Ovid 14: The Band free porn video

Ovid 14 - The Band By The Professor Every now and then, I wonder. I wonder if the gods I work for and with are really gods or something else. I wonder why they created Ovid. I wonder why they transform some people into other people and follow their new lives very closely while others they seem to forget before their victims ever stagger out of the courtroom. I wonder what they know of the future that we mortals can only guess at. But most of all, I wonder: why me? Why was I chosen to be the assistant to The Judge, better known to those outside Ovid as the god Jupiter? The problem with wondering about all of that is that most of the time, I'm too busy doing the job I'm paid for or looking after my family, so I don't have time to wonder often. I don't really regret that, though. Being a woman has turned out to be more rewarding than I would have ever dreamed if I hadn't been transformed into one. "You look deep in thought." I looked up from my desk at the smiling face of Susan Jager, my best friend in Ovid. "Sorry," I said. "I was just wondering." "About Ovid?" "Of course." It was a frequent discussion between the two of us. We probably knew more about Ovid and its gods than any other mortals, and yet we knew very little. Most of it didn't bother us much since, as I said, we had the more mundane tasks of job and family to contend with. Still, we often discussed it, primarily because there was one facet of the gods that concerned us - namely, their preoccupation with our children. Both Susan and I had noticed how the gods treated her new son and my new daughter as if they were very important. We doubted if it was just because of our relationship with the gods. Even The Judge - a being who seemed to have little patience with children - seemed enraptured by our children. Both Susan and I were beginning to suspect that the fact that they were both born within hours of each other was deeper than just a coincidence. "Hello ladies!" The voice and appearance changed often, but we always knew Diana from her cheerful greetings. Today, she had a very Mediterranean appearance, with olive skin, aquiline nose, and coal black hair. Given the origin of legends of the gods, I suspected this lovely but somewhat earthy version of Diana was close to her original appearance - assuming of course that the gods really had a human appearance at all. She was dressed in her usual sexy attire, albeit professional. Like Susan and me, she wore a business suit, but unlike our conservative gray suits, hers was a bright lemon yellow, and unlike the "sensible" two- inch heels we wore, she sported matching yellow pumps will a full four- inch heel. "Got time to update me on the Pearsons?" she asked. I wasn't surprised. It wasn't often we got celebrities in Ovid, although I was young enough that I didn't really consider them such. They were just another washed- up band relegated to the "Golden Oldies" on rock stations around the country. I suppose when you've lived as long as the gods have, the band was as new as this morning. "Sure," I replied. "How about you Susan?" "Well, I was there for quite a bit of it, but sure, why not?" "No time like the present," I shrugged as I fell into my trance... *** Nobody had to tell me what Hell was all about - I was already there. Hell was cruising down a two-lane Oklahoma highway on the hottest Indian Summer day in fifty years (or so the locals were sure to tell us) driving a rundown Plymouth van with an air conditioner that didn't work worth shit. Oh, and just to make it even more hellish, let's add a radio that keeps shorting out, a cloud of cigarette smoke, and the company of my three best friends who I had come to hate with all my might. "Turn that up!" Gordy called from the back seat. "That's 'What a Face.'" "I know it's 'What a Face,'" Boop growled in her husky voice. "You think I don't recognize my own voice?" I suppose I could have pointed out that her voice had changed quite a bit since we had made that recording. Of course it was so old it had been originally on vinyl. God, Boop had a voice in those days. No wonder we were able to pack them in on the What a Face Tour. Now though, she made Stevie Nicks sound like a soprano. No wonder we were stuck with gigs in places like East Bumfuck, Oklahoma. "So turn it up!" Gordy insisted, hitting the back of her seat. Shit. I wished he wouldn't do that. The fucking van was held together with Super Glue as it was. Besides, if Gordy hurt his hand on the back of the seat, we'd be short a bass guitarist for our evening performance. Things were tight enough for us as it was without losing this gig. I mean, it was a shitty gig but it was the only gig we had. Boop snorted but she turned up the radio. Actually, I was glad she did. The riff just coming up was one of the best ones I ever did. Jeez, I could play guitar in those days, I thought to myself. I could still outplay a lot of the new kids coming up, but not like I played in '78. "I figure we're about an hour out of Muskogee," I announced from behind the wheel as the song faded away. "You'd better wake up Jess." "You figure?" Gordy asked, making no move to wake Jess. Boop snorted again and lit another one of her fucking lung wasters. "You mean you don't know?" "This road should get us there," I said, faking confidence. "Jeez, Grant, you're a typical male," Boop observed. "Wouldn't check a fucking map or ask for directions if your life depended on it." "If you remember, Jess threw the map out an hour ago," I snapped. Yeah, Jess was high on something. I didn't have any idea what it was. He had more pills than a fucking Walgreen's. I don't think even Jess knew what he had taken - assuming he was even the slightest bit lucent. Jess had a bad habit of copping pills from fans without knowing what they were. It was no small miracle that he hadn't managed to fry his brain. Maybe he had. Nothing Jess had said or done for the last few years had made any sense. But God, could he play the drums! I had seen him so cooked he could barely sit up in his chair, but when the stage lights came on, it was as if someone had tripped a switch on him as well. He didn't just play the drums; he became the drums, beating out a rhythm that would have made a deaf man start tapping his feet. Of course everything he played he had been playing for twenty years. We didn't play anything new. "Fuckin' A," Jess mumbled at the sound of his name. It was his favorite expression and he mumbled it a lot. "Will he be okay for tonight's gig?" I asked Gordy. Gordy was about the most normal member of the band. Tall, lanky, his thinning blonde hair still as long as it was twenty years earlier, he always took care of Jess, sort of like a big brother. Sure, he smoked, drank and partied like the rest of us, but with Gordy, it seemed sometimes as if he did it just to be part of the group. I suppose we were his family in a way. An only child, he had lost his parents while we were all in college together, so in a way, we were the only family he had - and so Jess ended up being treated like his little brother in spite of the fact that he was really two years older than Gordy. "He'll be okay," Gordy said confidently, exhaling a cloud of cigarette smoke in my direction as he spoke. That was all I needed to hear. Gordy would walk Jess around, throw water in his face, slap him silly or do whatever else was needed to get Jess ready to play. Gordy was a good older brother - or I thought he was. I had never had any siblings so I couldn't tell. I had been raised by an alcoholic mother who had been deserted by an alcoholic father right after I was born. She was gone now and I didn't miss her. Come to think of it, I didn't miss anybody. I opened my window to let in the warm Oklahoma air. "What the fuck did you do that for?" Boop asked crossly. "Because when you and Gordy both have a cigarette going, the air conditioner can't clear the air quickly enough," I explained more