This choice: ...a cute girl you've never seen before. • Go Back...Chapter #5...a cute girl you've never seen before. by: Yote   The tiny woman hangs off your arm, her delicate hand resting lightly on your elbow. She is petite yet perfectly formed, with a pale, pretty face of flawless skin, though you can detect no hint of makeup. She has the cutest button nose, hazel eyes that dart nervously about the room and dark hair reaching to her shoulders. Her clothes are mis-matched and ill-fitting as though dredged up from a thrift store, but she has the sort of body that would look good in anything. A large frayed blouse hangs off one shoulder, while her black skirt is two sizes too small.
"Huh?"
"I said can we talk somewhere private," she repeats.
"Uh, sure."
She tugs at your arm with great urgency and surprising strength, and you find yourself being led away from the mourners. She finds a sideroom, peeks inside and drags you inside, shutting the door behind you. You're in some sort of closet used for storing religious paraphernalia between ceremonies. The girl turns to face you. The cramped closet doesn't offer much in the way of personal space. "What's this about?" you ask, a hint of excited hope in your voice betraying your thoughts.
"There's something I need you to do for me," she says pleadingly, her eyes wide and desperate. She begins to unbutton her blouse, revealing bountiful cleavage.
"Whatever you need," you grin. You've never done it at a funeral before. You just hope Jesus isn't watching.
"There are men after me."
"I'm not surprised," you blurble, drinking in the sight of her body.
"If they find me, they'll kill me."
"Huh?"
"You're the only person I can trust. I need you to help me hide. My life is counting on it. If you do, I'll give you this," she says, reaching into her cleavage and drawing from between her tits a neatly folded square of thick parchment. She unfolds it and hands it to you, still warm.
It is a legal document. I, Bernard Rhodes, being of sound mind and disposing memory and not acting under duress or undue influence, do hereby make, publish, and declare this document to be my Last Will and Testament, and do hereby revoke any and all other wills and codicils heretofore made by me.
I hereby grant the entirety of my estate to my nephew, Joe Rhodes.
"Wh-what is this."
"It's my Last Will and Testament, a new one that I had made just before my accident," she replies. "It leaves everything to you and supersedes all others. Instead of just 10,000 credits, you'll receive all of it - the houses, the cars, the money. But only if you help me!"
You shake your head in bafflement. "I don't understand. How did you get this?"
"Because I wrote it!" she hisses, seizing your suit. "I'm your Uncle Bernie!"
You stare down at her, a tiny slip of a girl, her perfect breasts shaken free from her unbuttoned blouse. "That's impossible."
"It's the truth! There are men out to kill me. They nearly succeeded. Faking my death and using surgery to disguise myself was the only way I could survive."
"You're confused," you say in calm measured tones, suddenly aware of being in a confined space with a crazy person. "The funeral has been hard, we're all feeling very emotional. Let's just get you back to your family, okay?" Or the police.
She sucks air through her teeth in frustration and makes an effort to compose herself. "Listen. I was there when you were born. The middle name on your birth certificate is Ferdinand. For your tenth birthday, I bought you a Playstation. For your fifteenth, I let you use my house for a pool party. You broke into my liquor cabinet and passed out after two rum-and-cokes. I took you back to your parents covered in sick. Your dad refused to speak to me for a year because of it and your mother still hates my guts! When you were sixteen I took you to a strip club. You messed your pants because a stripper held your hand."
"He promised never to tell anybody about that!" you exclaim, flushing red.
"And I never did! Not even till my dying day, which is today as it happens."
Your gaze flicks from the will in your hands to her pleading eyes. Cautiously, you say, "Okay. For the time being, let's assume that I believe you. How did this happen and who is chasing you?"
She relaxes and smiles a little. Brushing aside a set of empty cremation urns from atop a crate of 5,000 candles, she seats on the crate as if settling in to tell a long story. "Okay well, as you know, not only am I the best Uncle in the world, I'm also a damn good inventor. For the last year I've been working on something new. It was my life's work," she says proudly. "It was an automated surgical device and it was going to - will!- revolutionize the field of medicine. It's a thousand times more accurate than any human surgeon, and ten times as smart! It can analyse masses of data in realtime and make cuts down to the individual cell! Forget keyhole surgery, this thing is pinhole surgery! You could wake up after surgery and not even know about it. I mean you could shave a fly's ballsack with this thing."
You chuckle. Only your uncle could boast about his own achievements this much. Either she's a good actor or she's telling the truth.
"Anyway, there I was working on this machine. I'd built a prototype and animal tests were going swimmingly. Then all out of the blue, the funding just gets cut off. I'd been working as an independent contractor for this big cosmetics company when all of a sudden they back out, want nothing to do with it." She shrugs. "Whatever. I'm rich. I started funding it myself. I knew if I could get this thing released I'd be a billionaire. Then, about two weeks ago, these two government agents turn up in my lab. They try to get me to hand over all my research, the prototype, and to stop all my work. Said the device was a danger to national security. Naturally I told them where to shove it. I know my rights. They didn't like that of course, but they left. Sort of. Started parking black vans outside my house. Fortunately there's half a mile of lawn between the fence and the house," she grins. "But these black vans followed me everywhere I went. I knew I was being watched. The lab wasn't safe anymore, so I took the prototype we'd built and hid it somewhere safe.
Two days ago, my lab was broken into. They ransacked everything, stole my research and kidnapped my lab assistant. Then they tried to kill me. They failed, but only because my security got lucky. I knew they'd try again and next time they'd succeed. I had to hide, and fast. So... I got into the prototype I'd made. I programmed it to make me unrecognisable. And it did," she says, gesturing at her youthful female body. "The machine worked better than I ever could have hoped. The offcuts of my transformation, the bits of skin and gristle and fat the machine had chopped away, I used to fake my death. That's why I picked such a small body, so that there'd be more left over," she explains.
"But why would the government want to kill you over medical technology?"
She rolls her eyes. "Obviously the genius gene skips a generation. Are you kidding? Just look at me. I'm living proof of what this device can do. With the right programming, you could become anyone. The machine can cut you apart and stitch you back together looking like the President of Russia or the First Lady or hell, one of the Queen of England's corgis. Pretty useful for spying, don't you think? Or worse, replacing people. The fact that they tried to kill me to keep this technology to themselves just confirms that they're up to no good."
"This is a lot to take in. What do you need me for?"
"First and foremost, I need a place to stay," Bernie says. "Secondly, I need your help freeing my lab assistant and getting the evidence together to prove they tried to sabotage my research and have me killed. The dry ice in my coffin wasn't just for show, it'll keep my skin frozen and fresh for a week. All I need to do is prove the government is guilty of a coverup in that time and I'll be able to jump in the machine and be back in my old skin before I know it."
"That simple, huh?" you say drolly.
She grins. "It sounds daunting but you're forgetting that we've still got my prototype. We can become anyone and get into any government facility without them ever knowing. It'll be a doddle. Trust me."   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
| Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author