~o~O~o~

 

“What the hell does she mean, she’s concerned about some of the study results?” Felix asked, slamming his coffee mug onto the lab countertop.

“I don’t know,” Felix growled. You heard the same answering machine message that I did.”

“She’s losing it. That is the only explanation. She’s got to be losing it.” Felix stood and paced the length of the lab as he seethed.

“Possible, but that a side effect that would strongly support her claim that the results need to be reviewed again,” José noted with a smile.

“But José, we’ve been over and over it. Hell, she is more cautious than my maiden aunt from Dubuque. The only irregularity we found in any of the animal or human testing was the pre-viral clusters still in her body and they’re not a problem.”

“Maybe they are,” José mused. “We don’t know what the effects of long-term contact with the viral strands might be.”

“Oh no you don’t, I’m not going to let you sucker me in this time. I know I am right and I can prove it. Here, look at the chem. Profiles.”

~o~O~o~

“No sir, Dr. LaPierre is not in today.”

“No I don’t know when she’ll be back.”

I’m sure she knew about the meeting sir. I put it into her daily calendar myself.”

“Yes sir, it was sudden, but she did leave a message telling us she had a family emergency and needed to take some time off.”

“No sir, we haven’t notified the authorities.”

“Yes sir, if you insist.”

~o~O~o~

“Have a good…” and suddenly, Patrice DeJesus was speaking to a dead telephone. As usual, the most distasteful part of her job was speaking to Dr. LaPierre’s boss. She had once heard Calvin Coolidge described as a going through life with a pickle in his mouth. She did not know much about presidential pickles, but she often wondered if Carlton Maldonado went through life with one stuffed into a very different, hopefully more uncomfortable bodily crevice. With a resigned sigh, she dialed the police.

It had been a grueling couple of hours, but Paul had finally said, “Yes.” Kirsten had wanted to run over to him and hug him, but that would have sent the wrong message so she merely nodded and said, “Thank you, Paul.”

The next morning we began researching the changes. There were now two occurrences to start with and we discussed what had happened each time in minute detail. Maybe it was his lawyer’s skill at reading people’s emotions, but it was Paul who observed how angry I had been when I had changed.

“I have no clue how an emotional state could trigger a change of physical form, let alone control its shape, but we’ve nothing else to go on so let’s try it.”

“Okay. What form do you want to try for Georgie-Girl?”

“I guess my old male one–and don’t call me Georgie-girl.”

“Fine,” he agreed, but with less enthusiasm than I had expected. “Just don’t change into bimbo-Georgie. I do not think I could handle that. Oh, and would you prefer I called you Shirley?”

“Shirley? You know you helped my legally change my name to Kirsten. Now what the heck are you talking about?”

“How quickly they forget. It was a running gag in the movie ‘Airplane.’ Someone would ask Leslie Nielson if he really meant what he said, something like ‘Surely, you don’t mean that.’ and he’d response, ending his dialogue with ‘…and don’t call me Shirley.’”

I groaned. What else could I do?

“So now, if I need to ‘Paula’ joke out to calm you if you get too mad, I ‘Tina’ good way would be to call you ‘Shirley.’”

I did not even bother to groan that time.

“What’s the matter Georgie-Girl? No sense of humor?”

“That’s not humor. That’s a pun.”

“And you’re heavy and not my brother. Of course a pun is humor, possibly the highest form of humor.”

“Are you crazy? How can a pun be the highest form of humor?”

“What? Where were you educated, a pig sty?” Paul feigned shock.

“The same college as you, or have you forgotten?” I was getting annoyed now. He seemed to have gone off on a meaningless tangent rather than helping me study the change.

“I know that Georgie-Girl, but you must have slept through your classes. Don’t you remember Professor Kensington’s class in English Literature?”

“It was Professor Grisham and you took that class, not me. I took the class on Shakespeare.”

“It was Kensington, Georgie-Girl, and I suppose now you’re going to tell me that Shakespeare never used a pun in a single one of his stolen plays.”

“What the hell is going on here?” I demanded indignantly. “Have you lost your senses? Who the hell cares about puns? We need to get back to the business at hand.”

“No, you need to admit you’re wrong. Shakespeare actually wrote the first pun, something about a jester and a noose.”

“Paul! Stop this instant!” I stood and all but shouted in his face, but then buckled over in pain.

Instantly Paul was by my side, helping me back to my seat on the couch. “Now focus Georgie-Girl, focus on who you want to be. Focus on George LaPierre. Do it, damn it.”

I focused, but nothing happened. The pain was there, the tingling that seemed to foreshadow a change, but I was not changing.

“Damn it. Change you stupid slut.” Paul slapped me.

I was shocked. Through the haze of pain, I tried to slap him back, but he just blocked the blow and laughed at me. He laughed at me like I was the stupid slut he had called me. I wanted to kill him, but then I felt the changes overwhelming me and realized what he had been doing.

It was better than the previous time in that the pain was more bearable and I did not lose consciousness or even need to close my eyes against the pain. This time I could see the changes. I was becoming the slut I had just envisioned. At least it wasn’t the blonde Paul had asked me to avoid.

Frantically, I tried to refocus on my male body, but it did not work. My hair again grew out, this time into a curly black mop that extended to just below my shoulder blades. My breasts grew again, causing pain from my now too tight bra. Most surprising, was my skin. It turned a light coffee color. I guess there are small pockets of prejudice in the best of us, but the thought that I had become a mulatto actually worried me for a moment. Then I had a vision making myself appear to be black and finding out what it was like to live as a member of that population group like John Griffin did in Black Like Me. I too could be a temporary Negro. It seemed strangely humorous until I realized I was already doing the same thing in the female community, hopefully temporarily.

As the pain began to recede, I checked my watch. The entire transformation from noted transgendered Caucasian researcher to mulatto whore had taken about half an hour. As I stood and took off my tee shirt and now too small bra, I noted that the pain seemed to be less each time I changed. That is when Paul came back into the great room with a huge stack of pancakes oozing in maple syrup and butter. All other thoughts were going to have to wait until I had finished eating.

~o~O~o~

“Paul?” I popped the last bite of a pizza with the works into my mouth and sighed. The pancakes were long gone, but I was finally sated, well at least for food I was sated.

“Yeah, Georgie-Girl?” Paul came out of the kitchen still carrying a dishtowel.

“I realize what you were doing before, trying to get me angry. It worked. Thank you.” I gave up on correcting him about my name.

“Good, now how about putting a bathrobe on or something?” he said as he turned back to the kitchen. I had never bothered to cover my top after removing the brassiere.

“Paul?’ I stood and slid out of my jeans and panties. Now I was completely naked.

“What?” He turned back and his eyes turned into huge saucers. “What the hell are you doing?” he sputtered. “Get dressed.”

I walked towards him, making sure that my hips swayed noticeably as my left hand cupped and stroked my breast. “I’d like to thank you.”

“You did,’ he growled. “Now get dressed damn it.”

However, I was having none of that and I pulled him close to me. I had promised myself that I was going to discover my feminine side and I was damned if I was not going to do it right then and there.

