Composition, a TG AR story

Hoboken, NJ

I sat on the park bench that day, hoping that meeting Jimmy in public would spare me my life.  Not that the family hadn't pulled off broad daylight assassinations before, but it was something they preferred not to do.

Jimmy sat down on the bench a foot or two from me.  He looked in the other direction like he was waiting for someone else, but the words he spoke were for me.

"Nice choice, Scotch." I wasn't Scottish, or Irish, but my reddish brown hair had gotten me the nickname.  "You knew better than to run, and you knew to keep it public.  That's a point in your favor."

"I'm being graded?"

Jimmy took out a cigarette, lit it, took a good solid pull on it and blew the smoke out away from me.  He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees and looked down at the ground.  "Yeah, kid.  You did a lot of good things for the family.  You brought us into this century with your computer skills."

That was an understatement.  I had helped them incorporate hacking into their repertoire. I had made them several hundred thousand dollars richer.

Jimmy signed and continued, "And we all love ya, Scotch.  We have since you were a kid."  I had grown up next door the current head of the family when he was an up and comer.  I knew his kids, I knew his wife and I'd even taught their dog how to sit and play fetch.  I was like family to the family.

"But Scotch, that girl..." Jimmy just shook his and then took a quick drag.  "That girl, Scotch..."

That girl had been Jaimee McDonough - a real red head.  I'd met her at a coffee shop in the trendier part of Hoboken, and we'd spent some time together.  I'm not a fast mover, really.  She seemed to appreciate that.  She'd even been to my apartment and seen my computer rig.  We hadn't even messed around or anything.  I definitely hadn't shown her anything confidential or related to the family.  

But, the family knew she'd been there.  And they knew something about Jaimee McDonough that I hadn't.  Jaimee's uncle is an FBI Agent out of the New York office who's assigned to the organized crime unit.  She told me about it on our fifth date.

The next day I got a subtle message that I was out of favor and out of a job.  My red 1985 Alfa Romeo convertible had been found right where I'd parked it: upside down on its convertible roof.  When it was flipped back over, there were two red-head dolls, a boy and a girl, hanging from the rear view mirror.  

I sent a plea through an informant to the boss that stating that I hadn't known who Jamiee was, and that I wanted a second chance.

The message came back for me to pick a place and time to meet with Jimmy.  And here I was at that meeting.

"So, kid."  Jimmy's voice focused me back from my thoughts about Jaimee. "The boss has an offer.  He told Marco about what happened and Marco shared some things."

My heart imploded at that moment.  Marco was the youngest son of the boss and my best friend from childhood.  Only Marco knew my darkest secret: the feeling that sometimes I was comfortable being male and sometimes I wasn't.

Jimmy, who had been like an uncle to me for years, reached a hand hand over and patted my knee. "Kid, I seen some fucked up shit in my time.  What Marco told his dad wasn't really that fucked up.  You know, he loves ya kinda like a son."

"Yeah."  That's all I could muster at that moment.

"And, really, once he heard that, he felt a little bad about interfering with the first girl you really ever brought home.  We always kinda wondered, ya know?  But... she is who she is.  We can't run that risk.  She got a note saying your uncle got sick in Sacramento and you'd be back when you could be."

"Yeah."  I closed my eyes. "What's the deal?"

Jimmy took his hand away from my knee and sat up.  He looked around.  "Scotch, we gotta do something.  Everyone in the family, in all the branches, knows you hooked up with a Fed's niece and showed her your computer rig.  You have to disappear.  A lot of them are convinced you let some broad hack YOU, if you know what I mean."

"Yeah. I know."

"And, well, we've got something that might allow you to disappear and still stay alive.  You just wouldn't be you anymore."

"Yeah?  Like some kinda witness protection program."

"Kinda.  And, if you agree to this, the boss will make sure you're well taken care of.  See, the family needs to repay a debt.  And if you go along, you'll help us."

I shrugged.  What choice did I have?  "Okay, what's the deal."

Jimmy stood up and motioned me to follow him. "We owe someone a daughter."

--------

Jimmy filled me in on the drive to Jersey City.  The boss had an accountant in Manhattan, one James Fichtner, who was a very smart man and took care of the family's legitimate business fronts.  A year ago, Mr. Fichtner's six year old daughter, Emily, had been accidentally clipped by a Lincoln driven by one Frankie "Fudgie" Bardone, who was just stopping by Mr. Fichtner's on home behalf of the boss to drop off some paperwork.  Emily didn't make  it to the hospital alive.  Mr. Fichtner and his wife were grief-stricken at the loss of their daughter, and were too old to have another child naturally.  They were considering adoption.

"You want me to get a sex change?"

"No, Scotch, we got some really weird stuff over here at this house in Jersey city.  We're going to turn you into a kid again.  You're going to be a girl, maybe about... eight years old, and the family is going to help the Fichtners 'adopt' you."

"I don't wanna do this, Jimmy."

"It's that, or I shoot you and dump your half-alive body in the ship yards- In the guard dog pen."

-------- 

Jimmy opened the wipe, swabbed my arm with it and stuck the needle on the end of the IV  into my arm.  It hurt.  

