I awoke as if rising from the depths of a dark pool. What day was it? What year?

 

Who was I?

 

I heard soft breathing and smelled fresh bed linen. My eyelids fluttered open and I struggled to focus until I saw a woman with shoulder length, dark blue hair and fair skin regard me with wide open eyes through large, black-rimmed glasses. Her lips moved and when her voice reached me it was as if it came from the other side of a great valley.

 

“Ermmuh,” the voice seemed to say and the sound re-echoed through the vacant hall of my head. I found that I couldn’t move and I was unable to prevent myself from sinking back into the darkness. Before going completely under, I saw the woman’s face against the walls of my closed eyelids and realised that I had seen her before.

 

I slipped back into a scrambled version of the events I had been experiencing through another body, events perhaps from another lifetime, bizarre and hallucinatory, occurrences in vivid pinks and greens, pungent, some erotic, some shocking, some nauseating. This narrative had been my life for so long I couldn’t remember anything else, but then it had fragmented and made no sense, if it ever had. I remembered falling into an abyss; screams, terror, pain.

 

Released from this inferno I was again confronted by the sight of a strangely familiar face. I was lying in a big bed, comfortable but still unable to move. The woman bent over me, gently eased a hand between the pillow and the back of my head, then introduced a glass of water to my lips.

 

She repeated the same word as before, but this time I heard it as, “Irma.” Was that my name? I gratefully swallowed the water. The woman’s face was slim with a broad mouth and a long nose pierced at the left nostril with a stud. The expression was of attentive concern. Her upper teeth pushed slightly against her top lip and her chin receded just a little to give her a vulnerable look. I instantly trusted her, though I had the nagging feeling that, in the distant past, I had felt differently about her. Dressed in combats and a black t-shirt, her build was lanky, like a teen, though she looked older, maybe in her mid thirties. Tattoos swirled and scrawled across her neck and arms. I was gradually able focus beyond her to the room around us.

 

It was large and untidy, but clean. To my left was a cardboard box bulging with clothes and to my right a bookcase with titles about the nature of intelligence, books on Alan Turing and by Norbert Weiner on one shelf and on another, works by Dunsany, Carrol, Lovecraft and Wilde. To my right was a chest of drawers, a wardrobe, and opposite the bed, a dresser. White light was streaming in from a window behind me, along with the cries of seagulls and the distant horns of ships. At the end of the room the door was ajar. I felt safe in this room and obeyed the woman when she told me to relax and close my eyes. When she returned, carrying a bowl, she was in pyjamas, white and printed with little pink poodles, and the room was now illuminated by the soft, yellow light of a bedside lamp rather than the daylight from behind me. What had seemed to me like an instant must have been hours, perhaps days.

 

I was gently encouraged to sit up and I found I could move, though I felt incredibly stiff. I was propped up on soft pillows and offered more water. She placed the bowl on my lap, eased my head slightly forward again with one hand and, with the other, spooned soup into my mouth. It was chicken with noodles and I slurped it down quickly. I was momentarily troubled by guilt.

 

“It’s not real chicken,” she said, smiling, and the memory came to me that I was a vegetarian.

 

I was grateful for this memory, this sudden flower in the desert of my amnesia. As the food slowly filled me up I realised how much I had needed it. I looked into my nurse’s blue eyes, wondering who she could be and how she could know I was a vegetarian.

 

After the soup came a bowl of finely chopped fruit, followed by a pill of some kind. After removing the bowls and spoons to another room she returned to tuck me back in and switch the lamp off.

 

“Night night,” came a whisper which, in her dulcet, northern English accent, sounded more like ‘naht naht’, and I was left to gaze at a streak of amber light thrown by a street light through the curtains and across the ceiling. The house was quiet save the gentle hiss of air conditioning, and I drifted off to sleep.

 

When I awoke it was daylight again and I was alone. I found I was now able to sit up by myself. I was wearing clean, black panties made of silk. Not mine, then. The snugness of them around my crotch alerted me to the absence of something I had grown used to. I had been inside the body of a man, albeit not a real man, and it was something I already missed. My sleep had been pleasant, free of the nightmares that had been troubling me for so long. Maybe it had been my first proper sleep in half a lifetime.

