Remote Control Rescue
Sequel to ‘Armor Amour and Wrecker Romance’
c. 2001
By Brian [email protected]

I woke up screaming again drenched in sweat.  The dream again.  That dream.  Even here in the darkness of reality I could still see his deranged, mocking face.  And hear the gunshot.

I stumbled into the bathroom to dunk my head in some cold water.  Jesus, it had been five years.  Why wouldn’t the demons go away?

“Jabe, honey?”  I turned.  There in the doorway stood Alexis.  She had rushed after me, not taking the time to pull on a robe.  Her slender, nude frame trembled in the chilly night air.  “Jabe, what’s wrong?”  

“Had the ‘Nam dream again,” I muttered, trying to defuse the situation with humor.

“Honey, you were never in ‘Nam.”  She wasn’t about to be fooled.

“Doesn’t mean I can’t dream about it.  Go back to bed, I’ll be there in a minute.”

Alexis moved toward me.  “This is the third time this month.”

“It’s nothing.  Just nerves.”

“Bullshit.”  She grabbed me by the face and forced me to look into her big blue eyes.  “Jabe, last  year you made me realize I was more than a pair of tits.  Last month you showed me a side of life so magical I’m still recovering.  And in the process, you’ve put me in serious danger of falling for you.  So please open up to me.”

I touched her cheek.  “Alexis, a guy could really….never mind.”

“Really what?”

“Really…love a girl like you.”  There.  I finally said what I’d been trying spit out for weeks.

“Jabe, I’ve heard that from dozens of guys.  But I only believe it coming from you.”  She kissed me.  I placed my hand on her silky shoulder and began to pull her towards me.  She pulled away.  Then she gently took hold of my left arm.  “The nightmares…they’re about this, aren’t they?”

Even now I have trouble looking at it.  The stump.  The scarred upper arm that ends in a shattered mass of scar tissue.  My amputation.

“How did it happen, Jabe?”

“Um, deranged postal workers…”

“No jokes, honey.  You do that every time I ask.  Please.  Be open.”

I ran my hand through her hair.  “You really want to know?”

“Yes, I do.”


“Make me some coffee.  I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”
***
It was about five years ago.  I was working for Future Technologies, Limited.  You may have heard of them, they recently built a module for the International Space Station.  At any rate, I was an engineer, a troubleshooter.  You needed a problem solved, I’d solve it.  It was great work, and it paid well.

There were about seventy people working there.  Engineers, physicists, chemists, logistics experts, you name it.  All of ‘em thinkers, all of ‘em a little nuts.  Never met a funner group of people.

There was this one chick who worked there.  Cheryl Buck.  She was a computer programmer, worked in the same lab I did.  Smallest girl you’d ever meet, couldn’t have been five feet tall.  Short brown hair, round head, and probably weighed about twenty pounds.  She was a cute little thing, though no one at this office ever asked her out.  It would have been like asking out your own little sister, she was so quiet and innocent.

So anyway, Cheryl starts dating this one guy who none of us know.  No one things anything about it until she starts missing a lot of work.  Like one week out of a month.  And she’d come back with weird injuries.  Black eyes, bruised arms, funny ways of walking.  It didn’t take a genius to figure out what was going on.  Some female friends of hers tried to get her help, but she denied anything was wrong.

Finally, we’d all had enough.  Me and my boss, Mr. Latrell, cornered her in the lab one night.

“Why don’t you leave the SOB?” I asked.

“What are you talking about?” she asked, not meeting my eyes.

“What do you think he’s talking about?” asked Mr. Latrell.  He laid his hand on her shoulder and she winced.

“I slipped in the shower,” she protested.  “It’s nothing.”

I snorted.  “Yeah, just like the cigarette burns were nothing.  Or you walking bowlegged last week.  Or crying in the break room.”

For the first time she looked up.  “Mind your own business,” she barked.

“He’s going to kill you,” Mr. Latrell stated simply.

“He is not!  He just gets…upset with me sometimes.”  She was looking at her feet again.

“I’ve been getting upset with my wife for twenty-odd years,” replied Mr. Latrell.  “I never once laid a hand on her.”

“Look, you two,” tears were rolling down her cheeks “you don’t know how it is.  Leave me alone.”  She ran off sobbing.

Later that evening, I held a council of war with the hardboiled Mr. Latrell and some female employees in the lab.  

