Santa’s Helper (Sexy!) With Boots : 5 / 6
An Altered Fates Story
By Iolanthe Portmanteaux
“You’re me!” Jackie exclaimed, incredulous.
“That’s the idea,” Grady said, nodding.
“You’re ME!” Jackie repeated, stunned at seeing herself, hearing herself -- Jack, a man -- while she remained a woman.
Grady nodded. He was watching her closely, studying her reactions.
“So who *I* am supposed to be?” demanded Jackie.
“You’re Zadie Gammisen,” Grady replied.
“The dead girl? Zadie Gammisen? How can I -- She --- I can’t be her! I’m -- she’s -- she’s DEAD!”
“Evidently not,” Grady replied, gesturing at Zadie’s new incarnation. “Look: in that bag on the bed, there’s her birth certificate, social security, drivers license… there’s even her vaccination record and her high school diploma. There’s some old family photos in there, too.You can see what your parents looked like. You can see what you looked like as a little girl--”
Jackie cut him off. “I don’t give a crap about any of that! I’m still a woman!”
“Right, I know,” Grady said. “But look: a couple of minutes ago, you were nobody. You didn’t even have a real name. Now you have an identity, and an amazingly hot body to boot!”
“I don’t want a new identity! I don’t want an amazingly hot body! I don’t want to see what I looked like as a little girl! I want to be ME! I want to change back to Jack! I’m Jack Redhaven! I’m supposed to be Jack Redhaven. You don’t get to be me!”
Grady’s expression showed his disappointment and surprise. His face actually went white with dismay. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I didn’t know. I couldn’t know. There was no way for me to tell for sure what you wanted, no matter which way I asked you. You were in a state where you’d agree to anything. I couldn’t trust that any choice you made really reflected what you want. If you recall, I said all of that to you, at the time.”
Jackie fumed. She could see the justice in Grady’s remarks, but at the same time, she was angry. Angry at herself, mostly, but angry at Grady as well. She’d been so stupid! Stupid to put on the silly outfit. Stupid to go outside in those clothes! Stupid to get on the bus! Stupid to take those pills!
Grady was eyeing her. He was full of caution, uncertain what exactly she was feeling. More than that, he wasn’t sure what was safe for him to say. “I’m guessing you’re not too happy,” he ventured, lamely.
“That’s an understatement,” she shot back.
“I really thought you wanted to be a girl,” he told her. “You seemed so natural at it.”
“Because I have such a small dick?” she said hotly, turning red as she spoke.
“Hey, you’re average, I suppose. But how could I know? I didn’t see it until I changed.”
“But you assumed!”
“I didn’t assume. I just brought some insurance. I didn’t want to be caught short down there.” After a pause, he added, “You can do the same for yourself when you change back to Jack.”
Jackie looked away, offended and embarrassed. In spite of her strong emotions, she did her best to try to calm down. “All right,” she said, trembling slightly from anger and adrenaline. “Let’s discuss this rationally. Let’s talk about next steps.”
Grady told her, “Until now, I was thinking that the two of us could do the theater liquidation job, and see if we liked being together. I felt that we had good chemistry. We’d do that, and take it from there. With the medallion, we could always redo our choices.”
“No, that’s not what I meant. I mean, what do we need to do for me to get my body back. I need to be Jack Redhaven, and I need to be the ONLY Jack Redhaven. You said that if I didn’t like this, you’d fix it. I want to know how and when.”
Grady was embarrassed. He never intended to go back on his word, but he also never thought he’d have to live up to it. “Okay,” he said. “Seven o’clock tomorrow morning, you get to be Jack again. We’ll do what we did just now, pretty much.”
“And who will you be?”
Grady replied in a small voice, “I guess I’ll have to be Zadie.” For now, he added silently.
Jackie nodded grimly. “That sounds about right. We’ll see how natural it is for you.” Then she set her lip, gave him a fierce look in the eye, and walked into the bathroom, shutting and locking the door behind her. She had the feeling she was about to cry, and she absolutely did not want to cry in front of Grady.
It was almost exactly a day since she turned into Jackie, and here she was, back again, turned into a woman again. A different woman, but still, a woman... again. This time was different, though: this time she knew how and why it happened. She also knew how it would end: she’d go back to being Jack.