 

Beside the lamp was a glass of water from which I bent over to drink, but the bed and the world around it lurched sickeningly and I collapsed onto my front, my arms not being strong enough to support me. Gentle hands eased me back into a more comfortable position. My nurse, having apparently rushed in from just the next room, told me to take it easy and relax, her forehead wrinkled with concern. Over brown combats and a green t-shirt she wore a white coat and there was a weird device slung around her neck resembling small binoculars but with a number of odd attachments. What looked like a shoe lace looped from one arm of her glasses, around the back of her neck, to the other side. She wore no makeup and looked slightly sweaty. I studied her movements. She was gawky in her tallness. After disappearing for a few minutes she returned sans coat and device but with a breakfast of cereal, toast and tea. I tucked in heartily while she watched me with a child-like innocent smile on her face. By now I trusted this person so much I didn’t mind being studied like this. Clearly, she was profoundly concerned for my well-being.

 

After I finished eating I thanked her and suddenly I was shaking with sobs. She put her arms around me and held me for an age. When I looked into her face again I saw tears in her eyes also. This was more than the mere concern a nurse would normally feel for a patient and she had some emotional investment in the woman she was caring for. I felt tired again and laid myself back on the pillows.

 

“I’ve got to work downstairs,” she told me and asked if I would be alright for while. “But you can call for me any time.” She indicated a phone, which I had not noticed, beside the lamp. “Just click on the first icon.”

 

I nodded, smiled and watched her leave the room, only then noticing that she walked with a slight limp, favoring the left leg over the right. I felt so weak I think I passed in and out of sleep for a few hours. I considered my mysterious nurse with tender feelings. The pale face and diffident manner were so familiar. I reached across for the phone, finding gratefully that she had placed it within easy reach. The wallpaper was a selfie in which she smiled at her reflection, her face home to a dozen studs and rings, thick mascara, jet black lipstick and her hair in bunches that hung from high on both sides. She looked like a gothic geisha. I know her, I thought and spent a minute frustratingly searching for her in my mangled memories without realising that, all the time, the answer was staring me in the face. I saw the icon she had mentioned and was overwhelmed with another jumbled series of memories including those of a very friendly neighbor. With longer hair and fewer studs she now looked different and then her tattoos had not reached quite so high up her neck. She was Alexi, and now I understood the hitherto unaccountable feeling of guilt.

 

I remembered my poky flat in Deckard House, the graffiti daubed, urine-scented housing block where I used to live. The landlords had been gangsters, though I had never seen them and had paid my rent to a nice but eccentric lady connected them in some way I had never discovered. She had been quite a character, spending all of her money on plastic surgery. I remembered my laptop and the wire I’d plug into my nose so that I could escape reality. I remembered Alexi’s constant trivial requests that she seemed to make purely to annoy me. She hadn’t been there long. I remembered her moving in, soon after which had begun the loud music. Could this be the same Alexi, this compassionate nurse? I touched the five letters of her name with my thumb and heard the ring.

 

“Hi,” came a soft voice.

 

“Uh, Alexi?” I said, suddenly feeling incredibly sad.

 

“Hi,” she said again after a pause.

 

“I didn’t recog, recognise you.” I sniffed and wiped away a tear. My tongue felt like dead lump in my mouth.

 

“I know,” she whispered, sounding more like ‘a nur’, then said a little louder, “Is everything alright?”

 

“How long?” I began, then coughed. I took a sip of water and resumed, “How long have I,” but couldn’t finish.

 

“I’ll come up, lass.”

 

A minute later she was sat beside me on the bed, again in the coat and with the strange, multi-lensed gadget hanging from her neck. She was so different to the neighbor I had known, with her hair straight and parted at the side, hanging down low over her left brow, all of which made her more mature-looking, though the punk image was still there.

 

“I’m sorry,” was all I could say.

 

“What for?”

 

“I was such a bitch to you.” My mouth had dropped open in surprise at her query and, on her behalf, the outrage that I felt she should be displaying.

 

“No, you weren’t,” said Alexi, looking down and shaking her head slightly, “but it don’t matter now anyway. Not now you’re awake, awake and here.” She raised her eyes shyly. “Here with me.”