calmly than I felt. "My eyes were stinging." "Nothing worse than an ex-smoker," Boop mumbled as she scooted down in her seat. At least she didn't say anything. I gave a quick sidelong glance at Boop. Jeez, she was nice looking in spite of approaching forty-five. Oh, her skin had that sallow look a lot of smokers get, but her breasts were still high and firm inside her black halter top. And her waist was slim and trim encased in designer jeans. She fussed with her short dark hair, and as I looked at it, I could see that she needed to touch it up. Gray was peeking through here and there, and nobody expects to see a sexy-at-middle-age rock singer with gray hair. She had kept it short all of her adult life, and that had become a trademark and partially accounted for her unfortunate nickname. Her real name was Elizabeth McCarthy and her parents called her Betty. Then right after our first gig in college, Jess had looked her over in her short flapper-style dress and short hair and announced that she looked like a Betty all right - Betty Boop. By the time we were well known, the trades picked up on the nickname and she had been stuck with it ever since. Looking at Boop always made me a little sad. I'd always start thinking about what might have been. Back when the band got started - before anyone had ever heard of Interossiter - she and I had been close - real close. But while she really did it for me, apparently I didn't do it for her. She found other interests and I didn't fit in. Now we just had two things in common - the band and the fact that we both liked girls. "We're gonna miss the gig," Boop mumbled. "We won't miss it," I assured her. "There's a town up ahead. I'll stop and you can ask for directions." "Why me?" Boop asked. I gave her the patented Grant Douglas grin - the grin that had led a steady procession of girls to my bed and the grin that always annoyed Boop. "Because men don't ask for directions, remember?" Gordy snickered - which pissed Boop off even more. Usually, we weren't quite so tough on each other, but our experience just a few hours before had jangled us enough that the unspoken truce we had observed for the past couple of days had broken down. I suppose anyone nearly encountering a tornado on the Oklahoma plains would have been pretty jangled even if they weren't in our band. We all thought we'd bought the farm. The huge funnel was so close to us that the roar of the storm caused our van to vibrate. We had pulled over to the side of the road to avoid damage from the hail that accompanied the storm. The funnel caught us completely by surprise. Fortunately at the last minute is pulled back up into the sky and veered away from us, but it had left us all pretty shaken. Who would have thought, I mused as we came closer to the unknown town, that we would end up like this? Back at Arizona State, we had been close -real close. All of us were in the same dorm together as freshmen. At first, we were just casual acquaintances, eating and sharing stories about our classmates and our professors. But as we got to know each other better, we found that we had one big thing in common - music. Gordy and I had both been in bands in our respective high schools. Boop - and she was just Betty back then - was a small town girl with a voice that had gotten her the lead in all the high school musicals. Jess was already a pro, sitting in a drummer in three or four recording sessions back home in San Diego. One thing led to another, and by the second semester of our freshman year, Interossiter had formed. The band name had been Gordy's idea. Even back in the late seventies, naming a band was a little like naming a racehorse. You needed to find a name no one else had used (at least popularly) and one that would be remembered by your fans. Gordy came up with the name. He was a big science fiction fan, and the name cropped up in the movie This Island Earth. An Interossiter was a device used by an alien race to communicate. It had a screen like an inverted triangle, so that became our logo. We stayed around campus the summer after our freshman year, sweating through the ungodly Arizona summer but honing our act. We were good - very good. We got plenty of gigs but nothing really big. Mostly, we played small, loud clubs where we did our versions of songs made popular by the Beatles, the Stones, and the Doors. You might say we were early retro. Then as our sophomore year began, two things happened. First, I met a girl I really liked. She started showing up at all of our gigs. She was cute and blonde, and her eyes danced to the rhythm of our music. Whenever I looked down at her, she seemed to inspire me to play better. Her name was Eunice. It's funny, but I couldn't think of her last name, and the more I thought about it, I wasn't sure if I ever did know it. Maybe it was because she had such an unusual, old-fashioned first name. In any case, we saw a lot of each other that semester. The other thing that happened is that my music caught fire. No, I don't just mean the way I played. Like all musicians, I tried my best to compose as well as play, but I had limited talents when it cam to writing original music. Everything I wrote seemed trite. Even when the other members of the band heard my works, they'd tell me it was good and then tell me what other song it sounded like. Then came What a Face. I know; it's a stupid name for a song. One music critic later said "Grant Douglas should get a pie in the face for making us listen to What a Face." But he was in a very small minority. To make a long story short, we got noticed - big time. One day we're playing little clubs in Tempe and the next day we're on the front page of Billboard. MCA signed us, and Interossiter was big stuff. To be honest, all the songs on our first album, titled simply Interossiter, were inspired by Eunice. When I was with her, my creative juices just tended to flow. Tunes rolled through my head, echoing within my mind, demanding to be written down. And the words... they weren't just lyrics; they were poetry. Even people who hated rock music clamored to get copies of the lyrics. They appeared in poetry collections and slick paper magazines along with the works of prize-winning poets. We dropped out of school right after our first album came out. There was really no other choice. After all, MCA wanted us on the tour. The 1979 What a Face Tour drew as many people as ELO's Out of the Blue Tour. No college degree was going to make us rich like the tour would. The only thing I regretted was that Eunice and I broke up, but riches called. And we were rich - for a little while. More money was coming in than any of us - or all of us for that matter -had ever seen in our lives. There was plenty of money for palatial houses, magnificent cars, women, and every electronic toy known to mankind. Fans bought our first album in droves; the store couldn't keep the album in stock. We were on the cover of magazines. Product endorsements rolled in. Life was good. Someone once said that all good things must come to an end. I suppose we all knew that deep in our hearts, but none of us realized how quickly it could come to an end. In the recording business, it's called sophomore slump. It refers to a second album that doesn't measure up to the first. Ours wasn't just a slump; it was an out-of-control nosedive. This is how it happened. Eunice and I had broken up the minute the big checks started coming in. After all, what did I need with one cute little blonde when thousands were pleading with me by mail, phone and in person to have my baby? And as I realized all too late, Eunice was my inspiration. All I had to do was hold her hand and the music began to play. Now my hand was empty and there was only silence. But that didn't stop me. Our fans were waiting for our next album. It came out in 1981 and to be kind, it was trash. I think we all knew it when we made it, but we thought Interossiter on the album cover