At the same time, now that her confrontation with Grady was over and she was alone, now that the drug and its effects was fully out of her system, she began to feel and recall all that she’d been through in the past 24 hours. All the indignities, the assaults… all those god-damn dirty Santas. The memories didn’t unfold like a story: they burst one at a time like little neural explosions on the view screen of her mind. Faces, hands, smells, sensations, tastes… oh God. It was awful. She was cringing so much that she wanted to vomit.
She sat on the closed toilet, her fists curled into two tight balls, her head bowed, her eyes tight shut, her jaw clenched like a bear trap.
After the horrible backroom Santa orgy had ended… then came Grady. He was nice enough and good enough. He wasn’t ugly and creepy like the Santas. He did treat her to that lovely bath and that soft towel rubdown, but he kept her naked nearly the entire time he was with her! She recalled, blushing furiously, the way he slipped his hand under her shirt -- which happened to be the only clothes she was wearing -- how he lifted it up to show her ass, her pussy, her stomach and back… everything but her breasts. But he’d seen her breasts, too. She remembered how his blue eyes rested there, on her twin beauties.
And she knelt at his feet! Actually! Literally! No metaphor there. She was naked, on her knees, on the floor between his feet!
She wanted to hate him and resent him. He had used her. He’d stolen her identity, for Christ’s sake! But he did seem at heart to be a good person, someone who tries to do right by others. He had protected Buddy, even if Buddy didn’t understand it.
But on the other hand, he stole from Buddy! She saw him do it. And didn’t Grady say there was there a warrant out for his arrest? Why was he on parole? No, not parole, the other thing -- probation, right. Probation. He must have done something wrong, broken some law. You don’t get on probation by being a good person.
What had Grady done? What crime had he committed? As the question came bubbling up in her mind, displacing all her unpleasant memories, another question quickly took the fore: What was Grady doing right now? She’d left him all alone. For all she knew, he’d run off with the medallion and her face.
She jumped to her feet and whipped open the bathroom door, still naked, her breasts swinging.
Grady was sitting on a towel that he’d draped over a chair. He was looking at the floor when Jackie emerged, and slowly lifted his head to look at her. She was taken aback. He was still here: he hadn’t run. Clearly (since he hadn’t bothered to dress), he had no intention of going anywhere. That was reassuring. But his face looked so sad! Jackie was stunned. She was looking at her own face, Jack’s face. She’d seen sadness on that face before: she knew what it looked like, and she knew how it felt.
Why was Grady so sad?
Earlier, when Jackie ran off to the bathroom, Grady was glad to be left alone for a moment. He needed to think. But first, there was something he needed to do: he needed to hide the medallion. He didn’t want to leave himself open to anything that Jackie might do to him, either for revenge or out of good intentions. After a quick look around, he popped the medallion back in its case, and stashed the case on top of the closet, where she wouldn’t be able to reach or even see it.
Then he put on a pot of coffee. He felt like he hadn’t had a cup all day, even though he’d just consumed two at the diner. But… now he was Jack, and Jack hadn’t had any. The water bubbled and dripped in the coffeemaker.
He looked at the pair of Jack’s boxers, but he didn’t put them on. There didn’t seem to be any point to getting dressed, especially when he had no idea how Jackie might react to seeing him in her -- or Jack’s -- clothes.
He draped a towel over one of the motel armchairs, and poured himself a cup of coffee. It was time to review his options. His best hope was that Jackie would relent, and decide to remain Zadie. He wouldn’t force her or trick her. He couldn’t bring himself to do that, especially now that she had Zadie’s face. Oddly, he didn’t feel the same love and connection that he’d always felt with the real Zadie. Sure, Jackie was Zadie now, but only physically. There was a different person inside. The same body -- more or less -- but a different driver.
There was probably no way he could talk her into remaining as Zadie. If she was going to go for it, it would have to be her idea. Or at least seem to be her idea. Maybe if they slept together? That might sell it for her. He had caught her glancing at his cock more than once, and though they were quick looks, her face betrayed her interest. He could tell she was curious. If he had what looked like the right timing, he might coax her into enjoying her last night as a woman. So far, she hadn’t experienced sex without drugs, sex without Santas.