 

She covered my hand with hers and gripped my fingers, but I couldn’t feel anything and found that my arm wouldn't move at all. Seeing how tired I had become she allowed me to rest and soon I was fast asleep again.

 

When I awoke it was night and all was quiet. I sensed that a TV had been on in the next room, but had just been switched off. Through the open door I could see no light and I guessed Alexi was asleep. I wanted so much to talk to her, but I couldn’t disturb her, so I lay there and thought more about my nightmares, how they had played in a loop over and over before giving way to nothingness.

 

More memories came flooding in, accompanied by nausea. I remembered a feeling of smothering, of travelling through some noxious substance and then falling from a great height. I remembered the virtual body called ‘Ian’ that I had inhabited, a handsome and strong, black man. I remembered intense pleasure and pain. I remembered being pursued by religious zealots though a surreal landscape, revelling in my bisexuality and defiantly using it to shock the people for whom I had nothing but contempt. I remembered a sweet, girlish boy and a stunningly beautiful, voluptuous woman, and how the three of us had used our bodies to give joy to each other. I remembered carrying my genitals on the outside of my body and the convulsive pleasure they had given me and others. I remembered a vampire, at first urbane, then menacing, and how he had turned against me and my friends. I remembered a depraved fiend with sexual predilections I wanted to forget. But before all of this I remembered Alexi; shy, awkward Alexi, for whom I had apparently had no time, not even the time to chat.

 

While passing my hand across my face I discovered an unfamiliar sensation. The metal and plastic nasal socket had gone and when I pressed the left side of my nose I was able to push the cartilage inwards unnaturally far. In order to install the socket some bone had been cut away and now the opening to my nasal cavity was larger on the left than on the right. So my neural nanocircuitry was gone. I tried to move the fingers in my left hand. I had no feeling anywhere in the entire arm, so I massaged it for a while, trying to manipulate and pinch some life into it, but it had become a lifeless appendage. Most of all I resented my soft, weak body and the hole between my legs. For years I had wanted so much to be a man and when I had entered that virtual body I had felt fearless. Now, I ached for that body as much as I had ever ached for the body of a lover. I longed for the feel of the cock sprouting up from my groin, growing so hard and proudly erect, stabbing into the bodies of others and shooting my desire inside them.

 

I imagined myself at an orgy, satisfying men and women, fucking random, anonymous people, losing myself in my lust, abandoning myself completely to the pleasures afforded me by the body of a man, pleasures only a male body could give. I was penetrating everyone in every hole while they fucked, penetrated and sucked me again and again, crying out for my spunk, begging me for more, wanting my cock inside them, filling them up, making them whole. And between my legs I felt a deep ache, the ache of something missing. I mourned for the loss of my penis and I think I cried myself to sleep.

 

I was wide awake by the time Alexi appeared in the room smiling.

 

“Hey up, love,” she said breezily, asked me what I wanted for breakfast and in her smile I saw the metallic flash of a barbell. Soon she was back with a tray laden with food. I had tried getting out of the bed as I was starting to feel uncomfortable with my role as invalid, but my legs had had other ideas.

 

“I really don’t deserve your kindness,” I told her while she helped me spread the butter on my toast. She shook her head and said nothing. “I never even gave you milk. Here you are feeding me.” I ate in silence while she popped in and out to check up on me like the most attentive of nurses. “I feel I owe you my life,” I said before she cleared away tray. “How am I even alive?”

 

I felt dizzy and leaned forward, so she encouraged me to lie back again. Noticing I was gripping my left arm tightly she gently prized my fingers away and began to massage from my hand to my shoulder. She removed her coat and soon I was submitting to the soft kneading of her longer-fingered hands as they travelled across my entire body but concentrating on my arm. She seemed to have a good knowledge of anatomy and was an excellent masseuse, but all sensation failed to return to my arm. My head continued to be filled with more and more confusing memories and, for a second, I recalled drowning, or witnessing someone else drown, a girl floundering, her limbs thrashing the water into a white froth. Alexi excused herself, saying she had to continue working downstairs, but before she left me, she leaned forward and kissed me tenderly on the cheek, then briefly on the lips. I disengaged first and gave a slight shake of my head. She looked down, smiled tightly and left, trying to disguise her limp. I sighed, and was once more alone. I tried to twist around and lift myself to look out of the window but my legs buckled as if they were paper. I crawled under the sheet, feeling weak but relaxed.

