No, this isn't right! None of this is.

I stopped in mid bite, then chewed the pancakes more slowly, straining my senses to search for the qualities that I loved in them so well. Nothing.

It was not that they were bland in the traditional sense, they were completely devoid of taste altogether. Impossible.

I picked up the glass of orange juice and brought the pulpy liquid to my nose, inhaling vigorously for a smell. Also nothing. I examined the glass in my hand. I noted it sweated with condensation yet, it did not feel wet nor was it cold to the touch. In fact I felt no temperature at all! With growing alarm I sipped from the glass, it was utterly without taste. There was not even the elusive, yet tangible, neutral flavor associated with water.

What was going on here?

A diffused white light poured in from the kitchen window, too bright and unfocused to come from a single source like the sun. The light emanated all at once from the entirety of the sky.

With a growing consciousness that all of this was unreal, I stood up and looked around the small bright room. It was a chaotic hybrid of kitchens, which existed, throughout my life.

On an old Sears refrigerator, out of commission since I was fifteen held twenty year old drawings of my childhood that were flung crazily together with last week's scribblings given to me by my nephew. A long discarded microwave from college sat next to stainless steels pots from an old girlfriend's home.

I was uncertain how long I had been existing in what was surely a dreamscape, but a renewed sense of time made me suspect it had been a long while. At the same time, a creeping awareness filled my mind making me realize that I had spent the entirety of my time here unwilling to leave the kitchen.

Why?

I walked through the kitchen door into the living room cautiously. Centered in this massive room, perfectly frozen in its last moment of explosive violence, were the twisted remains of my roadster. Two bodies, un-harnessed at the time of impact, were flung far from the car's demise, speaking to both the speed and severity of the accident. The first body that was thrown into the treetops, was a woman I recognized vaguely, but was unable to call fully to memory. The second body that was twisted in a comically grim contortionist's pose was clearly mine.

It wasn't simple curiosity which made me approach the accident - quite the opposite, I was too horrified to look a moment more - yet I was compelled to edge toward the wreck as if by force. I moved to the corpse that was mine, squatting before it, examining closely.

It as devoid of being as the so-called food in the kitchen was of taste. My body was broken, lifeless and cold on a level transcending temperature. I looked up at the woman's body in the tree. It was warped in the tragic pose of death, but unlike mine, which was dashed to the ground, only the small gash on her head indicated why her life had drained away.

"Touch her."

I was startled at the sound of own voice for I was certain I neither thought nor had spoken those words. I glanced down quickly at my accident mauled self, face shoved angrily into the ground. No, it was not he. Somehow it was I.

Looking around, reminiscent of a boy stealing cookies from an elevated cookie jar, I stood on the hood of the smashed vehicle, raising my hand toward the woman wedged in the branches. Where my accident thrashed body was cold and harshly empty, hers had a warmth still glowing from it. Straining myself onto the tiptoes to reach her dangling fingers, I made contact.

They stood above me in green uniforms of a designation I did not recognize, perhaps Metro Transit, perhaps some other transportation related field. Whoever they were, they were incongruous to my surroundings, which I knew immediately to be a hospital room. I was not fully connected to my senses - my thoughts slogged through the murky like swamp of a brain emerging from a deep sleep - but I suspected I was coming out of a coma or long concussion of some kind. Beside me, tubes housed by a massive machine that pumped fluids in and out of my body. My limbs were weak and ached with disuse. At least, I could surmise from the pain, I was not paralyzed. But I knew little else.

The green clad men's voices came languidly into focus as though my ears were draining fluid from days underwater. The taller of the two, a dusty haired twenty-something with a nametag, which read "Arnie", read aloud from a book while the other, not listening, busied himself with a magazine.

I tried to speak, ask where the hell I was, but only a whisper-like croak emerged from my dry throat. Upon hearing my voice, "Arnie" dropped his book and whipped his head in my direction. In a whirlwind of excitable motion and energy, he snapped his fingers and yelled wildly for the second man to track down a nurse. He rushed to my bed, his face completely wet with tears as he wept openly. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he held me in his arms, rocking me back and forth, repeating over and over, "It's a miracle."

It was indeed a miracle! But not in a way I think either of us was ready to comprehend. For as he pulled me into his arms, I felt the sensation of a breast, my breast, pressing against his chest even as I looked down to see a body that was decidedly female. My scream came out as a low-pitched moan. I tried to push him away from me with all of the force my mind engulfing terror felt, but I was too weak. I could only lift my arms toward him limply, before allowing them to flop back to the bed.

In a few short minutes, the hospital room was filled with doctors pouring over my equipment. The curtain around my bed was pulled, two nurses massaged my body vigorously, undoubtedly to bring blood flow into the limbs. I watched the nurses rub life into limbs that could not possibly be mine. I fought back an overwhelming urge to throw up.

"How do you feel?" Three doctors stood above my bed. The speaker was a well-groomed silver haired gentleman. He was classically handsome, as if pulled from Hollywood's central casting, carrying his profession in his bearing. Judging from the way the other doctors deferred to him with their body language, he was the head of my case, if not hospital.

I held my hand to my throat and croaked as though I couldn't speak, which was probably still true. I was not ready for him or his questions. I was absolutely panicked! The impossibility of my situation had jammed my mind. I didn't trust myself to do or say a single thing. My entire body pulsed with amplified anxiety, all I could think was that I needed to flee from here until sanity returned to me or the world around me. I shook uncontrollably. I wanted desperately to be alone to think this through, to make sense of my circumstances. But, I was having a hard time even focusing on a single thought. Any momentary clarity of my thought that resumed, they were quickly destroyed by the electric shock of disbelief.

The doctors attributed my current, obviously tumultuous, emotions to shock. I had awakened in an unknown place, uncertain as to how I got here, and this level of disquiet was extreme, but natural. The lead doctor sat on my bed, very calmly explaining the situation, "You have been in a car accident. Do you remember the accident? Nod if you do." I nodded.

Bits and pieces of the accident swirled in my head, but I was unable to put them firmly in place. I remember having a couple of drinks with Lucy Maya to celebrate her new job. I vaguely recall driving down Canero Road, a little fast but far from racing. I can remember the back wheels of my roadster losing contact with the pavement making the roadster go into a spin. I saw a flash of something ... a bus, maybe ... before I found myself here.

"Good, that's a good sign. Physically you are okay, but you took a nasty knock on the head and have been in a coma for six days. There appears to be no brain damage from the tests we've run so far, although we will have to do tests over the next several days. Nod if you understand." I nodded again.

His face changed making a dramatic pause in his speaking of one who was used to delivering bad news, but no longer cared about its content, "I am sorry to have to tell you that the driver of the car was not as lucky. He was not wearing seat belts either and was killed upon impact. I promise you he didn't suffer." He rose. "I am going to leave a nurse here right next to your bed. She will get you anything you want. However, she is also going to keep you from sleeping for at least 16 hours. Until we understand a little better why your circuits went dark, we think that's best."

He smiled what, I was certain he considered his doctor-patient-winning smile, but to me it rang hollow, "You're a lucky young lady, Lucy." At the name Lucy, panic overtook me again. All I could do was thinking about racing out of here.

Over the next few days, my panic eased in moments, but it never fully left me. During moments of quiet, or while I slept, I would be jolted by a bolt of fear and confusion. This would be followed by hours holding myself, crying, rocking back and forth trying to make sense of that which I could not. My mind was unable to make a fundamental shift to accept everything I knew to be real, was not. Because of it, I often questioned my very sanity.

Being in this woman's body, feeling her shell wrapped around my being was just too overwhelming. Frequently I was consumed with the idea that I had somehow perverted the laws of the universe. Any moment I would be greatly punished for it. I thought much about the accident. I thought much about heaven and hell.

During these moments, I wavered madly between grasping organized religion and rejecting it utterly as a cruel joke. In other dark moments, knowing I was supposed to be dead, I fought the urge to kill myself. Somehow I felt that may set the cosmic balance right.

Then there was the engulfing grief. I grieved for the loss of my life. Craig Morton, the person I had spent my life to become, would never breathe another breath. He was a twisted corpse, probably days under the ground by now. I had lost both my parents in a boating accident some years ago, their funerals had been extremely hard on me, the loss - the outliving - of someone that close always is.

No one could possibly have prepared me as to how hard it is to outlive yourself. How could they? The feeling of loss and grief is incredible. I was filled with the sense of incompleteness, regret and helplessness. All of those people I wish I told I loved, all of those things I wish I had done with my life; all the places I'd never gone, all the things left to do, never to be fulfilled.

Over those few days in the hospital, I was presented with overwhelming evidence; I had come, with great trouble, to believing that I was in fact Lucy. Or somehow looked like her. The fact that it was Lucy whose body I now occupied made my situation a hair less stressful. I knew her fairly well and, at the very least, would not be hurtled completely into the unknown. She lived alone, had no boyfriend that I knew of, and was starting a new job that I could do in my sleep. If forced to, god forbid, I could navigate the basics of her life using the excuse of the coma to mask inevitable confusion. And there would be confusion. I may know where she lived and worked, for instance, but would not know her mother if she sat next to me on the bus.

I also spent a great deal of the hospital hours working with physical therapists. I discovered walking again would not be so easy. It had been six days, my legs had been messaged continuously, so it was expected they would quickly recover. But for me, it was far beyond that. My brain constantly demanded strides for my former male body, which my far shorter female legs were uncomfortable with. My center of gravity and balance were all wrong. My first trials I wobbled about like a newborn before even getting the basics down.

Other simple functions created problems as well. I went to grab things to realize I didn't have the same reach as I had before. I would accidentally jab one of my, surprisingly sensitive, breasts. I had to learn to urinate properly, figuring out, when needed how to hold in my pee. I was forced to adjust for the diminished strength of my female form, even figuring out how to keep the hair out of my face. Everything I had taken for granted was all slightly off.

On the third day, I gathered my mental strength dropping my robe in front of the mirror. The stranger that was looking back at me, moving as I moved. She was an attractive woman, well formed and in shape. I had noted that about Lucy even before I found myself wearing her skin. Her legs were lean and athletic. I reached up taking the time to feel her/my breasts. Smiling, I realize her perfect c cups were implants - the first amusing thought that I had in days.

Once, years ago, I thought about what I would do if I could be a woman for a day. It was a largely masturbatory fantasy about teasing men, dressing as sexy as I wished all women did. But standing here now, still breathing in anxious gasps from the sheer impossibility of it all, I didn't feel that way at all. I just felt disoriented... I felt cursed. The panic began to rise in me again. I took a deep breath to calm myself. I needed to hold myself together until I figured out what to do.

Whatever that would be.

After the accident they had cut my clothes from my body looking for external wounds. Upon leaving the hospital, I was provided with jeans, a bra and t-shirt in my size. The heels I had worn at the accident were still good, but I chose to wear the hospital slippers. I was quite certain I would not be able to navigate in pumps while still learning the ins and outs of just walking. I was given a purse - I quickly examined its contents, then tucked under my arm like football. I was not comfortable carrying something with that much money on straps hanging loosely from my body.

I took a cab to Lucy's home, I had no car available and the hospital wouldn't have allowed me to drive in any case. Standing outside of the hospital, I considered heading back to my old place, but realized that was probably not possible. Not only did I not have a key, but also much of what I owned was surely boxed up and on its way to my brother's.

I arrived at the front door of Lucy's apartment, fumbling to find the keys in the purse. In the hallway beside the door, was a large bouquet of flowers. The card read simply, "Let me know if there was anything I can do. Take care, Arnie." It took me a moment, but my mind went back to the first moments out of the coma.

The two men, who had been in my hospital room that day I awoke, and a portion of each day I was in my coma, were Arnie and Brandon. I was correct about the green uniforms. They were transit workers. Arnie had been driving the bus, which struck us when we spun into his lane. He had been cleared quickly of the blame, but was understandably traumatized by the incident. Learning I had no one else, he and his friend Brandon came down to read to me every day in the hopes it would "pull" me back from the other side. Arnie, as I learned later, was quite a spiritual man.

Even though this was "my" apartment, I swung the door open cautiously. It smelled of food gone bad. "Hello, hello!" I yelled into the empty confines. I looked around the apartment, vaguely familiar of it from my handful of visits. It was my intent to search this place inside and out looking to see if it held a clue as to how I could still be alive. How could I be alive in Lucy's body? I suspected she knew as little as I did, but I was far beyond the point of taking anything for granted. How could I? An entire myriad of things I once considered to be nonsense, may hold the key to my change.

I walked around the apartment taking heed of my surroundings. The place was decorated in earthy tones, which accented the various South American and African artifacts placed carefully. From the lack of dust, everything was carefully taken care of.

My mind immediately leapt to thoughts of Voodoo and other dark rituals, before halting and remembering Lucy was a fairly strict Catholic. She collected these because she was an art major in college and was particularly fond of native carvings.

I went through her closets and drawers. I noted she was a conservative dresser during the daylight hours, her work wardrobe were stylish suits and blouses, hip without going over the top, conservative without being dowdy. Lucy's nighttime and weekend wear was far more adventurous even playful.

She was fond of platform high heels, hip hugger pants, thongs and fairly skimpy skirts. There were two size bras in the drawer as well, double-A and the current c-cup which lead me to guess that her cosmetic surgery took place shortly before I came into the picture seven months ago. Her nightstand drawer was full with condom and toys, which told me she had an active sexual life. The drawer also revealed a strap-on dildo with a well worn harness, she was not adverse to the kinky.

A two-hour search of the apartment left me with far more clues to who Lucy was, but not a single clue as to why I was occupying her body. If she had a darker secret than she occasionally strapped on a dildo, I couldn't find it. I sighed aloud. I had expected to uncover doorways to the supernatural or maybe a pentagram painted under her bed. Anything to make sense of this madness.

All I found was a neat apartment which perhaps needed a few windows opened, its ice box cleaned of rotting vegetables, a girl who appeared to be completely normal with a dollop here and there of kink.

Weary from days of unending stress I sat down on the couch, after giving up after a futile search for the television remote, fell asleep.

The mist lifted from my eyes. I felt strangely not as one feels first entering sleep, but as though I had been flying. I found myself in the huge living room of the dreamscape I had been on before emerging from my coma. I was lying on the grass, a couch from my old apartment sat beside me to the left; the car wreckage from the first dream was beside me on the right. Overhead a single bird circled. I felt oddly hopeful this place would hold the secret to this body switching madness.

Sitting across from me in the grass was Lucy. I quickly held up my hand in front of my face, hoping for a moment that it would be the hand of Craig that we had switched bodies back somehow. It was not to be. Two Lucy's now sat on the grass facing each other.

Her voice was strangely detached, emotionless, in direct contrast to the circumstances at hand, "You wear it well," she said indicating my essence in her form, "you are a great deal thinner than I remember me however. But again, I have never had this vantage angle."

I coughed, "You were in a coma ... six days, the liquid diet..."

She waved her hand in a bored gesture, "I realize that. I realize a great many things," She leaned forward bringing those weary haunted eyes to bear, "Now ask your questions before an alarm or doorbell takes you from your sleep."

As instructed, I cut to the chase, "I am sleeping aren't I? But it's more than that, isn't it? What is this place? A dream? The afterlife? Why am in your body?"

She looked at me with that same detached look although I thought I detected a bit of sadness. "When we were in the accident, you were killed and I was in a coma. Our destinations were different, but we were traveling together. You were headed toward that place commonly described as 'the light'. I was to exist on a dreamscape, a world of my dreams on the cusp of death and life. Like most that end up in a coma, this was to be my place of respite until I died, ejected into the world of death, or recovered, and returned to my body.

"There are many here who refuse to move into the light or get lost along the way and occupy these plains of nothingness. A group of those spirits roaming the after life caught me on my journey and held, for lack of a better world, my soul captive. You have to understand the glow of life among the dead stands out here like a fire on an arctic plain, it is warm, alive and reminds them of what they left behind. They covet the feeling of being near it.

"It was your proximity to me in traveling the after life that allowed you to escape death. The Universe demands balance. My body was destined to come out of the coma, coming back to life, the balance of the Universe was not going to allow a body to come back to life without a soul. So while I was held captive for the amusement of those who wander the nothingness of the dead, you were sucked into my dreamworld, the one that was supposed to hold me. When I was ready to come out of my coma, you were attracted to my life force and that is why you were compelled to touch me - my body needed a soul."

"So what is to become of you? Why are you here?"

"I am here, because it - this dreamscape - was created for me, even though as you can see, it has been largely altered to suit you. But it's mine. Once those out there on the plains of the dead grew bored with me releasing me, I came here, but it was too late. You were gone, the chance to enter life through my body was gone. Now that you have occupied my body, I have no chance to come back to life. But instead of going back out there into the chaos of the hordes that refuse to except death, I chose to remain here."

"I'm sorry, I didn't..."

She held up and hand. "Don't apologize. Time moves differently here, I have been here a long, long time. What are mere days for you have been eternities for me. I have long since dropped the bitterness I have toward you. I am so far removed from my emotions of life, I can barely remember how such emotions feel."

Her gaze steeled, as she looked me in the eye, "Listen to me. It may be traumatic waking up as another person. I understand that. But what you have to do for me is forgo any thoughts you may have of death or suicide. Yes, I know, I can feel your emotions in here. Further, you must forge onward in my life. I was to have a purpose, which is why the balance of the Universe chose for me not to die in the first place. You are going to have to fulfill that purpose, whatever it may be."

She reached out and grabbed my hand in hers. "Promise me."

I was uncomfortable. I was uncomfortable with the fact that I was talking to the dead. I was uncomfortable with the idea she was asking me to live out her life. I was uncomfortable not knowing fully if this were a dream or not. But I did it, I promised her.

"It will not be easy. I will be here in your dream world to help guide you, but nothing I tell you will remain with you on a conscious level. It will be just like you don't remember being here prior to the coma, you won't remember being here now. You will have to guide yourself largely through your feelings and intuition."

And with that, my eyes snapped open

I woke up in this strange apartment in this strange body, for the first time since the madness began, while not calm per se, I did not feel the lung crushing block of panic seated on my chest. Perhaps a little sleep was all I needed to calm my nerves. After all, wrong body or not, I had cheated death. How many could say that? I may not be able to finish the things that Craig Morton, now dead, had started, but I may be able to carve out a decent life for myself right here.

I paused for a moment puzzling over my sudden change of temperament. I do not come upon emotions lightly, especially something of this magnitude. Everything seemed to change floating away from a couple hours of napping. I pushed those thoughts from my head. Dwelling on this would trash my tenuous mental stability again. I finally felt like I had something resembling a grip on my mental state.

Walking about the apartment, picking up things, examining them and putting them back down carefully - as though the actual owner were not myself and would be upset to find them moved - I came to a decision. To live at all in this world, I would have to go seek out what was left of my Old World... Craig Morton's world ... and accept the death, clean up what I could and get some closure.

I would start by paying a visit to my brother.

It took a full twenty minutes for me to find Lucy's car in the parking lot. The symbol on her keys identified it as a Toyota, but that was all I knew. Once I arrived in the parking garage structure of her massive apartment complex, I was presented with scores of Toyotas. If any security had been present, I surely wouldn't have gotten away with trying my key in no less that fifteen cars before finding the right one.

My brother lived in the Valley, in a house that was considered large in the hyperinflated housing market of Los Angeles. It was typical Spanish style, having a well kept lawn and garden, albeit very small. He lived here alone with the exception of the occasional girlfriend who set up camp for a few weeks before his patience grew thin. He had been married, had a son and was divorced by the time he reached the tender age of twenty-four. Now that my brother was thirty-five, he had sworn off steady relationships altogether.

Because he was born so many years before me (he was ten years older) we were never really close in the traditional manner. At least, until my parents had died. I was twenty at the time I wasn't sure how I was going to get through it. He stepped to become both part older brother part father, but I should have expected that from him. His fatherly skills showed in his care for his son, who, despite the 20 miles between them, was a constant fixture in his life.

Alex, my brother, was not surprised to see another stranger in his doorway. This was unfortunately not a new drill for him. As the oldest when my parents died, and now as the sole surviving member of our family, he knew all about receiving visitors as well as getting phone calls of condolence.

He looked greatly fatigued, his normally straight shoulders drooped with an unseen weight. Upon seeing me, we stood awkwardly in the doorway. I fought back tears of joy at seeing him wanting a familiarity and a brotherly hug that would not be acceptable from this person he in no way knew.

He took my hesitancy to be no different than that he had been facing all week. By that being from people who want desperately to express the right sentiment, but not knowing how to do so. He quickly glanced at my clothing, I felt a touch of embarrassment. For a visit of this kind, I was very casually dressed, too casually; slacks, flat open toe sandals, and a T-shirt. I was wearing no make up.

Lucy's more formal clothes, with the skirts, heels and hosiery, was just a little more than I could deal with mentally or logistically right now.

I shook his hand, "I'm Lucy Maya." His expression changed. My casualness was forgiven in his eyes as he realized I was the woman who was in the accident with Craig and had spent the last week in a coma.

"Come in, please," he bid.

I walked in and sat down where I usually did. I looked around his apartment for signs of his son. It was quiet and he didn't appear to be around. "Is Alex junior around?"

He was taken aback for a moment. "No, no he's not. Can I get you something to drink?" Alex asked politely.

"If you still have one of those home made beers, I could sure use one."

He stopped, looking at me again for a puzzled moment. I quickly realized I was making mistakes of familiarity. I admonished myself, forcing my mind to remember that Lucy has never been here, doesn't know his son, and he was longer my brother.

After a moment his face cleared. A wry smile crossed his lips, "So Craig mentioned my home brew? He always was a big fan," and he walked into the kitchen.

He returned with the beer, having one himself. We talked for a while, a great deal of the conversation was, of course, about my former self Craig. Alex was full of questions on what Craig's last day was like. He seemed to be very interested in Craig's state of mind. It seemed very important to him that Craig went out feeling good about life.

After a time he paused. He had been making polite conversation for awhile now, but he seemed visibly uncomfortable. I was beginning to wonder if coming here was a mistake.

"I know this may be a bit too personal," he began as he took a deep breath, "but how close were you and my brother? I know you said 'decent friends' and you didn't really spend a great deal of time together but..." He paused again, realizing he was treading in personal territory, "you have taken on a lot of my brother's mannerisms and speech. I mean... A LOT. It's a bit freaky. I know very few people in this world, who calls beers 'brewsters' for instance, twist their watch in circles around their wrist, or rub the spot behind their ears. And I know of no one who does all that other than Craig."

I sat back, wondering what to do next. A part of me screamed to confess to the madness, the warping of the laws of the universe that placed me in Lucy Maya's body sitting across from him. But a part of me knew that no amount of explanation or evidence to the contrary was going to bring him around. It took me days of living it before I could come to terms with the reality of my new life. I couldn't imagine how simple words could do the same. No, anything I told him about the truth would be simply a sick joke.

But maybe there was a way. I sat up, rolling my shoulders to take the stress away from my neck, a very particular Craig Morton habit. Alex's eyes narrowed keenly at the act. "Actually, there is a lot I know about Craig. More than you would believe, to tell you the truth..."

I continued in a rapid fire manner, "When he was six, you used to lock him in the closet to toughen him up, the closet smelled like a leather football. He had a crush on your first girlfriend Candice. At his first baseball game, you let him sneak a sip of your beer. You forged his absent notes when he skipped school. Your son calls him 'Unc'; he used to draw pictures for him that he kept on his fridge. The last picture he drew was of a Pokemon. You let Craig borrow sixty bucks when he forgot his wallet at dinner three weeks ago. He paid you back the day before he died. The first time he ever saw you cry was when your parents died. Your parents never did find out that in junior high you used to sit on the roof and smoked. After the divorce, you considered moving out East - "

Alex leapt off of the couch, standing half bent over like he had been punched. He held one hand up to indicate for me to stop talking. He placed his fingers on his forehead as if fighting off a headache.

He slowly stood up, turning toward me. Wordlessly he examined me for sometime. The wheels of his mind spun visibly.

Slowly he began to speak, "The name of our hamster, which died after only two days?"

"Sparks."

"My favorite band right before I left home for college?"

"Tough call. It's a Toss up between The Clash and Springsteen. Although, I'd give the edge to Springsteen because of the posters on your wall. Oh, wait! The fan club card you carried in your wallet; definitely Springsteen!" I shouted this, proud of my ability of recall, but realizing instantly how weird it was for it to come out of a stranger that way.

"How about Craig, then? What about the middle of his senior year in high school? Why did he call me to pick him up from school after he ran off campus without telling his teachers?"

"Well, his mom made him go to school, because it was a test day ...geography and trig actually ... and even though he was sick, she thought he was faking. It turned out he wasn't, he ended up throwing up on himself outside in the bushes between classes. Before anyone could see him, especially Jen Cantor the girl he was over the moon for, he ran off campus, calling you to save him from having to go back in the building..."

He walked over to me and knelt beside me, grabbing both my shoulders with his hands. With his face a few inches from mine, he looked into my eyes searchingly for a long while.

I didn't move or say a thing. I didn't dare to. He stood back up, walked around the room silently, shaking his head, muttering to himself. He looked back at me, "This is going to sound crazy. However, I think your subconscious Lucy, for some reason -maybe guilt over his dying in the accident - has taken on much of my brother's personality. I mean you are acting, moving and talking just like him."

Again, I sat still and said nothing. It was so much more of a plausible explanation than the truth, that for a moment I wondered if I could be completely insane and only believed that I had once been Craig. But the reality of my situation could not be pushed aside so easily and I dismissed it quickly.

He was in deep thought and continued to sort his ideas slowly and aloud, "But all the memories ... I guess he could have told you..." He turned to me again, "but why would he tell you something as ugly as throwing up on himself in high school...?"

"Because he was definitely leaving out the part where he had diarrhea, burying his underwear in the woods before you picked him up. Because no man tells a woman he crapped and threw up on himself when he was eighteen. Especially to a girl, like me, whom just a few weeks ago told you he was going to try to 'transition from a friend to a little more' and asked your advice on how to do it. Of course you said, 'I'm over relationships. You're barking up the wrong advice tree'."

"Craig?" He was pale. His face was a mixture of questioning shock as he waited for my answer. I could palpably feel him preparing his mind to reject all that he once understood to be the rules of reality.

With a deep breath of teary relief I said simply, "Yes."

He dashed to me and bear hugged me. He too was teary. Over and over he said, "Somehow I knew it. Somehow I knew it."

His mind was apparently far more flexible and understanding than mine. But, there was a big difference in accepting that your brother had somehow come back in the body of a woman, than actually being the one to find yourself as that woman.

As a youngster Alex was a voracious reader of science fiction, as an adult left behind the well worn path of our Presbyterian upbringing to reach out examining alternate spirituality and religions. While the reality of my situation was mind boggling, to say the least, he was better prepared for it than most.

Even after having accepted that I was Craig Morton in Lucy Maya's body, doubt would cloud his mind. He would ask further questions testing me, before apologizing, restoring his faith. "It's quite alright," I told him after one slide backward into disbelief, "I would be more frightened if you took this at face value without ever doubting yourself."

"I know you said you don't know, but I have to ask again. Don't you have any clue what made this happen? Any clue at all?" He had asked the same question in several different ways over the past half an hour.