He was pretty sure none of the Santas had a cock as impressive as the one he was now wearing. It was bigger than Grady’s, and Grady’s was pretty big.
On the other hand, he might couch it as a plea for himself: since he was sacrificing his manhood for her, could she grant him one last wish as a man? Could he use his cock before he had to lose his cock? Before he took the role of Zadie?
Grady did NOT want to be Zadie. If there was any way to avoid it, he would have to try. Zadie meant too much to him. It was bad enough seeing Jackie walking around with Zadie’s face. How could he bear to look in the mirror and see Zadie’s face there?
But honestly, what other options were there? Whatever they were, they had to be in this room. Clothes were the key to the transformation. He looked at Jack’s boxers again. But that was out of the question: he couldn’t be Jack. He looked at Jackie’s little bag with the Santa’s Helper costume. That idea, too, was a nonstarter. Not only because he didn’t want to be a bimbo: The real problem was that the person he’d known as Jackie wasn’t a real person, a person with an identity, a name, a social security card. Grady needed all those things, or his immediate future would be a little more complicated.
Another possibility was to go out and buy some new clothes. Then he could be anyone. He could be an 18-year-old boy, if he wanted. But again, he wouldn’t be a real person, a person with documents.
The more he thought about it, the more clearly he saw was that his only real possibility was to be Zadie. He needed a drivers license to get out of town, and he needed a name and a social security number to open a bank account. Zadie had all those things.
And sure, Jack had those things as well, but…
That was as far as his thoughts had gone when Jackie whipped open the bathroom door. He looked up at her, at Jackie with Zadie’s face, and realized what a terrible mistake he’d made. Buddy had spoken the truth: he had no right. Jackie, with Zadie’s face, was a sacrilege. Zadie was a saint, an angel from heaven. Jackie -- well, Jackie wasn’t a bad person, but she wasn’t going to win any Nobel Prize.
Jackie stood in the bathroom doorway, a little surprised, a little confused, but still with an undertone of anger and resentment, she asked, “What’s wrong? Why so sad? Is it because you don’t want to be a girl?”
As she said those words, she instantly regretted them. Not because they were unkind and unnecessary, but because her returning to being Jack did depend on Grady. No, revise that: now that she understood how the medallion worked, she could turn back to Jack by herself AND add inches to her penis, but Grady could still screw things up if he wanted. All he had to do, in fact, was leave, and there would be two Jack Redhavens. Or one, who wasn’t her. So she apologized. There was plenty of time to be a jerk AFTER they both changed again.
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I’ve been through a lot in the past few days -- I mean, the past DAY, but I have to say, I haven’t seen my face look that sad in a long time. What’s wrong?”
Her question sank deep into his heart, and it set loose a realization that had been cooking inside him all evening, starting from when he saw Buddy and stole the last remnants of Zadie. He realized that he couldn’t leave Jackie as Zadie. He couldn’t bear it. And at the same time, he didn’t want to be Jack Redhaven any more. He didn’t like Jack.
Jack was old, for one thing. Not “old” old, but older than Grady. Grady missed the energy and power his own body possessed. Jack had all sorts of little aches and pains that he’d probably gotten used to over the years, but those pains and problems were new to Grady, and he could feel them all. Jack had flat feet and bunions. His hamstrings and calves were so tight, they were hard as rocks. His shoulders, too, were a solid mass of tension, and his right shoulder pulled up higher than his left. Probably Grady could work out all those kinks if he had to, but he didn’t want to. Jackie wanted to be Jack, so let her be Jack.
That’s what Jack was feeling when Jackie asked him what was wrong, but there was no way Grady was going to tell her any part of that.
He also wasn’t going to tell her all of the thoughts he’d just run through, the evaluation of his options. He didn’t need to lay his cards on the table. So he told her something else, something she might find reassuring, since it meant he’d give up being Jack.
“I’m thinking about what it will mean to be Zadie,” he said.
“Are you thinking about pretty dresses and makeup and going whoring with your sister Lucy?”
A brief flame of anger lit in Grady’s chest, but he let it die. “There will be a lot to learn, yeah,” he admitted. “But I’ve realized that if I had to be any woman in the world, I’d want to be Zadie.”