Remember that hindsight we have discussed before? Here we go again. To say that my attitude at this point was dramatically different from what it had been an hour or so ago would be an understatement. My best guess is that I had inadvertently visualized myself as a whore and my vision of a whore was someone who had a phenomenally high libido. I will skip the biochemical discussion of estrogen, progesterone and the roughly twenty other hormones and proteins that were now flooding through my body, the result was that I was horny as hell, with minimal self-control and no shame. I knew what I wanted and I was going to get it.

When I grabbed him, Paul stepped back, bumping into the wall and I closed the space between us before he could dodge to the side and through the door. Again, grabbing him, I threw my arms around his shoulders and planted the biggest, wettest, sexiest kiss I could imagine on his mouth–and yes, we played tonsil hockey.

By the time I let him up for a breath, I could feel him rising to the occasion and I let one hand drop to his crotch. That is when the front door shook from someone pounding on it.

“Ignore it and they’ll go away,” I breathed huskily into his ear.

“Police. Open the door please.”

Oh, shit.

Paul pulled away from me and quickly strode to the door. “Get dressed,” he hissed back at me.

Ignoring him, I sauntered up behind him as he opened the door and began playing with his ear and kissing his neck. He opened the door just a crack. I guess the little dear wanted to preserve my honor. I giggled at the thought.

“Are you George LaPierre or Paul Goldblum?” There was a very large–I think its part of the job description–state trooper outside the cabin.

“I’m Paul Goldblum. Can I help you officer?”

He saw me standing behind Paul and I smiled sexily at him. Two would be even better than one.

“And what’s your name ma’am?”

“Why I’m whomever you want me to be officer,” I cooed through half closed eyelids as I tried to look sultry and adjusted my position to let a bit more of my breast peek out from around Paul.

“She’s my girlfriend, Wanda,” Paul interjected as he poked me with the elbow still hidden behind the door. “Wanda Langowski.”

I tried not to laugh at his choice of names. His reference was to a character from one of our favorite comic books. The cop’s expression made it clear that he didn’t think I looked like any Langowski he’d ever seen, but all he said was, “Would you please step outside sir?”

“I guess so officer. What’s the problem?”

“Oh never mind. You boys don’t gotta worry ‘bout my modesty.” I was frustrated, but I wanted very badly to hear what he had to say. “Come in side, officer. I’ll get dressed.” I made sure to give them both a nice show as I vamped my way to the bedroom to get dressed. Throwing on a bathrobe to cover my top, I was quickly back in the great room and sitting next to Paul playing innocently with his hair.

“What can I do for you, officer?” Paul asked as he irritatedly pushed my hand away and tried to concentrate on the police officer.

“We’re looking into the whereabouts of a Ms. Kirsten LaPierre.”

I’m not one of those people who get upset when people don’t use proper honorifics like “doctor,” but I was beginning to dislike this minion of the law, if for no other reason than he was interfering with my constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness.

“I’ve been out of touch with Dr. LaPierre for quite a while officer. Is something wrong?”

“We’d like to talk to her,” he said with that solemn unaffected face made so popular by Joe Friday. “I understand you had a date with her about three days ago.”

“Yes, we were to meet at the base NCO Club, but she never showed up. I figured she was involved in a research project that she couldn’t leave unattended.”

“Didn’t she call you to explain that she’d be busy?”

“No. Dr. LaPierre is a wonderful woman, but when she gets an idea in her head she can be quite focused.” Paul glared up at me, frowning as he gently pushed my hand away from the front of his shirt where it was slowly approaching his nipple. I of course pouted as sexily as I could and then started inching my way back there all over again.

“The gate records from the local military base show you left with a woman. Can you tell me who she was?”

“I’m sorry, officer; I met her that night and haven’t seen her since. She never gave me her name.” I swatted him playfully as if I were jealous, which when I thought about it, I was, even if it was me he was talking about.

The officer sat thoughtfully watching me as I clung to Paul so I bent over a bit more to give him a better view of the merchandise. He promptly cleared his throat and stood up.

“Here’s my card. If you hear from Dr. LaPierre have her call me as soon as possible.” With that, he gave us both a noncommittal nod and left.

I almost laughed aloud when I noticed him walking a bit stiffly. While I resisted laughing, I could not resist a parting shot so I called out after him as innocently as I could, “Oh officer, does that leg wound hurt?”

He just glared at me as he left, which gave me the opportunity to return to my previous research topic.

Unfortunately, Paul had other ideas. I knew he was interested, I could see the bulge, but instead of letting me complete my research project, he grabbed me by the shoulders and quick marched me into the bedroom.

“Go to bed. Take a cold shower if you need to. We’ll continue this in the morning.” He shoved me through the door and started closing it. “And don’t even think of sneaking out here during the night.”

Of course, I did sneak out of my bedroom, about fifteen minutes later, but he had locked the door to his bedroom. Spoil sport. I knew he was awake because I could hear him talking on his cell phone. It was hard to tell for sure–the door muffled his voice more than I would have expected–but it sounded like he was trying to find out why the police were interested in me. It hurt to admit it, since I really did want to dally a bit–actually a lot–but I realized that under the circumstances I had best leave him be. I wanted to know why the police were looking for me too.

~o~O~o~

The week was nearly up and I was back in my standard issue female body. Paul and I were reviewing the findings to date as we savored the last of our morning coffee.

“Okay, we’ve established that the process is painful, but becoming less so with practice. It seems that I can change into just about any female shape within about thirty minutes or less. The transformation is triggered by anger or, more accurately, the increase in epinephrine in the blood stream to some as yet undetermined level and the outcome is the result of focused visualization on my part. Each different body bathes the brain in a unique set of hormones and protein complexes that can significantly affect the thought process and emotions.”

Paul nodded and sipped patiently at his coffee while he waited for me to finish. He knew I would never be able to move on until I had clarified the issue for myself. “When I had finally wound down, he asked, “So is it my turn now?”

“I think so. As far as I can tell, I’ve completely summarized the status of the research to date–at least the research you’ve let me do.” I batted my eyes lazily at him and pouted for a moment to make my point, and to see if I could still, after all these days in close proximity, get a rise out of him.

“Good.” Paul pulled a legal size canary notepad from the kitchen counter and began leafing through it. “Then it’s time to discuss some basic issues like how to explain your disappearance, how to stop the human testing project, how, if at all, you are going to use your new ability and last but not least, how do we proceed with our personal relationship. I still think you should have called that police officer. It would have simplified things tremendously.”

“You’re almost certainly correct,” I sighed, “but this research would never have gotten done if I had.”

“Well, it’s water under the bridge, but we need to explain where you were in a way that either can be verified or at least sets aside any possible questions of impropriety or espionage.”

“Why not just tell the truth?” I asked innocently.

“We could, but then I need to have a justification for lying to an officer of the law, that is unless you’re planning to support me in the manner to which I’ve grown accustomed,” he grinned slyly.

“Why sure honey-chile, come sit on Momma’s lap.” I patted my knee hopefully and waited, trying to look as innocent and unthreatening as I could.

“Right,” he laughed. “But seriously, we could say we were having an intense interpersonal experience together and didn’t want anyone to know it. People would interpret that to mean ‘torrid affair’ but I can live with that if you can.”

“I suspect I would find it even more acceptable if it were true,” I answered wistfully. It had not taken long for me to make up my mind about our personal relationship, now I was eagerly waiting for Paul to decide I was serious and follow suit.

“To do that we need to be able to explain my night of wild abandon with the fiery Wanda. We could say it was you in heavy makeup. People would consider us a bit kinky and, of course, it would help if the cop is blind.”