would be enough to carry the day. But it wasn't. What followed were years of trying to climb back on that pinnacle we had once achieved. But it wasn't to be. The second tour was cancelled after dismal results in three cities. Plans for a third album were scrapped. The phone stopped ringing. No matter though, we thought, we'd take our winnings and retire. So after five mediocre years of trying to create another What a Face, the band broke up. Well, most of it broke up. Boop (and she was now and forever known as Boop) and I had become an item. But even that didn't last long. As I said before, we found that we really only had two things in common - our music and the fact that we both liked girls. I looked over at Boop and tried to remember the good times we had together before she decided to take men off her diet. We had been hell in bed together, but that wasn't enough for either of us in the long run. To be honest, I started cheating on her, seeing other girls. Imagine my surprise when I came back to the place we shared and found out she was seeing other girls, too. Then five long years ago, fate threw us back together. No I take that back. It wasn't fate; it was poverty. Here's what happened. First of all, none of us knew squat about investing our money. Here we were, rich by most people's standards, and it looked for a while as if Interossiter was going to earn more money every year than some third world nations. Of course that was before our second album bombed. Anyhow, like a lot of bands, we found ourselves a business manager to invest our earnings for us. Unfortunately, also like a lot of bands, our business manager turned out to be a crook. By the time we all realized what had happened, there were no bills left on the money tree and Interossiter was washed up. Still, we all had some assets left. After all, houses and cars and other fancy toys can be liquidated for cash. So each of us went our separate ways - usually after loudly telling each of the others to screw themselves. We cashed out and tried to get on with our lives. Unfortunately, none of us had ever gotten around to getting a college degree or learning a trade, and it seemed there wasn't much call for washed-up rock stars in the corporate world any more than there was a call for them in the entertainment world. I swallowed my pride first. I went back to singing and accompanying myself in small, smoky clubs. One by one, I got back in touch with the others and found out that their lives outside of music sucked as badly as mine did. Boop was waiting tables, Gordy was working as a disk jockey doing dance parties and the like, and Jess... Well, let's just say that Jess had burned out so much of his brain that he wasn't much good for anything except day labor. He was one of those guys who hang around the loading dock looking for enough manual work to get money for food and drugs. Fortunately there were enough aging Baby Boomers out there who remembered Interossiter that we could get gigs. And as shitty as our collective lifestyle was, we were all better off than we had been on our own. That was why we stayed together in spite of the fact that we didn't really like each other anymore. We needed each other. There it was - in spite of the fact that we were all in hell, it was a more comfortable circle of the underworld than we would have been in on our own. "Okay," Boop said reading the roadside signs. "So where the hell is Ovid?" "How should I know?" I growled. "Do I look like an Okie?" She gave me a withering stare. "No, you look like an asshole." Gordy broke into his irritating laugh; I swear the guy sounded like a little girl giggling. "Oklahoma..." Jess muttered. "We're in Oklahoma." Well, there it was. Jess had made his one halfway lucid statement of the day. "It doesn't look very big," Boop observed. I really couldn't reply to that. I was too busy driving to look around. All I could see was that the two-lane road ahead of me seemed to wind over a small hill then turn somewhat to the right where the usual collection of roadside businesses began. I had to admit that Boop was probably right. The town didn't appear very big. But then again, many of the small farm towns in the Midwest didn't appear very large. They were slowly dying as the farm economy they depended upon took less and less people. Besides, most of the younger residents could hardly wait to get out of the little burgs in the Farm Belt. They longed for the bright lights and good times of the cities, and I couldn't say that I blamed them. In our journeys from one gig to another, I had seen countless small towns. Mostly, we were just passing through. We hadn't sunk so low as to take gigs playing at high school proms and summer park concerts, so the only reason we ever stopped in small towns was to get a bite to eat or ask for directions. Ovid would hopefully be large enough to provide us with both. As we actually entered the town, I began to note something about Ovid that few other small towns enjoyed. There was an... orderliness to it. That's the only was I can think of to put it. Ovid was clean and polished, like the back lot of a movie studio. Business building were neat and well-maintained. Trees and lawns looked neat and well-cared for. Even the streets looked as if they had been recently maintained, their blacktop and concrete surfaces striped and free of the usual cracks and potholes that seem to plague all towns regardless of size. Boop was apparently thinking the same thing. "What is this, the governor's home town? Since when do small towns look this prosperous?" I grunted in agreement. "I wonder if they have a Mickey D's," Gordy mused. My stomach did a flip-flop just thinking about that. It as a running war between Gordy and me. He liked the fast food joints while I always tried to find a good little local place with a broader menu and a slice of homemade pie. "Food," Jess agreed, or at least I think he was agreeing. "Directions first," Boop demanded, pointing. "There's a convenience store. Ask them for directions." "You ask," I muttered, pulling in to the gas island in front of the store. "Jeez, you're serious about not wanting to ask for directions, aren't you?" "It's not that," I replied. "I need gas. I can be filling up while you ask." "Fine!" she snapped, opening the door the instant I stopped. I smiled as she stormed away. The fact of the matter is that I really didn't like to ask for directions -she was right. Actually, I still had better than half a tank, plenty of gas to get us to Muskogee. Or at least I thought it was. "I can use some more cigarettes anyway," she called back, knowing how much her smoking bothered me. The heat of a warm but fairly dry afternoon hit me as I got out to fill up the car. I normally hated the Midwest for the summer heat and humidity, but the temperature in Ovid didn't seem too bad. Of course, it really wasn't officially summer any more. But I knew from personal experience that just because it wasn't officially summer didn't mean much in this part of the country. That tornado we had spotted that very morning was proof of that. Boop strode back to the car, an angry look on her face. Before I could ask her why, she told me, her arms folded over her breasts. "Can you believe it? They didn't have any cigarettes." "All out?' I asked, surprised. The place wasn't a name brand convenience store like Seven Eleven, but I couldn't imagine that anyone would run the store so inefficiently that they would be out of one of their highest profit items. "They don't carry them," she said to my surprise. "It turns out smoking is against some city ordinance." "Well, probably just in restaurants," I offered, but she shook her head. "No, the whole damned town doesn't allow smoking." If she had said that booze was outlawed, I would have understood. This was, after all, the Bible Belt and there were still a lot of dry towns and counties. But cigarettes? Jeez, if the Californians ever heard of