When Daniel opened his eyes for the first time that day, he didn't realize they were actually open for a few seconds. He was surrounded by darkness, one that didn't yield despite his eyes being as adjusted as possible. He tried to rise to a kneeling position, but couldn't move his limbs. He struggled against his restraints, his body thrashing along a rough wooden floor, but whatever held him was tied tight.

“Help!” His voice echoed quietly in whatever space he was held, adding to his dread. “Where am I? Where did you take me? What do you want from me?” The questions lingered unanswered. Daniel's breathing became more erratic and he thrashed harder against the bonds. “Let me go! Let me out! Someone, help me!”

“Stop yelling,” a soft, feminine voice said. He instantly fell still.

“H-hello? Where are you? Who are you?” The voice didn't respond. “Tell me who you are! What do you want with me?” Panic was creeping back into his voice, raising the volume again.

“I said stop yelling. You'll attract cher attention.”

Daniel paused, running over what he'd heard. “What? Whose?”

When the voice spoke again, she was hesitant. “I don't know if chi would want me telling you cher name.”

“Who? Who are you talking about? And why are you talking like that? Who are you?” There was no response to his barrage of questions. “Let me out of these restraints at least, please.”

“I can't. It's not my place.”

“Who are you? What's your name?”

“My name is Ciscunt.” There was obvious defeat in her voice as she said it. Daniel started to say something, but was cut off when the room suddenly shook and light poured in from the ceiling. Daniel let out a scream of surprise.

“Did I hear shouting?” Another feminine voice, but this one was much louder. It boomed down from the gash that had been torn in the roof of wherever he was, and for a moment he wondered if God was a woman. “You know I don't like unruly slaves, Ciscunt.”

“Yes ma'am, I was just telling him to lower his voice,” the woman with Daniel responded. He looked over and saw a young woman resting on her knees, naked except for a thick black collar around her throat. She stared intently at the ground, her gaze unwavering.

“Good girl. I'm sure he'll learn in time. Won't you, little guy?” Daniel's attention shifted skyward as a massive finger came down, prodding him in the side. He jerked hard, futilely trying to escape the giant woman, but this only drew a lilting laugh. “Come here, let's have a better look at you.” Her fingers scooped him up into her hand, lifting him out of the drawer and up to her face.

“That's better. So what's your name, little thing?” she asked. Her hand blocked his view of the lower half of her face, but he could plainly see the massive blue eyes staring at him piercingly, each eye more than half his size. He started to tremble in fear, his mouth completely dry, and would have involuntarily relieved himself on her hand if he'd had anything with which to do so. After another moment of silence, she laughed again.

“Are you nervous? Uncomfortable? Afraid, even? I can understand why. For the first time in your life, the Patriarchy isn't here to protect you.” A creeping bitterness slid into her voice. She lowered her hand and dropped him on the table, giving him a better view. Generous breasts swelled against her revealing shirt, looming over him dangerously. He raised his eyes to take in her whole face and suddenly realized how he knew her – she was a girl from one of his old Sociology classes. He didn't know much about her beyond the fact that she was antagonistic during discussions, and he thought he'd heard she hadn't done well.

“Staring at my tits again, cishet?” Her voice was low and threatening. He squirmed against the ropes holding his limbs tight behind his body and shook his head.

“No, of course not! I just want to know what happened to me!”

“Isn't it obvious?” She rose from her seat, appearing even taller to the miniscule Daniel who wriggled like a worm on her desk. “I took away your privilege. This is what it looks like when you don't have a centuries-old system of exploitation and oppression supporting you. It's just you now, all alone and defenseless, at the mercy of those you've taken advantage of for so long. Are you ready to answer for your crimes?”

“My crimes? What crimes?”

Her fist came down on the desk, the shockwave slamming into Daniel with as much force as she could muster. He shrieked wildly, twitching and flailing on the surface of the desk.

“Please! Please god don't kill me! Don't kill me, please please please!” He was already screaming himself hoarse, gripped by pure terror. The giant woman stared down at him hatefully.

“Don't tell me what to do, you little fuck. I call the shots now. I'm the one in power, understand?”

“Yes! Yes, yes, I understand! You're in charge, I-I promise I understand!”

She smiled, taking her seat. “Good. Now get up on your knees. You need to get used to showing humility and regret.”

Daniel slowly calmed himself, getting up onto his knees. With his limbs bound the task was tricky, but not impossible. “Regret? For what?”

