Slice of an unwanted life (snippet)

The dick wasn’t the worst of it, although it came close. (Pun VERY much unintended.) Every morning this repugnant thing greeted me like an overeager watchdog, diligently guarding its meth addicted owner. The thing was disgusting.

No, the worst of it was that my words- the only refuge I had left into my own personhood- were filtered through the rough baritone of my tormentor’s voice.

I hated speaking.

“Derek, my man!” A voice cut through the unfortunate task of entering into Derek’s day. One of his buddies, possibly as mindless as he was, rasped, “Getting the old cup of Joe?”

I stood in line at the cafe, enveloped in the musk of a man impossible to shake no matter how often I stood in the scalding heat of a shower, practically flaying my skin- his skin- by washing away the very cells that comprised this prison. But I was stuck. For weeks, I was stuck as this man while he ran around, systematically dismantling everything I’d ever built from within my own form.

Meanwhile I maintained his life. Beginning the second week anyway, upon the realization that I may exist in this manner for the rest of my days. I may as well make the best of it. And at the moment, “the best” involved a morning coffee on the way to his job.

“Oh, hey,” I cringed at the sound ringing within my cranium. “Yeah, I need the pick-me-up.”

I didn’t. If I could drop dead, then and there, it would be a mercy. But I needed to find some way to reverse this wretched curse, so I carried on.

Derek took my body, swapping it for his, and while my soul screamed to escape from his putrid existence, I wasn’t going to let him take that too.

“What is that?” Barry was his name. An apt one, as his mind was the equivalent to a heap of mashed up fruit and rot. But maybe I was being too hard on him. Maybe I was projecting my rage at Derek onto his associates. “Is that a pumpkin spice latte? What are you, a basic white bitch?” Barry couldn’t help but release unearned guffaws at his own joke.

I wish I was a basic white bitch. I wasn’t a bitch before- I made sure of it- but I was a woman and an occasional sucker for coffee laced sugar. It didn’t taste the same now though, as much as I tried to force it

“Only on days that end with Y!”

Upon embodying this man I, too, had to rely on bad jokes, stupid gestures, and an affectation completely contrary to my own.

And how I longed for my voice. I yearned for my old life. A caretaker. A friend. A lover. An adventurer. Me. I missed my hands- dexterous and delicate- and my svelte frame, my womanhood. I missed giving, willingly, and receiving, gracefully. Now it felt like every waking moment was a violation, all the while he ran around posing as me, as if I was nothing more than a sexual ornament.

But one day this would end.

Right?