this place, they'd make it an honorary California town, I thought. "Well, they're not going to stop me," she muttered, pulling a mostly- empty pack of smokes out of the car. "Shit!" I screamed at her. "Don't light that! Can't you smell the gas fumes?" She graced me with a particularly nasty frown, but she didn't try to light up. Changing the subject, I asked her, "So did you get directions?" "Sort of." "Sort of?" She motioned with her head at the young clerk behind the counter. "The fucking brain dead monkey in there was sort of vague. He acted like he'd never been out of the county -whatever county this is. He said something about taking the road out of town and keep on it until we reached the main highway." "Which direction?" I prompted. "And which highway?" "He wasn't sure." "That was a lot of help then." Now her hands were on her hips. "Well, genius, why don't you ask him while you pay? Maybe one brain dead idiot can understand another." "Fuck you." "You wish." But as I paid for the gas, I began to understand Boop's frustration. The kid behind the counter looked like he had escaped from junior high. But that wasn't what bothered me the most. I swear the kid looked almost... transparent. No, that's not right. I couldn't exactly see through him. But it was almost as if he didn't quite register on the eyes like he should have. But when he handed me back my credit card, his hand felt solid enough. I chalked it up to too many hours driving. When I got back to the car, Boop was sitting in her seat with the door open to keep the car from getting too hot. She still looked angry, but there was something else about her as well - a look of confusion to put it bluntly. "What's wrong?" I asked her as I started the car and an anemic stream of cool air flowed out of the air vents. "Nothing." "No, tell me," I said gently. Something was really upsetting her and it wasn't just the cigarettes. I cursed myself for not noticing it sooner. "Did you notice anything funny about that kid back there at the counter?" My heart caught in my throat. "Like what?" I asked carefully. "Like he was... not really ... like..." I decided to let her off the hook. "Like you could almost see through him?" She looked at me strangely. "You saw it, too?" "I figured it was just tired eyes or something like that," I told her. "Are you guys trying to fuck with my mind?" Gordy asked, practically forgotten in the back seat. "What the hell are you talking about anyway?" "Never mind, Gordy," I told him. "It must have just been a trick of the light or something." "Well, if you're worried about your eyes being tired, let's stop and eat," Gordy suggested. "Food," Jess added. I hadn't forgotten Gordy's earlier request to find a Mickey D's, but fortunately, the town of Ovid seemed to have no representatives of any of the major franchises, which suited me just fine. "Maybe I'll head down to the main drag and find someplace," I suggested. "You can eat fast food for once in your life," Boop chided me. "There's a place up ahead that looks okay." Rusty's Burger Barn, the sign said. Another sign advertised "Rusty's Best Burgers" under a neon bull. The place was twenty years out of date and wouldn't have attracted flies next to a new McDonald's, but it looked clean and the cooking odors I was starting to pick up through the air conditioner smelled as if the grease wasn't ten days old like it was in most old burger joints. My stomach turned at the thought of a burger. Well, maybe they had decent malts. So I pulled into a parking space right next to the front door. "Food," Jess said again, but this time it was part of a contented sigh. Most of the lunch crowd must have already cleared out. Well, it was close to two, I realized, and in most small towns late lunches were frowned upon. There were only a couple of customers in the place - both about college age and both were studying as they drank their drinks. Two waitresses chatted behind the counter. Both of the girls looked to be about the same age as their patrons. Given the look of the place, I had half expected them to be dressed in those dopey old pink waitress dresses and tennis shoes. Okay, they were wearing sneakers I could see through the break in the counter, but short denim skirts and tank tops seemed to be the uniforms of the day. One was blonde and quite pretty, while the other was a cute but not exactly pretty redhead. But there was something else about the redhead... Boop grabbed my arm. "Grant, do you see what I see?" "I think so," I replied. The redhead was like the kid at the convenience store. It was almost as if I could see through her. "What's the problem?" Gordy asked as we all were grouped just inside the door. "Look at the redhead," I told him. He glanced at her. "Yeah, kind of cute, but not your type, Grant." Boop and I just looked at him. He shrugged. "Look, are we going to eat or what? I thought you guys were in a hurry to get to Muskogee." He hurried ahead of us and picked out a booth, Jess right behind him. "Should we ask Jess?" Boop whispered to me. "Why?" I replied. "Jess is so out of it, I don't think he knows what's going on. He probably sees semitransparent people every day." Reluctantly we joined them in the booth. I was a little relieved as the blonde came over to wait on us. "Hi guys, what...?" Her voice trailed off as she looked at us, her blue eyes growing wide. "Oh my God, you're Grant Douglas!" she gasped. I gave her a closer look. The girl - Gwen according to her nametag - looked to be no more than nineteen. I didn't think anyone under the age of thirty even knew who I was. "And you're Boop McCarthy!" Boop flushed at her nickname. "And Gordy Maxwell. And Jess Conroy!" Gordy smiled at being recognized but Jess didn't look up as he was too busy sprinkling salt on the back of his hand, observing it as if it were a critical scientific experiment. "Jeez... Interossiter!" "I'm surprised you've heard of us," I told her with one of those disarming grins. "Are you kidding?" she gushed. "When I was in high school, you guys were my favorite band." "I'd guess you'd be more into something more current, like the Dave Mathews Band," I told her. "After all, you've only been out of high school - what - a couple of years?" She looked confused for a moment, then flushed herself. "Oh yeah... well, I mean, sure I like the current bands and all and... Hey, look, what can I get you guys?" I looked at her puzzled as we ordered. She had an embarrassed, almost flustered air about her as if she had almost said something she shouldn't have said. Once she had our order, she gave us another shy smile and bustled back to the kitchen. "What was that all about?" Boop said, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and offering one to Gordy. "She acts like she said something wrong." Boop pulled her lighter out and flicked it. It didn't even spark. "Shit!" "Try mine," Gordy said, pulling a Bic lighter out of his pocket. He flicked it and got the same result. "Crap!" he muttered. "That's a brand-new lighter." "So was mine," Boop told him. Then she yelled out at the girls behind the counter, "Hey anybody got a light?" "Sorry!" they both said in unison. "Shit!" Boop growled again. I was actually happy about it. It would be the first meal I had shared with them in a long time where I didn't have to gasp for clean air. And maybe it was just the clean air, or maybe it was the quality of the food, or perhaps it was both, but in any case, I enjoyed that lunch more than any I had eaten in weeks. My stomach had been bothering me for a couple of months - an ulcer, I suspected. So I had tried to avoid fast food whenever I could. The meal at Rusty's didn't taste like fast food, though. The BLT I had ordered tasted crisp and flavorful, unlike the ones I had eaten in recent years. The bread was so tasty it made the toast taste almost sweet, and I had no doubt that the mayo had never come from a jar. As for the lettuce and tomato, it reminded me of