“I doubt he’s blind, but anything else would start getting complicated. I seem to recall you telling me to keep things simple when dealing with the legal system, Paul.”

“A disciple,” his charming boyish grin was back. “I have a disciple. An excellent point and it is even true. If we stick together on that, it will be his word against ours and he probably will not care too much as long as you turn up and no one finds any other irregularities.

“Next we need to decide how to stop the human testing project. That one is probably more in your ballpark. Any ideas?”

“Well, there are a variety of options, but none of them are optimal. Simplest would be for me to reveal what the treatment has done to me to the rest of the team and ask for their support.”

“And become a lab rat? It is your choice, but I would certainly recommend against it. Of course, one variation of that would be to go public. No, filth like the National Enquirer would be the only ones likely to cover something so patently outrageous. Can you imagine a newspaper like the New York Times headline? ‘Researcher discovers Regenderification Process’. Even if they published the article, no one would understand it enough to read it.”

“I could just resign,” I mused aloud. “No, that would just delay things a bit and I wouldn’t be there to prevent the human testing after the short period of time it would take for the research team to come up to speed on the few pieces I’ve held back.”

“How about an anonymous letter to the FDA with copies to a few well placed muckraking news people?” I could always count on Paul to get creative.

“Tempting, and a good idea on the surface, but there are less than fifty people in the entire world who know anything about the project and maybe five who could provide sufficient technical information to make a credible presentation to the FDA et. al. Even if I were to pretend to be outraged by the disclosures, I would be top of the list as informer and would never work in the field again.

“Let’s set this aside for now. It doesn’t seem to be going well,” I sighed in frustration. “What was the last issue again?”

“You mean, ‘What to do with your new ability?’ or ‘How to proceed with our changed relationship?’"

I could not resist. He’d made it clear that he would not act until he was certain it was right for both of us, and had reaffirmed that position after we realized that different forms affected my personality differently. Even if he was not going to take advantage of me–the little dear–I knew that, if I had to go down, I was going to go down swinging. I gave him a saucy smile and went for it.

 

I'm skipping portions of the next two weeks, mostly because major portions of it were unbearably boring. Paul and I spoke often by telephone, but didn't see each other, which is just as well as I was spending about twenty hours a day at the lab with just two goals in mind. The first was to find out more about my newfound ability and the second was to stop the human testing project.

With respect to the first, I accomplished little as I could only work on my personal research project when Felix and José were not around. On a positive note, I kept "practicing" new forms and my body somehow accommodated to the process so that the pain was barely evident and the time to change was now a mere five minutes.

Additionally, I was now at the point where I only needed a couple of “energy bars” to recover from the drain on my body’s resources. Who says old researchers can’t learn new trick? Aside from becoming male–which just was not happening–I really do have a broad range of options, so broad I am still testing the limits. Don’t even think of going for the obvious pun there. I suppose I could come close to becoming myself again, at least in terms of everything but genitals. I'd always have some small growth of breast and a void where I'd be scratching if I were a ball player. Having never wanted to be a Pushmepullyou, I had early on resolved that if I had to be female, I would be female.

With respect to my efforts regarding human testing, they were little more than exercises in bureaucratic frustration as I tried to stop, or at least postpone, further testing. Felix and José almost quit as I kept pushing them to review and re-review the animal results looking for something, anything, I could use to justify my goals without letting them realize that my intentions were other than to be extremely cautious.

Interestingly, once I had finally decided to try to be female and put my mind to it, it was relatively easy to control them. Instead of trying to shout them down and having a temper tantrum when they ignored me, I expanded a bit on my makeup use, broadened my attire to include some above the knee skirts and asked them to do little things for me, the “helpless” woman. The first time Felix got me a cup of coffee and stood attentively in front of me waiting to see if it was satisfactory, I knew I had it down. I also nearly bit my tongue off trying not to laugh and spoil all that work. It is interesting to note that the reason why most women feel they can change a man–is because they can.

Patrice did quit once–yes the same Patrice who had been my nurse during my initial recovery. I had convinced her to transfer to the lab so she could keep track of my medical condition and help teach me what I needed to know about my new gender. She really wasn’t needed full time, so she had agreed to function as the lab’s secretary and make certain the reams of bureaucratic paperwork was completed in a timely fashion. After her first month in that job, our requisition forms and time sheets were submitted on time for the first time in months.

Anyway, she was tired of dealing with Dr. Maldonado's rudeness, but I talked her into coming back before her paperwork could be processed. Carlton was just being difficult–more difficult than usual, if that was possible. I swear he still had it in for me because of that ancient mishap with Paul in the college chemistry lab. It was his position that testing needed to proceed apace and everyone from project director to cleaner was responsible for insuring that it did. Furthermore, he felt it was his responsibility to remind each and every one of us of our responsibilities, as he saw them, and insure that we complied. It’s not a good idea to insist that a secretary explain why a project is behind schedule and harangue her to get it back onto its appropriate place on his projected timeline.

One of the reasons Patrice came back was that I told her that I'd convinced Carlton that his constant telephone calls were taking us all away from necessary final preparations and that he should cut back on them. Of course, I also told Patrice to get the phone company to install the Caller ID feature and use it. From then on, Carlton always seemed to catch us when we were all away from the phone working busily to finalize the next phase of the project. I suspect Carlton was so frustrated he would have fired us, if he had just been able to reach us. He actually did at one point, but he did not realize it as Patrice recognized his voice and quickly repeated the answering machine message and then beeped at him–smart girl, that Patrice.

It was late Friday evening, just four days after the start of operation Caller ID, and I had already changed. Now I was a rather plain looking middle aged woman with short graying hair, average height, and a tendency to enjoy chocolates just a bit too much–read stocky. Everyone else had gone home for a well-deserved weekend and I was back to the old drawing board. My latest theory regarding how I could control the changes had just gone down the drain when the MRI and C-scan showed absolutely no abnormalities in the brain. I'd gotten the idea from an episode of the "X-Files" where a brain tumor had caused new mental powers to manifest, which also demonstrated how far afield I had been searching for research hypotheses. Anyway, Carlton had actually left his ivory tower at the administrative offices of BioLogInc and come a-visiting, thousand dollar designer suits and all.

“You! What's your name?”

“Ulp!” He had shocked me. I had thought I was alone and I had not realized that I had left the door unlocked–careless, definitely careless. Patrice was going to ball me out for lack of feminine caution–if I told her.

"I asked you your name,” Maldonado snorted. “You do have a name, don't you, girl?" You would think he could be a bit ruder and more abrupt, but I guess he reserved that for people he really disliked.

"Umm, yes sir," I almost gave him my real name, which would have blown my secret out of the water, especially given Carlton's innate ability to sniff out a profit. "Virginia, sir. May I ask what you're doing here?"

"I run this lab. Where is everybody?"

"It's after eight on a Friday night and everyone’s gone home. Now I'm going to have to ask you to leave too sir, I know Dr. LaPierre and you're not him–or her–so you can’t be who you say you are." I began moving toward him, as much to keep him from coming to me where he might peer over my shoulder and see my research on the computer monitor as to get him out of the lab. It was interesting to note that he was my height, and I was only 5'2 at the time. I wondered if all small men acted as pompous as he did.

