I Died Today by Seth Harrison

(3 ratings) Rate this Story (5 best) 1 2 3 4 5   1 comments /

The door ahead is closed, but I can hear everything. Everything. How am I doing this?

"I had two choices: let him die and get sued out of business or find a donor. What do you want from me?"

Donor? Gawd, it smells in here. She's going to the table now. Maybe she smells it, too. Maybe—

No.

"Maybe we've made a mistake."

I can't breathe. I must be losing consciousness because I can't think. Everything is so dizzy. Please. Let me go. Let me out.

"I made a decision. We'll see if it was a mistake."

Um, ya, fake bodies aren't donors.

"You'll stay in that closet, Darrell Reidmiller."

Fake bodies aren't donors, and she's giving me a Pap smear.

[Daddy is home.]

Dr. Wiley was a shadow silhouetted by the evening sunlight pouring in from the web glassed window behind him. He stroked his goatee as he observed me. "The sixteen-year-old girl whose body you occupy was pronounced brain dead after a car accident three days ago," he explained. "You understand. The parents agreed to the donation after hearing your story."

I was impatient. "Bedtime stories? Anything but Pumpkin Eater, daddy," I said.

He removed his glasses and seated himself across from me; those gorgeous eyes tore through the gloom with a quiet intensity. "Why didn't you mention you were a homosexual, Mr. Reidmiller?" he asked.

I laughed. "Please, call me Stacy, I guess."

"Her name was Erica, but then again you only have her body."

"The body I should've always had?" I replied.

Dr. Wiley relaxed. For a moment nothing was said, yet the silence itself seemed crowded with discussion. "You're upset because we couldn't fit you with a synthetic host body. I'm sorry. Biochemically imbalanced brains don't operate properly in a balanced pod-bod. It's like putting batteries in backwards, you see. Nothing works. Your parents knew about your sexual orientation, didn't they?" he said.

Suddenly I became noxious. Painful cramps shot through me and left me irritated. The thought of actually menstruating disgusted me and left me daydreaming about tampons and cotton balls. My nails looked like shit.

"I suppose they weren't nice about it, either," he added correctly. "But that's the past. You owe it to yourself to be yourself now."

"Out of the closet," I said, flipping my hair back and suddenly liking it.
He returned my smile; we flirted. "Something like that, yes."

[Tell mommy goodnight.]

Sometimes I think of myself as a man; however, Erica's porous shell hugs my soul in an always shifting, sometimes sexless introspection. Even now as I leave the corporate vault and hail a ride, I can't help wondering if I'm beyond anything humankind or nature intended: the anomaly no natural law can decipher.

An interstellar taxi passes everyone to stop just for me. I smile at the driver-pilot who checks me out. Somewhere the sunlight manages to slip past the skyscrapers to heat my face I know will never be entirely mine. I am three people, not one: the old, the new, and the now.

"Where to, sweetheart?"

I think three times better than before. "How about Neptune? It's only 3,001,300,502.4456
kilometers from this position, assuming our path of travel encounters no resistance." My glare scrapes the air with its virility.

"Hey, good guess!"

I snicker and wiggle into my seat, sensing that Soft Tech hasn't stopped watching nor will they ever. Mistakes are irresistible.