the fresh-picked kind I had enjoyed years before on my grandparents' farm. And the bacon was sugar-cured and cooked to perfection. They say smells, sounds and taste can invoke the past more than sights, I mused as I washed a bite of sandwich down with a big gulp of the vanilla malt I had ordered. If so, then sitting there in Rusty's was like a trip back to my childhood, accompanying my grandfather into town for a lunch at a variety store lunch counter - the kind that had disappeared from the cities where I had been raised long before I was out of diapers. The rest of the group had mellowed out when the food had arrived as well. Boop was ravaging a chicken sandwich like starving raptor, and Gordy had made a Double Rusty Burger (with cheese) disappear and was seriously thinking about ordering another. Even Jess seemed happy, sucking down a plate of French fries. I mean that literally. Surely he had to be chewing them, but it didn't look like it. "Are you guys going to be playing around here?" Gwen asked with excitement as she brought us our bill. "We'll be playing in Muskogee," I told her, grabbing the bill. Her face fell. "Oh, darn!" "It can't be that far," I told her. "What is it, an hour or so from here?" Notice my subtle way of asking for directions? "About that," she agreed. "But I'm not allowed to go there." That surprised me. Gwen looked to be about college age and there was no wedding ring on her finger. I would have thought an unattached girl her age wouldn't need permission to drive an hour away. "So who's stopping you? Your parents?" "No," she laughed. "I live on campus." "Then who's stopping you?" I repeated. Her smile disappeared. "That gets kind of... complicated." I frowned at that. It sounded as if Gwen had a possessive boyfriend or something. I remembered a guy my cousin dated who was like that - telling her what she could and couldn't do. She must have figured out what I was thinking, because she added, "No it's not like that. It's..." Suddenly her expression changed, as if she had had a shocking thought. "Oh boy, I just... Look, you guys need to hurry up and get on the road. You need to get out of town." "Town..." Jess said. I gave her a confused smile. "But I thought Muskogee was only an hour away. I doubt if the van with our equipment is even there yet." "It won't be there at all if you don't hurry," she told me, only adding to my confusion. "Please... I really like your music. I'd hate to... I mean... Just go!" I flipped a few bills out of my wallet, more than enough to handle the tab and a nice tip. Thrusting it into her hand, I said nothing. She seemed to be on the verge of crying. "Come on, guys, we need to go." "Go..." Jess mumbled. "What the fuck was all that about?" Boop asked once we were all back in the car. She pushed the lighter in and waited impatiently for it to heat up. "Beats the shit out of me," I replied, checking around for a sign that might tell me in which direction Muskogee lay. "Maybe she's on the same shit Jess is taking." "Fucking lighter!" Boop had her fingers on the business end of the van's lighter. Cold gray metal shone instead of the bright orange signature of a working lighter. "Maybe now is a good time to give up smoking," I suggested with no little sarcasm. "You wish!" "Ghost." "What?" we all said, looking at Jess who had just mumbled the word. Jess managed to nod his head. Following his nod, we watched as a couple who looked to be in their twenties got out of a nearby car parked just down from ours and headed into Rusty's. Now I'll admit that I might have been mistaken about the clerk in the convenience store or the redheaded waitress in Rusty's, but this couple was walking in broad daylight... and they were almost transparent. Again, I couldn't exactly see through them, but it was as if they were somehow less than solid. It was as if I could visualize what was behind them without really seeing it. "Ghost," Jess mumbled again. "What the hell is he talking about?" Gordy asked. "It's that couple," Boop told him. "Can't you see anything wrong with them?" Gordy shrugged. "What? She's a little young for him? What exactly am I supposed to see?" Neither of us answered. There wasn't really much we could say, I suppose. I just got the sudden feeling that the waitress back inside Rusty's had been doing us a big favor when she told us to get out of town. There was something very, very wrong about Ovid, Oklahoma, and I wasn't in a mood to find out what that was. I punched the accelerator and felt a little skid as we hit some gravel on the way out of the parking lot. The worn tires shuddered as they tried to catch hold of the pavement of the street. "What's the hurry?" Boop asked. I didn't have to look at her face to hear the worry in her voice. "We need to get out of here." "Grant, you're scaring me!" Gordy called out nervously as the van shuddered as I got back into the traffic lane. "Shut up, Gordy!" I didn't want to discuss anything until all of Ovid was in my rearview mirror. It was funny how quickly it all hit me. I guess the transparent couple was just the final straw. Already that day I had narrowly avoided being sucked up in a tornado, I had seen ghostly people all over the place, and I had been warned by a waitress (and a fan who seemed far too young to be one of our fans) that we needed to get out of town - fast. Put it all together, along with Boop's bitching and everyone else in the van being high on nicotine or drugs and I had had just about all I could take. And it wasn't over yet. My attempt to get out of Ovid had just met with disaster. The sudden whoop of a police siren, coupled with the sight of flashing red and blue lights, told me that if my day hadn't already been fucked to the limit, it was about to be. "Local fuzz," Gordy told me, looking back over his shoulder. "Maybe you can just pay him and we can get out of here." "Yeah," I agreed. But somehow, I had a feeling it wasn't going to be all that simple. If I had known then how right that feeling was, I might have tried to make a run for it. I had about five hundred in cash on me. That may seem like a lot for the de facto leader of a has-been band to be carrying around, but there it was. Slipping your setup guy a twenty here and there can make all the difference in getting things to go smoothly. Besides, merchants in the towns we usually played don't like to take anything but cash from a forty-something guy with his hair too long wearing a Motley Crue t- shirt. So I had an image to maintain, so what? Unfortunately that image wasn't going to be much of a help to me right at that moment. Small town cops figure most guys like me are trouble. I just hoped I could get by with slipping him a fifty and a promise to get out of town by the closest available route. I must have been deep in thought assessing my options, for as I sat there in the van I had carefully pulled over to the curb, I hadn't even heard the cop get out of his cruiser. The next thing I knew, he was standing right next to the window I had at least remembered to roll down. He was tall - well over six feet - and looked as if he should be on a recruiting poster for the State Police rather than wasting his time in Tank Town, USA. He was trim and looked as if he could run a marathon without breathing hard. His gray-blue uniform shirt was pressed military style with sharp creases down the front. The mirrored sunglasses he wore were almost polished, reflecting the afternoon sun into my eyes. "Is there something wrong, Officer?" I asked with the age-old greeting all traffic offenders know so well. "You left that parking lot at Rusty's a little fast," the officer said blandly. So that's the way it was, I thought. Ovid was one of those towns where if they couldn't catch you speeding, they'd stop you on some chicken shit charge just to soak a few bucks out of you. "Sorry," I said obsequiously. It never hurt to toady up to a cop - especially a crooked one. "We were on our way to