"I am Dr. Carlton Maldonado, Ph.D., Executive Director of BioLogInc and Dr. LaPierre's boss." He puffed up so nicely, just like a bantam cock. I knew then and there, I was going to have some fun with him.

"And I am the cleaner. I’m responsible for insuring the security of this lab until I can finish getting it cleaned and locked up for the weekend,” I huffed. “Like I said, I know Dr. Pierre and I don't know you. Do you have some identification?”

Did you ever meet one of those people, usually new doctors–Ph.D.s or M.D.s, it does not matter which–who are so full of themselves they introduce themselves with their degree and insist on being called by the title as if it were their first name? Most seem to be able to move beyond it within a year or two, but Carlton had been doing this for the past quarter century, which is why I took every opportunity to call him Carlton instead of Dr. Maldonado. As a result, I was only surprised with the intensity of his response–until I remembered that I was not his peer and the lead researcher in a project he was extremely interested in at the moment. I was just some faceless underling to be lorded over, not someone close enough to his “greatness’ to be permitted the right to challenge him. He immediately went from his usual pallid color to a ruddy hue, but he didn’t stop there. Even before he could start talking–read shouting at the top of his lungs–he moved on to a mottled, reddish purple. I was actually wondering if he was going to burst some of the small blood vessels in his scalp and was reviewing the medical procedures for dealing with apoplexy when the dam finally broke.

“You ignorant little pissant,” he stormed. “How dare you. What is your full name? I will have your hide for a wall hanging by the morning. You’ll never work for BioLogInc or any related company again.”

“I told you my name sir. It’s Virginia, Virginia Hyde.” I know, it was not very original, but I was betting he would fail to get the hint. “Now if you’re going to be rude, we can forget about any ID check and you can leave right now.” I took him by the shoulder and squeezed, hard.

Did I mention that I had been working on unusual features? I had long ago run the gamut of various forms of extrasensory perception and had found that abilities like telepathy and telekinesis did not really exist, at least not in any of the genes I possessed. The closest I would come there was the occasional hunch, like woman’s intuition–or “spider sense” if you prefer. I had liked that ability so much, I had kept it and I will bet you can guess what it had been telling me about Carlton.

Tonight I was also working on enhanced musculature. Just prior to Carlton’s arrival, I had been experimenting by lifting the slate-top lab tables with one hand. So, while I looked like a slightly dowdy forty plus year old, I was strong–almost as strong as the Great Muldoon, but that’s another story. Carlton’s yelp reminded me how strong I now was and I felt a twinge of guilt for hurting him–physically that is. As you’ve probably noticed, I had no problems with playing with his mind. Despite that, it felt great to have the upper hand and I quickly turned the surprised man, grabbed his belt with my other hand and quick-marched him out the door to the lab. Coming back inside, I locked the door, leaned back against it and, sad to say, laughed hysterically. I do not know what it was about the situation, maybe the look of shock on Carlton’s face, but in hindsight, pushing his buttons like that was not really that funny and it certainly proved to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done.

When he spent the next few minutes pounding on the door, it became even less funny. With Carlton making all that racket, the MPs would be around shortly. Then, I would have “some ‘splainin’ to do,” and my name was not even Lucy. Worse, it was not even Virginia as I had told Carlton. I could just imagine what the MPs, and Carlton, would think when they were introduced to someone in a research lab who did not have a legal existence.

That is what I got for letting my hair down and having fun. I felt the quiver that presaged another change and quickly reasserted my current image before I was in a position to do the Lady Godiva routine–although a good chocolate or two did sound nice.

Those were two of the problems that I was discovering with respect to these changes. First, it was getting too easy to initiate a change and second, if I was not careful it could get really annoying dealing with the various drives and urges of whatever body I was wearing. Besides liking chocolates, this body was not the smartest M&M in the bunch, which was not making things easier at the moment. I almost changed back into my Dr. LaPierre form and let Carlton in, but then I would have to listen to him rant and I really did not want that if I could help it.

A few judiciously expended brain cells later, I decided it was time to leave. The front door was out as Carlton was there and he would make a terrible doorman. Besides, my name was not Rhoda Morgenstern. The back door was also out as it was for emergencies only and would set off an alarm that would guarantee the MPs came running. That left a window. Unfortunately, the windows were of the style that cranked out, far too narrow for my current robust form. I reached into my memory for one of the super-thin actresses currently on television, but quickly reconsidered as that would make me too recognizable and cause other problems. Instead, I reached back into my formative years and a lady from the “Laugh-In” television series called Twiggy. Then, just to be certain, I made her even thinner. I think I ended up so thin, my internal organs were stacked one on top of the other, but I was thin enough to fit through the window and tall enough to reach the ground easily. Good thing this was a one story building.

Grabbing a copy of the Bernoulli drive with my research on it, I tossed the lab coat in a corner, grabbed my purse and slid feet first out the window furthest from the front door. Once out, I quickly changed back into my Dr. LaPierre persona and began slinking around the building toward the parking lot and my car. If I could get back to my quarters, I could come back to the lab for some late evening research and find Carlton there. I would still have to listen to his tirade, but it was becoming evident that I was going to have to face him sooner or later.

The parking lot demonstrated another flaw in my plans. It was well lit and only had two cars in it, Carlton’s and mine. Additionally, the front door was offset so that unless Carlton was blind, he would definitely see me if I tried making a run for it. The choices, face Carlton or make a break for it, were not great ones and they rapidly became even less appealing as a jeep pulled into the parking lot and two huge MPs got out.

I am not sure if it is natural selection or a planned breeding program, but I have never seen an MP less than six foot two and two hundred pounds with more muscle than any of the actors in Pro Wrestling. One went up to Carlton and suggested in a deep rumble that he stop pounding on the door and explain himself while the other one checked out the license plates on the two cars.

The two-car dash was now out of the question, so it looked like it was time to face the music, or rather the Maldonado. Maybe I could pretend I’d been out for an evening constitutional and then let Carlton dress me down–figuratively, please–the thought of him laying a hand on me in any literal sense caused me to shudder. With that in mind, I began changing back into Dr. Kirsten LaPierre.

That is when the unthinkable happened. Like a little lap dog that barely stood tall enough to stare at the MP’s chest, Carlton had been yammering away at the MP nearest him. The soldier had been stoically ignoring Dr. Maldonado’s dance of death, repeatedly advising him to calm down and explain the problem when, without warning and in mid-rant, the damn fool pushed the MP.

There I was, watching the end of my career. There was no way that Maldonado would ever settle for less than my head on a platinum–forget silver–platter. I told you he was not the best manager I had ever met and vindictive was just one of the few words acceptable in polite conversation his subordinates used to describe his administrative skills. I should have been panicking, and yet, I was nearly buckled over double struggling not to laugh aloud. He had not even budged the soldier.

Carlton just kept right on screaming and gesticulating. In his fury, I doubt he even realized what he had done, but the MP did. The soldier’s voice got loud and curt, with an undertone that suggested he should be listened to but hoped he would not be, and told Carlton to shut up and step back against the wall immediately.

It is sad to see an intelligent man with the cortex, or at least the frontal lobes, completely disconnected from the body. That was Carlton. Instead of meekly complying like any sane person, he pushed the soldier again.