"Not sure really. I figure it had something to do with her going into a coma at the same time I died. Maybe she was supposed to die and I wasn't. Who knows? I am also coming to believe it has something to do with my dreams. I can't remember them any more - I used to remember them all the time - but when I wake up, I feel like something important has gone down. It's hard to explain. The other day I was panicked beyond belief that this body switch was a trick of ... I'm not even sure ... some cosmic jokester or Satan or something. Then after taking this super deep sleep nap, I felt better about the whole thing. Like answers had been given to me, even though I can't remember them."

Alex considered this for sometime before speaking again. "Can you feel her, like inside you anywhere?"

"No, not really. Unless she is lurking about in those dreams I can't remember."

He got up to grab another beer. After only a few beers, I could really feel the effects. I made a mental note that Lucy's body had neither the weight nor tolerance for me to drink much without going over the limit. Isn't drinking bad for women anyway?

"So, what are you going to do? I mean you can't step right back in as Craig. You're not Craig. And what about Lucy's whole other life?"

"Well, as I said before, I'm not going to tell anyone else. They'll just think I'm nuts. And even if they don't, I fear that something bad would happen to me by some zealot. My very existence could bring the concepts of heaven and hell, maybe even organized religion, into doubt. No thanks." Alex nodded as if to say "makes sense".

"What I am going to do is throw my life at being this chick. Maybe not as she was, but the best I can do. As fucked as it is for Lucy, it is a second chance at life for me. I have to take it."

Pausing a moment longer, I said, "It's more than that. I feel, somehow, that I owe it to Lucy ... somehow she wants me to ... carry on, to complete her life. I think there's something left undone that I am supposed to do."

One of the things I learned quickly was that Lucy Maya wore glasses. I sat on the couch surrounded by books and articles of every ilk - everything from witchcraft to little known aspects and traditions of major religions.

I had been this way for days, sitting and reading almost continuously. After a few days of holding papers near the tip of my nose, it dawned on me that perhaps I should search for a pair of reading glasses in one of these drawers.

I found them in her briefcase. Spectacle search aside, I had done little else except read, order food, and phone my job. I told them I was recovering nicely and would require another few days before I reported. By this point, I had read through tons of material.

I picked up an article on reincarnation I had taken from one of the more off beat websites I had encountered and sighed. It, like most of what I was digging through, was not helping me at all. Most of it was plain junk.

A couple of days ago, when I revealed to my brother Alex that I was actually Craig Morton. I revealed to him that some twist of fate took my demised soul, placed it in the vessel of Lucy Maya while she lay still in her coma.

I told him that I would take what the lunacy of the Universe had handed out to me and start living her life. To be more accurate, living my life while trying to fill in her shoes.

I felt that one of us, she or I, was given another chance for a reason. I just needed to find out what that reason was. However, like every part of my new life, it turned out to be far from easy. One can't just settle and wear someone else's life like changing coats. I had a need to understand how and why I existed, even if no real answers were available. It consumed me.

It was not only a need to know how I got here, I needed to know who I ... Lucy ... was. Piled in with the books of the mystic, were every letter, answering machine tape, yearbook, and scrap of notes about Lucy I could find. I had read through them all, repeatedly, trying to formulate a picture.

I spent long blocks of time in front of the open door of her refrigerator asking myself what kind of person ate this type of food. I held up her clothes, trying to determine what kind of person wore things like this. I even examined the doodles on the edges of her hand written phone messages.

Then there were the interviews. Sitting around rooting through the scattered clues to my new life, Alex and I had a brainstorm. With my brother claiming to be a psychologist who was helping me recover memories lost from the accident, we rang every person in Lucy voluminous address book, and quizzing them - sometimes for hours on end.

Slowly over a matter of days, we were able to put together a working biography of Lucy. The biography complete with details would make navigation of her life a great deal easier. I had filled two notebooks with information of all kinds.

An unforeseen, but added benefit was we were able to prepare all of the people in her life that Lucy was not the same person she was before entering the mysterious world of the coma. Her faculties and intelligence may be as sharp, but her memory had definitely taken a severe beating. The path was laid - huge inconsistencies in my behavior may create concern, but the concern would be spawned of sympathy.

As it was in the first days of the hospital, it was getting used to my body that was another difficult part. Over the past few days, I had spent a great deal of time in front of the mirror. It took me hours just to familiarize myself with my new female form.

I had learned through my interaction with Alex, that I was not presenting myself as I assumed I was. Many of my expressions, on the face of Lucy, conveyed an entirely different meaning. Many of these misunderstandings, I learned, were largely through stereotypes imposed on women.

As a serious person, for instance, I as Craig Morton was often said to look thoughtful or carry a certain gravity. On Lucy's visage, these looks were interpreted by Alex as bitchy or dour.

My male habit of broad aggressive movements in this thin athletic body were overly assertive and tom boyish, often plainly crude. Making matters worse, my efforts to compensate for this were frequently over the top - like a woman playing what she thought a drag queen would act like in a very broad farce.

I was learning over time that there was great middle ground between Lucy and me, and by just "being neutral" - staying away from the extreme behaviors for either sex - I came off as much more plausible. I still needed a great deal of practice.

I called for Alex while he was in the kitchen. He had been in there quite some time; I suspected he was hiding out from having to wade through more reading, or plainly just hiding out.

After his initial acceptance of my situation, his constant testing of me to make sure that he could believe both me and his instincts, Alex went through periods of time where it was all too much for him.

In the middle of reminiscing over our parents, or one of the many subjects we had covered so many times in the past, he would stop in mid sentence.

At these times, he struggled to come to grips with my memories emerging from a completely foreign body. It was an impossibility, which sat before him, testing the limits of his understanding at every waking moment. The indescribable magnitude of the situation was sometimes too much for him, as it often was for me. His method would be to simply walk away from it. I suspected, as he remained in the kitchen, this was one of those times.

I had no sooner called his name than I was jarred as the apartment buzzer sounded. It wasn't an uncommon sound, as flowers and packages of goodwill had flooded through the doorway since it became common knowledge I had emerged from a coma. But, it still caught me off guard.

Standing up, I pressed the intercom button to identify the visitor.

"Hello?" I asked. The sounds of the busy lobby filled the apartment from the speaker. After a moment's pause (indicating indecision) a voice finally spoke.

"Hi, Lucy. I don't know if you remember me, but my name is Arnie. I was the one who left you the flowers. You know, the guy from the hospital when you woke up?" His voice sounded oddly neutral for someone on a friendly mission.

I was caught by surprise. There had been a few attempted visits since I arrived home, but those were all announced by telephone first. In those cases, I was easily able to plead weakness and recovery to brush them off.

However, no one ever just came by. Someone just arriving at your door in the stretched out metropolis of Los Angeles is such an unexpected event that I wasn't even sure how to react.

"Arnie. Yes, I remember thank you for the flowers. I would invite you up, but ... I'm not feeling so great," I lied, "You understand don't you."

"I can ... I understand ... But I have to talk to you. I was driving the bus when the car.... spun into mine. I was there at the accident. I was also there when you woke up. I ... I need to talk to you," he repeated.

I took my finger off the button and leaned against the wall next to the speaker. At this point Alex had walked into the room and was listening. His face was also puzzled. He shrugged silently.

I put my finger back on the button, "Okay, Arnie, come on up."

As he entered the apartment, I puzzled over him. Arnie Williamson was definitely not like the bus driver I had seen before.

Out of his Metro Transit uniform, he seemed a great deal smaller as if his work clothes were padded. His face came to a sharp point and he was bespectacled, he must have been wearing contacts the first time I saw him. He appeared like someone who would be more at ease flunking an English student than tossing a homeless drunk from the bus.

His voice carried a slight Southern tinge, which was rare in this part of California. His demeanor was slightly nervous, evident as he took in the apartment with quick cuts of his eyes. He however, saved his most inquisitive glances for Alex. Alex shifted nervously under his gaze.

"Hello Arnie." I began putting on what I hoped was a grateful voice, "Can I get you something to drink? I had heard about how you read to me everyday too. How your reading to me was probably responsible for bringing me out of the coma. You don't know how appreciative I am."

The bus driver said nothing as his eyes continued to dart about the room. He took notice of the pile of paper and picked up one, glancing at it casually, before putting it down. I couldn't put my finger on it, but there was something about him that was making me nervous.

"Well then, Arnie," I began, breaking the uncomfortable silence, "what brings you here?"

He chose not to answer my question before asking one of his own. Pointing to Alex he asked, "You're the brother aren't you?" Realizing he was not being precise, he elaborated, "You're the brother of the man that died in the accident I mean. Craig Morton, God rest his soul."

There was something very strange about his manner.

"I'm his brother, yes," Alex answered cautiously. He too picked up on the strange vibe coming from the bus driver.

Arnie returned to the matter at hand, "I know this has been hard on everyone," he was a slow deliberate speaker, "and no one more than you. You've lost ... a friend, and have been out of our world for a week. It's been hard for me as well. I was driving the bus when your car spun out and hit me. The lawyers at the Metro Transit tell me I shouldn't be talking to you at all, the way people seem to sue over anything and all, but that didn't seem like the right thing to do. I was there after all when you were in the accident, and I was there when you came out of the coma." He said the last part with a driving emphasis.

He continued his monologue, "Do you realize, you didn't go straight into that coma ma'am? You had a little gash on your head and were in a tree. I brought you down, holding your head up to slow the bleeding while waiting for the ambulance. That's actually when you slipped into your long dream. What's funny is when you came out, that day in the hospital, I held you too because I thought it was God bringing a miracle down upon us." Arnie spoke of God in the comfortable every day way of certain Southern denominations.

"Thought?" I asked. I had no real reason to speak; I just wanted to interrupt his story, which was growing more uncomfortable than his unwavering stare.

"Yes ma'am. Thought, because after going home, I started having feelings and ... strange dreams. I don't know if you've ever held someone in their arms as they fell into a coma - or die - but it, their spirit, washes through you. You feel it. But when I started thinking about it on the way home after holding you when you woke up from your coma, it wasn't the same spirit. At least I don't think it was."

Wasn't the same spirit? Was he saying what I thought he was saying?

Alex interjected, "Mr. Williamson, Arnie. I appreciate that you're in touch with your spirituality. It comforts us to think in those terms at a time like this. However, we can't believe in such things as spirits washing through bodies and the like. People fall into comas and come out of comas all the time. This kind of talk will only upset Ms. Maya."

Arnie paused to watch Alex speak, his eyes fixed upon him. When Alex finished, Arnie continued as if Alex hadn't said a word, "Well ma'am, I know this is going to sound insane. But I think something happened to you when you were in that coma. Something more than you just losing your memory. I'm not sure if it was a different spirit, I felt, or if being in a coma changes a person so that their spirit just feels different. But looking at all these papers about religion and reincarnation lying about, and watching you move about and talk like you were being yanked around by a brand new puppet master, I think you're on to it too."

He paused, gazing at me intently, "Do you feel like something ... I hate to use the word but ... supernatural ... went wrong while you were in that coma? You can tell me."

Why he assumed I could tell him anything, was beyond me.

"No Arnie, I don't. I do feel ... a little off, not having most of my memory is tough, but that's about it. I do, however, appreciate your concern."

He stood up and took off his round spectacles to clean the lens with the hem of his sweater. He turned to show himself to the door. He had one final thing to say.

He looked over his shoulder to be sure we saw the resolve in his face, "Well ma'am up until I came up here, I thought I was just having crazy dreams, or that maybe, just maybe, something happened to you that you weren't aware of. Now I think you do know. Moreover, I think you're lying to me about it. I just hope that something, isn't some great perversion, which slipped past the eyes of God and must be fixed, like my dreams keep telling me. I may only be a bus driver, but there are many things I am aware of. And if it turns out that I'm one who somehow made this all wrong, by your smashing into my bus, I guess I'm going to have to be the one to make it right. Good day ma'am. Good day sir."

The door clicked behind him.

As soon as I heard the elevator doors close down the hallway, I let my breath out, "That was fucking weird. How couldn't possibly...?"

"Why not?" Alex answered my half asked question, "It's no crazier than anything else that's happened. Your spirit did in fact leave your body and it did in fact lose its way after all. Why couldn't he have felt it?"

"What if he is right about my slipping past the eyes of God? I've often thought I was some great cosmic perversion, my very existence could set events ... well events I don't want to think about, into play."

Alex smiled without humor, "Aiding and abetting a cosmic perversion. I'm sure that will look good on the resume I submit at the pearly gates," he put his hand on my shoulder reminding me of the consoling he did after my parents had moved on, "I think something large is happening here. A mistake, maybe. A cosmic injustice, I don't know, but I don't think so. But, from the sounds of our bus driver friend, the difficult task of being Lucy Maya just got that much more so."

I stumbled across Janet sitting in the hallway of my apartment complex. I was holding an arm full of groceries with my key tenuously gripped to slide into the door. She was seated in the hallway throwing a rubber ball against the wall apparently waiting for someone.

She was no more than sixteen, despite her clothing, which tried its best to convey womanhood onto her still young body. Her demeanor, like her clothing, attempted to portray a more mature essence. Upon seeing me, she eyed me with narrow disinterest, which slowly brightened into recognition. I wonder how well she knew me. I braced for an uncomfortable encounter filled with lies of head injuries and diminished memory.

"Hi," I said simply. She threw the rubber ball with the expertise of an inmate in solitary; it bounced onto the floor, then wall, and back into her hands perfectly. I surmised she spent long stretches in these hallways. I also guessed she was not a favorite of the neighbors.

"Hi," she returned the greeting. Her voice was more melodic and innocent than I had anticipated. Her dress and body language prepared me for someone much "harder" than that. Her pose was most likely defensive built from hours of being a nice looking young lady in a not so nice city.

Watching me fumble for some time uncomfortably with my keys, seeing I was unwilling to do the intelligent thing putting my bags of groceries down, she offered to help.

"That would be nice. Thanks." I responded. She took my keys unlocked my door, swinging open the apartment door. I placed the groceries down on the dining room table with her following me in with my keys.

"Thank you," I said, "I'm sorry what was your name?"

"Janet." She stood back and examined me closely. "Your psychologist called my mom just the other night. Mom told me afterward that you were left with no memory from the accident, but it is a hell of a thing to see. I've met you on several occasions. You usually invite me in for coffee when you see me in the hallway."

"I let a kid your age drink coffee?" I laughed skeptically. I doubt very much this was something a straight arrow like Lucy would do, "Nice try, I lost my memory, but I'm not stupid."

At this she laughed openly and heartily. It too was musical. "No, no I guess you're not. But we have met, really, and you have - at least a few times - let me in. I'm not very good about remembering my key,"

She explained, "So I find myself waiting in the hallway for Mom to get off from work. She throws a fit if I wander around the city. You know because of the gangs and all." This part of Los Angeles was up-scale and completely gang free. I suspected it was more Janet that concerned her mother than outside forces.

I began unloading groceries as Janet had made herself comfortable on one of the dining room chairs. It became apparent that this was going to be another time that she waited in Lucy's ... my ... apartment for her mother to come home. She was far more pleasant a visitor than the troubling figure of the bus driver which Alex and I had experienced earlier today.

"So, if it's not rude," she asked seeming not really to care if it were rude or not, "what's it like losing your memory? Did you lose it all?"

Her bright eyes watched me as carefully as they would a new video from a boy band. I had been wandering around the kitchen holding two cans of soup, opening every cabinet one at a time, then closing them, as I tried to discover where they went. No wonder she asked. I would have to rearrange everything to my system soon, I decided.

"It's like," I began again, speaking truthfully, "it's like waking up and finding you're someone else. Everything about your life is a mystery to you. Your friends ... your enemies ... all of it. Even," I laughed, "where you put your soup."

"Yeah, my mom calls it a mixed blessing. She says coming out of a coma after a week and having everything working is a second chance. But having no memory must make it awfully lonely." Janet looked embarrassed at leaking the confidence of her mom, and on top of it, making me feel bad.

She pulled out her ball and nervously rolled it between her palms. She was miles away from the girl who played mildly tough while bouncing it in the hallway. I wanted to rub her head as I did my nephew when he stuck his foot in his mouth, but I felt it was inappropriate.

She changed the subject, "So are you going back to work and stuff?"

I nodded my head. I had been putting off going to work while I delved into my research on Lucy and matters of the supernatural. But for both subjects I had gotten as far as I was going to. I didn't feel like I was ready to assume Lucy's life fully, but there was a point in which I had to.

Bills would eventually pile up, and I was only putting off the inevitable. After the creepy visit from the bus driver, being surrounded by people seemed like the right thing to do.

I looked at Janet noticing her color coordinated outfit, matching both her lips and her nail polish. I had an idea, hoping to solve one of the larger problems I had run up against.

"Which gives me an idea. This is a bit awkward Janet," I said, "but when do you head to school in the morning?"

"8 o'clock. Why?"

"Well, here's the thing. There are some simple functions that I have developed a strange block against. You see, the coma..." I paused my fiction to search for the right words, "And one of those functions is that I can't seem to be able to deal with my make up or hair very well,"

I was right, this was awkward.

I plowed forward, "If it is okay with your mother - and I want her to call me to make sure - I'd like for you to come over before work and help me with my make up. I'm willing to pay you a great deal for it. I'm not starting for a couple more days, but it would be a huge help."

She perked up, "Paid! Really? A great deal? I'll ask mom for sure when she gets home. It'll probably be okay ... you guys get along pretty well. You were very nice to mom when she first moved into the complex after ... dad took off."

And as if just discussing her mother brought her home, Janet looked at her watch and stood up. "Mom's probably back, I don't want to freak her out. I'll have her call about the make up thing."

She half walked, half skipped to the door. Before she left she put a large smile on her face and turned toward me, "Thanks for the coffee."

[To be continued]

I pulled into the parking lot a full 45 minutes early and sat in my car. I needed to get my mind around the idea that I was actually going to work. Never had I been this nervous reporting to a job, but never have I done so in a body, which was not mine.

Craig Morton, my former self, was an advertising executive at the tender age of twenty-five - a well established wunderkind with a reputation throughout the industry - when he... I... died. Lucy Maya, who was one year older, also had great potential, but was getting her first break overseeing a diminutive auto manufacturer's account for a fairly large firm.

When I met Lucy through work a few months ago, I recognized her potential immediately, recommending her for this position. I was quite certain it was a small enough, yet an important account for her to establish herself well. However, as Craig, I was someone who had figured out how to run accounts this large during my first college internship in my freshman year. With my background, this account was going to be a fairly simple affair I could manage it with my eyes closed.

Pulling down the mirror, I checked my make up for the tenth time. Janet, the teen neighbor girl, was as good as her word. Janet was knocking on my door at the crack of dawn to help me apply it. A few days ago I had told her a mental block caused by the coma, the same one that erased almost all of my memories prevented me from being able to apply it myself. She was more than happy to oblige, especially since I offered her a good deal of money for a relatively minor task.

Nevertheless, a great deal of money or not, I was glad to have her around this morning chatting away brightly, bringing a good feeling into the apartment. Talking to her and laughing let me ease into the role of Lucy Maya that I was to play all day at work. She also prevented me from "making the absolute fatal mistake" of wearing the navy blue hose with the charcoal grey suit. "Off white, black or skin tone," she explained her face letting me know the gravity of my mistake. Janet was much more than just a luxury to me.

The morning was as it was for most jobs. I ran through the human resources gauntlet of filling out forms, shaking hands as well as being introduced to scores of people. Being ushered through the maze of cubicles, I could feel people's eyes upon me, trying not to stare, but staring nevertheless. I could attribute much of this, of course, to the fact that I was the new guy... new girl... and a bit of this to the fact that I was an attractive woman.

Mixed into this factor were that many here knew about my memory condition, wanting to see who the mysterious "coma woman" was. I should have expected these types of looks. Knowing this didn't take away my intense selfconsciousness. I knew it was insane, however I felt as though I was moving and acting strangely, as if many could somehow could see through my "disguise."

It was a good two hours before I was finally taken to where I was to work. I had a small office. I had a window that overlooked onto the parking lot housing my car. I could also look upon my secretary from my door. The walls were completely bare; being painted a neutral color situated somewhere between white and tan. The desk was clear, clean and polished, probably the last time I would see it that way for the rest of my time here.

For the second time today, I became entranced as I looked down across the protrusions on my chest to my hosiery covered legs. It was never possible for me to be unaware of my transformation, but when I moved about the house in jeans, tennis shoes and a sweatshirt, it didn't leap out at me as much. The low heels and pantyhose, which felt unnatural, however, were a constant, gripping, reminder that I was someone else. None of that could even touch the strangeness and odd feeling of having breasts, no less breasts harnessed in a shoulder-digging bra.

It was then, through the corner of my eye, that I saw a figure standing in the doorway. "Desk too low?" he asked, interpreting my leg gaze incorrectly.

"No, not at all. Just checking everything out." I answered.

He moved behind my chair, placing one hand on the back. He smelled strongly of a musky cologne, more suited for the clubs than the work place. He had jet-black hair, which he had obviously spent a great deal of time moussing this morning to ironically look like he did nothing with it. He wore a blue shiny suit, far too dressy for the LA Ad. World and a black turtle neck. He was now standing inappropriately close to me and unquestionably checking me out.

I made a half turn in my chair, so his hand was forced off of it. He interpreted the maneuver correctly, moving back several steps to give me my personal space. His face was arrogantly bemused, a look that he obviously wore often. He extended his hand. "I'm Kirk Baron. You work for me. I run this branch of the agency, and ultimately oversee most accounts. Welcome aboard."

I stood up and shook his hand. He let it linger for a moment, but never took his eyes off of mine. After a moment, he said in the low voice of an intimate, "You don't remember me at all, do you? To hear about it is one thing... but to see it... Wow."

I narrowed my eyes. I knew many men like Kirk, many, many of them. They were all over this business. Most were very good at what they did. They used a skill and the leeway given to the successful to mask an entire host of bad business practices. These practices were borne from a lack of morals and vanity. Craig Morton hated these kinds of guys with a passion.

However, having smelled Kirk's cologne in far too close proximity a moment ago while he openly stared down my blouse, I could tell I was going to hate these type of guys a lot more as Lucy Maya.

I spoke curtly, "I was in an accident Kirk. Many details of my memory are, well, plainly missing. However, I did retain a great deal of my knowledge on how this business works. Particularly, how to get a un-fancied small Korean car into the driveway of many more Americans."

"Well that sounds great," Kirk was now speaking loudly enough for someone to hear outside my office if they chose to listen, "It's good to have you on board Lucy. I look forward to working with you, I've heard great things. You may not remember, but you had a top of the line interview."

He leaned in toward my ear so that his voice was barely audible, "You better be really good at your job Ms. Maya. I've got news for you. You slept your way into this position... my casting couch so to speak, maybe not just mine... and I figure if you turned out not to be the wizard they say you are, you were going to sleep your way to keeping your job.

We had... an arrangement of sorts. Now that you so very conveniently have a clean slate so to speak. You don't remember who you've even met no less any arrangements, you better be even more than you're billed to be."

he looked me in my eyes, actually sneering. This was an expression I had not seen outside of the movies, "or you better consider remembering that deal we had worked out in a hurry."

He than added speaking for those who could hear, "I'll introduce you to the rest of the staff... again... during a meeting at 3:00. Just let me know if there is anything else I can do."

He spun on his heels in a military like about-face, walking out of the room. I sat down at my desk, pretending to organize objects, shaken up thinking about what he had said. It was strange to feel this vulnerable, having such sexually predatory energy directed toward me, freaked me out more than a little.

However even more than that, there were questions about Lucy on my mind. Was it possible that straight arrow Lucy Maya had slept her way into this position?

Her nightstand drawers did indicate an active sex life, but there is nothing wrong with that. Then again, she had given herself breast implants because she cared about her appearance. Also, on the surface, there's nothing wrong with that. Every thing I knew of her said this situation with Kirk was not possible, that this was his sharp mind using my condition to manipulate me or keep me off balance... perhaps to prevent me from out-shining him.

Might that be plausible? I had only known Lucy a little over half a year. So what did I really know about her? I more than any one should realize, any and yet all is possible in this universe.

The three o'clock meeting went well. Kirk Baron introduced me to the team of ten people, all of whom I had met before apparently, and moved on to another matter in the office. Watching his glowing introduction, I made note that Kirk's ability to perform professionally and warmly a few hours after threatening insinuations meant he was quite comfortable in his duplicitous role.

He even appeared to give me the silent vote of approval in front of the staff by his not having to stand over me as I first addressed my team. He was a snake, but a snake too smart to tip his hand. He was dangerous and is, a dangerous man. When it was my turn to speak, I went beyond the small talk of introductions. I laid out the direction and details on how I wanted to move forward. Whenever anyone is brought in from the outside, instead of the company hiring internally, there are going to be people who resist and resent the change. It was important for me to establish immediately that there was no one sitting in this room, or anywhere else in this company, who was going to handle this better than I. After I was finished speaking I answered questions. I think I went a long way toward that goal.

I picked up the cell phone with one hand, steering my car with the other. "How did the first day on the job go?" It was my brother.

"Well, Alex," I responded while weaving in and out of commuter freeway traffic catching peering faces in my peripheral vision. I quickly noticed far more people checked you out when you're a woman behind the wheel, "it's going to be a piece of cake in some respects. The account is small and easy. The people I'm working with on it are capable and not too pissed off that they hired from the outside. I do however have a fucked up sexual harassment issue going on that I'm not even sure is sexual harassment."

Alex laughed, but it came more from surprise, coming to terms once again with my new reality, than from humor. "Didn't consider that possibility at all actually. Nevertheless, Lucy is an attractive woman, so you are an attractive woman. The only guys you've seen since 'coming back' are the bus driver and I. We aren't exactly the greatest of gauges. However, you could run into a lot of that stuff, truthfully. How are you dealing?"

"Shitty. Skipping over the whole part on how weird it is to be in this position to begin with, it could be more than just the simple harassment. There's a possibility I slept my way into this job. I don't think so, but with none of Lucy's memories I can't be sure." I recounted my conversation with Kirk in the office to Alex. He let out a low whistle, then listened wordlessly until I had finished.

"Craig," he still called me, although I explained I needed to learn to respond to the new name. He didn't care, it was his way of getting his mind around who was inside Lucy's shell, "I don't know what to tell you at all. Even if this Kirk guy from work is an ass to a huge degree, that would be a bold move if it weren't true or if you had even a partial bit of your memory. That's a lawsuit waiting to happen. 'He said/she said', or not, what judge or jury in the land isn't going to side with the woman who just pulled out of a coma?"

"I know, I thought about that. Kirk just strikes me as a very smart manipulator. I knew a guy just like him at my last job. He could just be trying to use this to get some sort of upper hand - keep me off balance," I replied, "the established players keeping potential stars in this business down is par for the course."

The phone was silent for a moment as Alex thought about it. He had nothing more to say on the subject, so he changed it, "Listen. I've got my son coming up this weekend along with a ton of work to catch up on, so I'll be out the loop for awhile. I want you to call me regularly and let me know everything that's going on with you, work, and all of the mystic stuff."

"Okay, that's a promise. Bye."

Arriving home, I stepped out of the elevator to find Janet, the sixteen year old neighbor girl, sitting on the floor. Her back was against the door, bouncing her rubber ball against the wall in her expert inmate like fashion.

