Staring back at you is the familiar bright-eyed face you've seen come across your Facebook feed. A modern controversy in health care surrounding end-of-life issues. The boy you see as your reflection is from across the pond. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
"What did you do to me!?" You yell in your new higher-pitched youthfully exuberant British accent.
"Alright, alright. Calm down," said the shadow. "You're fine. For now. The transplant went excellently well. But if you get too excited, it may not remain so."
"You have me strapped to a table! As a little kid! What the hell do you mean 'calm down'? I can't even speak normally!"
"You just asked the question 'what do you mean, calm down?' did you not?" The shadow asked you in return.
"Well, yes. I did. But that was a rhetorical question!"
"Rhetorical?" he asked. "That's a good word for a 12 year to know."
"I'm not 12!"
"You are now. In body, at least. And mentally soon enough as well, if my theory is correct."
"Your theory?" You asked in a very British sing-song way. Which makes you cringe.
"Yes, yes! All in due time!" He responded. "But first, let's try to get you dressed, shall we?"
You couldn't argue with that idea. You were in a 12 year old boy's hairless little birthday suit and seeing the pathetic little nub you can feel as your own between two smooth sticks as legs was a bit much. Especially when confronted by a much larger grown man. At least the body was in otherwise very good athletic shape.
An orderly came in bearing a pile of clothes fit for an active athletic 12 year old boy.
"These are some of Arthur's, your, things," he said as he deposited them on a side table. "Freshly laundered," he added.
The doctor stood there for a moment or two looking at you with a slightly amused or satisfied smile on his face, even as you sat there looking up at him with your brand new baby-blues. Well. Not "brand new." They're "used" blue eyes under new ownership that happens to be you.
"Welp. I'll leave you to it! You may get properly dressed," he said as he turned to go.
The door closed. You sat there for a few moments in silent wonderment at the very strange turn of events. You look over at your new self in the mirror, which you still couldn't recognize other than as some foreign kid on the other side of the ocean featured on your Facebook page.
It was strange, trying put yourself into the image of such a drastically-different-looking and much younger face. Trying to put yourself behind those blue eyes, smooth cheeks, and small nose with the image of your old face still fresh in your mind. Trying to adjust the image of yourself as this young middle school-aged kid. Worse, knowing you now have a British accent with an equally youthful voice! And did the doctor say you were likely to mentally regress to a 12 year old as well?
Even worse yet, looking down at your flat hairless chest and developing abs that ended in two small feet, this body apparently hasn't started going through puberty yet! At least, not quite yet.
You were left with a kiddy-sized ballsack and a pencil-looking nub between perfectly long, smooth, hairless legs! There were a couple of small scars on those legs from some unknown previous adventures of a young active boy that tells a tale that this was a used body with its own history. The most prominant and biggest scar on the right knee that runs vertically along the inside (left-side) of the kneecap. But you don't spend time studying any scars. You just simply noticed them and moved onto the rest of your examination for this body you never asked for. Ironically also thinking, "well, I suppose I never asked for my old body either. But at least it was completely my own. I suppose this one is now as well...."
You went into a little bit of a deep philosophical line of thinking like this for a few moments more. Until you decided to look back up at the mirror again.
You began to get a vertigo-like, slightly sick feeling, being greeted by the still-unbelievable face of this (admittedly-cute!) blond-haired, blue-eyed boy you'd become. Your heart begins to quicken pace. Your already big blue eyes somehow become bigger. Your mouth opens in growing shock while you use an arm that's way too small with fingers way too thin and long to feel your cheeks. The image in the mirror did the same.
Simultaneously, you began to have a growing realization that you now had to live a completely different life. Essentially starting over in a completely different country on a completely different continent! That your thoughts of wanting to just "go home" to your family, now has a completely different connotation.
And your girlfriend! What about your girlfriend!? Even if you COULD somehow go back to your dear sweet girl in California where youoved to because of your new job, she wouldn't.....she COULDNT!....have anything to do with you now! It would be....it would be....you didn't want to even think the word. It would certainly be viewed as not just illegal, but highly immoral for a grown woman to be with a little boy!
The pathetic little penis just hangs there uselessly. "And what about me?" you speak to yourself in your new young British-accented voice that automatically made you cringe, as you reach down to touch it. To slightly lift it up to examine it. It DID become slightly alive at the simultaneous thought of your beautiful girl! You WERE at the very beginning stages of puberty after all, you realize.
The thing looked completely different from what you were used to. Not a smudge of hair anywhere on the pubic area above the penis. It was pale, thin, and on the long side. A bit like a pencil. Whereas, yours was like a stubby eraser. Your old equipment, you mean.
You felt a little bit of a spark upon examining yourself and thinking of yourself in such a reduced, pathetic form. "What about me?" You say outloud a second time. "Is this....is this ALSO 'illegal,' or 'immoral,' for a grown man.....a MENTALLY grown man.....to be touching and USING the naked penis of a young boy that is now....well....me...?"
All these thoughts and implications came all at once, which is why your new heart began to race in your new chest in growing fear and shock with a shocked face to match your imternal feelings with growing turmoil.