“What the hell can we do?”  I asked the group.

One woman suggested calling the cops.  “Nothing doing,” said Susan McKay, my section manager.  “He’s got her whipped.  She’d just tell the cops nothing was wrong, and we’d be back to square one.”

Mr. Latrell suggested that he, myself, and  a couple of other guys corner Cheryl’s boyfriend one night and have a friendly discussion with him.  Preferably with tire irons and bike chains.  Susan nixed that one as well.

“Much as I’d like to see you guys hobble that dick, getting yourselves thrown in jail won’t help things out.  It’ll just give him another reason to pound on her.”

“So what can be done?” asked another woman.

Susan sighed.  “I’ve seen this sort of thing before.  And until she decides she deserves better, there’s not a whole lot we can do.  We’ll just have to keep trying to convince her to leave him, then we can help her make her escape.”  She didn’t say what we were all thinking:  Cheryl could be dead before that happened.

***
Fortunately, it didn’t come to that.  It was at the office Christmas party when things came to a head.  Each of us was practicing for our number in the company talent show, a yearly holiday tradition.  I was tuning up my guitar, and chatting with Katie Greyson.

Katie was a systems analysis who I worked with on a daily basis.  For weeks now I had tried to avoid her so as not to hear another account of her upcoming wedding to Duke Hampshire, millionaire playboy.  I never read the society page, and quite frankly, one more account of the joyous preparations for the social event of the year would make me barf.

“And the ice sculptures!” Katie continued to gush.  “Oh, Jabe, you should see how they’re going to turn out!  Swans, flowers, waterfalls…” I cranked the volume on my amp, just a bit.

“And the band, have I told you about the band?”  Only about 800 times.  “You see, it’s a twelve piece arrangement…”  I began to wish I was about twenty years older so I could fake a heart attack and thus leave the room.  Luckily, Cheryl entered at that time, mercifully ending the wedding spiel.

Cheryl was sporting the beginnings of a shiner under her left eye, but seemed strangely joyful.  “I left the bastard!” she said, in a louder voice than I had ever heard her use.

“That’s wonderful!” said Katie, kissing Cheryl on the cheek.  “How did he take it?”

Cheryl shuttered.  “Badly.  But at least I don’t have to see him again.”

“Where are you staying?” asked Katie.

Cheryl patted her overnight bag.  “I have no idea.  This is all I have in the world.”

“Then stay with me until you find a place,” said Katie.

“I’m not sure that’s safe.  He may come looking for me.”

“I’d be glad to come over,” I ventured.  “So would half the guys who work here.  Don’t worry, he won’t get near you.”  Cheryl started sobbing again, but happily.  “It’s all over,” I heard her say.

Cheryl relaxed in her office as the rest of us prepared out big production numbers.  This year I was gonna win first prize, or my name wasn’t Jimi Hendrix…er, Jabe Oakridge.  As I waited for the show to get underway, Susan approached me.  She looked very upset.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“It’s Cheryl.  She just got a call from her boyfriend.  He says he’s coming to take her home.”

“Tough for him.  She ain’t going nowhere.”

Susan looked grim.  “She seems to think she is.”

I followed Susan back to Cheryl’s office where Mr. Latrell and some other employees were talking to Cheryl.

“Look,” she said, hopelessly, “it’s not a matter of him finding me here.  I know you all would stop him.  But what about the next night, or the next?  I’d have to run for the rest of my life.  I should just go back and apologize.”

“Apologize for what?” hollered Mr. Latrell.  “It’s time someone stood up to him…”

“He’d find me,” repeated Cheryl, numbly.  No matter where I ran to, he’d find me.  And he’d kill me.  If I go home tonight, maybe he’d just…”

I was sick of that crap.  “Just what?” I bellowed.  “Knock out a couple of your teeth?”  Cheryl looked away.

“Look, Cheryl, if you go back with him, you might as well be dead.  Think, isn’t there anywhere we could take you where you’d feel safe?”

Cheryl smiled a wan smile.  “I always wanted to see Italy.  Just go to some little backwater town and drop out of sight.  But what’s the use?”

“What do you mean, what’s the use?  We could put you on a plane tonight.”

“All the ticket agents are closed (this was a few years before you could buy tickets on the Internet).  By the time I had a flight arranged, he’d know where I was going.  He’d follow me, he’s obsessed.”