Her face brightened when she saw me, "Hi Lucy. I'm locked out again. Invite me in?" she asked.

"Forget your keys again? Twice in three days? Hmmmm. You never seem to forget your rubber ball, I see."

I walked over to Janet, kneeling down so we were eye to eye, "Before I lost my memory, how long did it take me to figure out that you actually have your keys in your backpack and that you're really waiting for me to get home for some reason?"

Janet smiled the sly smile of the apprehended, "About four, five times. Maybe more. I guess with out all those memories bogging you down, it makes your mind move quicker." I smiled at her comment, which from someone else in another circumstance may be considered sarcastically insensitive.

"Well then, let's drop the subterfuge so I can invite you in properly. You can then explain why it is you wait for me so often." I pulled out my keys and indicated for Janet to grab my brief case and follow me in.

I walked in the door, immediately stepping out of my low heels and sat down to rub my feet, "I don't know how I walked around in these all day."

Janet looked at me with amusement as a smile crept across her face, "Well it's either because you forgot what you're doing, and are walking in them wrong now. On the other hand, that being off your feet for a couple of weeks put your muscles out of practice. You wear heels much, much higher than this for much longer periods of time, trust me."

"Do I? Of course I've seen them in my closet, but I can't imagine that I sport them for long periods of time."

"Oh, absolutely," Janet confirmed seeing the opening for truthfulness, "You asked me in the hallway why I like to visit so often. It's because of stuff like that. You're so extremely cool. You are completely smart and professional; you were constantly getting after me to stay on top of my subjects in school so that I could have all of life's choices in front of me. At the same time, you wear these killer clothes during the weekend and totally have fun."

She blushed at having to explain herself so nakedly, but continued as she moved across from me at the dining room table, "My mom is great, but she's old fashioned. Spent most of her life raising me, then got a job at a day care center when Dad split.

It's not that there's anything wrong with that, but her ideas are just so old school. You aren't old school," she enlightened me, "For example, you told me once that it was completely okay to be good looking, dressing sexy as a teen and to use what I had. As long as I held onto my virginity, that is.

You said that sexuality is power, and the longer I held out, the more desirable I became. Even if a few of the guys would dump me over it down the road. You said that whatever you're doing, there is nothing wrong with using looks to get in the door, but you better be twice as good as all of the rest of the people once you get in, otherwise you're not cool, but a bimbo."

I thought about work today and uncomfortably considered if this was the PG-13 version of Lucy's lecture on "sleeping your way to the top".

Janet went on, "Like I said, you encouraged me to work hard at school, using fun as a reward for doing well. You've even taken me shopping to help pick out some killer styles, sexy and 'age appropriate' as you called it.. you know, without being slutty.

One of the times you and my mom had a talk, you convinced her to let me buy my first pair of platform heels." Janet was beaming now, "I had low heels before, but you showed me how to walk around in the high ones. So you can imagine how funny it is for me to hear you say those two inch heels are killing you."

"Well maybe you'll have to return the favor, because this shoe thing isn't working out so well for me... any more"

So, I was the cool aunt or bigger sister to Janet - a role model of the professional, yet hip, woman. I apparently was confident enough in my role, and in my guidance with this young woman, to actually nudge her mother to loosen the reigns.

I got up and went into the kitchen to pour a glass of wine to think this through. Having the mind of a man, the concept of being cozy with a sixteen-year-old girl who was not my own daughter or niece, was uncomfortable. It was not because I was aroused or distracted by her newly blossomed sexuality - although I couldn't help but notice it - I was never that kind of guy to consider such inappropriate matters to begin with.

Body or not, she was, after all, barely through with being a child. What was making it even harder was this level of female to female intimacy, which I was uncertain, how to deal with. She stood closer to me than she would if I were still Craig, touching me fairly frequently - all of these were not uncommon for women, but very out of place for my male psyche. The guy in me demanded I keep people, especially teen girls, at arm's length.

As I poured my glass of wine, I also made a mental note that I would have to get to know her mother very soon. I needed to understand just how much of a mentor I was to this young woman. I would also have to see if the mother accepted this in a willing or adversarial fashion.

Looking back at Janet sitting at the table, I could clearly see she was ready to resume this relationship as the rules once were. That was clearly impossible. I could no more teach her how to be a well-adjusted woman than I could teach her to fly around the room. Hell, it was she who had to visit me this morning to put my make up on. An idea shoved itself to the surface of my thoughts. I may not be able to teach Janet how Lucy operates in the world any longer, but I may be able to retrieve some of the knowledge that Lucy had given to her. Perhaps it will give me some more insight. At the very least it may help make this existence easier for me.

"Well, then Janet. If I taught you how to walk around in a pair of high heels, maybe you can return the favor. I'll find out if you actually listened to me in the first place. Go ahead, look into my closet and pull out a pair. The master or mistress is ready to learn from the apprentice."

It turned out, that Janet was absolutely correct. Although she didn't understand my situation to put it in those terms, it was because I chose to move about in heels like a man pretending to be a woman. That was why I couldn't walk comfortably in my shoes before. I was taught some very simple techniques. Like being taught, instead of trying to stand on my toes for hours, how to balance my weight using the support of the heel itself and showing me how to roll my weight on the heel to the toes when I walked on stilettos. I mastered this process in a very short amount of time.

Now I was standing here comfortably in a pair of a ridiculously high five-inch platform wedges. I was able to access the years of "muscle memory" Lucy had developed. Her tendons and muscles had long adjusted strapping her feet into such footwear, I just had to relax and use what was already there.

There were other, slightly less discreet matters that Janet confided to me. With a bit of awkwardness, she pointed out that if I was going to wear a bra which "cookie pads" on the sides, I needed to pull my breasts up as I placed them in the cups. It gave the cleavage that the bra was designed for, and it kept the breasts from looking slightly "bumpy" underneath smooth shirts. It was lucky matter she informed me that, I chose to wear a loose blouse today.

"When do you think I'll be ready for a bra... with a little padding?"

Janet asked bluntly after explaining how I needed to adjust my bra. I inadvertently looked at her chest, and felt myself blushing with uncomfortable shame. I was not, nor did I want to be, in discussions with a teenager about her breast size.

"I don't think that's really needed, Janet. You're still young, you should be happy with your... um... size."

She tilted her head sideways, resembling a dog hearing an unknown sound. She waited a moment, debating something internally, then spoke.

"Lucy... when I first met you, you were flatter than I was when I was ten. You've had your boobs done, you know,"

Detecting my chagrin she noted, "It's okay, we've talked about it before."

In fact I did know I had implants. It was something that I had determined when I first explored my body in the hospital. But I was not mentally equipped to understand the complexity of the motives behind breast implants. I surely was not equipped to explain to a young girl why she should not be concerned about such matters, when I, as Lucy Maya, clearly was.

"What did I have to say about my boob job?" I asked with clear interest.

"Well, you showed them to me almost right after you got them," she said.

At the same time my mind screamed 'Oh dear god!'

"You let me touch them. They're different than the real things. A little harder, they don't hang like real boobs. When you got them you explained that men are nuts over tits. You said that if a pair of boobs could stop a man long enough to hear what was coming out of your mouth, then they have served their purpose."

Lucy Maya's philosophy was feminism through overt sexuality. This was a concept so foreign to me that I could barely get my mind around it.

Janet continued, "You also said in a few weeks - and that was a few weeks ago - that you'd help me pick out a padded bra. Along with those silicone pads too. You said since I was young enough, I could pad my bra a little bit over a long period of time. If I didn't grow on my own, people wouldn't notice. You even told me about how to work it so the other girls couldn't figure it out in phys ed. My mom wasn't hip on it at first, but you got her to agree."

I had to sit down. This was just a bit too much. Janet sat watching me expectantly. I am... Lucy was... the kind of person who talked girl's mothers into buying padded bras for their teen children? How did I get away with that, I wondered? I had a hard time believing Lucy, with her straight-laced image, could do this. Was this normal conversation between girls and women? It couldn't be. This needed to be straightened out right away.

"Janet, I'm going to need to talk to your mother."

"Great, She'll love that!" Janet exuded confidently, "She'll be home in about 45 minutes."

Janet's mother, Betty, sent Janet to the movies, which gave me a sense of relief. I wasn't ready to discuss any of this around her daughter. I looked around their apartment, it was larger than mine. I assumed in this up-scale part of town it was the alimony money from the father, and not the day-care paycheck, that allowed them to live here.

Janet's mother was an attractive woman in a non-put upon way. She wore very little make up, if any. She was wearing a comfortable pair of slacks and penny loafers with no socks. Her hair was pulled back into a straight, simple, pony tail. Her daughter, although prettier, definitely got the lion's share of her looks from this woman.

"Thanks for seeing me Betty. I got the card you sent me in the hospital. I apologize that I haven't gotten around to responding to it... to any one's cards actually. It's just that I've gotten so many... and it's very difficult when you can't remember who any one is."

I crossed my legs in a swoosh of nylon realizing that I never changed out of the high platforms I had been wearing with Janet's lesson. Now that I wasn't trying so hard I realized I was able to move around in these super high creations with no effort. With the conservative work suit I was wearing, it must have been a strange combination to Betty's eyes. I felt the need to comment. "I know these look silly, but I um, was trying on some old shoes..."

Betty held up her hand, "Look, I know you love your heels. There really is no need to apologize about the card. I can only imagine how tough it has to be without your memory. I understand completely. It's been hard on all of us."

All of us? Know I love my heels?

Betty's body language was reserved, with a certain resigned sadness. There was something going on here that I couldn't put my finger on.

"I know this is going to be strange," I said, "but your daughter seems to have a certain fondness toward me, which is nice, because she seems to be a wonderful girl. She has been telling me things about how we... " I made a back and forth gesture between Betty and myself, "interact... which has raised some questions in my mind. I would love to reestablish my old relations, but without knowing what they were, it's easy for someone to pull the wool over my eyes."

I wanted to illustrate the point I made with the story of Kirk Baron, my harasser at work, but not knowing her, I stopped short, "not that I'm saying your daughter is trying to do that."

I went on, "Your daughter tells me I do things like help her pick out clothes and have even given advice as to... her underwear and er... her body type..." I let the sentence hang.

"The breasts thing?"

Betty filled in bluntly; "Even though she seems to be developing, Janet is fearful she is going to get the McPherson curse. Women on our side of the family just don't seem to fill out our bras."

I interrupted, "So I thought it was best that she fill out her bra anyway she could," I was amazed, yet uncomfortable to the point of anxiety, but I continued to drive on, "and you agreed?" I stopped to think about what I had said.

"Why is it, Ms. McPherson that I hold so much sway in such decisions about your daughter. I don't mean to be -"

It was her turn to interrupt me. Her eyes were now closed and her face was doleful. She was preparing to say something extremely difficult.

"I trust your judgment, because I trust you. Up until this coma business, I was quite sure you would never hurt us." She opened her eyes; they were moist with dampness.

She began to explain herself in another way, "I just wanted a child. When I couldn't pretend any more, my husband left me. You welcomed me... You were kind and gentile to me... Janet doesn't know..."

The realization was akin to having my head set on fire. My heartbeat increased. My adrenaline coursed through my body. I was certain that I was fire engine red. My mind flashed to the memory of the strap on dildo I found during my first day of exploration of Lucy's apartment.

"We're... your..." I gathered my wits about me trying to absorb the shock, and started again, "You're gay, and always have been. We're... lovers, aren't we?"

I held my breath as I went out on a limb. But I was certain I was right.

"We have," she said, wiping her eyes, "an understanding," this was the second time today I had heard sex used with that term.

"I understand that you aren't a lesbian, we were never going to be partners. You were very good about making your other lovers, the men, maybe other women... invisible.

We definitely had something good going, so I trusted you with helping with Janet. You know so much more about..." her explanation trailed off.

I understood. She was a woman, like many gays or straights, which ignored the aspects of her femininity and sexuality throughout her life. Now she found herself on unsteady ground with a teen girl who reveled in it.

I didn't know what to do, but it was a woman beginning to cry, so I stood up and put my arm around her.

I then spoke directly from the heart to a perfect stranger, "I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know if things can be like they were. In fact I'm sure they can't ever be, as I don't even know who I am any more. I will not leave you in a lurch, neither you nor Janet." For a reason I still don't know, I kissed her gently on the forehead then leaving her apartment.

I sat in my underwear, playing solitaire at the kitchen table. My mind whirled crazily with the mindless routine of the game allowing me to focus. Lucy, by extension, I, was a woman who told teens their heels weren't high enough, breasts weren't big enough, while I slept with their lesbian mothers.

Not because I was gay mind you, but for some other reason. I don't have the answers to those questions yet. Was it to get something from or on them? Possibly extortion of others? It was indeed possible. I was hearing plenty of evidence that I used sexuality as a blunt instrument quite possibly even to the point of sleeping my way into jobs.

I was telling girls who had not had a chance to even give their puberty a good run that they needed plenty of cleavage with large breasts survive. Possibly to conquer the mountain of sexuality.

This was not the Lucy I knew. Was it? She never came on to me when I was Craig. Looking back on the matter, I am starting to suspect that she did work my strings to get that job.

She suddenly blew into Craig Morton's life unannounced. It was right around the time she thought she was ready to take the lead on an account. Perhaps the only reason she didn't sleep with me is that she was a savvy enough user to read my moral compass. I was beginning to recall a lot of cleavage and long legs being conveniently always in view. In fact, so much so, I was considering trying to be more than a friend to her. Shit, was I used as well? Was she that good?

I flipped the cards over mechanically lining them up by suit and alternating color. I was missing some obvious moves, not caring as I ran this entire day through my mind.

I thought about work, about Kirk Baron. I don't know how I was going to face Kirk tomorrow, knowing that he could indeed be right. I was lucky I had no memory to fall back on. I'm not at all sure if I could handle all of this coming into my mind. What other surprises were going to sneak up on me? Plenty, undoubtedly... maybe twenty-six of Lucy's years worth of memories.

I looked at my watch it was getting late. I decided to lay out some clothes and get ready for bed. Janet would be knocking on my door fairly early for my make-up, and I had a lot of work ahead of me tomorrow.

I sighed as I again thought to myself. I never expected anything in this world be easy (far from it). After my first complete day playing the role of Lucy, once again I staring down the barrel of another tough day, I wondered what else I had in store.

I felt myself slip into the world of sleep.

The car wreck was gone, although the tree the car had smashed into remained. The impossibly large living room, which once housed the wreck, too was altered. It was populated by the African, South American masks and art work that was so much a part of Lucy's apartment.

I noticed it appeared to be much cooler than before. The grass was not a vibrant green, but a browning yellow (the color of toast). The leaves on the tree were also changing, alternating the colors red and orange with only a smattering of green. It was very much autumn here, although there was no briskness to the air, the dreamscape, like always, was devoid of temperature.

Lucy sat across from me as before. Her legs were crossed, her eyes were even more wearier than before. She did not look much different than I did when I saw myself as Lucy in the mirror every day. She had definitely aged in ways that were not readily apparent to the naked eye. Her eyes contained something, which looked like aged amusement.

She reached out to me with both hands. We joined together forming a circle of arms. I felt as though I should be angry with her, although here on the dreamscape, I could not remember exactly why. I couldn't eliminate the feeling of being vaguely disappointed and cheated.

She was Able to feel it herself. She answered the question I didn't even know I had.

"Let go of your anger. You can not steal someone else's life, accidental or not, then judge it by your standards. I am not the usurper, you are. You are judging the whole, by a very small piece. Be careful of jumping to conclusions."

As she spoke, I began to remember why I was angry.

Before I could explore this further, she changed subjects.

"The situation you are in is as dangerous, perhaps more dangerous, than you even understand -"

I cut her off trying to rush the answer.

"Which situation? The bus driver? My boss? The mom? Not the kid is it?"

I should not have said anything allowing her to finish. She gave me no answer; my alarm clock rang pulling me back into the waking world of Lucy Maya.

[to be continued]

After a traumatic first working day in the body of Lucy Maya, I had braced myself for them all to be that way. But they were not. A fortnight into the life and job, I was beginning to settle in a little more comfortably. Although in my more relaxed times I was still capable of making large "un-Lucy like" mistakes which raised the occasional eyebrow.

In one particularly surreal moment, I told a male co-worker something going wrong was no different than when I "took a hit" as a line backer. It was a phrase quite ingrained in Craig Morton's phraseology, but patently crazy in Lucy's. If I did not have the luxury of falling back onto the excuse of diminished memory and quirks caused by a week of being in a coma, there was no way possible I would be able to pull this off.

Over those next two weeks I forged a stronger relationship with my teenaged neighbor Janet along with her mother Betty. Janet was a sixteen-year-old whom Lucy had been trying to instill a philosophy based upon Lucy's view of the world. This philosophy could be loosely described as Sexual Feminism. This philosophy can only be described as by using the body to gain attention, then using the brain and personality to maximize the situation. I suspected it would give even the most flexibly modern feminist more than a little heartburn.

In addition to this, I was able to discern Lucy had been sleeping quite often, unbeknownst to Janet, with Janet's mother. This woman who quite recently, accepted that she was a lesbian. Whether Lucy was a lesbian, or was using Betty for some other means (perhaps to allow her free access to schooling the daughter in Lucy's ways.) was unknown to me at this point. Whatever the motives, I suspected Betty still carried something for Lucy, still believing over time it could be rekindled.

That aside, what forging a friendship with mother and daughter allowed me to do was gain more insight into Lucy. I would spend hours hearing Lucy's world philosophy regurgitated back to me from the daughter.

I learned much about how Lucy handled personal situations from the mother. After hanging out with them, I would go back to my apartment to write copious notes in the growing collection of notebooks bearing the facts and rumors of Lucy's life.

Alex and I had started these notebooks when he pretended to be my psychologist, calling everyone in Lucy address book. According to our story it was to "re-establish" the bits and pieces of my missing memory lost in the coma. Several weeks and many re-reads later, the notebooks were turning out to be a valuable, if not incomplete, tool.

With all of this at my fingertips, especially the mother/daughter input, I realized Lucy took very little crap from anyone. This knowledge, combined with a growing confidence in my role as Lucy, allowed me to fend off the hazards of the work place more easily by simply being in the character that was expected of me.

Kirk Baron, who I was now convinced had with Lucy slept to gain the job. This helped to register my growing confidence, scaling back, but did not cease his sexually predatory behavior of me. He was a slick operator with a moral compass stuck on "Kirk".

I suspected much of his attitude toward me stemmed from the fact that Lucy may have been a morally rudderless operator as well. Simply detecting the change in me, feeling the more straightforward motivations toward the work place in the post coma Lucy made me less of a threat to him.

He knew how to handle challenging bright newcomers, who played by the standard rules, they could be suppressed. It was challenging bright newcomers, who played by his off the book rules, which frightened him. Merely, scaling back or not, I am quite certain that he still carried something up his sleeve.

However, not everything was getting easier. After going into the fatal car accident as Craig Morton, and coming out of a coma trapped in the body of Lucy Maya, Alex had been overwhelming understanding and helpful.

After revealing the truth to him, I suspected that he would not be able to handle my new female form... or even the fact that I was not dead. Only for the first few days he had been more flexible of mind and understanding than I could have hoped for.

Simply without being able to put my finger on it, I felt something had been altered between us since the revelation. I had spoken to my brother on the phone a handful of times. Each conversation we had was becoming more terse and infrequent, with the last being over four days ago. We had not been out of touch that long since before our parents died. I needed to sort this out.

I picked up the phone on my desk, now covered completely in neat stacks of paper, dialing it. I put my stockinged feet up on the desk, glancing over them at the painting on the wall. I purchased the painting on a whim last week because the saleswoman assured me it looked decidedly feminine yet professional. I wasn't particularly fond of its abstractness, but it was titled "Mother Nature Arises". The title seemed better suited to Lucy's aggressive womanhood than the 1972 Miami Dolphins print that hung in my office when I was Craig.

The phone rang several times more than it should have, indicating to me that Alex had turned his answering machine off. After allowing it to ring fifteen or twenty more times, he finally picked up.

"Hello?" He sounded resigned.

"Alex, it's me." I never identified myself as Craig when I spoke to him from the office phone.

"Yeah, hey there. What's going on?"

"Well, per your instructions, I'm checking in just to let you know what's going on. Remember a couple of weeks back when you didn't want to let a day go by without hearing from me? Well you're pretty hard to reach for the man who uttered those words," I was taking full advantage of a brothers' ability to be roughly honest with one another.

"It's my son and work. You know. I just don't seem to have the time. It's nothing to get worked up about. Just circumstance," Alex replied.

I knew him well enough to know he was circling around the truth.

"Alex, listen, I'm not thinking so. There's something up. When ... the unique ... circumstances surrounding my coming out of a coma pops up, I would think anyone aware of it would be very interested in my progress. Especially someone close. Besides, you took your answering machine off-line Alex. You're avoiding someone, since I haven't talked to you in days. I have to assume that someone is me."

There was a pause, and finally "Look. I'll drive into town. Meet me for lunch at Darwin's Cafe. Make it a late lunch, say, two o'clock so we can talk without the crowds."

The Darwin Cafe. Looking at the decor, I could imagine people who thought evolution is a crock would hate this place intensely with its heavy "Evolution of the Species" motif. It may have the best sandwiches in the city, but I was quite certain they had no plans to make this place a restaurant chain in some parts of the country.

I sipped my Diet Coke, not because I particularly enjoyed the completely artificial tasting liquid, but because buried in the notebook on Lucy's life, were several notations that she was an infamous Diet Coke drinker consuming close to a six pack a day. Like the abstract print, which hung in my office, it was just another form of being in what I thought was character.

Alex walked in (spotting me immediately) sitting down. He was obviously troubled, even as he tried to disguise it. An astronomical ten years difference between us or not, you have gut feelings about your only sibling. His nervous running of his hand through his hair did not help his cause.

As we opened every face to face conversation, we small talked about his son, ex-wife, and the job, before I cut to the chase.

"Listen, I don't want to be out of the office too long, so I'm going to ask you straight out. Why are you avoiding me?"

He finished the beer in front of him, quickly ordering another via long distance hand signal to the waiter. It must be, I thought, nice to work from home, drinking when and as much as you please. He received the second beer, gathered himself, and began talking, forming his sentences carefully, and speaking in low tones.

"Let's say that one can get used to the idea of his brother showing up from the dead. Let's also say one can get used to the idea that he turns up by jumping into the body of a woman who was alive. This, I might add, are monster steps all by themselves. But I seemed to have pulled off with my sanity in check."

I nodded in agreement, as he continued.

"It turns out there are other factors to consider. People like to talk, so be it," he waved his hands dismissively, "But when the older brother of the deceased, steps in out of nowhere and is seen with her all over the place. He's staying at her place, she staying at his, it creates questions that are very difficult for the older brother to answer.

Sure, you were ... Lucy was ... close to my brother and the last person to see her alive. Sure it would be natural for me to help you out considering your condition. However, it gets to the point where tongues start to wag. Especially since I'm paying a hell of a lot of attention to a woman Craig had only known for half a year. My ex even called me about it."

"Your ex? Really? I don't get it. Who they hell cares enough to watch what the hell we're doing?"

"Keep in mind Craig," Alex explained, "Lucy Maya was the focus of quite a bit of local media when she pulled out of her coma. Whether you accepted the invitations to interview or not. Therefore, while you ... as Lucy ... are no Madonna, you're not perfectly anonymous as you would like to believe. The odd person here and there notice us."

I was growing angry. If he was telling me that he was avoiding me because of a handful of ill-conceived rumors, I was going to blow my top.

"Alex, you better have a stronger reason than this crap."

"Listen," Alex said, "I know this whole thing is very hard on you, but it is also hard on me. Can you imagine what it is like to be romantically linked to your brother?"

He shifted in his seat and downed the rest of his beer. He sounded a little bitter now, "Well, I'll tell you. All of it swirls around in my subconscious, until finally the other week it gave me a pretty nasty dream. A dream where I was ... banging the hell out of Lucy. Do you know what woke me up?" the question was never intended to be answered, "Lucy opened her mouth and out came your voice. I woke up, running straight to the bathroom to throw up."

He sat back, looking me straight in the eyes.

"I don't put much credence into dreams, despite the fact that you feel there may be a connection to Lucy through yours. I may on one level be attracted to Lucy Maya's body, however I have no illusions that I carry a conscious desire to bang her while you're in it.

You have to understand how uncomfortable I am. I have spent my life looking at women who look like you do now. It's just like I get that queasy shock when I look at the ass of a nice looking girl and she turns around. She turns out to be a very young kid dressed way too mature. Well that's what you're doing to me."

He pulled out his wallet and threw a couple of fives on the table.

"Listen, there will come a point in time where I grow used to your appearance, just as if you were a sister. The shock and the crazy dreams will go away. However, you can't expect that after a just a few weeks. It's just too much too soon. Believe me, I've tried very hard." He stood. "So keep in touch, let me know of anything that goes wrong of course.

I'm not abandoning you, you'll always be my brother. It's just until the rumors die down. I have to get my mind around to accept your appearance. Let's just keep a little distance. I wish I could be there for you bro', you know I love you, but I just can't. Not yet at least."

He turned abruptly and was gone.

It was strange, in some ways Betty, Janet and I were becoming a little hybrid family. I invited Betty and Janet over for meals when I grilled on the large balcony. They would invite me over for dinner on the days I didn't cook.

For someone as private as Craig Morton, it seemed incredibly strange to be breaking bread with newly made friends so often. On the other hand, to Lucy, it may have not been strange. I only had a sketchy but increasing working knowledge of the depths of the friendship Lucy had with these two, separately, as a mother and daughter unit.

Tonight we were sitting in their quite large apartment, enjoying a particularly well made lasagna. I talked about work in general terms, as did Betty. Janet went on at length about a history teacher that she absolutely didn't like. She labeled him several things that were so unknown to my twenty-five year olds vocabulary, that if it weren't for context, I wouldn't even be sure if they were bad or not.

She wrapped up her tale of school with what she thought was a minor observation.

"When I got home, those weirdoes were knocking on your door again."

My head snapped in the direction of Janet more sharply than I had intended.

"At my door again? What weirdoes would that be Janet?"

This was a secure building requiring a key or a "buzz up" from a resident. No one should be able to just arrive at your door. I was hoping Janet was about to tell me a story about a strange salesman. Betty, as an adult, more clearly registered my discomfort and was watching me carefully.

"Oh, right, I forgot to tell you the first two times. A bus driver and a priest, reverend, or whatever were knocking on your door a couple of times last week. I'm not sure what they wanted."

"What time was this?" I asked.

"Oh, I guess four o'clock the first time, maybe eight at night the second. Today it was around five."

"Why would a bus driver, and a priest be at your apartment door?" Betty asked, "It's like the beginning of a bad joke: A priest, a bus driver and a soldier all go to a woman's apartment one day..."

She was making a joke, but Betty, like her daughter, was sharp. Even as she couched it in humor, she knew there was something off about the visit and my reaction to it.

"The bus driver's name is Arnie and he was the one who hit us." I said honestly before speculating, "I figure the clergy is his friend, maybe he wants to find out if I was closer to God, or something, while in my coma. I get a lot of that."

