Girl Singer

Lulu Martine

I woke up, shivering, the room still dark. Searching around for my covers in the darkness did no good. I wondered what had happened to my nightlight. Since I turned seventy, I had found my night vision fading and very little help during my frequent trips to the restroom.

Cussing a little under my breath, I groped for the bedside lamp and fell off the bed because the little table also seemed to be missing.

I banged my head against the floor startling a yelp out of me. The noise seemed curiously high pitched.

I felt confused and panicked; at my age, a fall could be dangerous.

Had I taken up drinking again? I hadn't woken up from an alcoholic blackout in nearly forty years, not since I had joined AA six months after the accident that had wiped out my young family.

Something drifted down over my face, cobwebs I thought. I didn't fight them off, trying to lie still and figure out where I might be.

Then I remembered.

I had been drinking again. I'd taken my last full prescription for narcotic pain pills, bought a fifth of cheap bourbon and checked into a downtown fleabag hotel with the intention of taking all my pills at once and drinking myself to death.

"I'm d-d-dead," I said to myself. My voice sounded strange, besides the stutter, but I really hadn't expected to wake up. I didn't believe in an afterlife; despite years of trusting my sobriety to a higher power, I didn't really believe in God.

But other than a headache, a queasy stomach, a stiff neck and the slight bump on the head I'd got falling out of bed, I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt so good. The pain in my back, cancer, that I had lived with for more than two years was gone.

I didn't really hurt anywhere but maybe it would be a good idea to find the bathroom since the upset stomach seemed ready to turn into something even more unpleasant.

Had I just gotten drunk and never taken the pills? Surely fourteen strong opiate pills and a fifth of whiskey would have ended my problems, I must have failed to follow through. Drank the booze and forgot the pills? No, I had intended to take the pills first and wash them down with the whiskey. Maybe fourteen wasn't enough?

I stopped worrying because when I sat up I felt the bounce of something on my chest. This didn't feel like the old-man-boobs I had developed in my seniorage. And without thinking about it, I had sat up without bracing an arm behind me; it had been more than two years since I had been able to do that.

My hands went to my chest and felt them—taught, bouncy, girl tits. Ones like I hadn't felt since the last time I had enough libido to hire a prostitute, maybe a couple of decades—and they felt huge, more than handfuls.

“D-d-dreamin’,” I said aloud. My voice sounded funny, it even tasted funny in my mouth. I licked my lips; soft, smooth and plump with no trace of whiskery stubble and certainly not the thin, dry, crusty lips of an old man.

They felt—bruised? I raised a hand and explored my face. Soft plump lips, cheeks smooth, round and not sunken—the face of a child, or a woman.

“I-I’m d-d-drea-,” I said aloud. The stutter stopped me. I tried again. “I-I-ah-I-uh….” It was worse the second time. Now I didn’t remember exactly what I had meant to say. I frowned, annoyed and a bit frightened.

What had happened to me? I was a salesman most of my working life, talking was my business. But I didn’t seem to be the me I had known. I must be dreaming.

I touched the breasts, the hair, the wide spread of round bottom I sat on. A very strange dream, perhaps a delirium brought on by my Last Cocktail of booze and pills.

I could taste alcohol but not the whiskey I had planned on drinking, something more malty, beer?

In the darkness, I felt of my face, again. Soft, smooth cheeks, a buttonish nose and big hoops in my ears—and the "cobwebs" turned out to be long strands of very abundant hair. What little head hair had survived my turning sixty had been eradicated by the chemotherapy.

“I-I-I’m d-d-d-uh,” I said, tugging on one earring, frustrated with my inability to finish the sentence. Or the thought, had I meant to say ‘dreaming’ or ‘dead’? Either made sense but logic had nothing to do with it—and certainly nothing to do with what I felt and experienced.

Because I didn't feel as if I were dreaming. Or dead. I felt very much alive, despite a headache and nausea, I felt good, I felt strong I felt — young.

I dropped a hand from my face to my breasts to my groin. It didn't surprise me not to feel a penis there, the tits had been a clue. And to be honest, a dick would have felt wrong. Why, I wondered?

“S-s-some d-d-dr-uh," I muttered.

I tried to stand up and managed it with a combination of strength, flexibility, and awkwardness that seemed very bizarre. No struggle, though. A day before I would have had trouble standing at all and would have managed it only with an effort that left me gasping.