 

After a doze I became aware of very faint thumps and hums and realised that I had been hearing this for some time subconsciously. I was bored and called out, but Alexi was clearly busy with her work so I sat up and looked around. I had already guessed that my clothes and possibly my other belongings were in the box to my left. I rolled over, raised my legs and promptly landed in a heap on a floor. I cursed and, while waiting to recover my breath, found something under the bed, a small box about twelve inches long. Mildly curious, I took it and found it was home to a slender, pink silicone dildo. I caressed the phallus thoughtfully and was puzzled by a feeling of unease. I sat up and was able to slide on my ass across the floor, over to the big box and where, with difficulty, I pushed the lid down and found all my items carefully folded. Beneath layers of underwear my hand encountered my old makeup case which had once meant so much to me, but which I now tossed aside casually. My hands then found the familiar shape of my old laptop. I pulled it out and hugged it to my chest like a pet. This had been my ticket, my rabbit hole to an extraordinary journey away from this grey world into a multi-colored wonderland of sex and fantasies, fantasies that had hitherto been nothing but pink and green clouds in my mind, but had become vivid and tactile. It was a world of love, fear and danger, for me no less real than this world. I had formed attachments there as strong as any I had formed here.

 

I remembered my Beau with his girlish smile and his child-like sense of adventure, then Mary with her doe eyes and eagerness for sex at every moment. They were my friends, as real to me as Alexi or anyone I had met. But where had they gone? Had they succumbed to the same virus that had evidently infected me, or had they escaped safely to other sites? I longed for them fiercely with all my heart. I squeezed the laptop to my breasts and was suddenly sobbing for the loss of my friends. With my head free of the circuitry, how could I ever rejoin them?

 

I heard Alexi’s footsteps stop at the door and looked up. Her cheeks were flushed and she was looking at the floor behind me. I had forgotten to place the sex toy back in its box. Suddenly I realised why the sight of it had made me uneasy.

 

“If you think I’m going to be your, your,” I stuttered impotently, still shaking, “s-sex s-slave or something you’ve got another thing c-coming.”

 

Her jaw dropped and she shook her head. She kicked the offending object back under the bed and reached out for me, but I was suddenly overcome with my old feeling of revulsion for her. I shrank away, clutching the laptop, afraid she was going to take it from me.

 

“You’ve got me right where you want me, haven’t you!” I yelled in her ear. “Right where you’ve wanted me all this time!” She was stronger than me and she virtually carried me back to the bed while vainly trying to disguise her own tears with a smile, clearly not having much of an idea how to handle me in this mood. “I want to go home,” I told her angrily. “You’re taking advantage of me, keeping me here!”

 

“How could you even think such a thing?” she asked and tutted.

 

“You’ve done something weird to me. I can’t feel my arm, I have memories in my head that don’t make any sense and you got rid of my n-nano, my n-neural n-nanocircuitry!”

 

She tried to gently pluck the laptop from me, but soon gave up and instead drew the sheet up over me and plumped up the pillows.

 

“Y’can’t go home,” she said quietly. “Your flat was sold. So was mine.”

 

“Oh, that’s alright, I don’t fucking care about my stupid old flat anyway. I want, I want,” I began sobbing again.

 

“What do you want, Irma?” Alexi asked patiently, sitting beside me.

 

“I just want my Beau and Mary!” I wailed, looking into her sad eyes. My voice weakening, I repeated, “I want my Beau and my Mary.”

 

She bent forward and hugged me and this time I was too weak to resist. She rocked me like I was a baby while I soaked the pillow with my tears. I missed my Cyberspace friends so much and craved them like an addict craves a drug. Alexi raised herself.

 

“I know you love me, Alexi, but I don’t love you,” I said, wishing immediately that I hadn’t. “I’m sorry.” I wiped my eyes and regarded her steadily.