This would be a benign observation if it weren't for the threats that Arnie had made when he correctly assessed that the "spirit" occupying this body was not Lucy's. He further speculated that I had "slipped past the eyes of God", and he therefore, would have to "make it right". Perhaps he had an old fashioned exorcism in mind.

Janet was mildly interested in the explanation, this didn't satisfy Betty, "Why are they coming up without phoning first? How are they getting in the building? Have they tried to contact you before? I don't mean to pry."

Whether she was doing because she a protective former lover, or out of concern, I was quite certain that she fully meant to pry,.

"It's interesting, that's all. We're all concerned about building security."

I put large piece of lasagna in my mouth to give me a moment to think as I chewed. I decided on the partial truth.

"The bus driver came by before. He is, to put it mildly, a little stressed out at being instrument of Craig's death. Regardless of whether it was his fault or not. He sat in the hospital room every day reading to me. He believed the sound of his voice would bring me out of the coma." I shrugged.

Janet regained interest in the conversation.

"Maybe it did. Who knows? Yet, because I came out of the coma with a damaged memory, he is under the impression that I am possessed or something."

"Possessed? Really by whom?" Janet asked beating her mother by a second to the question.

"I'm not sure. The devil. A ghost of some kind."

I took a breath, if they run into Arnie in the hallway, or he knocked on their door, I wanted to prepare them. I meant it to come out more flippantly but I failed, regretting it the moment I said it, "Craig Morton, maybe."

Both women looked at me great interest for a moment taking in the madness of these claims. I could see them dismiss the idea for being as completely ludicrous as it sounded, but the seed was planted.

I phoned the moment I returned to my apartment.

"Alex, it's Lucy. It's Craig, I mean. Listen, I realize your taking some time off from me, but something very interesting popped up today," I told him the story of the bus driver Arnie and the priest hanging around my apartment.

"Exorcism maybe?" he asked humorously although he still sounded a bit high strung as he did this afternoon.

"You know, I honestly thought about that, but I am not willing to jump to that conclusion. It is pretty crazy stuff after all."

"Any more crazy than your existence?" he asked rhetorically, "I think its time to reassess what we define as 'crazy'." He launched into his big brotherly advice, "Listen I think you should confront this Arnie on neutral ground. That way he can't do anything rash. I don't take him for a fly off the handle guy, but you do represent a major breach in his belief system. A breach he created by the way. Who knows how people handle having their religious reality challenged."

"No telling. So you're thinking I can talk him into being reasonable? Suck him into the big lie."

Despite his inability to see me, I shrugged, "It's worth the piece of mind. Are you coming with me?"

"We talked about that before. I'm not going to be able to do it. Not yet anyway. If you want to run over strategies leading up to meeting him, I'll be here for you by phone. I'll put my machine back on, in fact."

He yawned. He was finished. As good as his word in Darwin Cafe this afternoon, he was leaving me on my own. He ended the conversation with a simple "Good luck."

Alex was right. I should try to straighten Arnie out, or more accurately, drive him away from the truth. At the very least, I could gauge where he was mentally. I had to see if he presented a danger to me or just a nuisance. In any case, I wasn't going to do that now. As Alex alluded, I would need a strategy at the very least. I would call him, but not quite yet.

The next morning Kirk Baron was waiting for me in my office sitting on my desk. He was holding a framed picture of Lucy's mother in his hand that I had brought in from home. The photograph was one of the many props I used to be "in character".

He looked up as I walked in, indicating for me to close the door behind me. He started speaking while he again stared at the picture in his hand.

"It must be strange to have these pictures on your desk, not having a clue as to who they are. I mean, somewhere, intellectually, you understand that this one is your mother, and this one over here," he pointed to the picture of the gray haired man near the printer, "is your father, but they don't create anything in you emotionally do they?"

"I don't remember them, really. I keep them on my desk hoping something will spark my memory, things will start coming back."

This came out well practiced and smooth. Over the past few weeks, I had used similar lines hundreds of times.

"So what do you remember exactly? Stop me if this is getting personal, but do you remember any of your childhood? Your teen years, college, anything?"

What was he up to?

"No, not my childhood or my teen years. Nothing."

"But you do remember some things don't you?" He was obviously setting up a pattern of logic to circle in around a point. I needed to answer carefully.

"Well, certainly I can walk and talk. I remember how to drive a car, things like that. Only, the brain is a strange complex organ. It seems like I remember mechanical basics, tying shoes, driving, etc. Although I am missing many pieces of my narrative history, so to speak."

"It sure is one complex organ, that brain. During our interview I noted you were a sociology major. We talked about it a bit. Do you recall anything about your sociology studies?" He finally put the picture of Lucy's mother back on the desk. He was watching me now.

"No, not at all. It's missing as well."

"Really nothing at all? Indulge me. I know its a tough situation, however I find this situation fascinating," his eyes glimmered with snake like malevolent mischief, "How did you even know to come to work when you woke up?"

"I've had tons of conversation with people who informed me I had a new job. I saw the letter of offer in with the rest of my mail. There was plenty of information to clue me in."

"So getting here wasn't so hard, then. How about performance? I guess what I'm asking is, how you do this job at all? You're very good at it you know. Your team really respects you. You are up on demographic trends, the latest surveys and consumer polls roll right off of your tongue. On this account you know exactly what the competitors are up to."

With growing alarm, I knew exactly where he was leading this conversation. Kirk Baron was deviously intelligent.

He continued, "I've been thinking about it. How is it a person who needed to find their letter of offer to even know they had a job, quote regularly and quite accurately from trade magazines that came out around the same time she was interviewing? How does a person who doesn't remember anything from her sociology classes three years ago, remember how the Ford Motor people handled their advertising buys five years ago?"

He had me dead to rights, but there wasn't a chance I was going to let him know it. "Again," I said as testily as I could within the parameters of work place etiquette, "my memory isn't missing completely but it is spotty. And by spotty, I mean huge holes."

"Perhaps. But laid out as I have done it seems very suspicious. Like someone faked this to get out of a certain work arrangement," he said, alluding to the fact that he thought we would be sleeping together once I came to work here.

I laughed, and said exactly what I was thinking, "Wow, now that's an ego. Do you really believe that I would go through this elaborate and painful ruse, to renege on some underhanded deal we had? I don't think so."

"Well that's good to hear. Then you are probably okay that I got human resources to approve a therapist to help you pull some of those memories back. Oh, a hypno-therapist, by the way. I know how expensive they are. I also realized our health plan doesn't cover it, but you have such potential, having been through so much, I thought it was a good idea," he paused dramatically to let the next part sink in, "Unless of course you have objections. It is not my place to recommend what an employee should do regarding their health. Nevertheless, a hypno-therapist would do wonders for anyone in your situation. That is except for someone who was faking it, of course. I'll let you think about it. Let me know what you're going to do. I need to give human resources the final sign off."

With that, he left my office very pleased with himself even as I cursed my carelessness. Without realizing it I had painted myself into a corner, and he quickly figured it out. In order to do my job, I needed to be on top of what was current in the field, the history of the client, as well as a host of other things. These things were blatantly inconsistent with the pattern of my alleged memory loss.

Kirk knows that I am not going to let myself be put under by a hypno-therapist to roam about my subconscious, especially since he is fairly certain I am faking it. My denial of the therapist will probably not directly challenge my job, but he will take this as his cue to put the pressure back on.

But what I didn't find out until much later, was Kirk began applying the pressure the moment he left the office. Quietly he insinuated to the ever-hungry rumor mill, what was probably the truth, that I had slept my way into the position. He changed it from himself to an unnamed "big wig". He also raised questions as to why, by my own admission, I wasn't seeing a physician or therapist.

This was a strange behavior for someone who doesn't even remember her parents. He then subversively pointed out the convenient gaps in my memory of my past, versus my full memory of the business. He also let the grapevine know that there was a therapist at my disposal, wondering to anyone who cared whether I would use the help. If not, why not?

This time, he left an envelope was taped to my door. Perhaps they had given up taking me by surprise. I walked into my apartment, slung my briefcase onto the couch opening the envelope. The letter was in script, its handwriting as simple as its message:

It is imperative that we see you. Please call.
Arnie"

Underneath his name was his phone number. I assumed by "we" he was referring to the clergy who seemed to be in his company much of late. Well, Alex and I had decided that confronting him was the best way to handle this. I expected it to be more on my timetable. I looked at the note again. Its lack of emotion or descriptiveness was a bit unnerving. It spelled trouble to me in a way I couldn't define.

If I didn't want an off balance chance encounter with Arnie one day when I opened my door to find him standing there. I should call meet with him, getting it over with. After reading this letter bearing all the charm of a ransom note, I was quite certain that it was going to be a very neutral, very public, place.

I walked over to the phone and dialed. It wasn't Arnie's number, which I tapped out onto the keypad. It was Janet's private line.

"Janet speaking."

"Hey kid. It's Lucy. I'm stressed as hell right now. Tell me, what is it I did to relax?" I did want some ideas on how to unwind, but mostly, I wanted to talk to someone.

"You run, you know. Miles actually. You always say that alleviates your stress." she noted, "You also like to shop ... and ... well ... you did promise a certain someone that you would go shopping with them for some ... stuff."

I grimaced. I had been trying to back away from Lucy's promise to help Janet endow herself through padded means, since I first learned of it. But Lucy was apparently more convincing than I was.

I sighed the sigh of the defeated, "Put your mom on the phone. I'm not doing this unless she goes - "

I didn't have a chance to finish. Janet emitted a high pitch squeal, and the next thing I heard was her calling for her mom.

I smiled humorously fully grasping the irony of my taking a girl shopping so she could be womanly. Like me.

Craig Morton hated malls with a resolute passion. Lucy, by all accounts, could spend hours, not to mention great amounts of money, in several malls over the span of days.

Pulling into the parking lot, I felt the ambivalence of Betty in the passenger seat, and the excitement of Janet in the back seat. I wondered with grim humor if facing Arnie or any of the other obstacles of being Lucy could be any worse than this.

The only upside was that now that I had "lost my memory" I didn't have to play the expert. My memory loss did not pull me out of the frank discussions of women's breasts, which, as the man I was internally, made me somewhat uncomfortable. Janet had worn a very tight top, so she could see how her soon to be artificially enhanced breasts looked under even the most form fitting clothes.

The advertising executive in me marveled as we all automatically chose the Victoria Secrets store, chiefly because they had branded the image so well into our brains. Once in, Janet paraded in and out of the changing rooms. She had with her various types of padded, water and gel filled bras, with and without even more added volume from silicone breast enhancers.

I made non-committal comments; mostly telling Janet that something "looked okay" and not to "go too big" which she informed me flew in the face of my previous philosophy. Betty stood close by, she was even more non-vocal about the situation than I.

However, after a short while, to my complete discomfort, I found that I could not turn my male brain off. It was becoming difficult for me, as this nubile hard-bodied young lady came out of the dressing room practically shoved her large, rounded breasts in my face. I felt a certain warmness begin to gather in my pubic area. It was, unquestionably, arousal. I felt my face begin to go red. I was going to excuse myself for a moment when Betty seemed to pick up on my vibe.

She leaned into my ear and asked quietly, "Is that what you like? Large breasted girls?"

This shook me up to the very core of my being.

"Look, it was your daughters idea - "

Betty cut me off in hushed tones, "I didn't mean it to sound that way. I'm not talking about Janet; I'm talking about me. Is that what I should do, get myself a pair of nice big artificial tits to turn you on?"

I could feel her hot breath on my ear, with myself growing warmer, growing moist, in my vaginal area. This was an area that I took great pains to perform basic hygiene on to prevent problems, but otherwise tried to ignore.

It was the single part of Lucy's body that I could not fathom, I was oddly afraid of this area. Breasts albeit were strange, but they were after all external and a more far rounded, much heavier version of something that already existed on men. Quite simply everything to do with the area below, from its mysterious flaps, to its unknown insides brought anxiety upon me. Now, for the first time in the weeks I have occupied this body, the unmistakable feeling of arousal was taking over.

Directly across the mall, I saw a shoe store. Betty smiled slyly as I stumbled over my words claiming I was going to look for some shoes to buy. She was not going to push the issue. Just being able to fluster me with sexual energy after all these weeks was a small victory. It was a sign to her, that she may be able to, over time, win me back.

With her daughter in the changing booth, with no one around, she gently kissed my cheek and whispered, "It's okay, I understand you need to go. This is a bit much for you. Besides, I think I'm going to shop some too." She walked over to the changing door to check on her daughter and I walked out of the store.

I just needed a bit of space, and time to come to terms with this feeling in my body and Betty's direct flirtation. As I said I would, I walked directly across the mall, pretending to look at the various shoe styles in the store window. I wandered back and forth in the mall, looking in store windows but seeing nothing, as my mind whirled. My feeling of arousal finally subsided. I felt as normal as I could be as a male locked into the body of a female. Nevertheless, mentally I was still a bit jumpy.

I eventually wandered across from Victoria Secret where I was greeted by mom and daughter, wearing their brand new purchases. Their old bras stuffed into their bags and their "new" breasts pressing tightly against their tops as if screaming to get out. They did, despite the mental roadblocks I tried to put up, look very good.

"What do you think? And Mom too! Who would have thought? She's not usually the dress up type." asked Janet, moving about side to side so I could get a good look at her mounds.

"Looks great ladies," I answered honestly.

Betty, who had been watching my eyes the entire time said, "Good. Now its your turn to buy something. And since we're in front of one of your favorite types of stores..."

I sat on the bed unable to sleep. The image of the two women stuck in my head, as did the feeling of the uncharacteristic hug that Betty gave me. She made sure her padded breasts pressed firmly against mine as she quickly, ran her hand lightly across my ass. I recognized that move from my old days as Craig Morton. The motions were just enough to get her point across, at the same time subtle enough to leave no doubt in my mind.

I stared at the top drawer of the nightstand for several minutes. I had spent the past few weeks getting into the role of Lucy. I was trying to understand what made her tick. I dug into her past, quizzing her acquaintances, this was merely all intellectual.

Simultaneously, I had studiously avoided the physical aspects of her womanhood. I did this mostly because it more than anything else reminded me of how upside down my world had become. I was beginning to understand that part of my avoidance was out of fear. What if I like it? What did that say about me? Occupying the body was one thing; comfortably occupying the body with all of its physical aspects was losing Craig Morton to the female form I've become.

After today, after those feelings of arousal in the store, I had to know about those feelings could achieve. Reaching into the nightstand drawer, I pulled out her vibrator. With a quick twist, it hummed heavily in my hand.

I closed my eyes, settled on the bed, hiked the bottom of my nightdress to my stomach thinking about Betty. I tried my best to push out the thoughts of her daughter, which fought their way in.

This morning, Janet seemed genuinely excited to go to school with her new sexier look. She took Lucy's advice from some week's back, buying a series of bras to mimic real growth. Janet's cleavage was larger, but not outrageously, so (definitely not as much as I saw it was going to be in few months). God help this girl, if she sprouts on her own, only her genes know.

She was only in the apartment briefly this morning. Her job was more to oversee and touch me up. I was becoming more adept at applying my own makeup. I was not quite ready to handle all the nuances of application, especially enough to look as though I was wearing no make up at all, but it was coming.

Once Janet left, I finished dressing, picking up the paper that Arnie had written his note on from the desk in my bedroom. Although I picked up the paper, my thoughts wandered to Betty. I was speculating how much more complex this situation was going to be with her coming on to me.

What about my fantasizing about her last night? Were those thoughts pure sexual fantasy or was something developing? It became particularly touchy because of my dual role as her daughter's buddy. How did Lucy do it?

Kirk had his keen observations about my faked memory loss. Those thoughts also drifted through my mind. He was unquestionably up to something; there was no doubt he was going to make my life much harder than he already had. I could almost feel the noose tighten around my neck in the work world.

This was all getting to be too much. Just being trapped in Lucy's body, operating it without a manual was difficult enough. It was time for me to untangle some of the complexities knotting itself around my life. It was time for me to be a bit more proactive instead of being knocked around by circumstances beyond my control.

I took the paper into the kitchen and dialed the number written on it.

"Hello?" His quiet Southern voice sounded of sleep.

"Hello Arnie? This is Lucy. Lucy Maya, I received your note. We have to talk."

Fear, confusion and fraud. These were the three words, which had dominated my existence since I died in a car accident. Through cosmic happenstance, I emerged from a coma in the body of Lucy Maya. My second chance at life, so to speak, was not one of wonderment at the miracle of being given another crack at life, as one would expect.

Quite the opposite. I tip toed through this life fearful more people would discover my secret (like the bus driver Arnie Williamson had) wishing to destroy me as an abomination to the laws of God.

I feared being discovered as a fraud from those who may not realize I was once Craig Morton. I do realize my story of losing my memory in the coma is deeply flawed, being full of holes - much like my immoral manipulative boss Kirk Baron had. I lived in the confusion caused by being thrown into someone else's life in progress with nothing but a very sketchy map to guide me, and finding - as was the case of Janet and her mother Betty - that I am in the middle of some quite complex relationships.

Adding to this all, I had also lost the close friendship of my brother. Whether this was permanent or temporary was to be seen. By believing me when I told him I was Craig moving about in the shell of Lucy, he alone made my first couple of weeks livable. However, the weight of the impossible, and the strangeness, sexual and psychic, of my being a woman wore on him until he declared he needed time off.

Then, of course, there was womanhood itself. Up until very recently, I treated this vessel I was in with great unease and distrust. It felt more complicated and worrisome than my male body. This was especially in the vaginal area. I went through great pains to deal with it as minimally as hygiene would allow. Even the few times I allowed myself to feel a wave of pleasure from outside stimuli, or even pleasured myself, I felt strange and dirty. It was as though I was going too far. This area was private to Lucy. Using it for my own purpose, whether in this body or not, felt voyeuristic at best, a violation of Lucy at worse.

Because of all of this, my ventures into the unknown of masturbation was rare, tentative, and guilt laden. Even so, I was finding, over time, that I was able to become more efficient at increasing the pleasure. Sitting there, just on the outside of my capabilities at this point, was the orgasm. It was something I had approached, had a partial taste of, but was not able to fully experience. With the ambivalence I had toward the entire process, it was no wonder. It was no secret that some women go their entire lives without reaching the orgasmic state, even those not harboring the baggage that I carried.

Nevertheless, with this matter, as with all the matters of my life, I was determined to start living. I may never be comfortable in this existence as it was handed to me, but I was never going to get through it shrinking through life.

And if there was anything I needed to get through to do it, my meeting with Arnie Williamson and his mysterious clergy sidekick would be it.

I had decided to meet Arnie Williamson and his friend mid day Saturday afternoon at a miniature golf course fairly close to Lucy's apartment. I had yet to determine if they presented an immediate threat or even a threat at all. I took the precaution of being in an open, outdoor, crowded place in broad daylight.

Before arriving, I changed several times trying to decide what felt right. Should I appear serious and daunting in the face of solemn accusation? On the other hand, casual and calm to brush off what, I would pretend, was obviously nonsense?

In the end, I thought it through and went for casual. I opted for a simple sundress and low heeled sandals. Being clothed this way made me more aware of my feminine body, and would help me in the role. I needed to play this firmly between a woman who was grateful for the care the bus driver showed me when I was in a coma, as well as someone who was slightly spooked and concerned about supernatural ramblings involving her.

Arnie and the clergy were both there when I arrived, judging from the nearly finished sodas, perhaps sometime before. Arnie looked even thinner than when I last saw him. He seemed to be forming sleepless bags underneath his eyes, bringing the focus to his spectacle branding nose and making his already pointed face look more so. He shook my hand politely, introducing me to Father McCormick, but never taking his eyes off me.

Father McCormick was a tall man who looked to be in his mid-sixties. Although it was difficult to tell, he was athletic and took great care of himself. His eyes were pleasant and open, but carried a knowingness behind them. Upon being introduced, he simply responded with a half bow of the head, pointing to the booth to purchase a round of golf, said, "Shall we?"

I glanced at Arnie, who looked beleaguered and distracted. I felt a pang of guilt as I assumed his state of disarray and visible lack of rest could be attributed to my actuality. I looked away quickly. Father McCormick, placed his hand on Arnie's back as if to guide him. This was a father and son like relationship, it was easy to see, that had been forged over many years.

Arnie was quiet, but the priest and I exchanged small talk on the way to the first hole as if we were about to embark upon a picnic instead of speculate on otherworldly, universe altering, topics.

Arnie who obviously had no patience for the small talk, launched right into the subject at hand, "I told Father McCormick about my feeling ... no, not feeling ... experience, that the wrong spirit is in that body of yours, Miss. I filled him in about the literature you had all over your home about mind transfers, reincarnation and all other forms of godless body swaps." His light Southern tinge took on a hard edge.

I eyed Arnie as casually as I could as he laid out the insane, but accurate evidence, trying to glance at Father McCormick to see how he was taking this. As I had decided before, I needed to play this with a gentle incredulousness, as one would a disturbed relative whom you have an affection for.

"And what do you think of this, Father McCormick?" I asked.

"Well, I can't think much of it, until you deny it or not," he replied.

I raised an eyebrow at the clergy, "So you believe in mind transfers after death and other sorts of body hopping business? I don't know too much about the Catholic Church having been raised -" I paused as my mind could not recall at that moment Lucy was a Presbyterian, but seamlessly continued, "in another faith, but I can't imagine you condone such beliefs."

He was pleasant, almost amused, "Well, you still haven't answered the question, yet I believe in a great many things. Almost all of them solidly sanctioned by the Church, yes." Deciding to go first, he placed his ball on the indented tee and putted around the large metal triangle situated in the center of the first green. He had a nice follow through.

"But I'll tell you a little story," he continued as Arnie teed up, managing to still watch me closely and gauge my reactions, "What are you? Twenty-four, twenty-five?" It was close enough, I nodded, "Well, back in the 1970's, before your time it appears, there was a film called 'The Exorcist'."

"I've seen it. Scary stuff," I added.

"Well you may not remember, the movie, and the book for that matter, took the country by storm. Though not necessarily in a good way. Like UFO sightings, possessions, real and imagined seemed to come out of the woodwork. Quietly, plus under the firm denial by the Church, many of us investigated them. Not because we were going to perform an exorcism mind you, yet because a great number of us are mental health professionals, the 'possessed' insisted on seeing a priest. What you find out quickly in this business is that a great deal of the problems you see as a priest require God's help in tandem with psychiatric assistance." Smiling, he said the last part as if delivering a punch line of a joke.

Arnie, visibly agitated, putted directly into the center of the triangle, bouncing his ball nearly back to the starting point. I gave him a look indicating "too bad" placing my ball on the tee-pad to putt. I wondered silently how any women could perfect a swing with breasts that are this size. My swing, while not perfect, adequately compensated, and the ball managed to be close enough to the hole to probably make the par two.

Father McCormick approached his shot, putting the ball in as he spoke. It occurred to me watching his golf course polished clinical expertise that he was probably quite glad to have a chance to brush up on his short game. "I saw quite a few things. Most of them had mental illness. However, I did see a few things, which defied my understanding of how the mind works. To make a long story short, I've seen a lot and I don't dismiss anything. At the end of my life's journey, God will make it clear. Now tell me," he asked again, "Are you a spirit, which found its way into the wrong body?" I was slightly unnerved at how casually he approached this.

"And if you are not," added the bus driver, "why are you delving into such literature, and what was it I felt?"

I felt myself shudder, hoping neither man detected it. I covered it up by putting the ball into the hole as easily as Father McCormick had. I then smiled as winningly as I could, hoping the falseness did not leak onto my face, and answered flippantly, "The short answer is 'no'. The long answer would also be, 'no'," nevertheless to add something for them to chew on, lowering my voice, I said in a confessional tone, "but I have felt strange from time to time as if something were trying to reach me from ... from I don't know where. But I can promise you that I am, body and soul, who I am supposed to be."

I watched them to see how my attempt to cloud the facts sat with them. Arnie looked unimpressed, though Father McCormick seemed intrigued. "Was this feeling of trying to be reached," the priest questioned, "from your dreams?" Perhaps I had taken the right tack, I felt he wanted to believe me.

"Dreams?" I asked.

"Yes, Arnold's feeling about you came from his initial encounter but persisted through dreams he had. More so as time has gone on. You came to him and explained that your body had been hijacked," He called the bus driver 'Arnold' in the manner of an elder who refused to except the existence of nick names - not even ones that make it to official Metro Transit employee name tags. As if to emphasize his elder role, Father McCormick made a hand movement indicating that Arnie should play the hole before we backed up the course, "And once Arnold had come to me with his worries about you, I too began having similar dreams."

"Really, how odd," I said as my mind began chewing over what was being said. I did remember Arnie mentioning something about dreams when he first arrived at my apartment. Wasn't it a dream of having sex with Lucy Maya, and his inability to deal with it, which isolated me from my brother?

Could these be connected? Could they be connected to the fact that I occasionally woke from sleep inexplicably able to know something, or perform a task, that I couldn't the day before?

"My cycle," I said softly in revelation. I was trying to understand how I had awakened one morning knowing both when my period was about to start and how to deal with it so efficiently. Why should I be able to do and know that, when I had no concept of something like, say, putting makeup on?

"Excuse me?" Arnie asked. He seemed displeased that the father had let me in on the dreams.

"My dream cycle," I covered up then adding truthfully, "I can't seem to remember my dreams any more." Uncertain as to why I added the last bit of truth I clouded the issue with a bit of fiction, "I think something might be trying to take me over from my dreams. It feels like a deceiver with great ability." I wasn't sure where I was going with this, but it seemed to be the right direction.

Father McCormick nodded. I guessed despite his having seen the unexplainable, he wanted the status quo to exist after all. Still Arnie was clearly not game, "That is not what is happening. You are the usurper, the deceiver, not the other way around. I could feel that the wrong spirit is in your body. No amount of double talk changes that."

Arnie was not going to be easy to shake. I needed time. I needed to look more carefully into this dream business. I would for now, pretend to play by their rules. I turned to the more reasonable of the two, the clergyman. Dreams or no dreams, I suspected was here out of support and long friendship for Arnie, not quite fully committed to his cause, "Father. Listen. I know who I am, I am who I've always been. Therefore, I have treated Arnie's claims as, truthfully, a bit off. Nevertheless, I can't dismiss this whole cloth. Not with all three of us having dreams. If you could give me your card, I will give you a call after I look into some things. All of this, as you can imagine, has upset me. I really don't think I can continue to play golf. I'm sorry."

Father McCormick gave me his card and wished my "good luck" as he turned to nod assuringly at Arnie. Good. In the priest's mind at least, we were all on the same team. Arnie, who knew what he had felt, was not thrown off by my soft-shoe act. He scowled as I left and whispered intensely into Father McCormick's ear.

"Well, in fact I have. I keep having several different versions of a dream where you come to me and I give my daughter to you ... sexually ... in exchange for our ... being together. I know you're not up to anything. I thank you for helping with the fashion issues. I guess the whole breasts focus with my sixteen year old probably weirded me out more than I thought. I mean look...," Betty gestured to her chest. After taking me for a breast woman, she had begun wearing padded bras and falsies daily.

"I'm not even sure what this bra thing's about...." But we both knew what that was about. Betty shifted with embarrassment as she continued, "but, again, I know that you're only helping, I mean with Janet." Betty was uncomfortable, and a little unsure of herself, but she was a woman who never saw a truth too big to take head on.

