With a scratchy blanket wrapped around him, Kyle took the seat indicated by the officer who had picked him up at the park as he wandered naked and completely out of sorts. He coughed again, a dry, rattling cough that shook his thin, wrinkled frame.
The officer called for one of his colleagues to bring a cup of coffee.
"I don't want coffee!" Kyle exploded in a frail, exhausted voice.
"Calm down, sir," the officer said. "I just need to ask you a few questions to help us get you back with your family."
Kyle resented being treated like a child. Something had gone very wrong when he used the portal in the leprechaun's cabbage patch to return to his world. He had arrived without a stitch of clothing, but worst of all, he had aged into the body of a ninety-year-old man. His wrinkles sported their own wrinkles, he had lost all his musculature, and his skin looked liked dry parchment stretched tightly across his bones. His hair had thinned considerably and was nothing more than a few wispy white patches atop his head. He could catalog dozens of aches without even trying.
An officer arrived with a steaming mug of coffee and placed it on the desktop. As Kyle picked up the cup, his hands shook like a tree trembling in a gust of wind.
"Easy there," his interrogating officer said. "Don't want to slosh that hot coffee all over you."
Kyle sat glumly, sipped his coffee, and listened to the officer's questions. He couldn't tell him the truth. He would get himself locked up as a loon. The coffee did revive him somewhat.
"I remember these two guys in the park," he said, trying to invent a plausible story. "They wanted money. They must have mugged me. That's all I remember."
"You have any injuries? You need to see a doctor?"
"I just want to go home," Kyle said, weariness once again in his voice.
The officer asked where home might be, and Kyle answered truthfully without any forethought.
"That's a pretty snazzy neighborhood," the officer said, obviously dubious.
"It's where I live," Kyle snapped, and then realized he wished he hadn't had the coffee. His voice lowered. "Do you have a men's room?"
The officer bent to help him out of the chair.
Kyle tried to shake off the offer. "I can stand on my own," he said before he realized how difficult it was for him now to even rise from a chair. After a valiant effort, he managed and the officer directed him to a door marked MEN'S.
A few complicated moments later, he opened the front of the blanket in order to clear his aim to a wall urinal. "Oh, shit," he complained when he saw his limp dick. It looked smaller... much smaller than normal. Its appearance even changed. It looked a shade lighter and mottled with a few dark spots. Even his pubes had thinned and turned white.
He groaned and tried to focus on the task at hand. And then he tried some more. "What the hell?" Kyle groused. He had felt intense pressure earlier, and now he couldn't even initiate a stream. He tried to reposition, but that just caused him to lose his precarious grip on the blanket, which sank to the floor. Across from the urinals, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirrors. He looked like a wrinkled nightmare with a sagging ass. He heard bones crack as he bent down to retrieve the blanket.
With the blanket draped awkwardly around him again, he tried again and managed a weak flow that dribbled into the urinal basin.
"I was better off 10 years old," he said aloud. "Now I look like I could keel over any moment."