 

She turned away, then slowly left me, her limp more pronounced than ever. A minute later I heard her crying in the next room. I was sorry for having hurt her, but I felt more sorrow for the loss of the life I had led in another world and the friendships I had formed there. Alexi initially tried stifling her tears, but soon gave up and began crying loudly. Now I began to understand the significance of my place in her life, how I had eluded her for so long, how she had pursued me and then finally found a way to possess me. And it hadn’t worked. I pressed my hand to my ear and my head to the pillow, but I could still hear her.

 

No longer able to bear it, I struggled from the bed again, this time determined to seize control of my body, weak and frail though it was. I finally managed to stand, then shuffle over to the box containing my stuff. With my one good hand I pulled out clothes randomly and plucked out my old, battered, black leather jacket and my tight, black leather pants. It seemed like an age before I was able to find my boots and all the while the sound of Alexi’s pain filled my head. I awkwardly slung the clothes on and hobbled to the doorway, leaning against the wall all the way.

 

The next room was a living room, a light, open space with windows looking over the river, a skylight and with black, leather chairs and a couch around a large TV. The couch in which Alexi sat was in some disarray with cushions and blankets piled up beside her and items of underwear draped over the back. She was evidently not much of a housekeeper. My heart melted when I saw her curled up with her face in her hands looking so young and vulnerable. I slowly edged forward and fell flat on my face. I had tripped over her shoes which she must have kicked off carelessly. I heard her stop crying suddenly and looked up to see her reddened cheeks and swollen eyes looking down at me. She made no move, however, and watched me crawl the few feet towards her. I knelt beside the couch and took her hand in mine.

 

“I’m sorry for freaking out just now,” I said inadequately. She sniffed. “But this is all too much for me and I think it’s t-time,” I swallowed, “time I went.”

 

“Where you going?” she asked looking up in alarm, her voice cracked and feeble. I shook my head and staggered to my feet while she stood and held me gently at the elbow. “I can’t let you go out. You can hardly stand up.”

 

“Alexi,” I said and held up my good hand. “You have done so much for me, but I can’t stay here.”

 

The first faltering steps I took away from her landed me quickly in her arms. I tried again and, sensing how determined I was, she held me gently and helped me to a door to the left which I assumed would lead outside. Once opened it revealed a staircase, but she took both my arms from behind and helped me all the way down. At the bottom I turned and we both looked at each other for a long moment. She embraced me and pleaded with me not to go but all I could do was shake my head.

 

“Well,” she said eventually, “take this, at least.” She handed me a walking stick. “I use it myself sometimes, but I’ve a spare one.”

 

I gratefully took it but but felt stupid with it. It didn’t really go with my clothes.

 

“Fook’s sake,” she said, looking me up and down with mounting concern. She grabbed my hand and said, “I can’t let you go out like this!” She reached into a coat hanging by the door and pulled out a shiny sliver of metal. She checked the gun and gave it to me gingerly, clearly unused to handling it.

 

“Alexi,” I protested, but she pushed it into my jacket pocket where its great weight stretched the leather. We stood there awkwardly for a few moments until I relented slightly. “Like to come for a walk with me?” I asked, wondering immediately afterwards why I’d said it.

 

A look of elation flashed across her face but was followed swiftly followed by one of worry. She raised her hand to her mouth and looked at a closed door to her right from where I could just make out the electronic hums I’d heard earlier. Curiosity got the better of me, as ever, and I hopped over to the door but she intercepted me easily and blocked my way. She was rather taller than me so I saw no point in pursuing my enquiry. The atmosphere in the hall having become unbearable, I hurried away and fumbled with the electronic locks on the door. Why were there so many damned locks?

 

“Don’t go, Irma, please,” I heard her crying behind me.

I turned and managed to balance on tiptoe to kiss her on the cheek. I tasted her tears and caressed her face gently.

 

“Goodbye.”

 

After a minute of my struggling with the locks she pressed her palm to a pad at the side and the door opened, her eyes closed and her face turned away. I felt so sorry for her and, for a moment, I nearly changed my mind, but I couldn’t think of a word more to say and a second later I was through the door and out on the pavement.

 

Copyright © Irma Cerrutti 2015