"These dreams, are they vivid, or strange like normal dreams? Or do they seem to have an overriding clarity?" I asked, taking in another bite of salad.

Betty waited for her mouthful to finish before continuing to answer, "Pretty damn vivid. Crazy vivid actually. Why the sudden interest in dreams Lucy?" The kitchen flooded with the sound of the dishwasher changing cycles. I wondered silently what kind of person did their dishes before they finished eating.

"I've been having dreams myself. I'm trying to figure out if its something we're both eating. Maybe it's the pasta sauce." At this Betty simply smiled.

"Listen. When you've figured it out enough to tell me the truth, then I'll wait for it. But no one's buying the look of concern on your face that food causing us to dream vividly."

She scooted her chair closer, continuing to speak, "About those dreams I've been having. Have you thought about ... maybe....?" Leaning in closer, she rubbed one of her highly padded breasts against my arm.

For some reason, I could not reject her advances. They felt, as they were, the longing of a former lover who sees an opening to get back in. I could not re-open that wound, not now. Especially now that Alex was out of the picture, she was the only friend I had. We ended up a tangle, naked, sweaty mass in her bedroom, and I tried to please her the best I could. With patience and understanding, she guided to her ultimate pleasure even as I experienced mine for the first time.

Lying here with her body against mine, sated and relaxed, I felt as I hadn't in a long time. I wanted to believe that it was simply the female stereotype of the body and emotion being connected to whomever they have sex with, and mistaking it for love. However, despite my rationalizations, there had been a connection made, it did feel strong and emotional. Real. I wasn't sure what was happening, though after a while I decided not to fight it as I have everything else since becoming a woman. If I'm falling in love, so be it.

For most of working America, Monday's were tough. So much so, that many comic strip writers have made comfortable livings from noting just that. Except Monday's for a man trying to pretend to be someone else while in the body of a woman, coupled with the ever increasing wrath and vengeance of the boss slowly coming down, well ... no comic strip could quite describe how tough that was. Even by my newly harsh standards, I figured this day was going to be a day of rough sledding.

I was barely in my office, when my secretary Andrea came in shutting the door behind you. Her face was scrunched with anxiety that I well recognized: she was debating whether or not to deliver bad news.

"Go ahead," I told her in a near mind reading fashion, "I can see you're ready to tell me something I don't like. You're quitting? All the coffee machines on all the floors are broken? Earthquake?" My tone belied a levity I did not feel.

"It's you," she dipped her toe in the conversational waters, pulled out, and restarted, "I like you. You're a great boss and good for your team. I think it's best you know what's going on." She held her hands tightly clasped together expectantly like a schoolgirl who had forgotten her homework, now waiting to see what I was going to do next.

I sat on my desk, crossing my legs. I held up my hand, gesturing for her to let me take a crack at it, "Let's see, there are rumors flying around about me. Probably about how I got this job. Perhaps something about my memory."

She nodded her head. The anxiety of telling me the news was giving away to pure curiosity. In this business rumors were like the ever-present white noise of the office air conditioners, but rarely were they acknowledge and tackled head on.

However I had been thinking about how to tackle this since I noticed the sideways glances growing more frequent, which was saying something for the oft discussed girl-with-nomemory. I wasn't sure how I going to approach it, still before me was an audience who, at least now, was enough on my side to be predisposed to what I had to say.

"Let be more precise to see if what I have matches what is in the rumor mill," I took a deep breath, "I slept my way into this position. Most likely with a high, unnamed, mucky-muck. Further, there is some stuff about how I'm probably faking my way through this amnesia thing, because certain facts just don't add up. I remember everything about how to do the job for instance, but nothing about my past. This is further evidenced through Kirk's going through great trouble to get a therapist specializing memory retrieval covered by our health plan, which up until this point I have utterly refused to use. And why, would a woman who can't, say, even remember her mother's maiden name, avoid such treatment?" I looked at her waiting, "Any of this ring a bell?"

She was more than relieved to be in a position of talking about it without having to break it to me. The door was open, so she asked, "Unfortunately, all of it rings a bell." She replied, "Since we are being honest about it, why are you avoiding the past?"

Avoiding the past. Exactly, I thought - avoiding the past.

"I'll explain it to you, and the entire team for that matter. Call a meeting for four o'clock. Make sure the HR Director, Kirk, and.... who is it again that oversees Kirk accounts?"

"Strickland."

"Yes, see if Strickland can make it."

My entire team as well as the human resources director Melinda Jones, my boss Kirk Baron, and his boss, the intimidating Mr. Strickland, all sat around the conference room table. There was an air of expectancy. Calling a meeting of this kind was rare enough, but bringing in such inexplicable players as Jones or Strickland was unheard of.

When everyone settled, I acknowledged the obvious. "This is an unusual meeting at best, and before I am done, it is going to get more so," Everyone's eyes were upon me. The silence was so pervasive the cars could be heard on the street fourteen floors below. Even Strickland's perpetually bored too-busy-to-care visage showed sparks of interest.

"I like this agency and I like this job. That is why I am here, to shine a little light on some things which I feel are harming our team," Okay, I thought to myself, enough preamble, time to get on with it, "Generally, addressing rumors is not done in such a forum. However, these rumors will directly effect whether the agency will be looking for a new team leader on this account or not.

Many of you are beginning to believe, because of planted whispers, that I may not have actually lost my memory. That there is something else nefarious going on behind my actions. Perhaps, as the rumor mill is spewing, I slept with someone to get this job and the memory loss is just an elaborate subterfuge to obscure the truth or give me a clean start. All of these rumors seem backed up by the fact that I won't see some sort of hypno-therapist to pull my memories back. What kind of person doesn't want their memory back? Perhaps I'm afraid the therapist will call me out as a fraud."

I paused to steel my nerves driving on, "Well the truth is, I did sleep with someone to get this job. I don't remember this, honestly, but the person has made no bones about reminding me. Constantly. The truth is, I did lose my memory, not all of it, just personal recollections.

The brain is a mysterious organ. I think while some of it is physical, I think some of it is psychological. You see, while I may be good at my job, I am not ... correction ... was not a very good person. I think the reason I am avoiding regaining my memories through the therapist, is I am scared of what I will find our about myself. What other harm have I done? What other under handed methods have I used to get ahead?"

I let the rhetorical question sit for a moment, "I don't know if you can understand this, or put yourself in my shoes, but try. Imagine you have nothing, nothing but your job. No past, no friends, no memory. Now imagine that you find out that you are a murderer? Or a thief? Or have slept your way into a job? It is devastating. So you ask yourself, do I hide from it? No one will probably know in addition to I am not that person any more. Or do you face up to it in front of everyone and take whatever lumps you may be handed. Well, obviously I chose the latter."

All eyes were upon me, I could detect some sympathy emanating from the boardroom, although some were still in a state of disbelief. It was time to wrap up my point; "I am going to leave for the day. I am hoping you will make a decision. Whether you believe me, wanting to keep me on, or whether you think this is all a big rouse and I should be let go. I will respect any decision."

I began walking out to leave them with their ethical dilemma. But I couldn't help but get in one more thing, "Oh, and the person I slept with, at least according to his repeated attempts to bed me again, was Kirk Baron." There was an actual gasp as I closed the boardroom door.

As I spoke, I put my stocking feet up on my bedroom desk at home. I don't know when this habit started, perhaps it was the odd feeling having my them encased in nylon for hours at a time, and somewhere along the line, I became a toe wiggler. I watched this feminine trait in wonder, as if it were happening to someone else. I guess, that in a manner of speaking, it was.

It had been quite a few days since that I had spoken to Alex in some detail, I caught him up on all of the events that had passed. He seemed to approve of my handling of the events at work. He was more than a little surprised at my confession of sleeping with Betty, but mused, "I guess it would make sense that you would fall for a woman. Breasts notwithstanding, you are a guy after all. I wonder how that fits in to biological theories that women are born lesbian?"

He was most intrigued about my conversations with Father McCormick, Arnie Williamson and later that night, Betty. "Dreams, huh?" He asked, "You know that fucked up dream I had about ... Lucy ... was extremely vivid as well. One of the reasons it screwed with me is it wouldn't recede like most dreams always do. It was as palpable three days later as it was when I was having it."

"And that seems normal to you?" I asked.

"No, of course not. Still do I have to tell you, of all people, that normal has been put on hold for awhile? Yet, you are right, I do find the dream link to be odd even by the standards of this brave new world of body exchanging." He paused. I could hear the explosions of video games in the background. I assumed he had his son over.

"Maybe Lucy is trapped in a dreamworld of some kind. She could be trying to communicate with those around you."

"Yes, well, if that is the case, she is going about it poorly. Every person she comes into contact with feels a lot worse about me than before. Like you for instance. There's a good chance that your dreams weren't selfinspire. You actually don't harbor any latent physical feelings toward Lucy. You may have been manipulated for whatever reason she is manipulating others. And if that's the case ... well, it would be great to have you back around."

Whatever game his son was playing, it was loud. The game now sounded as though rockets were flying close to the phone. Even over this noise, I could almost hear Alex considering what I have said.

With out alerting me of his jump in thought he said as much to me as to himself, "The hypno-therapist..."

"What of him?"

"They can guide you through the subconscious and dreams can't they? Maybe you can go digging around and find out what Lucy is up to. It is probably no coincidence that you can't remember dreams, when everyone else can remember them all too well."

"Well that will depend, of course, if I keep my job and my health plan." I laughed despite the seriousness of that situation.

"Yep, it will. I know you are afraid of them finding out the truth, but even if a therapist does, will he actually believe what he uncovers? Will any one else? I think he may attribute it to at worse, your being completely nuts. The one thing you seem to have forgotten is patient-doctor confidentiality. Even, on the off chance he believes the impossible, he can't tell a soul.... excuse me Craig -" Alex yelled for his son to turn down the volume on the video game, "Listen. I'm going to go. I didn't bring him all the way over here so he can sit in front of the video screen. However, with therapist I say go for it. Find out what's going on in that dream land of yours. Take care."

I had an unexpected surprise entering my office on Tuesday. Standing around my desk were twelve women, nearly the entire female population of the floor, all who applauded upon my entrance. Melinda Jones, the director of human resources approached me and shook my hand.

"That was a brave thing you did last night. It took real courage to admit what you did."

"So I take it then Melinda, that I kept my job?" I asked tentatively.

"Your circumstances are extremely unusual you understand. Off the record," she smiled, "as if anything in front of thirteen women could be, but off the record. We are working out a form of written reprimand which takes into account your reform and admission, with that, for all practical purposes, it was another person who committed that grievous moral infraction. It's not that we want to, but something has to be noted."

"Of course. Thank you. I am grateful for your reasonable approach."

Melinda flashed a wicked, wry smile, "But even more important than all of that, is that the incident caused these women who have been hounded by Kirk Baron to step up. Before, each one sat silently knowing it would be a case of 'he said, she said' against a major player. After you pointed the finger, they realized they were not the only one. As they say, there's power in numbers."

"Kirk harassed all of these women? Not that I'm surprised, but..."

"These, and from what they are telling me, probably a few more."

"So, what happens to Kirk? Does he get fired?"

"Oh, I don't think so, as much as we would like that to happen. He's slick and never really goes so far over the line that we can just say 'gotcha' hard enough to dismiss him. Truthfully, he brings the agency major income, making it that much tougher. What it will do is put Mr. Baron on notice. I would think his snake belly days are over."

"Well fantastic," I said. Then taking the opportunity to create more false honesty and goodwill I added, "I think I'm ready to face up to what I've done. I'm going to go to the therapist after all."

The women all clapped again, some hugged me, and others wept. Despite myself, my male brain laughed silently as I looked around and thought, what a fantastic "Oprah moment" this would have made.

In the dreamscape it was winter. Temperatureless snow covered the ground, and the sky was a seamless gray. Where the dreamscape was once a fantastically large living room, able to house the large field mimicking the one in which I died in a car accident so many weeks ago, it was now no living room at all. It was now simply a field spanning as far as the eye could see. However, unlike my previous visits here, it was brighter and clearer. The edges of the dreamscape, usually obscured by blurring, were in sharp focus. The light, which always seemed diffuse and uncentered (emanating from every where at once) now came from a single orb perched in the sky.

I held up my hands against the horizon, I was shocked to find that they were large and slightly hairy - the hands of Craig Morton. It had been so many weeks since I seen them, I just studied them with curiosity. Somehow, looking at them, I knew I was more in control. To test my theory, I stuck one of my hands in the snow and thought silently, "snow is cold". I immediately yanked it back out as my hands were consumed by the feeling of frost. Testing it again, I jutted my hand back in telling my self "it has no temperature". This time nothing. Therefore, I was right, entering the dreamworld this way, I did have a little control.

Lucy Maya walked toward me in the distance, her footsteps sunk deeply in the ankle high snow, yet leaving no footprints behind her. "It's an odd world, this dreamscape," she began without feeling the need of greeting, "it is a mixture of life and death, dreams and reality, the past and the future. I can always feel what is happening in your life, through waves of feelings, the texture of the dreamscape, although I am not always sure of the specifics."

She sat down in front of me, situating herself in the snow. Even knowing everything here was symbolic or completely unreal. It was still a strange sight to see a woman in a short skirted business suit lying so comfortably in drift of snow.

Lucy examined me carefully. "You're different. Yet not just because you are in the form of Craig. You seem more ... more ... solid."

"I'm different because I am completely lucid for a change. Somewhere out there," I pointed toward the sky to indicate the outside of my subconscious state, "there's a woman, my hypno-therapist, guiding me through this dream state. Even as I speak to you now, I am narrating this aloud in her office." I laughed with very little humor, "She will be quite surprised to find that my head contains the cusp between ... how did you put it ... dreams, death, the past future, life and the forever after. Well, something like that."

It was Lucy's turn to laugh dryly. "Yes, something like that. So Craig Morton, it appears you will emerge from this hypnosis, for the first time remembering all that has happened here."

I pushed some snow into a pile to make an arm rest, leaning backward comfortably cutting straight to the chase, "Tell me something Lucy," I asked, "why is it that you were helping me at all? You talked me out of suicide when I was feeling overwhelmed by the mind transfer, telling me I needed to live your life to complete some yet unfulfilled purpose. You warned me of an upcoming danger in my life. You even helped me with things like telling me when I was to have my period to keep me from going into too much trauma." I moved around on the home made snow lounge and settled in more. Removed of its coldness, snow was actually quite comfortable.

"Yet," I continued, "yet you move about in other people's dreams specifically to do me harm. Why is that Lucy?"

She laughed bitterly, "Why indeed. Do the math you low wattage moron. You stole my life. I am stuck on the plane of the dead, wandering eternally with the souls of the misguided and the partially damned, while you whoop it up in my body. I can't begin to tell you what amounts of hate I harbor for you."

"I wouldn't call what I've been doing 'whooping it up'. But, why the deception then? Why pretend to be on my side at all?"

Again, the bitter laugh, "Your mind is tiny even by the standards of the living," she spat this out as if it were a curse, "I don't care about you, but I need for you to stay alive. What you don't understand is that there are infinite mysteries out here. Time out here is fluid not relevant, but to simplify it for you, in what you call a day, I learn four hundred lifetimes worth of knowledge having only scratched the surface. I need for you to stay alive because I may just learn the secret to regaining my life, my body back."

"But in the mean time you are going to torture me and my friends, just enough to pay me back for accidentally falling into your shell, but not enough to push me over the edge? That's not fair. In fact, it's insane."

"Fair? Oh how very amusing. I think you've walked in my shoes long enough to know that I never cared a thing about fair. Fair will not get you what you need. Fair will get a woman stepped on."

"Possibly, but the game is up. You've already noted that in this hypnotic guided state, I am going to remember this whole dream for once - not only this, but all the times I've been here. "

"The game is far from up. I am more powerful than you think. Though I will say, it's going to make it so much nicer for me not to have to pretend not to despise you any more."

I stood up, and despite myself, brushed off the snow, "I think we've said enough for now." For no particular reason, for direction was meaningless as time was here, I looked toward the sky to contact my link with the conscious world, "Dr. Felder! Dr. Felder! Take me out of here!"

My eyes opened to find myself sitting in Dr. Felder's wood paneled office. It felt as though I had been on the dreamscape for mere moments, but the clock on the wall had gone far over an hour and a half. My session was up over thirty minutes ago, yet Dr. Felder let me go on.

I quickly saw why. Dr. Felder could barely contain her shocked excitement. I felt her examining me visually, trying to see through me as she turned over in her mind what had transpired through my hypnotic induced narrative. I was quite certain, in her mind, that she was already writing her prize winning Psychiatric Journal article on the most unusual, vivid case of dream induced split personality ever seen.

"What do you think?" I asked.

She composed herself, re-assuming her professional manner, "It is going to take more than a single session for me to determine what is going on in your head, of course. That was like no other narrative I have ever heard, quite frankly - quite detailed, almost logically, almost real. In any case, it seemed more real than a dream to you. Now whether it is a manifestation of something that occurred during the coma. The head trauma of the accident or something else. It is impossible to say. But make no mistake, there is definitely a distinct and combative, separate, personality in your subconscious on some level."

"But, you would agree with me that while I may or may not have a personality disorder, I am definitely not being hounded in a supernatural manner?"

She stopped and looked at me carefully, "No," she said slowly, "I would not say that there is anything supernatural going on. Again, what is happening, however, will take some time to discern."

After witnessing what she had, my question had obviously alarmed her. I am quite certain she felt my sanity hung by a thread and wondered how I functioned at all.

"I ask this because there are some people, specifically a Catholic priest, that believes my loss of memory and some ... alterations in my personality since coming out of the coma. He believes it may be a sign of some sort of supernatural shenanigans," I pulled Father McCormick's card from my purse, "I know this is unusual, but if you could call this man now, and explain that this has everything to do with the mind, I would appreciate it. He won't believe it coming from me and will need to hear it from a professional who has seen me. Despite that, he is, by the way, a trained therapist as well, so feel free to be as technical and detailed as you want."

I confirmed my next appointment, and got up to leave. She resisted my request to make the call, it was not what therapists do she explained, yet I insisted at some length before she finally gave in. She would call the clergy, I assumed, this would get him off of my back. Whether or not the psychological explanation would appease Arnie Williamson remained to be seen. I only half cared about that right now, I had much larger problems to contend with: a woman on the dreamscape of the dead trying to destroy my life.

"Jesus Christ," Alex said. He settled on my couch as we both sipped the home made beers he had brought from home. It was good to finally see him after our weeks apart.

"Yes, Jesus Christ indeed. That was one hell of a session. I think my doctor crapped herself. I don't think she was sure what the hell was going on."

"Well, we know what is going on, which is good. Still it looks like there's a war on your hands with someone just on the other side of life. Not a battle I want to fight."

"However, you are fighting it. I would think, for the huge capacity for malice that Lucy holds that everyone in my life should prepare for that battle. She seems to have the ability to visit dreams at will."

"What about the girl and her mother? What are you going to do about them?"

"Well, I was considering telling them the truth. A version of the truth, in any case. I'm just not sure how to go about it and how much to let on. Unlike you, there are no secret memories to prove who I am."

"And even then, there were times I would slide backward and doubt you. Even with all the evidence laid out in front of me."

"Exactly," I said, "I am honestly stumped on this one. But with Lucy gearing up to do heaven knows what, I can't in good conscious leave them to be victims of her wrath."

"Don't take this the wrong way, because I love you bro' ... but, man it sucks to be you." He smiled as he said it meaning for it to lighten my load. I could see, he too, was glad to be back around, even if the situation could turn dire.

"Yes, yes it does." And despite myself, I smiled as well.

"But if you want my opinion, if you have to do it, I say go for the whole truth. The whole thing is so absolutely crazy that there are no degrees really. They're either going to be on board or out."

"You're probably right." I acknowledged.

"Betty," I explained, "I know I caught you off guard with my call, and am making a big to-do about my 'confession', but you'll understand soon enough why." I was sipping the second of Alex's home made beers that I had brought over. I was nervous. I called earlier to explain I had something big to tell my daughter and mother neighbors. I wanted to speak to Betty alone first. Janet joined Alex in my apartment, while both waited for me to call them over.

"When they come back, I'm about to tell you a tale," I continued, "so large and so fantastic that you will question my very sanity. Truthfully, I don't know how you or Janet are going to believe a word I will say. But ... I have to be truthful, because it's going to get complex very soon." I sighed and braced myself for the first of the two confessions of the night, "I have to be truthful with you especially, because I think I am falling for you Betty. I want to be with you, spend time with you, and be in love with you. I am not so sure you will want me after this."

Before she could say a word, I flipped open my cell phone calling Alex, bringing Janet over from my apartment. The four of us sat around uncomfortably in anticipation. I chose their place because I wanted to talk to the women in an environment in which they were comfortable. I also figured it was much easier psychologically for them to get up and leave my apartment, than it would be to ask me to leave theirs. I wanted them to hear this all the way out.

Once settled, I launched right into it. Raising an open palm in Alex's direction I said, "This ... despite everything you may have understood to the contrary ... this man is actually my brother."

Not waiting for a reaction, and with Alex adding detail and confirmation, I told the story of my existence. I started immediately before the accident, continuing through to this very moment. I explained everything slowly, carefully and loaded with detail. Betty and her daughter's moods shifted from irritation, to dismay, to anger, to genuine concern for my mental state as the tale unwound. I could see Betty was coming to the end of her patience. However, as I bore into the details of the last dreamscape they both became intrigued.

Having sat with her arms crossed the entire time, like a someone stuck in a film that they find offensive and can not wait to be over, Betty's demeanor changed quickly to that of puzzlement. Janet too, shifted excitedly in her chair.

"Wait a moment," Janet said, seeming to beat her mother to the punch, "describe that dream place again."

Now that I could remember all of my visits to the dreamscape, I laid out the terrain in exquisite detail, noting everything down to its unusual change of seasons.

"I've dreamed that." Janet said. "I mean, I've had dreams where you come to me and ... do things." She left it unsaid, but chagrin still colored her smile. "All of the dreams were super vivid - I can still remember most - and they took place on this dreamscape you talk about. Just like you described. Even the change of seasons thing. There's no way you could know that."

Not knowing how it worked, I had always assumed Lucy invaded their dreams. I had no idea everything took place on the same dreamscape.

Betty looked her daughter, her face clouding with fear and wonderment as she, recalling her own dreams began to allow herself to believe the impossible. Janet, with her much younger, more flexible mind and predisposition to want to believe, was already there.

"So what do we do Lucy, about the other Lucy I mean?" The teen asked with anxiety tinged excitement. Her eyes were wide as if trying to see through my shell to my essence.

"I'm not sure. Although she can make our dream life hell, I am assuming, I don't think Lucy can hurt us, at least not yet."

I looked to Betty on the couch. She said nothing. Her eyes were hollow with shock.

I looked at the calendar on the bedroom desk realizing that I neglected to tear it off for the new month. As I removed the page, I marveled at how quickly time marches, whether you want it to or not. It had been nearly four months since I had first come out of the coma in the body of Lucy, and about half that time since I had explained to Betty and Janet who I really was.

After what we all came to call "the Revelation". They both naturally treated me much differently. Janet, who was still, obsessed enough with her breasts. She was still padding them that she looked to all the world like a 1950's sweating bursting pin up girl. She also assumed more of a guiding role in my development. Understanding that all things female were actually new to me, not just lost in memory, she took great time in teaching me the ins and outs of becoming comfortable with my body. The admiration she once held for me as a woman, who managed to understand the ways of success and sexuality, was gone, however. We both knew I was no longer that person. Our friendship was in new formative territory.

Betty, after a good amount of time passed, was able to accept who I was, but still had serious reservations. We still had feelings for each other, but the nature of those feelings had changed, and we were very tentatively moving forward. We slept together regularly, more out of lust than emotions, but many of my habits and my much of male psychological framework were tough on her.

As a lesbian, it wasn't just the body of a woman Betty was attracted to. It was the essence of and personality women had as well. I, paradoxically was becoming far more female even as I became more male. Living in this body, playing the role of Lucy naturally made me far more feminine. With Janet and Betty knowing my secret, I was able to not pretend around them to such a great degree and exhibited more "Craig" traits than they had seen before.

Even with all of the new obstacles, no less formidable than the obstacles of old, the three of us, with Alex coming by often to make four, were a nice little hybrid family of sorts.

Work too, was going well. I was still plugging away on the small car account but was getting notice throughout the agency. After my "coming clean" meeting, my work was being watched very carefully. I was doing it as expertly as someone, who was once Craig Morton, one of the youngest brightest ad execs around. On top of this, two of the larger clients, Toyota and Ford were grumbling about the staleness of the agency's work. There was talk that I may be placed on one of those major accounts to take it in a new direction to keep the car manufacturers from pulling their accounts.

Kirk Baron was still a sleaze, but far less overtly. He had, as the saying goes, "brass balls", never really stopped his harassment once the original furor of my pointing the finger died down. He was subtle enough that a simple threat of exposure, or ignoring him completely, made him very manageable. I had known these Kirks all of my life, it would take a major burning for him to change his ways.

Best of all, the Lucy which occupied the dreamscape seems to have, for reasons I do not know, disappeared completely. Since the day I sat down in Janet and Betty's living room and confessed, she had not made a single peep in our dreams. Nor could I locate her during my hypnotic induced tips to the dreamscape. Perhaps she tired of it all, moving on.

Tonight I was relaxing at my dining room table, eating crackers and reading an advertising trade paper. Smiling. Smiling was something I did a lot more of these days. I was thinking about the pasta I smelled in the hallway coming from beneath Betty's door, knowing that as soon as Janet came to get me, I would soon be eating it. This may not have been the life I was handed, but I was learning to make the best of it.

There was the light rap of knuckles against my door. Dinner time, undoubtedly. I put on my slippers and grabbed my keys so I wouldn't lock myself out of the apartment.

"Let me guess, it's lasagna." I said as I swung the door open.

However, it was not the face of Janet, which greeted me, but the grim determined visage of Arnie Williamson. He was holding something. Looking down at his hand, I noticed the gun at the same moment it fired.

"Oh, you didn't think I was going to let you live in your little happy ever after land in my body did you?" It was Lucy. She stood before me on the plains of the dreamscape, coiled with energy and malice. Without needing to look, I could feel from the bulk of my body that, I had appeared on the dreamscape as Craig again.

I looked behind me seeing another Lucy, lying wounded, near dead, with a bullet hole cleanly in the chest. Blood gushed from the open wound, but the body still emanated the warmth of life. The same feeling I detected emanating from Lucy's body the first time I encountered it on the dreamscape during the visit which changed my life.

"No, I wasn't finished with you at all," Lucy continued hissing, "While you and your little friends thought that I had gone away, I had done nothing of the kind. I have been busy entertaining a certain bus driver on our lovely dreamscape. I was convincing him further that you are a black mark against the will of God and could no longer live. We came to, what you could call, an understanding."

Lucy leaned to one side so she could see her duplicate lying on the grass behind me. "Oh, but it appears it is even better than I thought. Step aside usurper. It's time for me to reclaim what is mine."

"What do you mean? I'm not doing anything until you tell me what you mean."

Her face contorted into a grimace like smile, "I took a gamble. I told him to shoot you in the chest opposite your heart. Maybe you would fall far enough from life for this to happen. It did, you are slipping away from life, your spirit has left my body. Yet as you can feel from the warmth coming from it, the body is not going to die after all. It is only waiting for a soul to reclaim it."