“Listen,” said Mr. Latrell, “if we could get you to Italy tonight, without anyone knowing, would you go?”

She laughed, a harsh, barking laugh.  “Sure, if you could magically transport me thousands of miles away without anyone knowing.”

Mr. Latrell turned to me.  “Jabe,” he said, seriously, “the Unit Five.”

“The Unit Five?  Of course!”

“What are you two talking about?” asked Susan.

“We may have a solution to this.  Yes, I can see it now.  We’ll make it part of the act so no one will suspect a thing.  Susan and Katie, we’ll need your help.”  I paused.  “There’s only one problem.”

“What’s that?”

“I won’t be able to play my guitar this year.”

Everyone, including Cheryl, let out a disappointed sigh.  TOO disappointed, now that I think back on it.
***
“Ladies and gentlemen,” barked out Tony, the head of research who was acting as MC tonight.  “It is indeed a pleasure for me to open the eighth annual Future Tech. talent show!”  The audience applauded.  Backstage, I was beginning to get a little nervous.  The Unit Five was still in its experimental stage, and I wasn’t sure how well it would work.

“So what will we have to do?” asked Susan, the middle-aged section manager.  

“Just follow my lead and look pretty.”

Susan smirked.  “Couldn’t you have found someone a little younger to be a lovely assistant?”

“Younger, yes.  Prettier, no.”  Sucking up to my supervisor?  Maybe.  But she was slender and had a regal bearing about her that made one forget she was in her forties.

“This is so exciting!” gushed Katie.  “If only Duke were here to see this!”
 
“Speaking of which,” asked Susan, “how come we’ve never met him?”

“Oh, he’s far to busy to come out here.”  I got the uncomfortable feeling that that translated into Duke was far too important to meet the likes of us.

In the corner, Cheryl watched us, expressionlessly.  Every time a stagehand walked in, she’d jump.  Obviously she expected her ex to barge in and drag her away.

“Let’s give it up for Angela,” barked Tony, in response to an act that had just finished.  He shifted uncomfortably in the wheelchair that a lab accident had confined him to for a few months.  “And now, our own Jabe Oakridge will now regale us with his rockin’ guitar!”  There was a smattering of applause.  The backstage manager whispered something to him.

“What’s that?  Oh!  There’s been a change of plans.  Jabe will be performing a magic act tonight!”  The audience broke into a much more enthusiastic display of clapping.

“I guess they really like magic, eh?”  I asked.  Susan giggled and bit her hand.  I wondered why.

I strolled out on stage.  “Thank you everyone!  It’s great to be here!”  It really was.  I had always love the feeling I got when I performed on stage for any reason.  I often wondered if I had made the right choice in becoming an engineer.

I decided to warm the audience up with a joke.  “Hey, why didn’t Beethoven like his chickens?  Because they kept saying ‘Bach, Bach, Bach!’”  If I was expecting laughter, I sure didn’t get any.

I tried another.  “How are Saddam Hussein and Little Miss Muffett alike?  They both have Kurds in their way!  Get it?”  Susan caught my eye back stage and made a slicing motion over her throat.  Clearly the audience wasn’t in a comical mood.
 
“Well, without further ado, let me introduce my lovely assistant, Susan McKay!”  This, at last, elicited an audience response.  Susan walked out on stage and smiled at the crowd.  

I motioned for some stage hands to wheel out the centerpiece (and only trick) of my magic show.  It consisted of a gaudily painted wooden box, about the size of a refrigerator (the wood was an addition for the show, it was actually made of metal).  The front of the box was hinged.  Unlike most magicians’ vanishing cabinets, this one had three television screens, one on top of the other, set in the door.

“Now Susan, might I ask you to step inside?” I asked, swinging the door open.  The inside of the box seemed nothing more than a steel enclosure; there was no room for additional props or tricks.  I closed the door after her.

Susan was invisible from within the box; the TV screens were darkened.  I produced a remote control and turned them on one at a time.  Susan’s head and shoulders appeared on the top screen, her arms and torso in the middle, her legs at the bottom.  The images were clear, but at the same time you could tell they were broadcast: you weren’t simply seeing through the glass.