“You really loved her, didn’t you?” Jackie asked, not unkindly.
“Yeah, I did,” he said. “And so did Buddy.”
“Ohhh,” Jackie said with a nod, thinking she understood. “Now that you see me as Zadie, you’re feeling guilty.”
“Guilty?” Grady didn’t understand what she was getting at.
“About the things Buddy said, the names he called you. Graverobber.” She smiled at him, smiling with Zadie’s face, but with a cruel twist that Zadie would never have given, especially when talking about Buddy. She wanted to hurt Grady, to torture him even, and she suddenly saw a way to do exactly that.
Jackie walked to a spot between Grady and the bed, and turned her back to him. Then she crossed her ankles and bent over, so that he not only had a complete view of her excellent backside, but also of her pussy and her butthole. She smoothed out the bed with her hands, wiggling a little, making the moment last as long as she reasonably could. Then she turned to face him, letting her breasts bob and sway. She didn’t say a word. She simply stood there waiting for her breasts to stop moving.
Grady licked his lips. His impossibly long penis was sticking straight up in the air. “You don’t have to arouse me,” he told her. “I’m already aroused.”
She laughed and threw herself backward, onto the bed, opening her legs wide. Unfortunately for her seductive technique, the mattress let out a fearful set of squeaks, and the wooden headboard leaned dangerously and frighteningly down, as if to strike her face. Then after a heart-stopping pause, it swung back to hit the wall twice, with a sound like a baseball bat.
“Hey! Goddamn it!” the man in the next room shouted, and he pounded three times on the wall. “There’s other people in here, you know!”
“Sorry!” Jackie shouted. After a pause, she added quietly, “Guess that killed the mood.”
Grady shrugged. “I really wasn’t in the mood, to tell the truth.”
Jackie shook her head, not sure whether to believe him. “So, if we’re not going to have sex,” she said, “What can we do until 7 AM? I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep.”
“We can watch TV,” he suggested. “I’m sure there’ll be some terrible movie on.”
She shrugged. “Or we could talk.”
“Yeah, I guess,” he agreed.
“Because I do have a question I’ve been wanting to ask you: what did you do that put you in jail and left you on probation?”
“Mmm,” he said. He chewed on his lip for a moment and nodded. Then he said, “Okay, I’ll tell you. It’s all a matter of public record anyway. Remember I told you that somebody gave Buddy the idea to make meth, but didn’t really explain it to him? So… I got Buddy to tell me who that was. It was a pair of brothers, drug dealers, kids from out of town, smart alecks. I knew what they looked like. They were young and skinny, and I figured I could take them both. I went over to this garage they owned. I didn’t mean to kill them. I only meant to beat them up.”
“Only?” Jackie echoed.
“Yeah. I mean, I didn’t go there to kill them. Sure, I meant to leave them lying on the ground, maybe send them to the hospital, but that’s all. I blamed them for telling Buddy enough to hurt him, and I blamed them for killing Zadie. I wanted to hurt them bad, I wanted to fuck them up, but you know, these guys weren’t stupid. At their place -- the place where I went looking for them, they had inventory -- drugs -- and they had cash, so they weren’t just hoping that no one would rob them. They were ready… not for me in particular... they were ready for anybody who might come around, trying to cause trouble.
“I went in, hot and fast. I was in such a rush that I only saw one of them. I thought he was alone. So I knocked him down, but his brother popped out of nowhere and hit me with a pipe. Needless to say, that turned the tide in their favor, and they started to beat the hell out of me. They really did a number on me. And yes, the irony wasn’t lost on me: They were doing to me exactly what I wanted to do to them.” Grady paused.
“It got to a point, you know -- it became clear that they weren’t going to just teach me a lesson. They were going to kill me: Finish me off, throw my body somewhere, and forget I ever existed. So I got desperate, and I got lucky. I got one good punch in, a sucker punch, and that turned the tide in *my* favor. This time, I didn’t waste time beating on them. I killed them. I killed them both, as quick as I could. Then I left.”
“You didn’t clean up? Destroy the evidence? Make sure the police couldn’t find you?” Jackie brought to bear all of the experience she gained from watching CSI shows on TV.