"Then why don't you just take it?" I asked. If it were this simple, she would have done it.

"Don't be so dense. You're dead now, think ... the answer is right there for you."

Lucy was right. I was able to access the knowledge of the after life as easily as pulling fruit from a tree. It seemed to hang in the air of the dreamscape.

I answered my own question, "It's because you can't just shove me aside to get to your old body. I am as powerful as you. More so in fact because of my proximity to life. It would take two or more of you to move me. In fact, I could destroy you completely if I wanted to."

The clouds of the dreamscape whizzed by crazily overhead like a sped up film of a weather system. The eternally large field was green and lush, full of life.

"Yes, yes you could. However, you won't. Because you already know while you could easily toss me aside, retaking my form, it would cost you. Dearly. The first time it was an accident, so you won't be punished, but this time - "

I understood with complete clarity where she was going with this. Again I finished for her, "I would be consciously committing a great crime against the balance of the Universe. I would be the dead possessing a live body."

The thought made me involuntarily think of Father McCormick, "and upon my death in the body of Lucy, I would be judged and subjected to eternal tortures."

"Keep in mind, in addition to this, I would torture you and your friends in every sleeping moment, day after day, year after year. It would only be a warm up for what would be in store for you later."

She was taking great joy in this, "Now reach out with your mind, feel how horrible those tortures would be, see how long eternity really is."

The malevolence glowed from her like a candle. My mind reached out, glimpsing the terror and pain for less than a second. A second that was nearly enough ripped my soul apart with suffering. Eternity like that would be impossible.

"Nevertheless, don't let me just threaten you. You pretend to be a moral man - do you really have a right to take away my life from me? The life that was given to me, not to you. What makes it any different than murder? You, in good conscience, cannot damn me to eternal wandering because you don't like a few choices I've made in my life. Those are and were my choices. I'm not a serial killer or someone who maims. No, I'm just someone you don't like. Now step aside!"

She was right. It wasn't my life to live. I had grown accustomed to being Lucy in some ways, fallen in love, taken on Janet as a part daughter, but that was never intended for me. None of it was. I was meant to die in a car accident months ago.

I stepped aside, while a great white tunnel formed in the sky, beckoning me to enter. Lucy, seeing it, cackled like a witch knowing she won.

"If you don't want to go into the light, stay in the dreamscape for awhile Craig. I've got big plans. I want you to feel it when I deflower that sexy sixteen-year-old with that strap-on I keep in my drawer. Maybe I'll do it in front of her mom. I am most certainly going to bed Alex. Perhaps I will take the strap-on to him as well."

I was flustered and angry, "I think you're going to find a different world waiting for you. I've made some changes."

"Nothing I can't fix."

Lucy strode confidently toward the shell of Lucy and reached down slowly, milking it out to torture me. I could feel the warmth of the body's life force begin to merge with her.

I couldn't stand it.

With a single swing of my arm I struck Lucy, driving her away from her former body. I grabbed her by her neck holding it firmly.

"I am going to rip your soul apart and scatter you about the afterlife. No more haunting! No more dreamscape! You will be finished."

"And you will be the worst kind of murderer in the Universe. One who destroys an innocent soul denying it it's guaranteed after life. Eternal tortured won't begin to describe what will happen to you."

She was smiling. She knew no one walked willingly into damnation having tasted its horror. Nevertheless, damned or not, I could not release something like her back into the world to harm my brother and those I have grown close to. I squeezed her windpipe tightly. She exploded into a flash of light! I could feel her soul wash through me as it dispersed into nothingness, much as Arnie Williamson felt it pass through him as he held her after the accident.

Realizing what I had done, I wept hot tears of shame and dread as I touched the shell of Lucy so it could return to life.

"God forgive me."

For the second time in my life, I emerged from the realm of the dead in a body, which was not mine. I was bandaged and hooked up to machines. I was not sure how much time had passed, but it had to have been a decent amount, because I had been allowed visitors. I looked around at the tear stained faces above me - Alex, Janet and Betty. I could see they were certain they had lost me.

They glanced down at me expectantly, quizzically, and it took me a moment to realize, even without being privy to the turbulent events of the dreamscape, they could not be sure who was going to come out of my unconscious state.

"Craig's still driving," I croaked out cryptically. "How long ...?"

"Fifteen hours. You lost a lot of blood, but you'll be fine," Betty informed me.

"Arnie?" I asked.

"Arrested." Alex said simply.

I fell back into unconsciousness.

I found him behind his extremely modest home. A visor protected his face from the sun as he used gloved hands to pull weeds in his back yard.

"I never expected to see you again. Especially after what happened. You're looking well, how's the arm?" His greeting was polite, but cool.

"It's pained, but it works. Gun shot wounds aren't exactly the best thing for a girl."

"No I guess they are not." He said this with sadness, almost resentment. I understandably, was not his favorite person. Nevertheless, I was betting on his infinite capacity for forgiveness. "So what can I do for you?" he asked.

"We started off on the wrong foot. I lied to you ... about everything. I've done something grievous. More grievous than you can imagine. You're the only one who may be able to help me," I looked him straight in the eye, "I need to know if I can save my soul ..."

Father McCormick's eyebrow raised with concerned interest.

He looked at the face of his watch glowing dimly in the darkness: quarter to eleven.

The snoring told Arnie Williamson the man who slept above him was finally asleep. The former bus driver moved quietly off his bunk anxiously trying not to awaken his cellmate. Arnie had learned quickly, the man _ with whom _ he was destined to spend the next few years within this tiny cement box, was randomly, and explosively violent. Waking this man from his peaceful and only escape from the harsh cold world of incarceration was a risky proposition at best.

To make less noise, Arnie crawled to the toilet, which sat open in the middle of the cell. It was designed, like all things in prison, for minimum privacy and maximum degradation. Dropping his pants, he pulled at the string, which had been protruding from his rectum two days. He yanked out the condom, encasing the last of the contents, which he had so carefully gathered over the past couple of years. Washing the condom in the toilet, he tore it open.

Reaching into a razor thin slit in his mattress he grabbed the rest of the items he had collected for so long. Looking up to make sure his cell mate was still asleep, he placed the items on the floor next to his newest acquisition. Lastly, and most carefully, he placed the most valuable piece of the puzzle on the ground beside them, Lucy Maya's hair. Over the wails of incarcerated anguish, and the whimpers of brutally forced sex echoing through the building, Williamson began to chant.

He knew very well if this worked, even if it didn't, he was probably dooming himself to hell. He had most likely done so already anyway. No matter. Arnie had abandoned God, as God had abandoned Arnie. No rightful god would show him an abomination against the Universe (that thing occupying the body of a woman for its own evil purpose) and punish him when he went to set it right. Punish him by placing a godfearing man in prison to spend years ... years ... being brutalized by animals with unthinkable appetites.

The woman on the dreamscape, Lucy, the one who explained to Arnie how he must shoot and destroying the invader of her body, was wise. She told Arnie if he were to fail, she would no longer be visiting him in his dreams. Then her body's interloper had destroyed her. She left him with the knowledge of how to use the dark arts to stop the destruction of her soul, to make her whole again.

Many of the items were extremely difficult to get, most were not allowed in prison. However, Arnie was determined regardless of the price of getting caught. Now all of his effort was going to pay off.

Arnie was now surrounded by the symbols of religions he didn't understand or even knew existed. He now chanted quietly, fervently, while arranging the pieces as he had been shown.

Sweat began to form on his brow as he wondered if he was getting it right, it had been so long ago. The memory of that dream was hazy. He was supposed to do it for more than half an hour, but he knew he would have that much time. Either his cellmate, or a guard doing his rounds, would catch him before that surely. He just hoped it would be enough to bring the woman on the dreamscape back. Arnie was compelled to right the cosmic wrong. This was his best and last chance.

He was getting closer; he could somehow feel it. However, above him, he heard the hard steel springs of the bunk howl in protest as his cellmate rolled onto his side. Arnie closed his eyes and began chanting faster.

With an awakening, hoarse, groan, the voice rang from the top bunk heavy with menace, "If you woke me up because you're down there playing jacks, I am going to seriously fuck you up."

Arnie never stopped chanting. He knew his cell mate would climb down and punish him for this ... but if he could get a few more minutes ...

"All right then, bus driver. I'm going to make you so very sorry...."

Quarter to eleven.

Father McCormick knelt beside his hard wooden bed, saying his prayers before sleep. As little as three years ago, he laughed at himself for this habit, even as he continued to repeat it. Here was a sixty-year-old man of God, who guided others through the complexity of their beliefs. Here he was still doing something as simple as kneeling like a child, quoting the nursery rhyme recitation, "And now I lay me down to sleep, I pray to God my soul to keep, for if I die before I wake, I pray to God my soul to take."

Nevertheless, this prayer no longer held the amusing nostalgia it once did for the priest. Nor was it any longer simply a routine borne of 54 years of daily habit. The words may not have changed, but now Father McCormick prayed earnestly that his soul would be taken by God and placed where it belonged. Since, as he had learned, souls did not always end up in the places they should.

The priest took off his slippers, pulling himself up to bed and underneath his covers. The labor of working in his garden washed over him quickly. He felt sleep ease him into a semi-conscious lull. A few moments later, he was sleeping - his mind allowed to roam freely, unfettered by the constraints of waking logic.

The dreaming priest found himself floating above a large, grassy landscape. Upon closer examination, he noted it was a field, impossibly large, perhaps infinite. Across it an invisible force, unseen but felt by the priest nevertheless, spread. It spread slowly and methodically, like an oil slick on an infinitely large pool of water.

Father McCormick knew he was not brought to this location in his dream by accident. There was something else here with him. There was something besides the eternally spreading force. It was guiding him. Unlike the force below, the guiding hand was warm and benevolent, and had something it wanted him to see.

The clergy watched the grassy plane below more carefully, feeling the spread of the force below. There was a change as mysteriously as it was spreading apart. It stopped. He knew instinctively that this was wrong. He somehow knew this expanding substance was to do so until eternity itself lie between each of its invisible pieces. Now it had defiantly halted in its tracks.

The warm powerful guiding hand directed the father's mind toward the force. He noted it was no longer halted, but now moving in on itself, re-constituting. Father McCormick felt a blunt, mute, horror. He did not fully understand what was happening, but he could feel its perversion, he could feel its violation.

As the clergy delved his mind deeper to feel the force begin to recombine, he feared for what it would become once the force was whole. He knew with certainty it would be like a vase, which was broken and scattered about in the filth. Once back together, it would be cracked, imperfect, with dirt lodged in its crevices. Dirt it picked up from places man did not dare to imagine.

This was all the guiding warmness wanted Father McCormick to see. He felt the benevolence move him from this place, this dreamscape, pushing him gently into the random chaos that was his sleeping, dreaming, unconscious. However, it did so with a simple idea, which it left planted in his mind: "Remember."

The old woman pulled her faded, tattered, shawl tightly around her head and neck, it now hid her graying jet black hair completely. Her weather beaten hands moved quickly in perplexing patterns over the cards laid on the table. Each wave of her hands swept broadly over the cards then over the carefully laid out, but incongruous, collection of various Eastern religious symbols. As if on cue, a cold breeze blew underneath the side flap of the tent. The old woman took this as a sign to moan with otherworldly mystery.

"The spirits speak to me, more strongly than ever," the woman began, speaking in a strangely exotic style, "and they have much to say to you. An evil force is coming for you..."

Lucy Maya stood up and threw her five dollars on the table. She had seen enough. She turned to leave, but turned back. Not knowing why, Lucy decided to explain to the woman - bogusly wrapped in the trappings of a gypsy life style the woman obviously knew nothing about - where exactly she went wrong.

"I have been blessed with a really good ear for accents," Lucy offered, "And it helps that I live in Los Angeles, where I meet people from all over the globe. Albania may sound like the mysterious home of gypsies to you, but you are never going to be able to keep telling people that's your home with an accent so obviously Central American. Either go with the Central American supernatural angle, Santeria maybe, or learn what native Albanians actually sound like."

Lucy pulled on her coat, bracing for the Washington DC weather outside, continuing to dispassionately point out the false fortuneteller's missteps. The old woman looked up at her silently, but with bitter interest as Lucy spoke, "And - you can't talk to the dead in a fully conscious state. As you can imagine, being dead is by definition having unfinished business. Believe me, if the dead found someone they could talk to while that person was awake and aware, every soul in the afterlife would be constantly trying to get that person to do things. In fact, so many voices would be chatting to you at the same time; it would surely drive you mad. To be more believable, try faking a trance. Trances and dreams are more selective means for communicating with the afterlife."

The woman had obviously heard all she wanted to, but Lucy didn't care. She went on, "These are common mistakes. Although I think you are preying on innocents, I don't begrudge you making a living. If fools want to part with their money, so be it." Lucy shrugged, "But be careful. Once in a blue moon you're going to come across someone who has actually walked the plane of the afterlife, finding themselves here on earth. They may be looking to make actual contact with the dead. Furthermore they'll spot you as a fake as quickly as I did. Quicker maybe." Lucy laughed grimly, "But these people who have been in the after life for a while have a tendency to become a little dark. Many of them will not be as kind to you as I."

Lucy Maya turned on her heels, bending over to squeeze through the tent's flap opening, stepping into the cold nighttime air. From the inside the tent she heard the old woman called her crazy.

Lucy checked her watch: ten forty-five. Damn, she thought. She couldn't still make it to Richmond to check on a fortune teller working out of an old "haunted house" down there. She had heard very good things about this one, but she had heard very good things about many, like the one she just left.

Lucy's investigations over the past two years had lead her to literally hundreds of soothsayers, fortune tellers, psychic guides, tarot card readers, even people who had near death experiences having had "seen the white tunnel". This does not even count her extensive journey through the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. But this two-year quest so far had reaped very little, except how to tell within a minute or so, when she was dealing with fakes. Moreover so far, she was always dealing with fakes.

Granted, many of them got their good reputations because they were supremely gifted con artists with scams bordering on the verge of art. However, Lucy was in a unique position to weed the pretenders out. She was in the exclusive club of people who had actually walked on the plane of the dead not just once, returning with a full memory of what is beyond life itself. In addition to, more crazily, that was the least of what made Lucy Maya unique. Lucy, put in the most simple terms possible, was Craig Morton in possession of Lucy Maya's body; at the small price of his own soul.

Several years ago Craig Morton's roadster spun out of control and into the path of a bus. His essence wandered off course and occupied the body of the car's passenger, Lucy Maya, while she was in a coma. After awakening in the body of Lucy, taking months to accept this was his fate, he began to form a life.

But no situation that otherworldly was ever going to be clear-cut. As Lucy Maya's already ambiguous soul (trapped in between life and death) spent time amongst the corrupted of the dead, it became dark and misshapen.

Bitter that she was unable to occupy the body that belonged to her, the dark spirit of Lucy manipulated circumstances, putting Craig at a crossroads. Continuing to live as Lucy, sentencing yourself to certain eternal torture once the occupied body perishes, or, give it back to the dark soul of its rightful owner - releasing that soul onto innocents.

Even knowing the consequences, Craig could not let what Lucy had become come back into this world. With great reservation and misgivings, he chose to continue life as Lucy now, facing eternal tortures later.

Furthermore now, Craig Morton thought of himself as Lucy ... at least a version of her, as a "she". In addition to these days she had a single mission: searching for the one small clue which could hopefully save her soul.

As was her way, Janet McPherson woke up giving herself just enough time to get ready. She rose from her bed, wiping the sleep from her eyes, looking at herself in the mirror. Even by her own insecure standards she was forced to admit she was an attractive girl. She was long legged and lean, no longer the coltish sixteen-year-old she was two and a half years ago. Left to its natural shape, Janet's body could be described as athletic, like a tennis player's. However, Janet's body had not been left to its own shape for quite some time. Thinking about this, unconsciously she cupped her small breasts, which were in the rare position of not being buried under layers high tech padding.

A few years back, Janet had been convinced by "LM" - what they all called the former occupant of Lucy Maya's body to avoid confusion - that every successful woman needed to manipulate her situation through sexuality. LM pointed to herself, an obvious up and comer, attributing it all to her ability to make those around her want her.

LM proudly discussed her implants, convincing Janet she too should be more buxom. Janet, whose only other role model was her mother, a woman not nearly as glamorous or charismatic as LM, completely absorbed this philosophy.

Now that she was two years older and less impressionable, combined with discovering how morally ambiguous LM actually was, she wasn't so sure hers was the path to follow.

Janet paused again to look at her body in the mirror, wondering how it would be to look as she did in her natural state? To not have men staring at her chest constantly, to not have women hate her, to not have so many refuse to take her seriously simply because of the size of her breasts? Breasts that, ironically, weren't even hers.

She wasn't sure that's what she wanted either. Janet was also very attuned to the power of these mounds which, when inserted, protruded so prominently from her clothing.

Men bought her dinner because of them. She got into clubs, often ahead of VIPs, despite huge lines in addition to her being under age, because of them. Because of them, she could always convince someone to take care of a little dirty task that she didn't feel up to. They were in many ways, a key.

"Besides", she explained to Lucy some months ago, "it is easier to explain breasts becoming larger as you're growing up. Especially from sixteen to eighteen. However, once you become known as bosomy, it is difficult to go the other way." Janet had come to terms with the idea, somewhat ambivalently, that she would be getting implants at some point. As her situation was now, she could not let boys see her naked, or even take a shower at a gym.

Janet shook herself from her daydream scolding herself for time-consuming self-reflection. Realizing she was close to running late, dashed for the shower. Lucy was a patient woman, However, no one liked being stranded at the airport.

Lucy stepped onto the curbside waiting area of Los Angeles International Airport, better known by the two logical, but last inexplicable, letters "LAX". Janet (as much neighbor as she was informally adopted daughter) waited in the loading zone driving Lucy's Toyota.

Smiling, Lucy threw the bags in the trunk and greeted Janet with a European style peck on the right cheek. As the greeting was exchanged, Lucy felt one of Janet's highly padded breasts rub up against her arm. It was inevitable, as it would be very difficult to control breasts that large if they were real and she could feel how far they extended, no less if two of the cup sizes were made up of artificial material, as they were in Janet's case.

Lucy quickly looked the young lady over carefully. She wore a short skirt, extremely high platform clogs, the aforementioned visually aided breasts leaping out of the low cut sweater in a "look at me fashion". Try as she may, Lucy was unable to undo the philosophy of LM, especially since Lucy, wearing the clothes LM picked out, did not dress much differently. It was impossible to explain the difference between it being okay for a woman and not a teen girl, particularly when that teen knows Lucy was never a teen girl herself.

"How was DC?" Janet asked, bringing Lucy out of her distraction.

"Same as Portland. Same as Toronto. Same as Phoenix. I talked to a gaggle of fakes. Well, I guess it was not quite like Phoenix, because Washington was too cold for all the open toed shoes I packed," Lucy stuck her arm into the warm Winter sun, "It's good to be back in LA."

"Well Mom will be glad to see you." From her peripheral vision, Janet watched for a reaction. She had known her mother and Lucy were good friends, but she was beginning to believe there was more to it. As she watched the two women interact, often in ways which spoke of secrets underneath the surface, Janet began remembering the innuendoes her father made about her mother's orientation before the divorce.

Lucy nodded silently, like Janet, was now thinking about the complexity of the relationship she had with Betty. LM, a woman who used her beauty to morally ambiguous ends, had manipulated Betty's closeted gayness to achieve a sexual relationship with her neighbor. Lucy suspected the entire relationship with Betty was fabricated by LM to position herself to bed the girl Janet. Lucy never gave LM the chance to prove her suspicions.

The complexity of the interaction between Lucy and Betty began at the core. Because try as she may, Lucy was in fact not a woman. Twenty-five years of conditioning did not change in the span of a few years. Furthermore, although it would never be said aloud, especially after discovering what LM's true nature was, Lucy could feel that Betty preferred the former occupant of her body. At least her femaleness. That was the woman she fell in love with, not this man walking around in her shoes.

For her part, Lucy enjoyed Betty's company. Betty was able to pleasure Lucy sexually, she enjoyed the idea of her, Betty and Janet as a little family. However, she often battled with the idea of was she in love, or was she in a strong bond with the first person to give her an orgasm. And if that were true, then what next? For now, despite its complexity, she was not willing to rock the boat.

Alex Morton spoke aloud although the room was empty. After researching for a block of three hours, he just needed to hear a voice, even if that voice was his, "Alex, my man, I'm beginning to think the Ancient Placenaxens are bullshit."

In the loosest sense of the word, Alex Morton could be called a hobbyist. He spent hours each week pouring over photocopies, and more rarely like tonight, the actual texts detailing religions long forgotten. Although unlike a hobbyist, who took on an activity to pass the hours away, Alex's aims carried far more gravity.

However tonight, like most nights before it, was a dead end. Alex had been reading these texts for two years now, nevertheless it took far less time than that for him to realize that despite what novels and movies portrayed, most of the "forgotten" religions were done so for a reason. Half were usually the poorly thought out rantings of cowering ancients trying to explain the mysteries of their world - why it rained, or why the sun rose each morning.

The other half of the texts Alex ran across were plainly frauds; written by men at the Dawn of Exploration creating entire cultures and religions that didn't exist. These men were simply storytellers trying to gain celebrity status in their homelands for their journeys. They were safe in the knowledge that most men in the days of treacherous travels and inaccurate maps would never be able to retrace the steps to these fictional lands.

Yes, Alex learned a short time ago that it was going to take great luck to be able to unlock what he needed to find the most: how to save his brother Lucy from the eternal tortures of the afterlife. On the contrary this didn't slow him down from trying. The inexplicable did occur, his brother was now a woman for god's sake, and people did come back from the dead. He just needed to find that one book, that one scribbling, of someone who had been there that could tell him what he needed.

Alex placed his feet up on his desk. In the background the muffled sound of laser fire from his son Joshua's video game leaked quietly into the room. Alex would soon go out there, throwing the football with his son, getting him away from the television and gaming consoles for awhile.

Alex needed the relief, more importantly, he needed to spend time with his boy. Alex was not going to suffer the bitter irony of losing one important person in his life while trying to save the other.

A young man matched Betty McPherson's speed running beside her for a moment, smiling. Betty smiled back politely, but not overtly so. The young man understanding her signals picked up speed and moved up the path. He knew there were plenty of women along this route who would enjoy running beside him, he didn't need to keep uninvited company with a woman who did not.

Betty watched him accelerate with a bit of amusement. Even the exercise paths in this city was fair territory in the never ending game of pick-up. She wondered what he would think if he knew that she was gay. Knowing most men, he would be even that much more excited. Being so sought after by men was a relatively new phenomenon for Betty.

While she had never been unattractive, over the past couple of years Betty had evolved, through much effort and exercise, into what running-boy would call a "hottie". All of this was borne from her, often contentious, relationship with Lucy.

After leaving her last husband, along with coming to terms with her sexuality, Betty was happy being attractive in a very simple manner. She had never been one for makeup, nor as long as she wasn't overweight, did she care too much about her figure.

Makeup, high heels, tight clothing were all things that she dispensed with as well. The few tentative relationships she struck up in the lesbian community seemed to overwhelmingly affirm that these women did not seem to care if she adhered to these standards or not. Even the women who were obviously very conscious about their beauty and style were able to look past these trappings, which men like her exhusband seemed to obsess on these points.

Although as wonderful as she tried to be, Lucy was not a woman. In very small ways, a comment here and there (even though they were almost always positive) let Betty know that Lucy liked the things the way men did. A revealing top, push up bra with heels, was far more likely to lead to impassioned sex, than sweats and slippers.

On the occasions they went out, Betty took the time to put on makeup was always met more enthusiastically than when she did not. She was almost certain Lucy wasn't even aware she was doing this. Lucy was still not fully aware how she came across to others or projected herself.

Lucy was equally not aware of the effect she had on men and women alike. At least Betty hoped not. Her obvious beauty and the ability to relate to them completely on their wavelength intrigued men. These weren't the conversations of a woman who had just grown up with brothers, or liked sports, or was a tomboy at heart, it was like (they gushed endlessly) she could be one of them.

Women too, found themselves feeling the attraction as they sensed a certain compelling essence emanating from this attractive woman in ways that they could not quite put their finger on. Many women had fantasies about being with other women, but they were just that, fantasies.

However with Lucy it felt very palpable and realistic; it was as strong as the genetically hard-wired attraction they had for men. There was something confidently sexual in the way she interacted with them. This was a feeling as if she were casually flirting with them on a male level. It left these women mysteriously thinking about her long after she had gone.

Betty could feel and see all of this. Despite their rough patches, her very frequent doubts, she very much wanted to keep Lucy. So here she found herself, running, hitting the gym, dressing up. These were all of the things she would be doing to keep a highly coveted man.

Betty switched her stopwatch over to clock mode. Lucy would be returning from the airport with Janet soon, meaning they would all be off to the meeting shortly afterward. She'd consciously thought to cut her run short and get ready.

From the ornately decorated stain glass door in the back; Janet, Betty and Lucy walked into the church, down the hall to priest's office. Even before entering it for their first weekly meeting two years ago, it looked, as they would have imagined it to. Bookshelves lined the paneled walls with spaces for replicas of famous religiously depicted paintings. In the corner sat a small wooden desk covered with a scattering of papers. The clergy still wrote his sermons by hand.

Janet, who was intrigued by these meetings as a young teen, although now was plainly bored as the mysteriousness became common place. She mentally began playing her weekly game to see who was going to be more uncomfortable when Lucy walked into the room.

Was it to be Father McCormick, because he was a man of god and modesty, or Alex because he was her brother? This time it was Alex who quickly looked away to gather himself, before looking back at the voluptuous, leggy, female he called his brother. Janet gave herself a mental pat on the back along with an inward smile for guessing right before hand.

As much as Lucy said she rejected the reasoning behind LM's choice of overt sexual clothing, she had not rejected the clothing itself.

Lucy claimed that for her male mind the equation was simple. LM, an avid clotheshorse, had bought more things than Lucy could wear in a year (even if she chose a different outfit every day). Lucy saw no reason on spending more money on coverings. Especially as she needed every dollar for the extensive traveling she did over the weekends.

Quite simply the others were a little more astute than Lucy gave them credit for, taking this explanation with a grain of salt. They understood as Lucy came to terms with how she actually looked to the world, becoming more womanly, that a bit of pride and curiosity came into play. Lucy was doing in two years, what most women come to terms with over a lifetime. They viewed much in the manner of a child with a new toy.

Other than testing out her womanhood or not, with her chest almost freed from its top, her strappy extremely high heels and short skirt, Lucy was perhaps pushing the levels of decorum around a brother who, was still not accustomed to her comeliness of appearance. Father McCormick, on the other hand, who shared Alex's discomfort. Due to his vow of celibacy it would never be.

Alex shook off his brother's appearance getting to the matter at hand. It was he who usually opened the meeting of what he dubbed, "The Scooby Gang". This was a reference to their chasing, researching and, largely, debunking mysteries. This was seen also to them as a "Harry Houdini Complex"

In a typical Sunday gathering, they went around the room covering their various assignments: Alex was the one who looked into texts of ancient religions searching for descriptions of the after life which came closest to what Lucy had seen. Lucy herself roamed the country looking for someone, any one, who could actually contact the dead. She looked for those among the afterlife who could help her cheat her fate.