I was watching when it happened, yet I have no idea how it happened. One moment Carlton was pushing the MP, the next he was face down on the ground being handcuffed. In the words of a wise and learned professor of mine during grad school, “the fit had shit the fan.” There was little more I could do but watch as they pulled Dr. Maldonado to his feet as if her were a toy and cart him off to their jeep. Next stop would be the stockade.

I had no clue what to do now. As I said, I had just watched my boss do what might have been the stupidest thing imaginable, which did not bode well for my career or my research. I could take my car and go around to the stockade to try to bail Carlton out, but the damage was done, and the last thing I wanted to do was be the target for his anger just then. Besides, I knew he could get himself bailed out in short order without my intervention. It would be a small delay, but even waiting the few days until Monday to see him would help him cool off a bit. I became Dr. Kirsten LaPierre. Stopping off at my quarters, I packed lightly and headed up to the cabin, making a call to Paul from a gas station along the way. I asked him Paul to join me there, telling him I needed to talk to him and get some advice.

It is so easy to see things after the fact. The lab accident in college was the first and biggest mistake of my life. It brought me to the attention of Carlton Maldonado in the worse way possible. It set the tone for our relationship through out the years to the point that I was surprised when he hired me for the cancer research project. In hindsight, this was probably the second biggest mistake of my life.

 

“Like the sands of an hourglass, these are the days of our lives.” That thought kept running through my mind as I waited at the cottage for Paul. The quote, from the opening to a soap opera, seemed to sum up my life recently, although maybe not; no soap opera I’d ever seen was quite as bizarre as my life had been in the last year.

The gravel crunched from the sound of tires as a car pulled up to the cottage and I ran to greet Paul I as so happy to see him. I had been waiting almost two full days for him to get my message and come to me and the cabin had been lonely without his company. Throwing the door open, I reached out to hug him and stopped in my tracks. Instead of Paul, there was some huge, muscle-bound, pug-ugly.

“Where’s Paul? What are you doing with his car?” I tried to look around him to see if anyone else was in the car, but couldn’t really see around him. Without speaking, pug-ugly handed me a note.

~o~O~o~

Dear Kirsten:
I have reviewed your research notes and I concur with your attempts to stifle further human testing. Instead, I have decided to take this project under my personal attention and make it a special project, with only a few personally selected candidates. We need to talk of many things, including Virginia and Paul.

Dr. Carlton Waldorf Maldonado requests your presence to discuss your future and the future of your research. The gentleman bearing this invitation will escort you to our rendezvous.

C.

I looked up at the man-mountain standing in front of me. He had heavy calluses on his knuckles. The only way I knew to get calluses like that was from punching something–hard–over and over again. Did I want to go anywhere, for any reason, with this guy? I didn’t think so. “I’m waiting for a friend. Please advise Dr. Maldonado that I’ll be happy to meet with him at a more convenient time.”
He stood there with a mildly bemused expression on his face and then handed me a second note. I was beginning to wonder if he was mute, possibly from repeated blows to the head.

Dear Kirsten:
Sammy is here to assure your attendance. He will do whatever is necessary. I encourage you to allow him to make your time with him as pleasant as possible. Oh, and as an incentive, Paul is here, so waiting there for him will do little good.

C.

~o~O~o~

This was rapidly beginning to have all the makings of a bad gangster movie. I knew Carlton was not to be trusted, but this smacked of criminal intimidation, as I was willing to bet Paul would not be with Carlton, at least not willingly. I opened my mouth to tell tall, wide and silent to get lost, but he already had something else in his hand.

A ring.

Paul’s ring.

It was his law school graduation ring. Paul was very proud of that ring. In one of the few instances of self-indulgence I had ever seen from Paul; he had designed it himself to include an emblem noting that he had graduated summa cum laude. He also never removed it, even in the shower, which meant that this no longer just “smacked” of anything; it was forcible kidnap. My shoulders fell as I grasped for ways to stall until I could think of something, so I asked for a few moments to get changed into something “more appropriate.” Some fast thinking was called for. I had clearly been underestimating Maldonado.

Fifteen minutes later, as I slid into the back seat of the car, I wondered just how far my ex-mentor and ex-boss–there was no chance that there could now be any other than an “ex-“ relationship–was willing to go to attain his goals, whatever they might be. The absence of a human finger inside the ring was a positive, but the thorough frisk, the metal and plastic protective shield between the driver’s seat and the passenger compartment and the absence of door handles or locking knobs answered that question.

~o~O~o~

The windows of Paul’s car had been painted black and they had installed a solid metal partition between the front and back seats so I would not be able to see where we were going. They had also removed the doorknobs and window cranks so I wasn’t going anywhere without a struggle. I wasn’t quite sure why they bothered as I knew who we were going to see and I didn’t really care where we were going as long as I could make certain that Paul was okay. As a result, I spent the ride to where ever we ended up planning and preparing–which is what I wanted anyway. To ensure the best chance in the event of a fight, I enhanced my hearing, vision, speed and strength to the maximum while retaining the familiar Dr. Kirsten LaPierre exterior to insure that I appeared friendly, harmless.

I also enhanced my appearance subtly to make myself appear helpless and non-threatening–and yes, desirable too. I was hedging as many bets as I could. I modified my voice to make it as friendly and sensuous as possible, enlarged my bust to the maximum comfortable within my dress and thinned my waist a bit. I also increased pheromone production, and finally, I stretched my legs a couple of inches but shortened my spine by an equal amount in order to assure that I was not looking down at Carlton. I wanted him to feel as assured and in control as possible in hopes that he would overestimate me. By now, there was no pain at all as I made the changes, and I covered the energy loss with a single energy bar from my purse. You know w hat they say about practice making perfect. I had been practicing.

Even when the car finally stopped, I still wasn’t certain where we were as it had pulled into a parking garage and the garage door closed before the car door opened, dashing any hopes I had of getting a clue to where I was by seeing the exterior of the building or the surrounding street.

Like most garages, this one was dimly light and I quickly increased the number of rods in my eyes to facilitate low-light vision to that approaching a cat’s. This helped as I could see a sign reserving a parking space for Dr. Carlton W. Maldonado, Director of Research and knew I was at the main offices of BioLogInc. Somehow, I had been expecting to find I was being taken to an office with fifty-year old furniture in some rat-infested warehouse. Certainly television had led me to believe that was where most gangsters did their business. The fact that we were in the corporate headquarters seemed to suggest that maybe Maldonado was not that much the villain and mobster I had been anticipating.

Once I had been thoroughly frisked a second time, we took the elevator directly up to the top floor and Maldonado’s office. I remember commenting to Paul that it was designed to intimidate. It was twenty by forty feet wide with a step up to the area around Maldonado’s desk and another step up to his desk, which spoke volumes about his vanity and a few other personality characteristics. Behind his desk, with the chair back, his feet up and his hands comfortably entwined behind his head, sat Maldonado.

I idly noted that his desk was completely barren of any indications of office equipment, files or even a telephone and the rather large wall hanging behind his desk that seemed at odds with the otherwise sterile environment. It was a copy–at least I assumed it was a copy ¬–of Rembrandt’s he Ascension” with Jesus standing on a cloud in a state of rapture as cherubs surround him and a crowd of humanity stares up at him in awe and reverence. As I thought of it, maybe the painting wasn’t so much out of place in that otherwise sterile environment as it was a portent, telling anyone who was astute enough what Maldonado’s real goal was in life–to be revered as a god-like figure. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the face in the painting had been modified. It didn’t have the beard I remembered the original having. It was clean-shaven and looked surprisingly like Maldonado’s face. Was he really egotistical enough to have modified the painting if it was an original? That was a scary thought.