Am I dead? I asked myself, not trying to speak out loud. Or am I just dreaming that I'm dead? Why would I dream that I’m a woman? I ran my hands over the female body I seemed to have — inherited? Why did I think that?

I stumbled a bit in the dark and the bathroom door did not seem to be where I thought it should be but a dim light from high up in the wall, a window, gave me enough light to see the sink, the toilet, and a dark and sinister darkness that might be an old-fashioned clawfoot bathtub. Nothing looked at all familiar but I began to wonder if this were the same hotel room as the one I had checked into for my planned suicide.

If I were in a different body, why not a different hotel room. Heck, even a different hotel, a different city, country — language? Was I even thinking in English?

I smiled in the dark. How would I know? My stuttering had sounded like English but that didn’t prove anything.

I didn't remember having smiled since the rictus of pleasant pain I'd felt after taking my first drink in many more years than I felt like counting.

I stood in front of the toilet for a moment before the thought occurred to me that I had better sit down and do my business. “W-w-wouldn’t….” Wouldn’t want to have an accident, I finished the thought without speaking.

For some reason, this struck me as funny and I sat there giggling and making tinkling noises into the bowl. Afterward, I found the toilet paper and cleaned myself up. The feel of things down there wasn't exactly a surprise, I hadn't been a monk, but it did feel different to have female equipment of my own.

I didn't linger though but wandered back into the dark bedroom. I still hadn't turned on any lights. I debated with myself just crawling back into bed and waiting to see if next time I woke up as dead as I had expected to be.

More giggles. Damn it, I felt absurdly good. It had been so long since I felt good. Years, if not decades. But what I was experiencing had to be a delusion; no one takes a massive overdose of pills and booze and wakes up in a new body.

What did I look like, I wondered. Why hadn't I turned on the light to see?

But I knew why. I didn't want to see my old, gross, dead body lying in the bed.

*

I knew he must be there, I could smell him.

A fat, stinky old man, dead on purpose, dead of booze and pills. Lying in the other half of the bed where I woke up in this new, young, female body.

How had this happened?

Magic?

I didn't believe in magic.

A miracle?

I didn't believe in miracles, either.

Which only left insanity. “I-I-I’m c-c-crazy?" I said aloud.

Other than the stutter, I liked the sound of my new voice. I lifted my chin and sang, "La, la, la-a-a!" No stutter on the nonsense syllables, high and pure, a child's voice, or at least a soprano, a woman. In the darkness, I hugged myself, pleased to be the new me.

But what would it be like to live a new life as a woman? I didn't know but a hundred imaginings occurred to me. If I didn’t stutter when singing, maybe I could make my living doing that? My new brain seemed quick with thoughts, not like the still-life old male brain I had been trying to kill.

Had killed.

I couldn't make sense of it but I stood there in the dark, convinced that a dead man was in the room with me. A dead man who used to be me.

I needed a light but I felt afraid of turning one on and seeing my own corpse. The only illumination in the hotel room came from the dim square of the high window in the bathroom.

There should be a light switch in there, I could retreat to the bathroom and turn on the light and sneak up on my dead man, not have to see him all at once.

I crept backward into the bathroom and felt around for a light switch but no joy. It wasn't on either side of the door, high or low. In the dimness, I saw a line of shadow on the wall beside the mirror. I remembered old-fashioned pull strings from when I was a kid. I reached for the string and yanked.

A small bare light bulb in a socket next to the mirror came on. It probably wasn't more than forty watts but it blinded me because I had looked directly at it. I blinked, my eyes tearing up.

In a moment I could see, more or less. A young woman, a girl, looked back at me from the mirror. Her face seemed absurdly young, pretty but sort of vapid. She wore the remains of quite a lot of makeup, dark stains around her eyes, a smear of bright red around her mouth.

She had light brown hair and eyes that were either hazel or gray, a straight nose, a wide mouth and the sort of clear complexion, under the makeup, that makes one think of Ireland or Scandinavia.

I forgot about the dead man in the next room and made faces at myself in the mirror. I smiled, I winked, I preened, I frowned. I almost laughed out loud to see the new me.

“N-n-name?" I asked myself, but I didn't know the answer. My old male name would certainly not work. Did this girl have an identity that I would have to take over?

That stopped me for a moment. If I had killed myself and taken this girl's body, her life—what had happened to her?

