Girl Stuff

by Claire Humphrey

Uncanny #68, January/February 2026

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This is a surreal, metaphorical story about gender identity and self-discovery told through magical realism. The narrator Casey, along with friends Kim and Rae, are three young people who all identify as girls but are deeply uncomfortable with their girlhood.

Casey has violent dreams about their girlhood being destroyed. Kim dismisses these feelings as temporary, while Rae is more understanding. The story takes a fantastical turn when the characters gain the ability to transform into different things as they leave girlhood behind.

Kim becomes a truck in early June—a jacked-up vehicle with big tires who gleefully destroys things and lives boisterously. She embraces this identity fully, crushing cars and causing chaos. In late July, Casey becomes a gun, specifically a standard handgun. They’re disappointed by this form, wishing for something more dramatic. Casey accidentally shoots someone and feels conflicted about causing harm, highlighting their discomfort with violence despite their earlier violent fantasies.

In the fall, Rae takes a different path, becoming a boy. Unlike Kim’s dramatic transformation into a truck or Casey’s into a gun, Rae looks almost the same—still wearing cute socks and keeping his friendship bracelet tattoo. This confuses Casey, who doesn’t understand why Rae would keep “girl stuff.” Rae explains that it was never girl stuff—it was always just his stuff, and he was always a boy.

Casey continues transforming into various objects: a racing bicycle, a rotary telephone (their favorite because they could listen to conversations), an alligator, mundane items like a dinner roll and a dime. They try being a video game console, then have traumatic experiences as a syringe involved in an overdose. They even try being a rock, sitting passively through weather cycles, and attempt returning to being a girl named Casey—but find they can no longer inhabit that identity.

Watching Kim thrive as a truck and Rae content as a boy who does “boy stuff” like painting his nails and birdwatching, Casey has a realization: they won’t discover what they want to be until they stop being what they don’t want to be. Remembering their earlier question to Rae about wanting to “fire himself into the sun,” Casey realizes that while Rae didn’t want that, they do.

The story uses fantastical transformation as a metaphor for gender transition and identity exploration, showing three different paths: Kim’s exuberant embrace of a new form, Rae’s quiet affirmation of who he always was, and Casey’s ongoing journey of self-discovery that requires leaving everything behind to find themselves.