In the pit area nearest the entrance was a conference table covered with material that looked suspiciously like the samples and research notes from my lab. Also, in the pit area, by the window wall, was a conversational grouping with some soft lounge chairs, the kind that you start sinking into and just keep sinking. In one of those chairs was Paul, flanked by Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee. They were obviously close relatives of Sammy, the man-mountain, who nodded amiably at them and then took a position directly in front of the door we had just come through. Once he had settled in, there was only a small segment of the door visible around his calves.

“Good evening Dr. LaPierre. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us. And may I note that you’re looking especially radiant tonight.” I knew he was a sarcastic bastard, but until that moment, I had not realized exactly how smarmy he could be. I had to fight the urge to shudder.

“As we both have many demands on our time, I’ll be brief.” He was again the crisp businessman as he stood up and gestured for me to sit in one of the other chairs in the conversational grouping. I followed his lead, but mostly because I wanted to look at Paul. He had not really moved or said a word since I had arrived and I was worried.

“Your friend will probably be fine.” In cheap detective movies, this is where they would note that the villain seemed to be reading my mind, but it was quite evident what I was thinking as I approached Paul and knelt daintily beside him so my face was inches from his.

“For now,” Maldonado continued, allowing the implied threat hang heavily in the air between us.

My response was, of course, “What the hell have you done to him you slime.”

Maldonado’s response, equally well scripted, was, “Oh, nothing much. I’ve provided him with a moderately large dose of one of the stronger sedatives. In a few minutes, we should begin to see the first symptoms of respiratory and cardiac collapse. He will shortly die, unless we can come to a deal.”

“Deal?” I couldn’t believe this piece of slime was talking business as he watched someone die. “I gather you tend towards the reform view of the Ten Commandments, ‘It’s not murder if you don’t get caught.’ How the hell can you expect me to make any deal I’ll keep under this kind of duress?”

“Sadly,” he gave me a wry grin, “along with being an annoying wiseass, you also have a rather intuitive mind. There is no guarantee I can actually expect from you. Have a seat and watch.”

“I don’t think so,” I growled and prepared to leap.

“Oh, I do.” He slid into a soft chair beside Paul and pointed to the Tweedle brother by the door. Sammy was pointing a gun at me. “He’s quite a good shot, especially from less than fifteen feet like now.

“I too am armed,” Maldonado noted while patting a lump in his chest, “but I’m quite sure you won’t make it necessary for me to use my weapon, will you Kirsten?

“Can you stop us all before one of us kills you and/or Paul? Please feel free to try. I’m actually rather interested and would like to see a demonstration.”

Damn, I cursed silently. For all his myriad faults, the man was smart. Could he really have figured out what happened from his brief time skimming the lab notes?

“What kind of demonstration would you like?” I asked, trying to assess how much he had learned as I stood and slid beside Paul. I made a show of putting one hand on his shoulder and rubbing it nervously. The move also put me next to, and barely touching, the Tweedle furthest from everyone. He glanced down and leered at me while I braced myself so I would not flinch or shudder, tempted as I was, as his hand furtively moved to rub against my buttocks. I had cranked up my pheromone production as high as I dared without making the room reek for weeks to come, so I would have been even more annoyed if he hadn’t made any move at all.

“I mean, are you expecting me to turn into a gorilla or something? What the hell are you expecting?”

Psychologists call it reaction formation, the use of sarcasm and saying the opposite of what is meant to confuse and misdirect. I made certain that my voice dripped with sarcasm as I continued my original plan, slid behind Paul’s chair and leaned down a bit to rub Paul’s shoulders with both hands. This served several purposes. It allowed me to shake my hair and let it flow appealingly over my shoulders and frame my breasts, highlighting then. It also allowed Sammy a better view of them and the lacy bra I was wearing. Finally, it allowed the second Tweedle guarding Paul to move his hand over to my rump. With luck, it was only going to be a matter of time before one Tweedle’s roving hand found the other Tweedle’s and they hopefully got mad at each other.

“No, I think something simple like a change of hair color, a breast enlargement or a height change would be sufficient.”

The height change would have been the most obvious way to get on Carlton’s good side, assuming there was one. He’d probably love the idea of beautiful woman who was shorter than him. It would make him feel all the more a man–a big man. Unfortunately, that would have made it much more difficult to maintain all the hidden musculature I had created for myself on the ride over. Instead, I chose hair. I made it shorter and darker, almost a crew cut like the lady who was hawking her diet book a while back, but still styled in a feminine manner. When the fighting started, there would be less chance of getting it pulled.

The rubbing stopped. Shit. I hadn’t thought they would be that observant. I cranked the pheromone levels up again, deciding it was more important that worrying about the room reeking. Actually, I was chastising myself for caring about the condition of Maldonado’s office considering what I was planning. I also, added a bit more wiggle to my butt as I rubbed Paul, just enough to insure that it would make contact with their hands again. Thank god for short memories and overactive glands; they were soon rubbing again.

The increased pheromone production had another benefit. Sammy had wiped some drool of his chin and taken a silent, sliding step closer to us. I gave a silent cheer, as I needed him to be as close as possible for this to come off. Next, I pumped up my breasts just a bit more and moved the nipple a bit higher so that it was visible above the edge of my bra. By increasing the sped with which I rubbed Paul’s back, I was able to increase the jiggle factor and he moved another two steps closer.

I had been ignoring Carlton the last few moments. Luckily, he was apparently caught up in his own thoughts, probably deciding how to make the most of my discovery. I wondered if he realized what I was trying to accomplish, but regardless, it was time for a distraction, “So what do I need to do to save Paul?”

“Why, merely walk over to the telephone by my desk and call 911, then provide CPR until they arrive.”

“Since I assume you will not be allowing me to do that until you have something, why don’t we stop playing these games? What do you want from me?”

“Actually, nothing any more. I have your research. I have your samples. Now I have the proof that it works thanks to you little demonstration.” He stood up and strode decisively to the table with my life’s work on it. He spoke with out turning back to me as he did something I could not quite make out, but the scent of lighter fluid suddenly became more overpowering then the combined body odor of three Tweedles. “I’ve already made copies of the relevant material and this job is no longer necessary to my plans. I will miss you LaPierre. You are a damned boy scout and you would surely interfere with my plans for a new world order, but as I have noted, you do have an intuitive mind. Oh well, “Qué sera, sera…”

When he did turn around, he had a syringe in his hand. “I’m certain you can guess what this is, your wonderful formula.” With that, he injected himself.

I knew I would not be getting a better chance. Carlton’s hands were full and the Tweedle family was in deep lust. Feigning moral indignation for his too free hands, I screeched and spun on the middle Tweedle and yelled “Fresh!” as I slapped him hard enough to break his jaw. Continuing my spin, I grabbed the far Tweedle and kicked him in the family jewels hard enough to fracture his coccyx before hoisting him backwards over my shoulder and sending him flying over Paul’s chair into Sammy with me flying right behind him.