I stepped back to get a better look at myself. The tiny bathroom held a toilet, a sink, an old-fashioned clawfoot bathtub with a shower attachment and a rag rug. I pulled the door around to see behind it, a freestanding cabinet probably held towels and supplies but on the back of the door was something more interesting, a 3/4 length mirror.

I stared. “W-w-wow," I said. The face might be only attractive but my new body had the large breasts, lush curves and long legs of an old-fashioned pin-up girl. “W-w-wow," I said again. “N-n-n--." Naked.

Well, I'd known that. I managed not to laugh at myself and ran my hands over my softness. It all felt strange and familiar at the same time. This felt like my body without feeling at all like my old body. I touched a nipple and felt and saw the crinkly response; it kind of tickled.

I checked out the groin area. "Oh," I said. I stifled another giggle. I had a bush, soft and curly hair grew around a damp slit with fleshy lips. I chickened out on exploring that more, at least, not yet.

Further down, my legs were softly furred as well, with some hair in the pits. Was I not American? European?

I noticed my earrings, gold hoops with itty-bitty chip-like red stones set in them. My nails were polished but not painted and a little ragged--as if I had chewed on them sometime recently.

But something else caught my eye. Were those bruises around my throat? The purple marks looked fresh and finger-shaped. I touched them, they hurt a bit if pressed. I tried to swallow and that hurt a bit more. Had someone tried to choke the pretty girl I saw in the mirror?

I turned and looked out into the bedroom. In the light from the bathroom door, I could just barely make out the lumpy shape under the bed covers.

I screamed, then stuffed a hand in my mouth to shut myself up. How could I have forgotten about the dead man in the bed?

*

I tried to stop the whim-whamming of my heart and rationally consider the situation. Yes, there was a corpse-like lump under the covers in the broken-down bed of my hotel room.

But how could it be my old body? I had taken pills and drank cheap booze in an attempt to off myself but there had been no young woman in the room with me when I did that. No naked young woman with a body like the one I now had, for sure.

And yet, even before I turned on the light, I had known he was there. Well, was he really dead? I hadn’t checked yet but the hotel room certainly smelled like someone had died in it.

I saw an old-fashioned table lamp on a dresser near the bed. I crept up on it, hunched over as if I expected to have to run from some sort of retaliation. The switch on the lamp was another pull chain but I hesitated.

Up this close, I had no doubt the man was dead. He wasn’t moving and he smelled of shit and vomit, stale sweat and old cologne. Cologne? I —the I from before— did not wear cologne. I’d even given up on deodorant because I no longer cared.

He was lying on his back. As fat as he seemed to be, I should be able to hear him breathing. If he had been breathing. My hand on the light switch trembled and I yanked it away, almost knocking the lamp over.

Fat? I hadn’t been fat at the end. The chemotherapy had caused me to lose over sixty pounds in only six months. But it didn’t relieve my mind to realize that this corpse could not be mine.

I opened my mouth to scream again but the noise of a key in a lock stopped me.

I stared around the room, looking for a door which suddenly opened before I had located it. Dim light from a hallway outside came in through a crack that swiftly closed after a shape squeezed through.

“Jesus Christ,” said a male voice. “It smells like death in here.”

“Eep!” I said.

“Bonnie?” the voice asked.

Bonnie? Was that her name, my name, now?

“I-I-uh-I-.” No use, I realized. I might as well not be able to talk at all. “M-m-me?” I said, making it a question.

“Don’t try to talk, dummy,” the man said cruelly. “Ain’t there a light in here?” He found a switch by the door and flicked it on, holding an arm over his eyes against the sudden glare.

Almost blinded, I remembered I was naked and tried to run toward the bathroom, my breasts swaying and jiggling with the movement.

“Stop!” the man commanded and I did, collapsing into a heap on the floor. Am I crying? I wondered. Shit yes, I was weeping like a little kid who got nothing but coal in his stocking on Christmas. Her stocking.

“Bonnie Mae, stop that blubbering,” the man ordered.

I looked up and through tears saw that he was standing by the bed, staring at the corpse there.

From my angle near the floor, I couldn’t see the face and I didn’t want to, turning my head away. My insides felt shattered and it took me a moment to recognize the feeling as fear. I was terrified.

The man standing by the bed turned to glare at me. “You done killed another one, you stupid cunt,” he accused.

*