibrant, feminine color.
Sarah slid down the side of the counter, unable to hold herself up any longer. Her laughter turned hysterical, a series of gasps and squeaks that shook her thin frame. She laughed until she was dizzy, holding her side, the idea of Leo, the self-proclaimed tough guy, slowly retreating in a dripping maid dress, covered in pie and bright pink slime, was so profoundly ridiculous that she was genuinely on the verge of passing out from the sheer joy of it.
Leo continued his slow, humiliating walk. He was a wreck: a short boy in a ruined maid uniform, painted pink with slime, and hobbling on glossy black heels. He was completely and utterly humiliated. His girlfriend was laughing at him, and he had been made a joke by the ghost of a maid. He finally reached the grand, dusty exit door, grabbed the peeling brass handle, and pulled. It wouldn't open. He tried to kick at the ancient wood with a delicate heel, but it did nothing.
Then, he heard the cool, gentle voice of Elara, the maid ghost, right behind him.
"I don't think you truly learned your lesson."
Leo spun around, his cream-and-slime-coated face now registering pure, unadulterated terror. Elara hovered above him, her green glow intensifying. Around her, dozens of large, face-sized whipped cream pies began to materialize, rotating in the air like sticky, edible planets.
For the first time that night, Leo looked up in genuine, paralyzing fear. He slowly began to slide down the door, his slim body crumpling into a fetal position on the floor.
"Please," he begged, the word muffled and choked with emotion, "I will be good. I promise. Just let me go."
The ghost just looked down at him, her expression unreadable.
Sarah, having recovered enough to stand, made her way into the hallway. She looked from the ghost, to the massive, revolving arsenal of pies, and then to Leo, cowering and begging, his maid dress ruined, his body painted pink. She had never seen him so utterly broken and scared before.
Elara turned her luminous, green attention to Sarah, bypassing Leo completely.
"Should I let him have it?" the ghost asked, her voice a calm, final judgment.
Leo's eyes, wide and terrified, flew to Sarah. He desperately shook his head, begging her to say no with his silence.
Sarah took a moment. She thought about every put-down, every casual cruelty, every time Leo had made her feel small or foolish to boost his own fragile ego. The memory of his laughter earlier that night--her fear becoming his entertainment--was still raw.
She walked up to him, a new, cold smirk spreading across her face.
"Get on your knees," she ordered.
Leo, without hesitation, did exactly as he was asked, his hands clasped in pathetic supplication.
"Now, apologize to me," Sarah commanded.
Leo's apology spilled out instantly, desperate and frantic. He said he was sorry, swore he was a horrible boyfriend, and promised he would never, ever treat her like that again.
Sarah listened, her expression thoughtful, before walking back toward the ghost. Leo watched her, his last hope clinging to the idea that she would accept his desperate words.
Sarah smiled. "I accept," she said. Then she turned to Elara, and with her smirk returning, she spoke the words Leo had dreaded most:
"Let him have it."
In an instant, the air erupted. Hundreds of pies, launched by invisible hands, flew at Leo. He didn't even have time to scream. Pie after pie hit him in the face, chest, shoulders, and all over his body with brutal, overlapping splats.
Sarah watched, satisfied, as the barrage continued, reducing the pathetic figure of Leo to a mound of churning white and brown. When the ghost finally ceased the attack, Leo was nothing more than a pair of small, stocking-clad legs sticking out from the top of a mountain of whipped cream and broken crust, silent and completely entombed.
Elara turned to Sarah, a flicker of satisfaction in her spectral eyes.
"Here," she said, and a final, immaculate whipped cream pie materialized in Sarah's hands.
Sarah knew exactly what to do. She walked over to the sticky mountain, found the place where Leo's face should have been, and slowly, deliberately smushed the pie deep into the cream, ensuring it was a perfect, crushing final blow. She left the tin on the surface, pulled out her bright red lipstick from her purse, and wrote one single, clear word on the metal: L O S E R.
Epilogue
The manor doors had unlocked the moment Sarah delivered the final pie. Sarah walked out into the cool evening air, leaving the ghost and the mountain of dessert behind. She didn't call the police or tell anyone what had happened; she didn't have to. She was free.
Leo reappeared three days later, not in his old, aggressive uniform of jeans and a hoodie, but back in the same black and white maid dress, freshly laundered and starched, complete with the heels and white stockings. The transformation was permanent, and something deep inside him had irrevocably shifted.
He no longer looked feminine in a way that made him angry; he looked feminine because he was now hers.
Leo, quiet and compliant, now known simply as "Leona" to Sarah's friends, quickly fell into a new routine. Sarah, radiating a confidence and command no one had ever seen in her before, was in charge. Leona's small apartment had been reorganized into "Sarah's Residence," and he kept it immaculate.
Every morning, Leona would be up before dawn, polishing Sarah's shoes and laying out her clothes. He served her breakfast in bed, always perfectly cooked, always delivered with a bow and an apology for his past behavior. He wore his heels constantly, having learned through painful practice how to move with a silent, delicate grace. The makeup was always flawless.
One evening, Sarah was curled up on the couch, watching a movie, when Leona brought her a glass of chilled juice. He set it down gently on the side table, his eyes fixed on the floor.
"Thank you, Leona," Sarah said, not taking her eyes off the screen.
"Is there anything else I can fetch for you, Mistress Sarah?" he asked, his voice now soft and trained, utterly devoid of the sneering arrogance it once held.
Sarah finally looked up, a soft, satisfied smile playing on her lips. She reached out and delicately lifted the edge of his apron, wiping a stray spot of dust she knew wasn't there.
She picked up her phone and idly scrolled through the gallery, pausing at the videos and pictures she'd taken in the kitchen: Leona, buried in cream, the pink slime dripping, the L O S E R tin. The images always gave her a quiet, profound pleasure, reminding her of the night she took back her power. Sometimes, she would look from the image of the cream-smothered boy to the perfectly obedient maid kneeling before her, and a sly thought would cross her mind--it might just be time for another messy lesson, just to reinforce who was in charge now.
"No, that will be all," she said. "Go on. Go wait in the hallway until I ring the bell."
Leona bowed low, his blonde bob swinging forward. "As you wish."
He backed out of the room, his black heels clicking softly on the polished floor, the picture of a perfectly obedient, feminine maid. Sarah settled back, the gentle sound of his footsteps fading as he retreated to stand silently by the front door, waiting for her command.