The broken jawed Tweedle was on the floor moaning behind Paul’s chair, out of the action, at least for the moment. Mr. Crushed Cojá³nes Tweedle was a dead weight on top of Sammy, who had not dropped his gun as I had hoped, but who was struggling to move Cojá³nes so he could get off a clean shot. I was on top of them both before he could get off any shot, clean or dirty. With a loud crunch of broken bone, the gun was in my hand and someone below me was screaming.

A fast roll and I had the gun aimed at Carlton, or at least where Carlton had been. Instead, I was nearly blinded by the brightness of the yellow flames engulfing my life’s work. I was shocked into paralysis and that is when I heard it, the soft popping sound of a bullet. Maldonado was shooting at me.

It took precious microseconds to locate him, by his desk of all places, and he was able to get off a second shot before I emptied my pistol in his direction.

It would have been nice to be able to say that I was a crack shot, but I was not. Paul and I had been hunting with our fathers several times as youngsters and I knew enough to point the damn thing and pull the trigger, hoping the safety was off. Nevertheless, I had not shot a gun in twenty years and I had not been that good even then. Besides, even veteran cops will tell you that in the heat of a firefight, aim is the last thing you are thinking about. When I opened my eyes, I could see a cluster of bullet holes in and around the desk, but no Carlton.

A quick glance back at the conference table with my research burning like some damn Boy Scout bonfire was enough to tell me that it was a lost cause. I knocked Sammy and his clone on the head just hard enough to make sure they would be sleeping for a while and turned to Paul and the last Tweedle, Mr. Broken Jaw. That is when I saw the blood.

Knowing that there is about the same amount of blood in the human body as there is oil in the oil pan of a car does not prepare you for the shock of bright red flowing down the side of a white shirt. I followed the red upward as I traced it back to the source. There was a steady flow of blood gushing from a small hole in Paul’s left eye.

With a smothered whimper, I leaped back to Paul, only to find what I suspected but prayed would not be. There was a large, gaping hole in the back of my best friend’s head. No more would we trade barbs and think up jokes to tease each other. No more would we eat, or play, or study, or be sick together. No more would we be there to help each other. No more, no more, no more.

I knelt beside Paul’s chair and cradled him in my arms as the last of his blood dribbled out, mixing with my tears. Mr. Broken Jaw groaned and tried to move so I kicked him, possibly too hard as he stopped moving all together. The building’s smoke detectors finally realized that something was burning and the sprinkler system released a deluge that covered us all, turning Paul’s blood a pathetic pink. I do not know how long we stayed there. That is how security found us.

 

“Paul was dead, but I wasn’t even allowed to attend his funeral. It seems that Dr. Maldonado had prepared a bunch of phony records framing me, describing me as unstable since the experimental cancer treatment. There were counseling memos, pleading notes to the company’s Employee Assistance Program to get me into therapy, even a couple of calls to company security asking that they be present whenever I was in the building as he feared for his life.

“They never found Maldonado’s body, but that didn’t matter to the DA’s office as they had Mr. Broken Jaw Tweedle’s body and my confession to having kicked him. That was enough to guarantee Manslaughter and when the other two goons concocted a story about how I’d attacked them like a wild creature, breaking bones and shooting at poor Doc Maldonado in a fit of rage, as I accused him of sabotaging my work, they felt confident they had enough for Murder Two. You’d think the big strong Tweedles–by the way, just to show how quirky life can be, it turns out that they really were brothers and Tweedle really was their surname–would be too embarrassed to admit to have been beaten up by the little slip of a thing I was for the trial.

“The last straw was when the police went through my quarters at the base and found blue prints for BioLogInc’s corporate office building as well as directions to a local swamp known for its quicksand deposits, a map with directions to Canada using local and back roads, and a box full of money. The fact that I had never seen any of that stuff before was absolutely irrelevant–and besides, who the hell ever escaped to Canada except a few draft dodgers? That crap was the proof of premeditation that gave the DA his Murder One charge.

“At the time of the trial, it amazed me that no one asked how I could have beaten up those huge, muscle-bound men so badly. No one asked who had shot and killed Paul since the bullet didn’t match any of the guns in the room, or even why he was there.

“Do you know what my court-appointed attorney’s advice was? ‘Look innocent.’ I cannot even imagine what she meant by that, but she certainly didn’t do anything else to functionally present a defense for me. I suppose that’s why she sent me the Laura Ashley outfits to wear. I hear it helped their sales, although the only thing it did for me was get me voted best-dressed woman on death row. I am wearing one now under this orange prison issue jumpsuit. You can just see the top of the turtleneck.

“Actually, as far as I could tell, the only person in that court room who believed I was innocent, excepting the Tweedles, was Patrice. We had been friends since my initial treatment and she came every day. I understand that she has tried to visit me, but she was not my immediate family, my attorney, or someone the State wanted to see me, so we haven’t been able to speak in months.

~o~O~o~

“About now, she’s the only one I’ve got left. Would you please give her a message? Tell her ‘I love her and I’ll never forget her.’”

“So here I am, Father; with no family, no friends, no job, and no future.” I stopped him before he started the usual platitudes about how my faith will help me accept what was to come. “I know. God loves me. Well, if you were about to tell me to confess and free my soul, I’ve got a problem. That was my confession, I’ve confessed to being stupid, and naíve and innocent, but not to being guilty of the charges against me.”

“My dreams of helping mankind are dead; even if I could find someone to fund me, it would be years before I could recreate my work to this still incomplete point. To put it bluntly Father–and I apologize in advance for the language–but I’ve been raped and screwed in the most basic, albeit figurative, terms. Just as Dr. George LaPierre’s life ended when he contracted cancer, Dr. Kristen LaPierre’s life ends in a couple of minutes.”

“What about the other deaths, dear?” His hand trembled a bit as he poured a small quantity of holy water into a steel basin and then dipped his fingers to sprinkle it on me. I think he was afraid that he would join those that had died from being near me. That had been the kicker. With the near absolute control of the inmate population, anyone who had tried to talk to me had died under mysterious circumstances. They couldn’t prove I had done most of them, in fact most are still unsolved, but Maldonado made certain that a few were linked to me via circumstantial evidence, enough that the second trial resulted in the death penalty.

“I have never killed anyone, Father. Those people who died may have died because of me, but not by my desire. I’ve grown tired of trying to explain Dr. Maldonado’s real nature and his role in all of this. Do you want to hear that story again?”

“That won’t be necessary, my child. I shall pray for your soul.” The priest kissed his rosary and crossed himself before rising. He seemed happy to be finished blessing me, yet another successful convert to my side–not.

“Thank you, Father; but pray for this country and the world. Dr. Maldonado is still out there and if he’s even half as ruthless as I believe he is, we’re all in deep trouble.”

The sound of a key rattling against the bars made us both start. A contingent of four burly guards and the Warden was waiting just outside the cell. For some reason the joke about the King and the Jester came back to me and I realized that I heartily agreed with the punch line, “No noose is good news.” Oh, and that reminds me of the other joke I have yet to finish, the one about the vase. It is about an attorney making his opening address to the jury in behalf of a client who is accused of breaking a neighbor’s extremely valuable vase. It goes something like this. “Your honor, distinguished colleagues, and ladies and gentlemen of the jury, by the end of these proceedings, I intend to prove three things beyond a shadow of a doubt. First, I shall prove that my client never received the vase in question. Second, I shall prove that when she did receive it, it was already broken. Third and finally, I shall prove that when my client returned the vase, it was intact.” I almost wish my attorney had been able to match the quality of the attorney in the joke. Actually, I wish Paul had been alive to serve as my lawyer.

