Victoria

1

I sat in my small damp basement apartment and my underpants, savoring my fourth glass of a cheap little something only a desperate wino would rave about. My eyes drifted towards a particularly strange advertisement in the newspaper, I’d carefully crumpled away on the floor.

It read; ‘The opportunity of a lifetime. If you want to become a woman and you’re prepared to sell your soul to the Devil - call this number’. I’ve worked in sales and I know a con job when I see one. I noticed they gave a mobile phone number. What concerned me was; it was my mobile phone number they were using. Bloody newspaper I thought, they’re forever getting phone numbers wrong. Now I’ll have every weirdo on the planet ringing me.

Out of curiosity, I switched on my very second-hand Nokia® phone, expecting to see a large number of missed calls and messages. There were none. I stared at the phone’s display, letting the alcohol in my bloodstream do the thinking for me, for a while. Eventually, since nothing much happened, I dialed my number.

"You are being diverted to Hades, please wait," a pleasant female voice said. "Thank you for calling. This call may be recorded for quality assessment and training purposes. If you hang up now, your body will break out in lots of really nasty boils.

After thirty seconds of a badly played instrumental version of "I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No" from some old Broadway show whose name I couldn’t remember, a sexy female voice spoke.

"Thank you for calling Hades - Customer Service Division - New Accounts," she said cheerfully. "Please select from the following option. If you are calling because some idiot moron used your phone number in a newspaper advertisement - press 1. You can press 9 at any time to repeat this option."

There was a long silence.

"You have not selected option 1," the voice said happily, startling me. "Since you’d obviously have difficulty understanding anything more complicated than the internal workings of a house brick, you are now being transferred to one of our consultants."

This time the music was a shaky rendition of "Black Magic" played on a harmonica.

"Hello," a slinky female voice interrupted the music. "I’m Victoria. May I have your user name and password please?"

"I don’t fucking have one," I replied angrily.

"That’s okay, David," Victoria said cheerfully. "We don’t need it anyway. We know very well who you are."

"What?"

"Did you see our advertisement in the newspaper?" she asked proudly. "We’re all very pleased with it down here. It’s part of our new IBM® - Innovative Business Marketing."

"That’s what I rang you ass holes about," I answered. "Why the fuck did you use my number? And who the Hell are you, anyway?"

"You’ve already answered your second question," she laughed. "And the reason we used your phone number was; you probably wouldn’t forget it - too easily."

"And what’s all this shit about me becoming a woman? I don’t even want to be a woman."

"Yes you do."

"No I don’t."

"It just so happens - we know you do," she insisted.

"Then you just so happen to be fucking wrong, don’t you?"

"It’s a perfectly genuine offer, David," she continued. "It’s just like it says in the advert. You want to be a woman - you give us a call. We tried to put the advertisement in simple enough English, with no really big words. We’ll turn you into a woman. All you have to do now - is go through the boring bit about selling your soul to the Devil. For fuck’s sake David - you know the drill.