“For silently accepting all the benefits of your station, of course.” She seemed genuinely surprised that she had to explain this. “You're a white, heterosexual male. You've been propelled through life, given whatever you need, and it all came at the expense of people like me.” He stared up at her with confusion plain on his face.

“I... I never did anything to you... I don't even really know you,” he said. It was the truth; he still couldn't remember the woman's name.

“Not me personally, idiot.” She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Minorities. Women and people of color largely.”

“I don't...” Daniel shook his head. It was a lot to take in, especially since he didn't understand how anyone could think this of him. “I'm not a sexist. O-or a racist, I swear. I don't... I don't hate minorities.”

“Oh, for fuck's sake, quit acting like you're stupid. You know what I mean. As a white male, you're part of a system that takes advantage of the weak. You're given whatever you want in life just because you won the genetic lottery, and you don't do anything to change the situation because it's all so convenient for you, isn't it? It's so easy to just turn a blind eye to real suffering when doing something about it might mean making your own life a little more difficult.”

“I-I swear, I never-”

“Oh, shut up!” she screamed, instilling terror in him once more. “I shouldn't even have to explain all this to you! If you'd pulled your head out of your ass for five consecutive minutes at any time in your entire life you'd already know all of this!” Her eyes were wild and filled with rage. She reached into the drawer just beneath the desk and withdrew the woman Daniel had seen earlier, roughly tossing her onto the desk beside him. The smaller woman got to her knees beside Daniel. “Ciscunt, tell him I'm right.”

“Chi is right. You profited off of suffering and misery, and chi's only taking fair retribution. Chi doesn't do anything that hasn't been done by the Patriarchy a hundred times over.” The statement sounded practiced, with each word flowing comfortably into the next as if she wasn't saying it so much as reciting it.

“Chi? I-is that your name, then?” Daniel asked. The giant girl snorted.

“No that's not my name, you stupid little cishet. My name is Anita, and 'chi' is my pronoun. Chi, cher, and cherself. You'll do well to remember that, because if I hear you using the binary-gendered 'her,' or 'she,' I'll make it so you can't ever speak again. Understand?”

He didn't understand. This entire experience had been one incomprehensible situation or sentence after another, and it was starting to overwhelm him. Despite that, there was one thing he understood; telling this woman 'no' was almost certainly unwise. “O-of course.”

“Good boy. Now, are you ready to start your re-education?”

“M-my what?”

Anita rolled her eyes again. “You've spent the last two decades surrounded by privilege. It's going to take a lot of work to make you nice and submissive like my little Ciscunt here.” She reached out an index finger and stroked the tiny woman's face. “It's not going to be easy. Every instinct you have is going to tell you that you should be dominating me just because I'm a woman, but you're going to have to learn to suppress that.”

Once again, confusion grew in Daniel. “I... I don't want to dominate you, Anita. I never did, even when we... when I wasn't...”

“When you weren't a frail little insect?” Daniel hung his head. His new situation was terrifying, and she seemed to have no sympathy towards that. “Of course you wanted to dominate me. I saw you looking at me in class like I was a piece of meat. You think I did this to you randomly? I chose you because I looked in your eyes and I saw a rapist looking back. I saved some woman in the future – possibly even myself – from being raped. I'm a hero.”

“I'm not a rapist! I would never! I... I-I don't mean to question you, o-or anything, but... I think you have the wrong guy! I'm not any of these things, I swear! I swear to God!”

“You just don't get it, and I'm tired of trying to explain it. From now on, you're to accept everything I say as fact. There's no backtalking, none at all. Understand?” Daniel was intensely frustrated. He was sure she had the wrong person, but he'd seen the fury behind her eyes, and provoking her was the last thing he wanted. He nodded his understanding, and she smiled. “Good. Now I need a name for you. Cishet works, I guess...”

“C-cishet?” Daniel asked.

Anita sighed. “Ciscunt,” she said expectantly.

“Cishet is short for cisgendered heterosexual. It means you mentally identify with the gender you were assigned at birth, and you're attracted to the opposite gender.” Daniel looked over at the woman kneeling beside him. Her eyes hadn't moved from the ground since she'd been placed there. The level of obedience she displayed terrified him; it made him wonder if Anita was capable of turning him into that, too.

“So that word Anita keeps using for you, 'Ciscunt'...”

“It means I am cisgendered and also a cunt.”

He looked up to Anita, who smiled down at her two captives proudly. “How can you be so cruel? Why are you doing this to us?”