Father McCormick, because of his strong relationship with the bus driver that was jailed for shooting Lucy, was the last of the group to come on board. It took Lucy a great deal of time getting him to workout his ambivalence toward her. It took a great deal of adjustment (after all Lucy was a soul in possession of what was not hers) and reflection, but he finally came around.

The priest's assignment of course, went to his obvious strength delving into the texts and ancillary material of the known religions - the Koran, Torah, Kabbalah and of course the Bible, searching for the answers. He also prayed over them to keep them from harm, and hopefully, Lucy from the eternal tortures. Betty and Janet did the preliminary searches, finding the books for Alex to investigate, in addition to checking on the reputations of psychics and the likes for Lucy's inquiries.

But the pensive look on Father McCormick's face told Alex something different was going to happen this Sunday. He had never seen the priest with this much weight on his shoulders, even after learning of Lucy's true nature and fate.

"Did everything go okay is mass this morning Father?"

Alex asked, trying to place the reason for the priest's look of misgiving.

The priest reached up and rubbed his forehead. He was obviously in great distress.

"I had Father O'Hare give mass today."

The priest's visitors showed surprise. Father McCormick never missed mass; he took great pride in bragging on how he was always healthy as an ox come Sunday. Looking at him now, he was obviously not ill. Lucy leaned forward attentively waiting for his explanation. Her breasts, practically fully exposed, created even more discomfort in the already anxious clergy.

Father McCormick, never one for unneeded words, cut straight to the chase, "I had a dream last night. Not any dream, mind you, but one where I was guided to Lucy's dreamscape."

The room became silent, only the sound of the congregation's post-mass gathering could be heard faintly down the hall. It had been years since anyone had been to the dreamscape. Not since LM was destroyed.

"But its more than that," the father continued, "I felt a malevolent force which had been spreading across eternity, stop and begin the journey toward reforming. But not just reforming as it was, but in a more powerful, darker, vengeful entity."

Every one in the room, thought they knew whom ... or what this entity was. Betty interrupted, "If LM isn't destroyed any longer, what does that mean for Lucy's soul? Is she safe now?"

Father McCormick looked up, "That cannot be known right now. In the eyes of God, does a man who attempts murder but fails escape the fate of one that attempts and succeeds? What if the victim was evil? These are age-old questions Betty. In Lucy's case, we can only hope she has been spared," However, it wasn't the question of Lucy's long term prospects that had the clergy worried now, "But if what I felt on the dreamscape was real, Lucy ... all of us ... have more immediate problems".

Jack Wallace knew something was wrong immediately. It was the sky. Diffused light seemed to bear down on him from everywhere, from every object, yet no sun could be seen above. Just a seamless bright white sky hung over head.

Despite being what should have been a balmy Miami afternoon, Jack wasn't the slightest bit warm. Nor could he feel the breeze, which blew the tops of the palms. Impossibly, the air was still without temperature.

Jack made a careful assessment of his surroundings. He was standing in the middle of the street in front of his home, except the neighborhood looked wrong. The normally manicured lawns, cleanly washed cars, up-kept homes, were ragged and in disrepair. The normally smooth asphalt of the street was full of potholes which looked to stretch endlessly down a road which seemed to span into infinity.

Jack focused on his own home. While it too was disheveled in a manner it had never been, it was the front lawn that caught his attention. There, underneath a ladder, was a body. He didn't need anyone to tell him who that was. It was his body.

Before he could react, a hand touched him on his shoulder. Jack turned to find himself facing some sort of beast. It was far larger than Jack, perhaps seven feet, looking roughly to be in the form of a female.

All the attributes, legs, breasts, long hair were there, along with the remains of what must have once been a sundress.

However this creature was like nothing he had seen before. Its skin was metallic with colors washed over it like a mad kaleidoscope. Although it moved fluidly, it had the look of being thrown together haphazardly by an impatient creator. Looking at this outrage of human form, Jack knew he should have felt afraid. However, fear was as missing as the sense of temperature in this place.

"Ladders are dangerous things, Mr. Wallace." The creature's voice, despite its horrendous appearance, was melodically pleasant (what Jack imagined a beautiful opera singer must sound like when engaged in speech).

"I can sense in your thoughts that you are just beginning to figure out what has happened here. Nevertheless you are wrong. You are not quite dead yet, you were close, but you are in a short coma. It will be less than a few hours, in fact. The doctors probably won't even call it that. Under normal circumstances, as with millions of others in your state, you would walk over to that body, touch it, regaining consciousness remembering nothing which has passed here."

The creature's grip on Jack's shoulders tightened, "however its unfortunate for you it will not happen this way. Not now that my journeys have made me strong enough to prevent it. Besides, I have just so much unfinished business to attend to. I hope you understand."

With that the creature squeezed harder, splitting open Jack's shoulder. Through the opening, Jack did not feel the spill of blood as he expected. Except his very essence was escaping, like gas from a balloon. Jack knew with sudden clarity, in mere matter of seconds his existence was to be shattered forever, left to spread apart forever across this dreamscape on which he found himself.

The creature laughed as she felt his soul wash through her body. Pausing for a moment to savor her triumph, the creature walked over to the prone body, reaching down to touch it. She felt its life force merge with hers as she was being pulled back into the land of the living.

Before disappearing off of the dreamscape completely, the creatures words echoed through the tattered, empty neighborhood.

"Time to look up some old friends."

"Where am I?"

The gentle faced red haired woman stood up at the sound of Jack Wallace's voice. She smiled upon him kindly, but her eyes could not conceal the concern.

"You're in a hospital room Jack, you had a small accident. You fell off of the ladder when you were cleaning the gutters and were out for awhile."

Jack Wallace lay in bed, he had raised his arms off of the bed, opening and closing his fists while watching his forearms bulge as he flexed his limbs.

"I'm a powerful one aren't I?" He said to no one in particular, lifting the sheet to take further note of his body. The body was strong and in tune from years of hard exercise. "Yes, I am a powerful one indeed."

Jack turned his attention away from himself, studying the red head standing beside his bed. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail. She donned thick-framed cat eyeglasses. She also wore a pair of bell-bottoms and long jean jacket coat with fur around the collar, each piece of clothing far more expensive than they looked. If she were anything like her Los Angeles counterparts, she looked like she was taking great pains to hide her beauty behind her hip "nerd-chic" look.

"I should get the doctor," she said. His strange behavior was throwing her off balance.

"Fuck the doctor. Just tell me, who are you? My daughter? My wife? My sister? My secretary?" Jack asked.

"I'm Kaetlin. I'm your girlfriend." The pain from his lack of recognition and aggressively changed demeanor showed clearly on her face.

"Really? But you're, perhaps, what, twenty one, twentytwo ?" Jack began.

"Twenty-three." She corrected.

"And I'm like thirty, right? Maybe older because I seem to have a pretty nice house, at least the dreamscape's version of it was." He stopped to ponder his situation, "Am I fucking you?"

Dreamscape? Fucking you? Kaetlin was growing more uncomfortable with the conversation as it proceeded. She wasn't sure what brain centers were knocked out of whack from that fall, but she didn't like the end result. She looked over her shoulder trying to catch the attention of a doctor.

There was no one within earshot. She would have to go out of the room and grab one. She decided not to let him see how upset he was making her. After all it was Jack, not her, who was lying in a hospital bed obviously suffering from head trauma.

She answered him far more calmly than she felt, "You are thirty-four Jack. And yes, we are intimate. Now... I'm going to get the doctor." She turned quickly on her heels, practically dashing out of the door.

In the background she heard Jack say to himself, "Cool. I'm a fucking stud."

After meeting with their patient, Jack's doctors debated in consultation quietly among themselves in the hallway. The malpractice ramifications of releasing a man who didn't have anything resembling a full memory back onto the streets loomed large on all of their minds. The doctors were wary of their patient's demands to be let go immediately, especially coupled with his girlfriend's concerns.

She had pointed out Jack's radical change in behavior, leading the doctors to believe the head trauma was perhaps more severe than they were seeing. Although the patient did have a point (they had done the tests, there was nothing physically wrong him). If he wanted to leave AMA (against their medical advice), they couldn't stop him. Plus, there was something oddly persuasive about him, even knowing they were in the right. They all found it difficult to argue with this charismatic man. They decided to stall his exit while hedging their bets with further tests. Barring his complete refusal, they could probably keep him another nine or ten hours.

As the hallway conference went on, Kaetlin Cox sat against the wall watching the enigmatic behavior of her boyfriend. In tentative, exploratory manner, he had rubbed his entire body with his hand. He now, at least as much as Kaetlin could determine, was lightly squeezing his genitalia underneath the sheets with obvious delight.

Kaetlin hadn't said a word to him since she went to retrieve the doctors. He was always a man of confidence, some would say ego, but that's what she found attractive in him. However, he was never crude and rudely direct like he was now. It was like he was consumed by something dark, despite his being oddly... alluring. When she asked the doctors about the altered personality quietly beforehand, they couldn't assure her this would pass, however noted they didn't see evidence of anything large enough to cause a wholesale change in personality. At least in the long term. Nevertheless, one of them gave her his card and told her to call him if this behavior persists.

Despite his best efforts, Jack was not able to waltz right out of the hospital once his tests were finished. He apparently needed time just to get his motor skills in sync. When he tried to walk, his motions were spastic, slightly out of control as though his brain was firing the wrong signals to his limbs. He moved around the room in a jerky fashion for some while, cursing his every misstep. Kaetlin had never seen anything like this, it was as if Jack's puppet master had gone mad, it only alarmed her even more. Not allowing her to recall the doctors, Jack was insistent that it was just a "glitch" and he would work through it. As good as his word, after some half an hour of intense concentration, he began moving with far more fluidity.

Kaetlin wondered to herself, what kind of person calls not controlling their limbs a "glitch", giving it no further thought than a cramp. Something was wrong here. Jack was hiding something, but she couldn't imagine what it could be.

Once in the passenger seat of the car, Jack became visibly less agitated and his mood moved slowly toward near giddiness. During the drive he watched everything race by the window carefully. It was obvious, to even the most casual of observers, that he was seeing this landscape for the first time. If it were not for his disconcerting habit of fondling his genitalia with palpable pleasure, he would look the part of your average first time Miami tourist.

Sounding more reasonable and calm than in the hospital, he turned and spoke to Kaetlin, "Sorry about all that back there. The hospital, I mean, with the rude questions and the doctors. This knock must have really done something screwy," He grabbed the back of his head in emphasis. "I'm a little sketchy on the memory, but things are starting to feel right. I'll be fine soon enough. I just wanted to apologize that's all.

Kaetlin nodded, but he didn't sound completely sincere. It reminded Kaetlin of the plastic apologies offered by politicians with their hand caught in the cookie jar by their mother. This was not the way the Jack she knew, would go about apologizing. His strong suit was making a selfdeprecating joke of even the harshest things, always doing it in a boyish and charming fashion. Still, Kaetlin decided, this was a welcome change from his behavior in the hospital. Perhaps, as the doctor said, he would be normal soon, this change of demeanor she was seeing was just the first step.

"Kaetlin, sweetheart?" the endearment sounded hollow, "are you in school, or do you have a job or something?"

"Actually Jack, I work for you."

"For me? Really? Also you're my girlfriend as well? Interesting. Any way, that's really good to hear because I have some business I need to take care of in Los Angeles actually. I would love to take you out there with me." He smiled warmly, seductively. Kaetlin wondered how he could so casually mention flying to the West Coast for business, while she was fairly certain he, at this point, had no idea what he did for a living. This was Kaetlin decided, beyond just a knock on the head. He was up to something. What was it? Some sort of insurance fraud?

"Are you sure you're okay Jack?"

"Not as okay as I'm going to be in Los Angeles, darling."

Again, he similed the smile of warmth and seduction. While it was definitely not one, which would have made it to the face of pre-accident Jack. Kaetlin found she was afraid of it, but at the same time she found the raw power of it exciting. It was unnervingly magnetic. She, despite herself, began to get the warm feeling of becoming turned on.

He snored beside her, asleep for over an hour. Kaetlin sat up, her body still wired with feeling. She wasn't even sure how it happened so quickly. There was a knowingness, and a compelling presence in Jack that seemed to have that made it all happen so fast. One moment they were talking, the next moment they were in bed together.

Of all the times they made love it had never been like this. Jack was at once clumsy like a teenage virgin within his own body, yet almost prescient in anticipating her needs and desires. His lovemaking carried none of the confident nonchalance usually associated with it. Every touch she made to his body was greeted with near child like wonder. When Jack plunged deeply into her, moaning and shaking with his own orgasm, he did the unfathomable, and kept attending to her until she had hers.

She exploded in orgasmic delight, even as his refractory period was ending. He sat above her, hard-on in hand, marveling at his own stiffness. They continued to slither together in wet sweaty harmony until Jack, seeming to understand her body as well as she guided his hard-on for the last time creating a dual orgasm which made Kaetlin scream in delight.

Afterward now watching him sleep, she quietly masturbated herself again thinking about their sex. Whatever had gotten into Jack, it was at the same time gentle, uncertain, firm, and rough. But she had also seemed to feel... something... when they were in closest contact of sex,. It was something seductively and powerfully strong, although in an almost savagely dark, frightening way. It was like making love to a great beast, a beast that knew all the pleasures of satisfying a woman.

The following morning Jack looked more confident and relaxed. His jerky movements were completely gone, and he possessed a sense of self-satisfaction.

Kaetlin was already downstairs on the outdoor patio reading the paper when he came down. She began to hand the sports section over. She knew how Jack needed to check up on his hockey scores first thing, however he waved it off picking up the front page. He read the paper with great interest, absorbing every word of every article; much like last night where he spent hours-absorbing CNN and the newscasts. His only comment, other than the occasional non-specific sound of surprise at certain events, was the enigmatic, "I've been gone a long time."

Putting the paper down, he smiled at Kaetlin. "So, honey..." Even after sleeping together, she was still uncomfortable with the indifferent way he used endearments. Jack must have picked up on this, because he started again anew without it,

"Kaetlin, as I said last night, I know this is rough on you. I greatly appreciate that a woman like you, who could have any man, is willing to at least try for a awhile to stick through this. So don't take this the wrong way, but... explain to me exactly why I am a thirty-four year old man, with a twenty-three year old girlfriend, and am living here?"

He made a wave of his hand to indicate the considerable size of his home, "While you're at it, maybe you can explain why a man who appears to have gardeners and housekeepers, is climbing on ladders risking his neck cleaning out his own gutters?" The entire time he spoke, he continued with his new, extremely distracting, habit, of casually stroking his penis through his pants.

"You occasionally like to do things yourself. Like the gutter. It goes with your fitness thing," she shrugged. This conversation was surreal to her. She decided she was going to skip over the part about their relationship completely. Despite it being Jack sitting across from her, memory loss or not, she couldn't shake the feeling she was talking to a stranger.

"You're a senior vice president for a financial firm," she continued, thinking about how to explain the rest of the information delicately, but accurately, "your father runs the company, owning something incredible like sixty percent of the stock. When you go back to work you may catch vibes that you were given this position because of your... connections... but you are well qualified, and have proven over time that... "

Jack held up his hand indicating for her to stop, "No need to flatter me. I know how those positions work. In fact, you wouldn't feel you had to tell me I was well qualified, unless of course, I wasn't. So... I'm a figurehead of sorts. A well paid vice president on the payroll because my father runs and owns the company.

Fascinating. I must be a big fucking deal. Do I even bother to show up every day? Probably not, nothing in this house indicates work crosses my mind for a second. I don't even own a computer, but I have a hell of a set of golf clubs. Well this will make getting the time to make this LA trip a breeze, he paused for a moment before saying, "not that I give a shit about keeping this job one way or another any way."

He stopped his musings, focusing on Kaetlin, "I hired you right out of college didn't I? Never mind, if you're twenty-three I had to have. I hope at least I was the one who got partially used, and you seduced me into hiring you, as much as the other way around. The other way around would bore me. Nevertheless you look like a woman smart enough to use those feminine charms of yours to nestle yourself into the good life. If so, I respect you for it. If not, don't tell me."

He sat quietly in thought for a long while. He seemed to make an internal decision, and changed gears, "How fast can you be ready to hit the Coast?"

Kaetlin was still stunned. She was more than disoriented by Jack Wallace's new, detached honesty, and brutally selfassessing mode of thinking. She wasn't sure she wanted to be around this man, at the same time she was becoming further drawn to him. There was something exciting about his self-analysis; completely without pretension or selfdoubt, like an actor getting his mind around a character for a film.

There was an undoubted power, inconceivable self-confidence that surge within him. Here was a man not the least bit concerned he didn't remember or understand any of the world around him, as if he himself were bigger than any worldly circumstance. Yet his lovemaking held an uncertainty, despite its power, that Kaetlin found newly endearing.

She imagined for a moment this is what it was like for those who fell in love with serial killers. She knew it was at this point she should get off of this train that would surely derail. Whatever plans he had in LA, could not be for the good. Yet, all of the wavering protestations forming in her mind were unable to come out of her mouth. Instead she said, "I can be ready this afternoon."

Jack looked her up and down with his eyes, almost sensing his new hold on her, before saying, "Wonderful."

Jack packed his bags upstairs in his bedroom. Socks, underwear, a few shirts, and a few pants. That was it. The single pair of well-heeled black shoes on his feet would go with everything he had. For so many days of clothing, it was going to be an incredibly sparsely packed bag.

"It's unbelievable how easy men have made it on themselves. It used to take me two suitcases for a trip like this," Jack said to the room at large. "And this fucking thing," he said, groping his groin for the untold time that day, "is great. But how they get anything done with this weighty, hypersensitive thing always there is a mystery to me. After awhile, you have to figure they become able to ignore this constant rubbing feeling putting them on the verge of getting hard all the time. Otherwise men would fuck everything that moves," Jack laughed and said, "Wait, they do try to fuck everything that moves."

He stopped in his tracks, listening for Kaetlin. She apparently was still packing downstairs. Realizing he had speaking aloud for quite some time, Jack admonished himself and turned his speech inward. "This is not the Dreamscape," he thought to himself, "speech and thought are not the same. You know the rules, it hasn't been that long."

Nevertheless for "Jack Wallace", who was no more than the sprit of LM looking through Jack's stolen shell, it had been a long time. What was merely a few years to those on this side of death, was far longer in a plane where time moved backward and forward at once, where fleeting moments are years, years are fleeting moments.

Moreover Jack had quite a bit of work to do now that he was alive again. Certainly he was planning to pay a visit to... Lucy Maya... that impostor... to pay her in kind for destroying her soul and nearly condemning her to drift in pieces throughout eternity. However, he had much more in store than that.

He looked down at the bulge in his pants. The very thought of vengeance had made this new toy between his legs grow in response; hate and sex tied into one stiff feeling. What kind of animals were men, the former LM wondered in equal parts amazement and disgust. He wasn't sure, but he knew he was going to find Kaetlin, making sure this did not go to waste.

Warm, but not Miami humid, Southern California. Kaetlin still loved it here, even though she didn't see Los Angeles through the same magical prism as she once did. She had been here a few times with her father as a girl falling in love with the mystique of it all - Hollywood, films, the glamour. She discovered as she became older that this was the stuff of make believe. Granted, being in the right neighborhoods you could see a film star sitting in the booth next to you while eating. However, you were more likely to see a disillusioned want-to-be film star serving you your breakfast, or dealing drugs on the street.

She and Jack had been in the city for a little over a week. Jack had rented a fully furnished luxury apartment. Jack left her largely to her own devices during the day while he "took care of business". She asked him a couple of times what he did when they were apart, however he would only discuss it in the most vaguest of terms despite intense prodding.

At first, Kaetlin suspected another woman, his sexual appetite which was ravenous and continuous (they made love several times a day). He never came back to her smelling of another woman or a fresh shower. She thought briefly that perhaps he was involved in shady dealings, although being associated with such actions were far too inconsistent, extremely difficult, with his memory loss. Kaetlin was fairly certain the memory loss could be no act.

Having sorted these issues in her mind, she became more relaxed. As with all things that begin feeling odd, the strangeness wore off, as they became more routine. After awhile, Kaetlin felt as if this was almost normal. He gave her a credit card in her name, telling her to entertain herself in any way she saw fit, which she was able to do easily. With her days occupied she obsessed less over his.

Two weeks to the day after they arrived, this routine changed. Jack came home, announcing an old friend of his was arriving from out of town and would be staying with them for a short while.

Kaetlin greeted this latest pronouncement with great reservations.

"An old friend?" Kaetlin asked. This revelation made her vary wary, "how is it that you can remember an old friend, but not your damn middle name?" She had become agitated.

"My middle name's Albert, isn't it? I'm not really sure why I remember my old buddy though, the brain being such a funny thing and all."

Jack shrugged off her concerns as he did them all. He reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a cold slice of pizza. Kaetlin didn't cook, so all prepared food in the rental apartment was takeout or delivery.

"That says nothing Jack. And you know it. Where did you meet this guy? I mean... this time... here in LA?"

"Well originally I met him in LA, but he doesn't live here now. He's in prison, or more accurately, getting out of prison. Tomorrow. I'm going to meet him at the bus station. To keep him out of the half way house and such. I had to hire him on as a driver, personal assistant, and so on. The parole board jumped at it. I was surprised at how far my name... dad's name it turns out... goes."

Kaetlin was upset and pulled him back on track, "Wait, wait, wait. You said nothing about meeting a prisoner when we came down here, no less having one stay with us. I don't know if I can deal with this."

Jack was smiling his enigmatically charming smile. Once again Kaetlin was swept up in the serial killer girlfriend's feeling of being willing bound to someone exciting, passionate but dangerously unknown.

"Don't worry," Jack said, "he was in for a white collar crime."

Of course he was, Kaetlin thought as she sighed with relief. It was embezzlement, fraud or something equally non-violent. Recent strange behavior or not, what other kind of criminal could someone of Jack's ilk know anyway?

"So what did he do to land him in prison... this whitecollar crime? Tax evasion? Fraud? Why are we putting him up?"

Jack finished chewing his mouthful before delivering the punch line, "Well, he went in because he shot... an old friend of mine through the chest. I figured we'd put him up for a while because I was the one who convinced him to do it. Even more than that," Jack smile wickedly, "I can say with complete earnestness, he made me the man I am today."

Kaetlin watched him for reaction. Surely he was kidding. He had to be.

While LM ran things, Lucy Maya had never been in a bus station. LM was fairly certain that the previous owner of this current body, Jack Wallace the blue blood, had never been in one either. Taking note of the neighborhood this particular Greyhound station was in, it was no wonder why. But here they were.

LM/Jack watched Arnie Williamson step off of the type of vehicle he formerly held a license to drive. The Presidency may differ from prison in every way possible, but they obviously both aged a man just as fast. Arnie at once struck Jack as having grown ultimately defiant yet quietly broken. This was a man who had obviously suffered the worse prison had to offer, only pure survival allowed him to build his outward shield of bold resistance he really didn't feel. Jack noted with some irony, that Arnie's spirit had been as shattered figuratively, as his had been literally.

Although Arnie was given a description of Jack, he wasn't exactly sure who he was looking for, so Jack approached him to shake hands. Arnie at once seemed glad almost in awe of Jack's presence. It was through Arnie's solemn eyes that reminded Jack exactly what he was, a spirit of a woman once twice dead, returned in the body of a man.

Arnie whispered tentatively, "Lucy"?

"No, not Lucy. I don't belong to that name any longer. Nor do I allow myself to think in those terms. Let's get this straight, Lucy is the woman with a hijacked body, living a life that rightfully should have been mine. I am," he bowed theatrically, "Jack Wallace. I am a product of extreme wealth whose only job in life is to do just barely enough to keep my father off of my back. I have more money than I can imagine spending, and no one to account to. I am, perfect for what lies ahead Mr. Williamson."

The sun caught the former bus driver's round spectacles, making it look for a moment as if his eyes sparkled upon hearing the revelation.

"That is why it made perfect sense that, you as a former bus driver, and I, being all about giving people a second chance at life, came to this agreement that you would drive me around town. Just what the parole board loves to hear - gainful employment."

"Now," Jack said placing his hand between Arnie's shoulder blades, "Let's get you a real suit, and maybe a steak. I'm sure prison grub is shit."

Despite himself, Arnie ate his streak greedily. Jack had been right, prison grub is shit and it had been years since he had a good meal. In fact, when Arnie was a free man earning bus driver's wages, never had a steak quite like this.

Arnie watched his new employer. Even knowing what (and who) he was. Jack Wallace was an odd collection of attributes. Jack was obviously a very fit, powerfully built man, in the easy way of gyms, running and perhaps the occasional manual labor when he fancied it. His body did not have a ruggedness to it. His manner was easy going, but nevertheless contrived. He had the occasional, but definitive female affectations of his current owner, which simply came across as being somewhat effeminate as opposed to what it really was, female. Nevertheless because of his well manicured, obvious cultured looks and clothing, Arnie was certain much of Jack's behavior was being contributed to his upper class pampered life.

But Jack also had the underlying, energy of the afterlife... not just the afterlife, but something else, something stronger... radiating from him. It was magnetic almost certainly couldn't be missed, even by those who didn't know of his origins. Arnie wondered how this was interpreted by those who happened across Jack's path. Intense sexual attraction maybe? Or perhaps, charisma - the kind which makes men go to war and down poison drinks to please their leaders? However they interpreted it, Arnie could feel it now, as he felt it in his dreams so long ago. This was the power, which made him shoot a woman in the chest and give up his own soul to bring LM in the form of another back into this world.

As Arnie listened to Jack speak, he realized Jack didn't just have a simple plan of destroying the invader of his old body and have her meet the eternal tortures. Jack had a long thought through plan, which would wreak havoc on her and all those who protected her.

The small voice of reason in the back of Arnie's mind told him that what Jack had in mind was going way too far, but he was long past listening to the voice in the back of his head. He was enslaved. With a creeping smile, he let the words flow over him willingly allowing himself to get pulled into Jack's scheme. All the way in.

Janet took him to be a little less than twice her age, thirty-five, perhaps. Simply saying he was handsome and obviously in great shape. Looking him over, his clothes, especially his shoes, screamed "money". He watched Janet, as all men do, however he did it with a calm confidence which neither spoke of cockiness or lechery. He didn't seem to be in a hurry to approach her, perhaps he was married or thought he was too old for someone so young. But after a while, Janet began wishing he would, there was something... magnetic... about him.

He sat calmly sipping his drink and looking around the restaurant, and just as Janet felt like she needed to get some air, he seemed to sense it, stood up and approached her.

Without being asked, he sat down directly beside her at the bar and spoke with almost unnerving familiarity. The tone of the conversation was as easy going as one being continued after a trip to the rest room, "You're probably not using the fake I.D. half as much now. You look young, but damn close to twenty-one. This early, the day shift bartenders don't card as much. Besides, these guys that work the pre-dinner shift don't get a lot of nice looking women sitting right at the bar, so they're not as used to it as the more blasé night shift guys. They'll scrutinize your fake I.D. far less, as I said, if they ask for it at all." His voice was low enough so the bartender could not hear, but not enough of a whisper to attract attention.