"I'll come up and check on you in about six hours.  You should be done then.  The door will be locked from the outside, and the windows don't open.  I'll be downstairs.  If I hear you get up from this bed before 8pm," he nodded to a clock on the wall, "I will come up here and put you back in it- dead or alive, whatever I feel like.  Capiche?"

"Yeah, Jimmy."  My arm was on fire.  "I got it."

"For what's worth, kid." Jimmy looked at me from the doorway, "You might be happier in the long run.  Focus on that."  He shut the door and I heard it lock.

There was no way I would have gotten up.  I don't know what he was worried about.   Right after he left, the stinging pain in my arm crept through my body.  It was like a light jellyfish sting, but every where.  I had no control over anything.  I was stiff as a board.  My jaw locked up, my eyes were straight up at the ceiling and my chest was constricted.  I could breathe, but only in tiny, little gasps.  The pain was bad enough, but not being able to move in any way to relieve it was worse.  I thought about everything I'd ever done wrong in life, and decided this was my punishment.

Without warning, the pain stopped and my body flopped loosely on the cot.  I still had no real muscle control, but my head lolled slightly to one side on the pillow.  I could move my eyes enough to see the clock.  It had only been about fifteen minutes since the IV was put in my arm.  

The next hour or so was very odd.  Whatever was in the IV started affecting my cartilage first, but I didn't know that at first.  Slowly, I felt joints in my body begin to shrink.  I could see my left hand, and the joints in my fingers seemed to get smaller at each knuckle. One of my knees was in view, but not very much.  Out of my lower peripheral, I could see the knee almost cave in on the sides.  I really began to panic though, when the cartilage in my nose and in my chest began to decrease in size.  The ribs connect to the breast bone with cartilage, and when the cartilage got smaller the the rib cage started to fold inward a bit.  My nasal passages shrank, and breathing got harder again.  Thankfully my mouth was open or breathing would have gotten impossible.  In other places, I felt bones start to press against one other or become loose as their supporting cartilage shrank.  I envisioned myself as one of those ventriloquist dummies that only had a solid head.  Worse, though, was that nerves were now contacting with bones that they shouldn't be.  I heard myself whimper as pains randomly went up and down my spine, arms, legs, fingers, toes and neck.  My windpipe was shrinking.  It didn't hurt, but I felt it.  The sound of my breath changed.  If my ears were shrinking, I couldn't tell.

That was about when the crackling began.  I remembered the sound that foil candy bar wrappers, when they were actually foil, used to make when crumpled them.  I began to hear that under my skin.  I heard it in my head, in my upper torso and I assumed all the way down my body.  Slowly, the pains from my pinched and tortured nerves began to dissipate as my bones began to change in shape and size.  While the changes to my body relieved the nerve pains, the changes in my skull were frightening.  I got dizzy as my skull pressured my brain, which I prayed would shrink in tandem, and my eyes wouldn't move for a little while.  My teeth clacked around in my mouth, or so I thought, and there was a great pressure at the bridge of my nose at it thinned.  My eyes blurred for a long time, and then came clearer as they loosened up in their sockets.  I was able to move them again.  I looked down as best I could, and I saw a body of too much skin and not enough stuffing.  

Looking back at it now, I don't know why I wasn't in full panic by then.  I think there was too much going on for to consider the big picture.

Before the crackling changes of bone structure finished, two new sensations began.  First, my scalp, eyebrows and eyelids began to itch fiercely.  Hair was growing there, that I could feel.  The second sensation was the most horrifying.  My skin and muscles began to tighten.  They contracted slowly, moving the now shrunken bones and cartilage into a tighter package.  It's fiercely unnerving to watch your body pull into itself: toes being pulled into smaller digits, being pulled into smaller feet, being pulled into a thinner ankle, being pulled up into legs that are revealing themselves to be skinny as they pull closer to your torso.  Your torso retracts in at all angles, becoming firm as your rib cage aligns into a tiny shape.  When the skin in your groin tightens so much that your testicles draw up into your body, that is the most unnerving moment: As you realize that it's all going inside you so that you can be a functional girl.  You want to scream or yell or run away, but you can't.  You don't have the strength or muscle control yet.  Finally, the skin pulls you neck and head down to meet the torso, which is also pulling in to itself a set of smaller, thinner arms.  As your head slides slowly down the pillow, hair falls into your face and you have no choice but to peer through it.

And that "you" I just mentioned was me.  

My eyes closed for the rest of it: skin between my legs dancing into a final new formation, and joints making little popping sounds as everything sets into its new home.  I didn't feel any internal organ shrinkage, but it obviously happened.  My head got warm for a long, long time.  With my eyes closed, I saw colors, old nightmares, dreams I've never had, flashes of light and finally some sort of chemical cooling seeped into my brain like fingers massaging my synapses.  I had no worries, suddenly.  I just had peace.

When I opened my eyes, the clock read 8:22.  I was cold.  I crawled under the covers, only slightly musing over how big the cot now seemed.  I did my best to keep the hair out of my face.  I think I heard Jimmy come in and check on me.  I slept.  And I started the next day truly anew.

That is the story of me.

-------------------

"The Story of Me"

Abigail Fichtner

Freshman Composition I

Professor Thompson

September 7, 2012