Muskogee for a gig - you know, a band performance - and I may have been in a little bit of a hurry. Is there something I can do to make this right?" The something I was referring to, of course, was a greenish piece of paper bearing the picture of a dead president. "Yes, there is something you can do," he told me blandly. That was no surprise. What he said next was. "You can follow me over to City Hall to see The Judge." "Now wait a minute!" I interjected, losing my cool at the rebuff of my bribe. "We haven't got time for that. We - " "Yes, I know," he broke in. "You have a gig." From most people, that would have been a sarcastic comment. The officer - Officer Mercer, according to the silver nametag on his shirt - seemed to be incapable of sarcasm, though. With a sigh, I realized that he was all business, and meeting our date with a small town magistrate was the only way we were ever going to get back on the road. "Okay," I finally replied. "Lead on." "I'm calling Jens," Boop announced, pulling a cell phone from the canvas bag she used as a purse cum carryall. Jens was our agent such as it was. If we wanted to blame anyone - besides ourselves - for getting gigs in the backwater of the Bible Belt, Jens was our man. From his rundown office in LA, he kept us busy but never exactly prosperous. He wasn't going to be happy when he found out we'd blown the opening of the Muskogee gig. After all, he got fifteen per cent of our take, and fifteen percent of nothing was still nothing. "Damn!" Boop growled, throwing the phone back into the bag. "No service." "Cell phones don't work everywhere," I reminded her as I followed the cruiser toward what passed for a business district in Ovid. "Cell phones don't work anywhere where we do," she muttered. "It fucking serves Jens right. He books us out here in the middle of Cowpie, Texas..." "Oklahoma," I corrected. "Okay, Cowpie, Oklahoma. Anyhow, if he's gonna book us in these burgs he's gonna have to know we can't always reach him when there's trouble." "Maybe we can call from the court after we see this judge," I suggested, wheeling into the parking lot of this neat two-story granite building with columns out in front as if they were trying to make an office building look like a Greek temple or something. I suppose for a town like Ovid, it was a reasonably impressive building. They probably paid for it from fining motorists who were passing through, I thought darkly. I was sure that Ovid was nothing more than a speed trap. After all, this Officer Mercer had done a few things wrong when he stopped me, and believe me, I've been stopped by experts. I never learned how to drive slowly, so I had collected more than a few speeding tickets in my life. First, he hadn't asked to see my license or registration. I was certain the only thing in my wallet he wanted to see was the color of my money. And he hadn't been curious about Jess. To be honest, I was sure he'd notice Jess out there in Never-Never Land and check the car for drugs. Boop and Gordy probably had a little pot on board, and Jess probably had enough pills to make a small city high. I had given all that crap up a few years ago, but I would have been brought up on charges, too. Yet the cop hadn't even noticed. One thing did surprise me, though. When we got out of the car, our Officer Mercer no longer had the laconic look of a cop on his own turf. If I hadn't known better, I would have sworn there was real concern behind those mirrored glasses. Now he noticed Jess. Of course that was to be expected. Gordy had to pull Jess out of the car since our drummer was almost unconscious. "You didn't let him take something else, did you?" I whispered to Gordy as I helped him with Jess. "No," Gordy whispered back. "But he may have taken something when I wasn't looking. I've never seen him this wasted before." Neither had I, but I didn't say it. Boop was concerned, too, I noticed. Boop had been known to pop a pill or two but she was careful when she did. There was no doubt given the look on her face that she was worried about Jess. "Quickly!" Officer Mercer ordered, bringing us back to our current legal situation. "I think he needs a doctor," I called out. Officer Mercer shook his head. "It's too late for that. He has to see The Judge." "Listen!" I lashed out. "I think he may be dying." "Given what he's taken today, it's a miracle that he isn't already dead," the officer replied. "But how...?" "Now Mr. Douglas, before it's too late." Before I could argue, an attractive black woman in a uniform similar to Officer Mercer's rushed out of the building and grabbed one side of Jess's body while Gordy wrestled with the other side. "We have to forgo the paperwork, Wanda," Officer Mercer told the woman. "I know," she said, struggling with Jess who was considerably larger than she was. "I just heard. We've only got five minutes." "Five minutes until what?" I demanded, confused. "Five minutes until your friend is dead," she called over her shoulder. The courtroom was chaos. An attractive blonde woman hurried in with us, opening the large oak door that guarded the courtroom. In side at the defendant's table, another attractive woman - this one a brunette - was spreading some papers on the table. Like the blonde, she was dressed casually - denim shorts and a yellow tee. She was a damned fine looking woman if I do say so. Jess was propped up in one of the chairs at the table. I thought for a minute he was going to collapse but Gordy held him up. Boop and I sat down on their left, leaving me beside the attractive brunette. "I'm your attorney," she said quickly. "Susan Jager. Sorry to be dressed so casually, but I took the day off and just got called in to court a few minutes ago." She didn't bother to shake hands with any of us, and I notice Boop was having a wonderful time watching our attorney wiggle her attractive ass as she arranged her paperwork before sitting down next to me. "We'll talk after the trial." "Look, our friend should be in a hospital," I told her. "Your friend would be dead before we could get him there," Susan said, shaking her head. I felt almost as if I was in the middle of a strange play called Alice in Wonderland Meets Perry Mason. All the trappings of the legal system were being spread out before us while our friend was - according to the locals - dying. It didn't make any sense at all. What were we doing in a courtroom when we should be in a hospital. Boop, Gordy and I should have protested more, but I think we were so confused by the absurdity of the situation that we just sat there at the defendant's table. Suddenly Officer Mercer called out, "All rise! Municipal Court of Ovid, Oklahoma, is now in session, the honorable Judge presiding." He said it so quickly that all the words seemed to run together. At that moment, I was aware of another player in the room as I rose to my feet with the rest of our table. The Judge looked the part. He was not terribly tall - at least a couple of inches under my six two, I estimated. Brown hair and a mostly-brown beard gave him more the look of a scholar than a magistrate. Like everyone else in the courtroom, he seemed to be in a terrible hurry, still buttoning his black robe as he sat on the bench. "Stand aside!" he commanded in a voice used to being obeyed. The order was aimed at Gordy who had been trying to hold Jess up. "He's nearly gone!" Officer Mercer called out. "Just what the fuck is going on here?" Boop yelled. "I will not tolerate such language in my courtroom," The Judge's voice boomed, actually hurting my ears. Boop gasped and tried to speak but no sound passed her lips. "Your Honor!" our attorney blurted out. "I think he's dead!" "Not yet he isn't," The Judge muttered, his eyes fixed on Jess. I looked at Jess in alarm. He was standing, but no one could stand in the manner he was posed. Although on his feet, he looked more like a scarecrow, as if there was a rod jammed up his back to keep him from slumping over