"Is this your pick up line? Telling me how to get past the bartenders?" she asked.

"Nah. My pick up lines are better. You probably already know this since I'm not one of those guys, which you are probably growing weary of I'm sure, who keep stealing glances at your boobs."

Janet was about to object before he interrupted.

"Besides, with my luck, they would be real," He leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, "I'm going to tell you something really off of the wall considering we're complete strangers. However, I have a fetish for small-breasted women who wear hugely padded bras. I know its strange, but that's me," as quickly as he threw out his admission, he brushed it away, "But let's not talk about me anymore, I'm boring. Let's talk about you."

Janet instinctively cast a glance at her padding, realizing there was no way he could tell, then looked back at this stranger with great interest. There was a certain familiarity about him.

"So, what makes someone at your young age drink in the middle of the day? Let me guess. You're skipping classes at the local college because you're disillusioned that you're going to a school just around the corner, and its not challenging enough for your sharp mind. You wanted to go to another school, I'll guess Stanford, but your mom just couldn't afford it." He smiled knowingly, "Of course, I could be wrong."

He stood up, brushing off his immaculate clothing, "Listen," he said, "I didn't come over here to be a pest, tell you about my sexual quirks, and bum you out about college. You're just so cute and attractive I just had to say hello. I'll simply go back to my table, read my newspaper and leave you alone."

Janet smiled at the stranger warmly. How could she let him go, he was so understanding, so...comfortable. Despite him being so much older, Janet noted, he was handsome and probably very well off. She touched his arm lightly, "No, please stay for awhile. I didn't catch your name."

"Well, people call me Jack. Please to meet you."

"I'd knew I'd find you back here Father. Always pulling weeds and working on that garden."

Father McCormick stabbed the garden tool so that it stood up in the soil. Wiping the sweat from his brow he stood and turned. However, he wouldn't have needed to turn around to know who belonged to that voice. It was one he had known for many years.

"Hello Arnold," Father McCormick never called him "Arnie", he was not a man who believed in nicknames.

"You don't look so glad to see me. I would have expected, after all the years we've known each other, and how passionately you spoke on my behalf in court, that you would be a little more excited to know I was out of prison. You know, paid my debt to society and all of that."

Prison. Father McCormick understood their need, but despised them all the same. They served their purpose of keeping people off the streets, and some people, he agreed, should not see the light of day again. As a priest, even with his capacity for forgiveness, he understood clearly that there were those who were just plain evil. However, as a priest, he also understood that most men were not evil. Most, he felt, if guided properly in the teachings of the Lord, could become model citizens even if society had a need to make people "pay" for their crimes by locking them in a violent box.

What the cleric hated most about prison was the way it hardened people. Facing the prospect of incarceration, many, whether in earnest or in a desperate ploy to reduce their fate, came to see Father McCormick to "find god". He had seen streams of these, mostly, young men. He also saw many of them when they returned from their time; hardened, bitter, a cynical hard shell of what they once were.

Arnold Williamson, a man whom Father McCormick had known since he was just a teen, was now one of them. The priest didn't have to even look past the way he held himself when he stood to know; Arnold was a man who held his prison time right on his shoulders for every one to see.

"You know that I am glad to see you Arnold. Why wouldn't I be?" The father's eyes could not hide the conflicted weariness of his feelings, "Why don't you come along inside, we'll have ourselves some tea."

"That would be nice Father. You know how I always loved your tea."

Arnie followed Father McCormick inside his humble kitchen. Father McCormick was one who took his vows of poverty seriously, though he wasn't necessarily living like a pauper. His kitchen was filled with nice things, many of them gifts practically forced upon him. It was decorated in a simple, but classy manner.

One of the few perks he always allowed himself, however, were his teas. He drank his tea like an Englishman, never skimping on the expense. "God's work," as he often joked in the past, "never meant drinking anything manufactured by Lipton, a company best suited for making bland cups of soup."

Arnie sat down at the table where he had sat so many times in the past. The priest put the kettle on the fire to bring it to a boil. The room remained silent, as the priest prepared the cups and saucers, and finally serving the hot beverage.

"I understand why you may have some conflict Father," Arnie said as he sipped his tea, "I understand that you're keeping a little different company than before I went in," Arnie quickly waved off Father McCormick as he was getting ready to speak, "Father, Father, its okay. Obviously I know, and I'm not really asking. I don't want to put a man of God in a position to hedge and beat around the truth. Besides, I don't mind. Why would I? I have done my time. I want to put this whole shooting and demons possessing bodies business behind me. I just want to get on with my life, and bring the Lord back into it. That's all. If I saw Lucy Maya today I would beg for her forgiveness. Whether she were the original Lucy Maya or not."

Arnie finished his tea, standing up reaching out to shake Father McCormick's hand, "I'm sorry to pop in then run Father, but I really just wanted to let you know I've done my time, and that I'll be back around. A lot".

The cleric walked Arnie to the front door, despite the fact that the former Metro Transit employee had entered his property through the back gate. They exchange some airy, non-substantiative niceties, before Arnie went on his way.

Father McCormick returned to the kitchen, poured himself another tea, sat down, reviewing the entire conversation in his mind. Other than references to the company the priest kept, which is understandable considering what Arnie had been through, he had said nothing out of the ordinary. In fact the tone Arnold used was exactly as it should have been.

Then why, thought the priest, did this visit feel like a clear warning?

Lucy left the small Mexican airport on the way to a nearly (if maps were any indication) invisible Mexican village. She was breaking one of her primary rules, investigating a fortuneteller below the border. Her hesitation in the past stemmed from the heavy belief in superstition in these places. It made it fairly difficult to get any accurate accounts on the ability of any particular soothsayer. To a peasant who wanted badly to believe, and didn't have the benefit of education to discern otherwise, they were all awe inspiring.

But Madam Garza was different. Her reputation went up and down the coast extending from the top of South America, well into Washington State. Of all her kind, Lucy had never encountered someone with such a mass of believers. The sheer mystique of her notoriety demanded that Lucy try to keep an open mind, but it was growing more difficult having encountered the number of fakes she had.

For a price that wouldn't have gotten her two miles from her doorstep in a Los Angeles cab, she got an hour trip to and from the airport with a driver who would serve as a translator and guide. He was open-faced and had a pleasant demeanor, along with a large build that gave her an added sense of safety. The rifle that he kept in his front seat went a long way toward that feeling as well. When she asked about it, by one way word of explanation he patted the rifle and said, "banditos".

The trip into the village was by long dusty roads, many of which she was not sure were roads at all. The village was built around a small, run-off creek from the surrounding mountains, which appeared to be stagnant this time of year. The village itself was dirty, underdeveloped, and scarcely populated.

Pulling down the single road leading through what was the "heart", they were greeted by an old man who looked to be in his eighties. He was sitting roadside reading a book, looking up at them languidly, and not the least bit surprised, when the arrived. As Lucy suspected, the only visitors of her kind in this town were for the seer. She was directed by the old man to Madam Garza's abode.

Lucy noted with some curiosity the fortuneteller did not work out of a tent or house with fancy trappings indicating a reader of fortunes inside. It was a shanty, made up of corrugated metal sheets, not much different than the other barely livable abodes in this town of the most abject poverty.

The driver and Lucy were ushered into the shanty to await Madam Garza by the old man who seated them. He left with out uttering a word. The room was furnished with nothing more than three barrels to sit on, and a table, which was most likely used to lay out cards or the various symbols used in all such rituals. There were no tapestries or charts of stars hanging on the wall. No crystal balls or skulls present. Whatever money was made from this operation, was obviously poured into trying to stop the leaks in this family's undoubted floodgate of poverty.

They sat waiting for fifteen minutes wordlessly. The cab driver drew circles in the dirt with the toe of his sandal. Lucy was beginning to wonder how far away anyone could actually be in such a small town as this, and suspected this may be for effect. A moment later, to Lucy's great surprise, a young girl, perhaps 10 years old, walked into the room and sat behind the table. She shocked Lucy further by turning to the guide, telling him, in heavily accented English, to leave. He frowned at the request, then glanced at Lucy angling his head to let her know he would be just outside.

The young girl carried a gravity far beyond her years, much like the pretentious child actresses Lucy had seen so many of back in LA. The child, obviously used to objections over her age, spoke before the driver made it through the heavy towel that represented the front door.

"You," she let the first word hang in the air, "of all people, should not let somebody's appearance fool you. I am from a long line of readers. Our gifts, while long lasting, are the strongest right before our coming of age. I am a just few years from coming of age."

Lucy, assuming "coming of age" meant puberty, was fascinated. This was not the tired dog and pony show of most fortunetellers she had seen. This young girl, speaking perfect, but accented English in the middle of this mud hole village, fascinated her that much more. Nevertheless it was, by far, how she had started the conversation that made Lucy sit silently to hear what this girl had to say.

The girl folded her hands on the table, as if she were going to pray, but did not close her eyes. As much to herself, as to Lucy, she quietly wondered, "I am amazed that no one can see through you. Even now, you move in that skin like a stranger to its ways. It doesn't fit you."

A shock struck Lucy through her spine, causing her to visibly shiver. Her mind crept toward the idea, but didn't let her quite believe, that she had finally found the real thing.

"I'm not sure what you mean," Lucy put forth cautiously.

"No, that is not it at all. You just want me to say more so that you can be certain that it is I, who know what I mean,"

Her eyes sparkled with knowing humor, "I am not going to spell it out in front of your cab driver. He stands nearby that he may overhear outside, but I will say this; when someone doesn't go where they are supposed to, yet they land back here, people like us know by just looking.

There's a glow that shines through you. Almost like a fantasma... no that is the Spanish word... what is the English... oh, yes, 'ghost'." She glanced at the towel covering the door. Lucy instinctively followed her glance. The shoes of the driver could be clearly seen a few yards away shuffling about. However as of now he was too far to be within earshot.

Lucy could feel her muscles tightened with anxiety. She began breathing deeply to alleviate the light feeling, which was beginning to take over her head.

The child had no need for Lucy Maya to ask questions, it was she who guided the conversation, "What you have done is a mistake. The first time was an accident, now you have doomed yourself by... stealing what is not yours.

You know this; you feel this. There is no way to proceed like this and escape your fate," she raised her hand toward Lucy, "look within yourself, allow the truth to come in.

But... there are ways, ways which you may be able turn the tides of time, for the..." again she glanced at the sandals of the driver, "place you were at runs backward as it runs forward. Getting back there, you may be able to arrange to face the decision again. I sense in you that you believe this is not the answer, that you would do the same again, to save your friends.

But it is not that simple any more. You will not be saving your friends at all. You are doing them even more harm. You see, there is another, one like you, one connected to you, who has taken your path and returned. This person has an agenda that I cannot fully see. Be very careful. If this other is powerful enough to cloud even my vision from its intent, it is very powerful indeed."

The child Garza had finished. She rose waving off Lucy attempts to give her money, "No I will not accept this from you. Everything you touch is tainted with evil. Go now, try to save your life and that of those around you. If you are not, as I think you are, already too late."

Upon returning to Los Angeles, Lucy got more news to ponder along with her strange experience with the reader in Mexico. She was been informed by way of an anonymous phone call that Arnie Williamson had been released from prison. At first Lucy thought this was a sick joke. She was certain the former bus driver had several more years on his sentence. Why should she trust someone who refused to identify herself in any case?

"Who are you? Why are you doing this?" Lucy asked, "This is not funny at all."

The caller only identified herself as a "concerned citizen". She explained that men, who commit crimes against women, often single those women out when the criminals are released. The legal system is slow to alert the former victims, so she takes it upon herself. She went on to explain, a simple call to the prison, or her lawyer, would confirm everything she was telling her to be the truth.

Lucy wondered why someone who seemingly made so many of these calls, sounded as nervous as this woman did now. Perhaps she was inexperienced. Nevertheless she decided to take the woman at face value, and thanked her for the call. Lucy made a mental note to check with her lawyer later. She hung up the phone slowly pondering what she had just learned.

She wasn't sure what to expect now that the man who shot her was now free on the streets. Has the knowledge of Lucy's true nature eaten at him while he was behind bars did he still felt the need to "right what's wrong". Or did that time make him realize that you can never get the parts of your life back that are taken from you? There was just no way to tell.

Joshua, Alex Morton's son, woke him up from his nap on the couch. Alex noted with amusement that the page of the book he had been reading was damp with small spittles of drool.

"Yes, what is it son?" he asked kindly of his only child, one which he saw far too infrequently now that he and his mother were no longer a married couple.

"It's a phone call dad. I can't believe you slept through the ringing. I tried to tell him that you were sleeping, but he insisted. He said you told him to reach you whatever you were doing."

Alex rose moving toward the phone. Clearing the nap from his mind, he inquired of his son, "Who did you say it was again?"

"I didn't. It's a Doctor Chang." Joshua said casually, going back into the kitchen to continue making the sandwich, which this phone call rudely kept him from.

"Good to here from you Wade. How are things in Chicago?"

"Splendid. My daughters are driving me crazy, but you should know, your son is about the same age," the coma specialist on the other end of the phone paused, "I wish I had time to chat, but I just wanted to let you know. We got a report down in Florida, Miami actually, which is very similar to the case of your friend Lucy - "

"Go on," in the two years since Alex had first befriended the doctor by constant long distance telephone calls (all under the umbrella of helping Lucy) the doctor had never heard of a case anything like hers.

"Well the duration of his coma was much shorter, so the doctors weren't calling it that. However, they faxed me the particulars, it is, was definitely a coma. The patient emerged exhibiting radically different behaviors and a complete loss of memory concerning identity, but no loss at all in over all memory - speech, motor functioning, etc."

"And who is this patient?" Alex asked.

"That's the catch. The doctors wouldn't give me a name, just that it is a 'he'. I tried to get it out of them, believe me. In any case, the patient demanded he be released from care. I suspect the doctors down in Miami General are concerned they let him go a little too quickly. This is, by the way, the reason they were quick to contact me. They wanted to see if there was anything they missed."

Alex nodded, although Wade Chang could not see him. It made sense. Alex looked the doctor up a few years ago purely because he was a giant in the field of coma medicine. Although their friendship began as pure business, he truly liked the respected the doctor and his flexible ways. He was willing to bend the patient-doctor confidentiality rules a little, if he thought it would help Lucy - although Dr. Chang was, obviously, not aware of the real cause of Lucy's memory loss. Alex could see how the doctors in Miami felt comfortable double-checking themselves with Wade. They knew he would not make a federal case if they had slipped up somehow. But, oddly, their not giving Doctor Chang the full facts flew in the face of this trust.

"That's odd they didn't give a name. That makes it hard for Lucy to get together, share experiences and learn more about her condition," Alex said reiterating the old lie, which disguised the reality of her looking for people like her from the other side who may hold the knowledge of her salvation.

"I can't be certain," the coma specialist speculated, "but I suspect the patient is some sort of big wig. Possibly he's a guy who could get them in a great deal of trouble if this comes out they may have screwed up - maybe a politician. Or, perhaps he is someone rich enough to hire an army of lawyers it takes to win a malpractice suit. No telling,"

Wade Chang spoke more quickly, belying his hurry, "listen I have to go. If I find out more on the patient's name or where abouts I'll let you know. If I do, same rules apply, just be sure and be careful not mention any of us at the hospital. Take care, Alex."

"Thanks Wade."

Alex sat back on the couch. Wade, as always, had been a great help. Whether the doctor could find who this patient was and whether this second coma victim could answer some questions for Lucy, or whether he just turned out to be a man with a memory loss, was obviously unknown at this time. Until he found out more, Alex decided, there was no reason to worry Lucy or himself about it any further.

Looking at the small puddles on the page, Alex discarded the book he had been reading and picked up the paper he had not finished from this morning. He paged through the local section aimlessly before coming across a tiny headline which caught his attention: Local Priest Accused of Years of Molestation. Although the article was couched in plenty of obligatory "alleged" speak. The paper refused to give the name of the priest, there was one small fact, which sent a small shock into Alex's brain - the name of the church: Hillshire's St. Mary's.

Father McCormick's church.

Betty didn't usually run this early, but she had read something in the paper - a report about a child-molesting priest in Father McCormick's church, that set her on edge this morning. Unsure whether it was the priest she knew, or not, who was being implicated, she felt shaky and disturbed and needed to run it off.

It was in this mood of not wanting to deal with strangers at all when the handsome, well groomed, despite his running gear and perspiration, man in his mid thirties trotted up beside her. There was no question he was going to start a conversation, it was at this point, Betty began to question her opposition to Walkmans.

"Here's the irony," he began, "I hate it when people jog up beside me and try to talk. Especially on this trail with all of the young hard bodies showing off, you'd think it was a damn nightclub instead of an exercise path. I will not be surprised the day I see someone wearing a neck full of gold chains as a torso weight."

Despite herself and her cloudy mood, Betty laughed, "Then what brings you to my side this morning, if you're not one of these pick up guys?"

The jogger flashed a magnetic smile, "Well this is not like me at all. I promise you I'm not trying to disturb your jogging or to pick you up. I just woke up this morning and had to vent, even if it is to a perfect stranger. In fact - honest to god - the best thing you could tell me is that you were in a relationship, gay, or better yet, gay in a relationship, so I could trust that my forwardness here isn't taken the wrong way."

She wasn't sure what to make of this seemingly off the cuff statement, which was a little too close to home. Thusly she went straight to the core of her concerns in her typically blunt manner, "You know that's pretty screwed up. What made you say that business of being gay? That is a very strange thing to utter to a stranger."

He looked momentarily pained before saying, "Well actually... I'm gay. Didn't figure it out until I'd been married for years and had a daughter. I guess since I've only come to terms with it recently. It's been on my mind lately and I say stupid things like that. Sorry if I was out of line. I also didn't mean to say that my forwardness was some sort of aphrodisiac that you couldn't resist. Unless, you were a lesbian in a relationship - which you may or may not be, I obviously don't care. I was trying to say that it would be nice to chat with someone without all the stupid pick up games getting in the way."

He didn't wait for her to respond, "Again, I just have to get it out. I don't know if you can imagine what it's like to raise a eighteen year old girl by yourself, not having a clue on how to do it, but that's the boat I'm in. I know this is probably too much information, but I came to this realization this morning.

Okay yes. I was snooping where I shouldn't have been - that my daughter may be having relationship with boys. Well at least, I found out that she's been putting about a pound of some kind of rubber falsies in her bra to get the boys heated up. I don't know why you would do this, unless it was leading toward sex. I don't even know how to approach her about this subject.

It's not just the bra thing. It's the whole growing up, wearing heels and all of these things I can't relate too. She continually reminds me that I can't. She uses it as leverage to blame of the divorce on me. If there was a woman around, she alludes, these problems wouldn't be happening. I've done the birds and the bees thing, but this is way beyond that. How do you explain to your adult daughter, that you've been in her underwear drawer? How do you tell her that you object to her fake breast size? I can't find a real way to do this without, at worst, being the creepy dad or, at best, coming out as the sneaky enemy."

He finally stopped his rapid-fire speech. They both ran in silence for a few minutes as their footsteps pounded the pavement in rhythm. Betty was a little disturbed by the eerie closeness of this man's story to her own. For a moment, she thought perhaps he knew about her and was using it to create a false closeness for some sort of gain. But that, she decided, was blatantly impossible. Betty has never admitted to anyone, not even her own daughter, that she was gay. She doubted very seriously this man could know her daughter stuffs her bra too, or that she even had a daughter at all. She was certain she had never seen him before. Only Lucy could connect those dots, and Lucy was, understandably, the most closed-mouth person alive.

The coincidence was near impossible, but it was just that, a coincidence. As randomly as he may have appeared this man turned out to be a kindred spirit of sorts. Betty, looking at him again, could remember why she fell for her husband. It wasn't romantic love actually, she didn't have the capacity to love men in that way, perhaps it was a close caring like two very good friends.

"Listen," he said, "I didn't mean to lay all of this on you. Again I turned myself into an ass on the running trail. Worse, because I gave you the history of what's wrong with my life. To tell you the truth, I would love to see you again to just chat. I feel a... I guess strong instant friendship toward you, like I've known you before."

He had the look of a man who was digging himself further into a hole the more he tried to dig himself out, "Look, I'll just speed up and you'll never see me again. Sorry."

He increased his pace slightly and was ten yards in front of Betty before she made up her mind. Not even sure why she did it herself, she shouted to the nameless stranger.

"No, wait. Wait for me."

Kaetlin Cox would be described by most as thin and athletically built, but looks can be deceiving. In this case here they did, for Kaetlin Cox was not an athlete at all. She could run fast enough that some would consider it a decent distance. But, she could not run anywhere as quickly enough to keep up with the two runners that were ahead of her. Still she had run long enough to see Jack approach the woman, talk to her, and then speed up only to be rejoined by her again. At that point Kaetlin's lungs demanded she stop.

Despite witnessing the liaison, Kaetlin still didn't suspect Jack was having an affair. She was however, concerned that he was up to something far worse. It was not in her nature to sit by passively only to find out something bad has transpired when it was too late. So she began taking a very active hand.

This morning, she tailed Jack from the house. He sat outside of an apartment complex in his car waiting and watching the front door. Once he saw the woman leave in her running clothes, he drove quickly back to the park, and ran in slow circles, before approaching her as if randomly. But, it was far from that, it reminded Kaetlin of nothing more than a predator circling its prey. It was a perfectly orchestrated maneuver, showing great skill on Jack's part. The fact that he was able to do it so smoothly concerned Kaetlin even that much more.

She glanced at her watch, realizing she needed to go. It would take her a half an hour to get back to the apartment. She wanted to be there when Jack returned for a meeting he had scheduled with the ex-con who resided in their residence. Kaetlin knew this, as she knew many things these days, by spying. Today was going to be no different, she fully intended to listen in on the meeting this morning.

The spying, she felt, had become a necessity. Jack's strange behavior, his inexplicable comings and goings had alarmed her. Once he took up with the former inmate, she had a burning need to know what had happened to this man to make him change so much since emerging from his coma.

However, knowing what he was up to, and doing something about it, were two very different things. Despite her resolve, when it came down to it, she wondered if she could even face up to him if she discovered he was up to something nefarious. He had a power over her, sexually and charismatically, that was far stronger than before. The objections she held seemed to melt away with a stare or a kind word from Jack. It was as unnatural as it was pleasant.

Checking her watch again, Kaetlin jogged slowly toward her car.

As he always was, Arnie was on time. The life of a prisoner and the life of a bus driver were similar in at least one respect: the schedule was everything. Although, admittedly, the consequences of lateness in prison could be described kindly, as more "punitive".

Slipping his key in the door, Arnie wandered into the large apartment to the quick, but withering glance, of LM's sex toy Kaetlin. She could shoot all the scathing looks she wanted (the former inmate thought) it meant nothing to him. He was here to serve a purpose larger than she could imagine. Besides, after years in prison without the benefit of female companionship every single look she gave Arnie regardless of emotion, had the same effect: it caused a tingling and slight hardening of his penis.

Nevertheless, in some ways he understood the hostility she held toward him. She didn't understand the change in her boy friend Jack, or the reasons for the "dubious" company he now kept, and it worried her. Arnie was unable to determine whether she genuinely cared about Jack and his state of mind, which she at least appeared to, or she cared about a change in what had to be one of the cushiest meal tickets around. But either way he could see how he represented a threat.

Thinking about all of this, Arnie gave an invisible mental shrug. It was a shame for her, but it was a shame all around. The situation created by that impostor Lucy Maya had made it hard on all of them.

"Jack here yet?" he asked politely. He was always very polite.

The red head tilted her head toward the apartment's den. Arnie watched her, soft, red lips press together in disgust, feeling himself grow.

Arnie walked into the den, still in awe that there were apartments of such size that could house rooms of this magnitude. Jack was seated on a leather chair, with several Los Angeles newspapers piled around him.

"Good job, my friend. I see here our cleric friend finds himself in hot water."

Arnie shrugged, something he learned to do a great deal of in prison. Shrug off the good and the bad, trying to keep an even existence.

"Just doing as I was told," he said, sitting down in the chair across from Jack, "I reported that the priest had molested me for years. I told them I thought that he was doing it to both the boys and girls in his congregation. As I was instructed, I made sure to emphasize that I am willing to go under hypnosis to prove it."

Arnie shifted, comfortably sinking in his chair. From prison, to the lap of luxury. He would have never guessed.

Arnold Williamson continued, "I managed to get it in the paper, using that reporter you told me about - "

"Yes, now that was very amusing. It's a wonderfully capitalistic world we live in, isn't it? A little monetary incentive even motivates the untouchables of the press."

Jack giggled, and Arnie held back a shudder. As much time as they spent together, Arnie had never grown accustomed to Jack's decidedly female mannerisms which appeared when Jack was relaxed.

"Any way," Arnie said, "they're not real big on the hypnosis thing. It was too long ago. Retrieved memories can't be trusted, and they couldn't use it in a court of law. All of those things we expected. As we discussed before, I told them that I wanted a police psychologist to do the retrieval. I'm not doing this for my sake. But so they know to keep an eye on the priest for what he's doing to kids now, not what he did to me then."

Jack nodded, "Good, good, what did they say?"

"They would think about it, and get back to me. I don't think my being an ex-con going against a priest is helping to grease the wheels."

Jack's eyes narrowed in contained angered. When he looked this way you could feel the power of his darkness shine through. Arnie, for the second time in as many minutes, shuddered. However this time, not from disgust, but fear.

"You must," he placed powerful emphasis on the word "must", "no, you will, make sure that they dig into your subconscious. I know I only gave you enough information to complete your tasks, nevertheless I will explain the importance of this one, so you will understand."

Jack took a sip from the water on the table next to him, "I have planned my vengeance long and hard. Between becoming whole again, and returning to this plane, I laid out some things very carefully. One of them is in your head. It is a hypnotic trigger."

"Trigger?"

"Yes, while on the dreamscape I crafted a host of false memories and images that are waiting for the psychologist to pop them, like a very fragile soap bubble. When this bubble is popped, not only will your mind fill with the memories of molestation from our traitorous friend the cleric, but other bubbles will float into other dreams and pop."

"Other bubbles... other dreams?" He asked, before answer his own question, "other memories of people... youngsters... in the congregation. They're going to suddenly remember, all at once, your false memories that Father McCormick was an evil man. Dear god..."

Jack leaned forward in his chair, "You see Arnie, it's not just about me. I understand how you must feel after your priest, who had been your friend for all those many years, turned his back on you for... the abomination. He will suffer, but not even as badly as the rest of those who helped that body thief, will suffer. Now go, and see what you can do about getting that psychologist to push that first domino."

Jack flashed his impossibly enticing smile, and for Arnie, all was right in the world.

In the bedroom, Kaetlin lie still by the vent, uncertain what it was she heard (so much of it didn't make sense) but nevertheless she was terrified. Her heart beat a thousand miles an hour as she tried to make sense of the talk of dreamscapes, dominos and revenge. Her mind tried to force the connection between the false memories and the disgraced priest she read in the paper, however she couldn't quite connect all the dots.

All she knew was that she was very frightened.

But not nearly as frightened as she would have been, if she knew, that Arnie had gone, and Jack was sitting in his leather chair, with his eyes glued to the vent, listening to breathing that no man with normal hearing would have a right to hear.