“Not at all,” Grady explained. “I was hurt too badly. Plus, I’m not a forensic scientist. There’s no way I would have found every single trace. It was too much of a mess. My blood, their blood, was everywhere. Anyway, I wanted to turn myself in.”
“What!? Why would you do that?”
“I knew I’d never get away with it. I needed to get ahead of it: if I was going to plead self-defense, turning myself in was a good first step.”
“But it didn’t work, right? I mean, you went to jail.”
“Yeah. I was found guilty, and now I’m a felon. But remember: I was beat to hell, and the story I told was basically true and fit all the facts, so I got a pretty light sentence, considering. That’s why I was let out on probation.”
“But you said there’s a warrant…”
“Yeah, my probation officer thinks that I belong in jail, so he made something very clear from the outset: He’s going to keep finding pretexts for throwing me back inside.”
“Can he do that?”
“He can do whatever the hell he likes. He owns me. That’s why not being Grady would suit me just fine.”
Jackie nodded, taking all this in. Grady sighed and looked at the floor. There was more, but he wasn’t going to tell Jackie… or anyone else, for that matter. After he’d killed the brothers, Grady went looking for a sink so he could wash the blood off his face, arms, and hands. On his way there, he found a room where the brothers had been counting cash. Grady didn’t know how much money was there. It wasn’t a million dollars, but it was more money than he’d ever seen. Grady grabbed a small backpack and filled it, starting with the big bills.
He wasn’t greedy; he didn’t take it all. He didn’t want anyone to know he’d taken anything. He was careful to touch nothing but the money that went into the backpack. Then he left. Before he went to the police and turned himself in, Grady hid the backpack. No one knew about the backpack or the money, so no one was looking for it. Right now, the backpack was tucked away in the black Silverado that Grady had appropriated. The owners of the truck probably wouldn’t miss it for at least a month, and by then he had intended to be far far away.
Now that he was someone else, the “far far away” wasn’t as urgent or important as it had been an hour earlier.
After he told Jackie the story (minus the bit about the money), there didn’t seem to be anything else to talk about, so they sat on the bed, naked, side by side, watching one black-and-white movie after another. At three in the morning they tried to call for pizza, but both pizzerias in town were closed. They drank another pot of coffee. Each of them went through all the TV channels three times without finding anything to watch… and then they fell asleep in each others’ arms.
Jackie woke first, at six AM. Her eyes snapped open, and the clock’s glowing numbers were right in front of her. She eased her way out from under Grady’s arm and tiptoed to the bathroom. She meant to not flush, but forgot and did it anyway, out of habit. She was trying to be quiet, to not wake Grady.
She knew there was still an hour to go -- or at least that’s what Grady told her -- but she wanted to try to change back on her own. Maybe the timing wasn’t as strict as Grady believed. She’d change back, then change Grady in his sleep. See how he’d like it!
But she couldn’t find the medallion! She looked everywhere, until she realized: Grady had hidden it. Asshole! She sat in a chair, wiggling impatiently, watching the numbers on the clock slowly change.
Grady woke at ten to seven. Without a word, he used the bathroom. Then, slowly and carefully, he laid the various items on the bed: Jack’s boxers, the long condom, Zadie’s dress, the little sneakers and the bimbo-esque bathing suit. He paused and looked them over.
“You’re killing me!” Jackie cried. “Let’s just do it!”
“Let’s take the extra minute or two to do it right,” he told her. “We don’t want to mess up and have to wait another 12 hours.” He paused, as if trying to remember something. “There is one thing I have to tell you, so we don’t screw this up--”
“Where’s the medallion?” she demanded, cutting him off.
“This is important,” he said. “It’s just one word of caution. Be careful--”
“The medallion!” she said tensely, balling her fists and gritting her teeth. “Let’s get this show on the road!”
“Okay,” he said, slowly taking the necklace case down from atop the closet. “But listen, don’t--”
“I got it, I got it,” she told him. “I saw what you did last time. We’ll do the same thing. Except this time, you won’t tie me up!”
Grady blushed at that, but he tried one more time to warn her, “Just don’t touch--”
Jackie hissed in impatience and grabbed the medallion off the bed. “WE’RE DOING THIS NOW!” she growled. “NO MORE TALKING!”
Grady put up his hands in surrender, and she dropped the necklace around his neck.