“Cruel?” Anita giggled. “I'm not being cruel, I'm being fair. Before her re-education, little Ciscunt here was quite the special snowflake, preaching the virtues of equality – which is great and all – but she was supporting the Patriarchy on the side. She even had the gall to slap me after I tried to talk to her about the damage she was doing to feminism.” She petted the woman's head. “Of course, Ciscunt would never even think of raising a hand against me now, would she?”

“Of course not, ma'am.”

Bile rose up in Daniel's throat. “How dare you? How dare you kidnap and torture people into submission! You're not just automatically right because someone is too terrified for their life to say otherwise! You... you... you just take away a person's entire ability to resist you and then force them to agree with you to feel good about yourself! You can't just do that!”

Anita clucked her tongue and shook her head. “I told you it wouldn't be easy to accept. The Patriarchal system in which you've lived has corrupted your mind to the point that you can't understand how anyone could even question it. But that's okay, you won't be the first guy I've re-educated.” She took him in her fingers and laid him out on his back against the desk. “Now the first thing to do is remove the main source of testosterone poisoning. Once that's gone, it will be a lot easier for you to accept your new position.”

“Testosterone poisoning...?” Daniel wondered aloud, seconds before realizing what she meant. “N-no! No! Wait, no, please!” He bucked wildly underneath her fingers, and his already-fervent efforts doubled when she produced a small modeling knife. “No! Oh god, I'm sorry! Please don't do this! I'm so sorry, I'll never say it again, please!”

“I'm sorry, too. If it wasn't for the Patriarchy, I wouldn't even have to do this.” She seemed sincerely apologetic, even as she lowered the blade to his scrotum. As soon as the cold metal pressed against his thigh he stilled completely, looking at it in fear.

“Please Anita... please please please don't do this, I'll do anything you want, anything I swear, just please don't fucking do this...”

“I'm really sorry, cishet.” The blade slid forward, then jerked to a stop. “Cispet!” Anita giggled to herself, looking down at him proudly, any trace of moroseness gone. “Get it? Because you're going to be my good little pet from now on. Cispet! Oh, I love it.” Her eyes refocused on his crotch, and the edge of the blade pressed against the top of his manhood.

“Please... Anita...” His whimpering went ignored by the giant advocate for justice, and a moment later a searing pain shot through his body. He howled, wordlessly screaming his pain to the heavens. Anita threw away the small bit of flesh she had removed, and dabbed at his crotch with a kleenex retrieved from nearby. She held the cloth against the wound, slowly stopping the blood coming out of him.

“I'm sorry I had to do that, but you're going to see that it was for your own good, Cispet. You've already taken your first step down the path towards throwing off the shackles of the Patriarchy. I'm very proud of you, you know.”

The agony was unbelievable. It was like nothing he'd ever experienced in his life. Not only was the physical sensation the most brutal thing he could imagine, but the humiliation of being castrated by this college-aged giant for crimes he'd never even committed intensified it so much more. He started wonder if maybe she wasn't wrong, if somehow he was the monster she'd claimed he was. More than anything, he needed what had happened to him to make sense. He wanted to know that he hadn't lost his testicles at the whim of a psychotic girl. Right now, he was more ready to believe he was a rapist.

“I'm so sorry...” he said in a low, pained voice. “I'm so sorry Anita... I'm so so sorry...” He repeated the line over and over in as loud of a voice as he could muster. He felt one of her giant fingers caress his side.

“I know you are. It's not your fault. I know you want to be a good boy, and I'm going to help you out, okay?” She pulled the tissue away from his crotch. Already the bleeding had slowed nearly to a stop. She set it aside and pulled out her phone, positioning it over him.

“Wh... what are you doing?” he asked.

“Just getting a picture for my blog.” A second later the camera flashed and clicked, indicating a picture had been taken. “I want to document your progress.” She plugged her phone into her computer and moved her hands over to the keyboard, turning her attention away from him. “So what do you think, Cispet? Are you ready to get untied yet?”

“Yes, Anita.”

“You promise you won't try to run away?”

“Y-yes, Anita.” She raised an eyebrow, having caught his stutter.

“I don't know... let's keep you in them for another day. Just to be safe. I'm sure by tomorrow you won't even have the energy to flee.”

“No, please, Anita, please let me out, I promise I won't run!”

Anita just chuckled to herself as she opened the drawer and slid her two prisoners back inside, sealing them once more in darkness. Daniel called out for the next few minutes, but he got no response. In the following hours he tried to make conversation with the woman trapped there with him, but she refused to speak to him. Based on the noises she made, it sounded like she barely even moved. To Daniel, trapped in isolation as he was, it felt like years before he finally became exhausted enough to pass out.