like a pile of lifeless straw. The judge had been right - I could see that Jess was still breathing, but his breaths were ragged gasps, barely sufficient to keep his lungs working. The Judge said something, almost in a chant, but I couldn't catch what it was. It sounded like gibberish to me, but every now and then I heard a word that sounded familiar. Languages had never been my strong suit. The strange thing was the effect it seemed to have on Jess. A golden glow surrounded him, and within that glow, his gasps for breath seemed to have stopped. I couldn't detect any sign of breathing from him, yet I could detect very slight movement, almost as if he was sleeping. Yet he hung there so relaxed that I couldn't imagine what was holding him up. I found I was standing - all of us were. It was as if we had all tried to move to prop up Jess only to find ourselves suspended in space. I found that with effort, I could move my arms and head, but my legs seemed to be locked in place as I stood next to Gordy and Boop. "Your Honor," Susan Jager began, trying to look like as much of a professional attorney as her tee and denim shorts would allow, "I move that the trial be postponed until tomorrow morning so that my client can have suitable medical care." "I can't allow that," The Judge told her bluntly. "Ms. Jager, your client has not been stabilized. I have merely captured him in a moment in time. That moment can only be slowed but not stopped. Unless we continue with the trial right now, Jess Conroy will die and no medical treatment can stop that." There were a hundred questions I wanted to ask, but none of them came to my lips. Maybe like Boop, I would have been silenced by the strange magistrate on the bench if I had tried. I could do nothing but stand there, held in place by some improbable force, while that strange play was acted out around me. "Yes, Your Honor," our attorney said, sinking into her chair. "Officer Mercer, read the charges, and quickly. Maintaining this time indolence is tiring," The Judge said. His voice had returned to normal, no longer booming through the courtroom, but I had no doubt that it would be any less obeyed. "Charges are careless driving and possession of illegal drugs," Officer Mercer said simply. "Your Honor," our attorney interjected, "only Mr. Conroy was in actual possession of drugs at the time of the arrest." "Yes, but all of the defendants had knowledge of the drugs," The Judge pointed out. "The charge will stand." The Judge then looked sternly at our attorney. "Ms. Jager, I am tiring quickly. I will give you dispensation to speak with as many of your clients as you feel necessary this evening after a verdict has been reached and sentence passed. But please do not try to entertain me with your normally amusing antics in this courtroom today. I have neither the energy or the patience to appreciate them. Do I make myself clear?" Susan Jager's face seemed to lose its color. "Yes, Your Honor." "Then if there is nothing further to be said, I will pass -" "Wait a minute!" I yelled, actually a little surprised that I was able to speak at all. "Can I say something?" "If you must," The Judge sighed. "What kind of a put-up trial is this?" I began, feeling my temper rise. "You drag us in here and - " "Enough!" The Judge boomed, and in that moment, anything I tried to say was lost. Air escaped from my mouth but there was no sound. "Let me tell you what kind of a trial this is, Mr. Douglas," he began to lecture, leaning forward from the bench. "This is the trial of four very talented individuals who wasted their talents until they had none left. It is the trial of four people who all feel that if it hadn't been for the others, they would have been more successful. It is the trial of four individuals who should have learned long ago that their strength lay in their unity. And it is a trial which has reached its end!" He started again in that strange language that he had uttered when he was focused on Jess. I don't know why but I braced myself, as if I might have done facing a strong wind. I suppose in a way, I was as I felt a cool breeze blow across my skin and heard what almost sounded like whispers on the breeze. It made my skin tingle, and even as the breeze abated, the tingle was still there. "Court is adjourned!" The Judge pronounced with a sharp rap of his gavel. I recovered just quickly enough to see him retreating from the courtroom with Officer Mercer right behind him. The blonde woman who had come in with us and settled in the gallery also made her exit as silently and as unobtrusively as possible. The four of us were left alone with our attorney. Jess, I noticed, had slumped back into a chair. He seemed to be sleeping though, rather than trapped in a drug-induced stupor. His ragged breathing had become regular once more. "That was a near thing," our attorney breathed. "Look, what the hell is going on here?" I asked, my voice cracking suddenly as if I were experiencing puberty again. I hoped suddenly that there was nothing wrong with me. After all, if this weird bunch was finished with us, we had a gig that night. It wouldn't do if I couldn't sing. Susan Jager looked at each of us as if she was expecting something to happen. "This would be a lot easier if everything had gone normally," she said, adding not one bit of clarification to our situation. "What the hell are you talking about?" Boop asked. Then she suddenly cleared her throat. Her voice had become huskier through the years as she continued to smoke, but just for a moment, it sounded almost like a man's voice. Maybe we were both coming down with something. Great, just great. The pretty young attorney scribbled something on the top sheet of her legal pad and handed it to me. "Look, go here to the address I've written down for you. Give me a few hours. I have to talk to The Judge first and finish a couple of things at the office, but I'll be there as soon as I can. Actually, let's make it eight o'clock, all right?" "What the hell is this all about?" I asked, taking the sheet of paper in spite of myself. "Is everybody in this town crazy? Do we have to pay a fine or what? Are we free to go?" "Just be at that address." "We don't have time for this," I argued. "We've got a gig -you know, a performance. We can't just - " "Be there!" she ordered us as she gathered her belongings and rushed from the room. As the large oak door closed behind her, the four of us were left alone. I looked at the others, noticing for the first time that something had changed. After all the years we had been together, I knew each of the members of the group better than I had known my own family. I knew every feature of their bodies, every gesture they made, and every sound they could utter. So why did they suddenly look different to me? Jess was the first one I noticed. At first, I thought he was just slumped down in his seat, but all at once I noticed he seemed somehow smaller. It wasn't as if he had shrunk to Lilliputian proportions; it was just that he looked shorter than he should be. And his dark, thinning hair seemed somehow lighter and fuller. Boop noticed, too. "What the hell?" There was that deeper voice again. "Let's get him out to the van," I suggested. "He still doesn't look good." "I think I saw a sign for a hospital," Gordy offered, slipping one of Jess's arms around his shoulders while I got the other one. Damn! Jess may have looked smaller but I could have sworn he had put on fifty pounds. Either that or I was going to have to start working out again. It had to be additional weight, I thought, because Gordy was having trouble with him, too. "She's heavy," Gordy grunted. "What?" I asked. "What did you say?" I looked at Gordy. He and I were virtually the same height, but suddenly he appeared a good three or four inches shorter than me. So was Jess for that matter, I realized. We must have looked odd as we rushed to our van on strangely uncoordinated limbs. Only Boop looked