“I'm very polite by nature, even the voices in my head let each other finish their sentences.”
Parke, Graham. (2012). Unspent Time. Outskirts Press.
__________
Jacob was suddenly elsewhere.
And it really didn't seem to either both nor surprise him.
It was bound to happen eventually, he surmised.
Still outside, Jacob took stock of his surroundings: he was in a downtown alley, behind some shops or restaurants. It looked like he'd just been rummaging about through the rubbish recently tossed in the dumpsters back here.
The air was a disagreeably noisome, and there were fresh, nasty wet stains on Jacob's dirty pink, fingerless gloves.
“I'm not me anymore,” he said with virtually no shock.
He had the voice of a young woman.
Looking down at himself, Jacob saw he was a short, skinny woman now, dressed in a fraying, mostly threadbare red hoodie, some sort of dirty t-shirt below it, a pair of black leggings (ripped at both knees), and a pair of filthy grey tennis shoes.
Most importantly though, there was a big Spanish style, black felt hat on his head. Jacob has stolen this stylish item from his older sister Angela. A few years ago, when Jacob first started having “problems,” he'd discovered he could exert some small measure of control over his rapidly disintegrating sanity by dressing in Angela's clothes. Maybe it had started when he turned sixteen and got to wear Angela's fancy, formal, pink dress …
“No, no, no, no, no,” Jacob whispered aloud to himself. “None of these memories are mine. I am me: not her. Get out of my head! I- I- I'm becoming Abagail – and she has some mental problems. I need to stay focused and get back home. If I find Kaitlyn's stupid metal doughnut of destruction, maybe I can get my body back. Then I can … I can … oh, shit … I can't remember my old name? I'm Aba- … I'm Jacob! I am Jacob …”
Again, Jacob's mind wandered, perambulating furiously through the absurd, winding and twisting mental roads of a purely internal delirium: was the real Abagail now in the body of an overweight, teenage boy? Did she think she was him? Because Jacob was becoming increasingly convinced he was her. Abagail was supposed to be twenty-three years old. She'd been a happy, well-adjusted girl. But after Jacob got her period, something had changed. He became much more than just a typical, angst ridden teenage girl. His serotonin was low or imbalance or something, and Jacob became a moody, sullen, depressed young woman suffering the occasional delusional hallucination. They usually passed quickly. But that, and the bipolar mood swings, and the nagging bits of frenzied paranoia all got harder and harder to hide from the other girls Jacob was friends with. The party at age sixteen was a rare bright spot in her life. Oh, Jacob had looked so pretty in Angela's dress. He'd had her blessing to wear it that time. But after that, he constantly got in trouble for sneaking into her room and stealing her things without permission. He wanted to be a happy, well-adjusted normal girl like Angela … instead of the “crazy bitch” madwoman he was becoming with each passing year.
Then there'd been university.
Jacob just didn't fit in with all the other girls. He didn't wear makeup and sometimes couldn't even be bothered to brush what used to be his long, beautiful hair. He wore the same sweater and leggings, day after day after day, becoming weirdly obsessive compulsive about his attire. He couldn't get a boyfriend. He stopped going to classes, lied to his family about his grades, and finally got kicked out. Since then, he'd bounced around a bit: living back at home with his parents, or living like he did right now – free (i.e., homeless) on the streets. He was cold and hungry: like a wild bird, soaring high in the air. Completely and utterly free.
And he had Angela's hat!
Somewhere along the way, he lost his favorite sweater and leggings (and that one bra – the only one that had ever felt comfortable on him). When did it all happen? He had a dim reflection in a shadowy corner of his mind: something about singing and dancing naked under a bridge with strange, wild men who … who … had they taken advantage of her? The police came, and there was a stay at the hospital and …
… and the important thing was that Jacob somehow had retained possession of Angela's hat throughout everything. Nothing else mattered. Her hat was magic, though. And Jacob's possession of it was critical to his survival. He felt remorse at stealing it from Angela, years back. But she'd never really missed it. And while Jacob had it on, his brain was protected from whatever it was They were always beaming into his skull.
Oh, he'd figured out most of their little schemes. At first they were just testing him, teasing him, toasting him. Pushing and prodding and pulling him about in little ways, like they did all the laboratory mice. No, that wasn't right. We're not mice are we? No: we are sheep. Sheep people. Sheeple. And they are directing us, governing us, conditioning us.
“No phones, no TV, no radio,” Jacob muttered. “And keep the hat on. That's the key.”
He pulled the big, floppy, brim of the felt hat low over his darting, feral eyes.
Jacob was pretty sure They were the CIA. He knew, at least, they were some massive, secret organization with essentially infinite resources. They had to be such in order to maintain constant surveillance of Jacob and all the other young women they'd followed and controlled. They liked young women, like Jacob. However, They wanted the young ladies all to remain hatless. Headgear interfered with the signals somehow. And the signals were crucial.
In time, They were planning to force Jacob to infiltrate a group of terrorists. They wanted him to join them, convert to their cause, engage in a bit of evil violence to win their trust. He would have to hurt people, espouse the tenets of hatred, and learn to dress and act and walk and talk like one of their women. And then, when the time was right, They (the CIA?) would beam a very special signal into Jacob that would cause him to self-destruct! Spontaneous combustion on a spectacularly massive scale. Poetic justice. Jacob's exploding body would take out the terrorist cell, and leave behind no evidence of how the CIA had seized control of Jacob's mind and used him, just like they used all the brainless, hypnotized, sheeple around him.
“That's why I wear a hat!” Jacob said with a proud smile. “As long as I wear Angela's hat, I get to keep on being Abagail.”
He was a smart girl, and would not allow anyone to use, abuse, choose, and confuse him! Not Emily and Kaitlyn, not the CIA, not the terrorists, not the mean sorority girls at college, not anyone!
“I'm free to be me,” Jacob said proudly. “I'm just plain Abagail now. And no one is going to convince me to be anything else for them. I am Abagail!”
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