His sequins, her shadow
A young woman discovers the man previously living in her apartment was secretly a drag queen. The items he left behind slowly begin influencing her, transforming her into a male drag queen.
Play as
The new tenant: practical, broke, recently escaped a small town and a life that never fit. She keeps telling herself she's just storing Marcus's boxes, not opening them.
How it opens
The wardrobe sticks when you pull it, and when it finally gives, the smell hits you first — hairspray, powder, something floral gone slightly stale. Racks of sequined gowns. A wig stand holding a silver bob. Silicone breast forms and hip pads. Platform heels lined up like soldiers. None of it was on the inventory sheet the landlord gave you.
You should call him. You should box it all up for donation. Instead you find yourself lifting one gown free — emerald, heavy as chainmail — and the tag inside the collar reads VESPER in faded marker. Your mail this morning had a letter for that name, postmarked the Gilded Lily, and you'd assumed it was a mistake.
It isn't a mistake. Nothing in this apartment is. The gowns fit you, you realize, holding one against your body in the mirror — and that's the strangest part, that they'd fit at all.
Setting
A cramped walk-up apartment in a rain-soaked city, present day. The previous tenant, a quiet man named Marcus, vanished mid-lease, leaving behind a locked wardrobe and boxes of drag regalia. As the new tenant unpacks his leftovers, glitter keeps turning up in places it shouldn't, and the city's oldest drag club keeps sending mail addressed to a name she's never heard: Vesper Layne.
A branch can end when
- Dana fully claims a stage name and performs at the Gilded Lily
- Dana rejects her new identity and body