The Priest silently stood and backed out of my way. I had actually been waiting for this moment–or maybe it was that stupid noose joke–but I gave him a jaunty wave and said, “See you later, Father.”

They added handcuffs and leg chains before letting me leave the cell. Then, we all did a slow march, the Warden in front, the Priest in back and me, surrounded by the guards, in the middle. My escort was silent and grim, but the cheers from the surrounding cells was deafening and could be heard even after the heavy steel door at the end of the corridor closed behind us.

I had had many discussions with attorneys, news people, psychologists and guards over the past year and a half while the required appeals were processed–against my wishes, I might add–by do-gooders trying to help.

Meanwhile, Maldonado has had free rein to remake the world in his image. As a result, I was not surprised by the huge crowd seated in the bleachers in front of the gallows. But then again, I had been planning this moment for quite a while now.

We continued our slow march to the top of the scaffold. Then, I got to listen as the Warden read my list of crimes and verified that I was Dr. Kirsten LaPierre in accordance with state law. Were my situation different, I might have found it funny that after being in jail for almost two years, this was when they verified my identity. Finally, in a deep stentorian voice, he completed the ritual by citing the statute under which this execution was occurring.

Then it was my turn. I was asked if I had anything more to say. Still shuffling due to the chains, I stepped up to the microphone and glared out at the audience. “I have said it from the beginning and I say it again. I did not kill Dr. Carlton W. Maldonado. He is alive and he is amongst you plotting evil of such magnitude that it will stun you at the least, and could prove the undoing of this country, even the world.

“I know that you do not believe me. I know that you consider me the evil one. It saddens me that I have not been able to convince you to join me to fight the evil that is Dr. Maldonado, but fight him I shall, to my dying breath. One last time, I implore you to release me and join me.”

The silence was deafening. A guard shuffled his feet and the Warden checked his watch against the large clock mounted on the scaffold. It was almost time.

The guards escorted me back to a marked position on the trap door and offered me a hood, which I declined. Then the noose slid over my head and down my neck. Someone, one of the guards, was thoughtful enough to pull my hair through so it was not trapped between the noose and my neck. The chains stayed on; I guess they figured it would be added weight to insure that my neck snapped, then they added sandbag, which were attached to each foot by the leg chain. When I had been prepared, the Warden nodded to someone behind me. He declined to look into my face although I looked into his. Then, the ground fell out from beneath me.

For more than six months I had been preparing for this moment. I had read of this moment and I had dreamed of this moment. I had interviewed anyone who could tell me anything about it. I had even spent time on the Internet researching gallows construction and the medical details of hanging. I was at peace, knowing what would happen.

The first feeling was that of falling. My shoulder length hair floated up creating a golden halo in the morning sunlight.

Then, the thick hemp rope snapped taut and it was over, but for the perfunctory medical exam. I can honestly say that there was no pain.

They let me hang for several minutes. I guess no one ever told the Warden that asphyxiation as the actual cause of death in hanging is an old wives’ tale–or maybe he was just being cautious.

You did you know that hanging does not kill you by asphyxiating you, right? The actual cause of death is the landing, so to speak. More accurately, it’s the combined multiple insults to the body including the trauma to the brain as it is bounced about, the spine as it is severed, and the essential organs as they stop receiving messages to function. Trust me I speak from personal, first-hand experience.

Finally, they took me down and lay me on a gurney. The jail physician took out his stethoscope any listened for my heart, checked for a pulse and flipped my eyes open to see if there was any pupillary dilation. There wasn’t.
From then on, it was just a matter of time. I had asked for immediate cremation at the funeral home that had cared for my parents’ remains, but like most bureaucracies, it took almost five hours, lying on a freezing metal slab, before my body was released for pick up.

Right about now, you’re probably thinking of the ending of any of the dozens of “B” horror flicks Paul and I used to watch on Sunday mornings as we grew up. Someone always seemed to end up intoning in a somber voice, “There are some things man was never meant to know.” At least it makes sense in the context of wondering how I could possibly know about things like my death and the events that occurred after it. If it will help, I could tell you that it is beautiful up here and “a far, far better place to which” I have gone. However, I can assure you that I am not a ghost, nor am I some other type of supernatural being. My personal experiences are the result of living through my own death.

I told you I had been researching executions for months. After all, I am a research scientist and that’s what we do when we want to know something–research it. I also told you how a properly administered hanging actually works. Remember I had quite a bit of time for independent study during those many months in solitary confinement on Death Row. Thus, I practiced and honed my ability to change shape until it was effectively instantaneous. In the process, I discovered that the only limitation is my ability to properly visualize the biology, to imagine the change in sufficient detail that it is able to function. This means I can even assume various animal shapes, even in between shapes like a half man half animal. For some reason, I am partial to large white furred, ape-like creatures. Sorry, just kidding about that last comment. I don’t really have a preference of any sort, except for being male, which I still can’t do.

As the noose went around my neck, I created a shell-like exoskeleton under my turtleneck sweater extending down my spine and under my crotch. The upper part prevented asphyxiation and a snapped neck. The lower frame served as a support so I would not snap some other portion of my vertebrae. Once the trap door opened, I just played dead, removing the lower exoskeleton first so it would not be noticed when they lowered me off the noose. Then, I just moved my heart and major arteries well away from their normal position in my chest so that my internal organs dampened the beating sounds until they could not be heard by the good doctor. Finally, it was just a waiting game until the funeral home picked up my body and placed it in a casket to be cremated. When no one was looking, I just swapped another body for mine and disappeared amongst the next group of mourners.

From there, it was a quick bus ride to Patrice’s apartment to borrow some money, collect some clothes and say our tearful goodbyes. I cannot afford to lose my last true friend and I know Maldonado would kill her without a second thought if he thought she was helping me, but I am not worried. I can still call her if I finish the conversation within sixty seconds, or drop her an e-mail, even a letter to return the money she lent me. Besides, she gave me the hope that this will one day be over and I can again be with her. It will not be the same as it would have been with Paul, but no one should ever give up a friend without a fight.

Now I am free to seek out Maldonado. It will not be easy. I do not know her new name. I do not know what she looks like. I do not know where she is. I do not even know what her goals are. I just know she’s out there plotting, organizing and controlling more nefarious criminal activity and she must be stopped before she does to others what she’s done to me. She will also have the same ability to change her appearance as me and, when I catch her, I will have to tell her she is a lousy lawyer. I am certain she is still planning for our next encounter. She will believe I am dead as much as I believe she is dead.

I never wanted to be some kind of a hero. I never once thought to save the world. I just wanted to help my fellow man. Now, I have a mission–and I will succeed. I have to. I cannot let down Paul, or my parents, or those of you who have no way to protect yourself from Maldonado’s machinations. Like in the comics still at the cabin, I need a superhero name, but most of the good ones are already taken. I have combined the two things that are most prominently me. I am a biomorph and, as Carlton sneeringly pointed out, I am a Boy Scout.
Prepare yourself Maldonado. I am coming for you. Bio Scout is coming for you.

 

The End