as if she was having no trouble. If anything, she seemed taller and more solid than any of the rest of us. And why was her hair suddenly so short and so brown? "Come on!' she ordered, shoving back the sliding door on the van to let Gordy and I shove Jess in. "Get that out of the way!" I yelled to Boop, indicating a colorful object on the back car seat. "What is it?" she asked. "Damned if I know." "You shouldn't curse," Gordy said suddenly in a prim voice about half an octave higher than normal. "Jeez... it's a Barbie doll," Boop said, holding the toy up as if it were somehow radioactive. "A what?" "Oh Christ..." Boop's deeper voice trailed off. "What?" I demanded, breathing hard from carting Jess to the car. "Look at yourself in the mirror," she told me. The side mirrors of a van aren't exactly the best way to view your own image, but... my own image? The face looking back on me wasn't my face at all. My face had been described by Rolling Stone once as "ruggedly handsome." Well, the face I was looking at now was neither rugged nor handsome - or at east not handsome in the usual male sense of the word. The bones of my face seemed to be moving, rearranging themselves into something smoother and less linear. My skin was becoming lighter, the deep tan I had enjoyed since my surfing days in high school was being replaced by a creamy complexion accented by a significant dusting of tiny freckles. My eyes were no longer gray, shifting to a light blue instead. And my hair - well, it had been longish before but now it was a darker shade of brown - almost black - with what seemed like hundreds of tiny curls. "Oh God!" I screamed, and that's just what it was - a scream, high- pitched and obviously feminine. I turned and looked at Boop. Boop? No, it couldn't be Boop. The person beside me was bigger than Boop should be; hell, she (she?) was bigger than me. Boop's face was shifting as mine was, but instead of softening, I noticed tiny dark dots - stubble - appearing on her cheeks. Her hair seemed to be retreating into her head, even receding in front just a little. Her earrings dropped from her ears as I watched, blurring like an approaching mirage and disappearing from where they had fallen on the pavement. "Mom, what's happening?" a high, worried voice called. I looked over at Gordy, but Gordy wasn't there anymore. Instead there stood a child who could have been either male or female, his juvenile face confused and frightened. He was still wearing Gordy's clothing, but as I watched, the clothing seemed to shift and fold in upon itself. I looked in the car to see what was happening to Jess. All I could see was a small body - even smaller than Gordy's - asleep on the seat, completely oblivious to the shifts of skin and material going on around him. I don't know how long all of this took. It might have been an hour or it might have been just a few seconds. However long it took, there seemed to be nothing we could do to stop it. I felt weak in the knees, as if I wanted to fall to the ground and pass out, but I couldn't. Something seemed to be holding me in place as parts of my body shifted inward while others shifted outward and my clothing modified itself to fit my new form. "Mom?" There was that child's voice again, and it seemed to be directed at me. I looked around... No, I looked down at a cute little moppet no more than ten (and probably less). She was dressed in shorts and sandals, her brown hair tied back in a ponytail. She wore a t-shirt with no sign of breasts in it. She had the freckles and knobby little knees so many children her age had, but there was promise of a future woman in her features. There was no doubt in my mind that this little wisp of a girl had until minutes before been Gordy. "Mom?" she said again, worry in her voice. She was looking into my eyes. It was a surreal moment, and I knew instinctively that this little girl saw in me the mother she sought. I became strangely aware in that moment that I had now changed as completely as Gordy. I was, indeed, the woman she thought I was. I took only a moment to glance down at my own body, noting respectable but not overly large breasts poking out from a pink tee. I could feel the denim shorts against my thighs but felt a strange absence between my legs. I could see my own smooth legs ending in small feet encased in sandals not unlike those the little girl wore. "Holy shit!" a man's voice muttered. I didn't have to look over at him to realize it was Boop. "Are we going home now, Mom?" the little girl asked. She obviously had no idea she had once been Gordy. As far as she was concerned, everything was normal. "Look, Gor..." For some reason, I couldn't say his name. Maybe it was because he no longer existed, I thought to myself. But more likely was the fact that the sweet little girl who was staring at me just didn't look like a Gordy. "We'll go in just a minute," I managed to say calmly. "I... forgot something inside." The man Boop had become nodded to me as I turned to go back into the courtroom. The look on her... or rather his face was once of alarm. I raced back into the building. I had to find The Judge and talk him into changing us back into ourselves. I may have had other thoughts as well, but that was the only one I could concentrate on. The whole situation was just too preposterous to think about. Here we were, a rock band minding our own business when suddenly we're dragged before a small town justice and transformed, presumably by magic, into members of the opposite sex. It wasn't the sort of activity that promoted steady thinking. As I got to the courtroom, the blonde woman who had been sitting in the gallery during our trial was just closing the door. "I have to see The Judge!" I cried out, amazed at how sweet and feminine my voice had become. "He's already left," she told me with a knowing little smile as she looked at my new body. "Left? Left where? I have to see him," I demanded. "Even if I have to go to his home, I have to see him." "I'm afraid that's impossible," she told me. "He... well, no one knows exactly where he lives." "But look what he did to me!" I cried out, motioning to my new body. "He was pretty lenient with all of you considering," the blonde told me. Then she held out a hand. "I'm Cindy Patton, by the way." Numbly I took her hand. He handshake was firm for a woman, and I couldn't help but notice our hands were about the same size. "What did you mean about him being lenient?" I managed to ask. She smiled a little wider, relieved that I seemed to be calming down just a little. I didn't feel calmer, but what else could I do? "The Judge hates drugs," she explained. "But I don't take drugs," I pointed out. "None of us do - did. Except Jess, that is." She shook her head. "It doesn't matter. For years you've let Jess turn his mind into jelly with every hallucinogenic drug imaginable. It's a wonder he didn't kill himself a long time ago. And if he had, it would have been your fault - all of you." "Now wait a minute, Jess is a big boy..." "Not any more." Come to think of it, I hadn't seen Jess since his transformation was complete. However, given that I had seen him shrinking, I had no doubt that he was now a child like Gordy. It seemed as if we had been changed into a typical American family, with Gordy and Jess as the kids, Boop as the father, and me... Well, I didn't want to think about that at the moment. "He has to change us back," I insisted. "He won't," she replied. "In all the time I've been here, I've never seen him change anyone back - ever. If you're smart, you won't even ask him if you do see him. He never changed anyone back, but he has made some of the changes worse." Worse? What the hell could be worse than finding myself in the body of a small town mother of two? That was my first reaction. My second was a bit some somber, realizing in that moment that there were probably a lot worse things. I just didn't want to think of what some of those things