Lulu

A Dark Comedy About Mistaken Identity

Chapter 8 - Princess or Frog?

by Lulu Martine

The limo drove up into the Hills and stopped in the circular driveway of an immense mansion. We seemed to be miles above the city, above the smog even. Almost a fairytale castle, the huge house had towers and a gate with a little bridge over a stream. I thought I had imagined that but later I checked and yes, it was real. Or as real as anything else in my life.

“You’re home, princess,” Alice whispered to me. I didn’t feel like a princess, even with tits. I felt more like a frog, an experimental frog in biology lab. Any moment now, someone would make the incision and take out my brain to put with the other parts of me that had disappeared.

And this wasn’t my home. I lived in a dusty old ranch-style out in the Valley with my parents and my brothers and my little sister. I made texting motions with one hand at Alice but she didn’t get it. If I could just get hold of a cellphone I could call my parents.

What did they think had happened to me? Why hadn’t they come for me? Why hadn’t anyone missed me and come to take me home? I started crying and Alice said, “Yes, it’s so beautiful, it makes you cry.”

I shook my head but I didn’t even try to speak. I knew my parents must think that I was dead or someone would have figured all this out by now and come to take me home. I tried to say cellphone but Alice shushed me then wiped my eyes with tissue and helped me blow my nose.

There were three girls in the car with Alice and I, and five or six more following behind. More girls poured out of the mansion as the limo stopped at the front door. Almost all of them tall and a little unreal looking in one way or another, like bad CGI animation.

They babbled and giggled and several of them bent to kiss me on the cheek or forehead. They called me Lulu or princess or baby or darling. When they had wheeled me into the entry, they offered to let me get out of the wheelchair and walk. My groin hurt and my feet, too, so I whimpered and settled back into the chair.

"She wants to ride," laughed one of the girls. Betti-Sue, I think.

"Don't blame her," said another, the tall black girl with the blonde hair and blue eyes. "Get all the TLC you can and ride when you can't walk."

I had realized that all of the girls, every one of them, had started life as men. Had they all gone through something like what had happened to me? Only, did they want it to happen? They sure acted like they thought I'd won the lottery or something. I tried to hate them for their joy in my misfortune but the sedative or something kept me from working up any real emotion more than a sniffle of self-pity.

Alice helped me settle back into the chair, cautioning me again not to speak. "You don't need to talk, honey," she said. "We'll take good care of you and we can baby you all you want for a couple more weeks. The doctor says you shouldn't walk on your new feet until at least then."

What had they done to my feet? I wondered. I couldn't talk, I couldn't walk, people expected me to stick things up inside me in places where I shouldn't have places. I started to cry and everyone gathered around me to tell me things would be okay.

"You're going to be beautiful, baby girl," Alice whispered to me. "Just like you've always dreamed of."

I tried to tell her I didn't want to be a girl or beautiful. I just wanted someone to call my folks or let me text them so I could go home, but she put a finger to my lips and reminded me that I wasn't supposed to talk yet. Who wants to hear a frog croaking, anyway?

I let the tears run down my face. She wiped them away and kissed me on the cheek and the forehead and called me princess. But even she didn’t sound completely sure of it.