And they call her a name that they never get right, and if they don't then nobody else will …
“They have a certain gaiety to them, a power of invention, they don't care what people think. They have escaped, though what it is they've escaped from isn't clear to us. We think that their bizarre costumes, their verbal tics, are chosen, and that when the time comes we also will be free to choose.”
Atwood, Margaret. (1988). Cat's Eye. Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
__________
A flood of dizziness and nausea swept over Jacob abruptly. He felt his knees shaking, his heart rapidly pounding, and every pore in his body swiftly emptying itself of sweat that now covered his cold, clammy skin. Collapsing to the ground, he weakly croaked: “Help me!”
Emily watched in silence, her jaw frozen in wide open surprise.
The Toroid slipped from Jacob's languid grass and landed on the grass with a soft thump. No sooner had it done so than Jacob's entire body abruptly began to writhe, ripple, twist, and painfully re-shape itself. He cried out once in sharp pain. Emily remained paralyzed with shock as she watched the boy next door transform, over the course of maybe just twenty or thirty seconds, into something completely new.
His hair turned bone white and sprouted out into a long, wavy mane of brittle looking threads. His face grew sallow, thin, pale, wrinkled, and wan – as though it had been stretched out like an inflated balloon and then deflated back into a hollow, sunken mass of puckered folds, furrows, and creases. The effect quickly spread across every inch of his skin, straining, creasing, and crinkling his epidermis into the wrinkled, cadaverous husk of an nonagenarian. His arms, legs, and torso all seemed to lose massive amounts of muscle mass as well, as his body began to take on the bony, gaunt appearance of an emaciated of a geriatric patience. From what Emily could see, it looked as though Jacob had lost maybe a third of his body weight and perhaps up to a foot of height!
Finally, the transformational magic affixed its attention to Jacob's attire. His clothes at present hung ridiculously loosely on his shriveled and shrunken, skeletal frame. For perhaps a second or two, every item of clothing on Jacob effulged with the soft, lambent glow of clean, white light. Then it briefly wavered, like a heat shimmer mirage, and was instantly replaced by completely new and different apparel. Jacob was now wearing a frowzy, threadbare cable knit cardigan of a faded coral pink hue. Beneath that, he had on white house dress with a floral pattern of badly faded greens and pinks printed across its fabric. Below that, he wore a badly wrinkled pair of crumpled, nylon knee highs that clung limply to his anemic legs. On his feet were a pair of plain white, utilitarian orthopedic shoes.
From appearances alone, it would seem Jacob had been completely replaced with a short, shriveled, anile woman recently escaped from a nursing home.
“J-J-Jay?” sputtered Emily finally. “Is that you?”
“I don't feel so well, dearie,” Jacob weakly wheezed, struggling to pull himself back up erect.
“What happened?” asked Emily.
“I don't think I'm Jacob anymore, dear,” Jacob answered in a feeble, thin voice. “I remember being him, of course. But … oh my goodness … that was just so far away. It was another lifetime. I just received the memories and life experiences of what must eighty years of living. It was all poured into my consciousness just now. I recall being Jacob. But then I also remember suddenly being a girl, blossoming into a young woman, marrying my husband, raising a family, being a wife and mother … and then a grandmother, and then a great-grandmother and … well, dearie: I'm still Jacob, I guess. But there were only fifteen years of his memories and experiences in my mind. It's hard for that to compete with eight decades of what's now rattling around inside my head.”
“That stupid doughnut of doom Kaitlyn wanted – it did this to you,” said Emily.
“Oh, yes. I expect you're right about that,” Jacob chuckled. “Now where did it go? I do believe I may have dropped it earlier. The arthritis makes you go all butterfingers, don't you know? Help me find it, will you dearie? My eyes just aren't what they used to be.”
“We need to find it and change you back!” insisted Emily. “You're my friend Jay from next door, remember? You're a guy: not an old lady. Hold on to your identity, Jay!”
“Goodness, dear!” laughed Jacob in a dusty voice. “Young girls do get themselves worked up now, don't they? First things first. We'll find that little toy of your sister's. And then let's do go inside for a nice cup of tea. I'm so tired, and a cup of tea would sure perk me up. You can have that little gewgaw for yourself, or give it to your little sister if you please. She does strangely remind me of myself when I was a girl her age: all headstrong and ready to take on the world.”
Emily gaped in horror for a moment, glaring fixedly at the shriveled old husk of a crone standing before her.
“Snap out of this! You were never a girl before this,” hissed Emily. “Please, Jay – you have to remember who you really are and stop being an old lady.”
“I told you,” grinned Jacob with a wrinkled, wry smile. “I'm still me. I am Jacob. But I'm also much, much more than that. Oh, you're young dear: you wouldn't understand. As I said: I have fifteen years worth of boy memories but eighty years of woman memories. It's hard for that distant, long-forgotten part of me to compete. I'm far more a little old lady now than I ever was a young boy. I'm afraid I just don't care to lose all my valuable thoughts and experiences: even if they do represent the the life of a woman who never was, to me they do all somehow feel real. And at my time in life, memories are all we have left, dearie. Don't take them from me.”
“I won't leave you like this,” swore Emily. “I will fix you.”
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