“Now Susan,” I said in a voice loud enough for the audience to hear me, “you often say with our schedule, you have to been in three places at once.  Well, I think I’ve figured out a way for you to do that…literally!”  With that I picked up a huge, rectangular blade and held it to where Susan could see it.

“Uh, Jabe,” said Susan, “you never said anything about that!”  Her voice wasn’t natural; it came from a speaker in the side of the box.

“Hmmm, where have I heard that before?” I grinned at the audience.  My fellow employees laughed.  Susan was the sort of boss who expected you to find what needed to be done and do it.  ‘You never told me about that’ was not an excuse you used with her.

I positioned the blade at the side of the box.  “I’m serious, Jabe!”  Susan continued to protest.  “You never told me what I was supposed to do here!”

“If you want to follow orders, then join the army,” I retorted, using Susan’s favorite rebuttal when faced with that excuse.  I hefted a blade and inserted it into the side of the cabinet.  Susan yelped, then looked down at her hips.  Quickly, I inserted the second one just under her shoulders.

The audience applauded politely, but from their point of view they were seeing nothing new.  Every magician in the world performs something like this.  The crowd, made up mostly of scientists and other thinkers, obviously thought that Susan had escaped from the back of the box somehow and was having her image broadcast from backstage.  Susan, who was still very much in the box, would not be so skeptical.  

Gripping the top of the box with my hands, I lifted.  The top part of the box, containing one TV screen, lifted as well.  Susan’s face and shoulders still appeared on the screen.  She looked ill.  I sat her head on the stage and separated her torso from her hips.  I then lifted the section with her head and placed it on top of her legs, and stacked her body on top.  Susan looked at me from her screen with desperation.  It was obvious she hadn’t counted on anything like this.

“Susan, I’m shocked.  Just last week you wrote me up for keeping my work area in disarray, and you can’t even keep your own body parts on order.”  The audience laughed, then clapped.  I’m sure they were all convinced I was doing nothing but moving TV screens around, and that Susan was nowhere in the vicinity.  But I wasn’t finished yet.

Susan, meanwhile, was starting to breathe heavily, I was afraid she would panic.  “Everyone give a big round of applause to my assistant,” I said, enjoying calling my boss my ‘assistant.’  While they clapped, Susan waved, numbly.  Figuring she had had enough, I pulled out my remote again.  Starting from the bottom, I changed the setting on each screen.  Susan’s head vanished, it its place were an unfamiliar pair of women’s legs in a designer dress.  I vanished Susan’s legs and made the woman’s torso appear.  I disappeared Susan’s body, and brought in the head of my new assistant.  It was Katie, the professional fiancée.  

Katie seemed confused a moment or two, then waved at the audience.  “Now, Katie,” I addressed her, “I understand that you have an important date coming up soon.”

That was all it took.  “Yes, I’m getting married!  It’ll be in two months, and you won’t believe what we have planned.  Just the other day, Duke…” fearing I was loosing control, I flipped a button on my remote.  The speaker went dead, and the word ‘mute’ appeared in green on the lower TV, much to the bemusement of the audience.  I think most of my coworkers were as tired of Katie’s wedding plans as I was.  Katie stopped moving her lips, embarrassed.  

“Now Katie,” I continued.  “Have you picked out a dress yet?”  She tried to say something, then just shook her head.  I knew she didn’t have a dress yet, but I didn’t want to hear about the eighteen possible choices (again).

“Well, perhaps I can help you.  What do you think of this one?”  I flipped a button on the remote.  Instantly, Katie’s dress was replaced by a wedding gown with a long, flowing train.  Her hair and makeup were now done up, and she clutched a bouquet.  Katie was stunned as she noticed how quickly her clothes had changed.  “Or maybe this.”  The dress changed; now it was a shoulderless outfit with more lace.  Her hair was now in a pony tale.  “Or perhaps, this.”  The dress changed a last time, now a simpler, ivory colored one.  Katie was smiling such an amazed smile that I turned her speaker back on.  A flip of the remote returned her original dress.

I turned to the audience.  “Now ladies,” I grinned.  “With this magic remote, you don’t have to spend hours a day getting ready.  With just a flip of the switch, you can have any outfit you desire!  You there!”  I gestured to a female employee I didn’t know.  “What sort of outfit do you think Katie should try next?”

“Um…blouse and skirt?” she ventured.

“More specifically?”  I asked.

“White blouse, grey skirt,” she shrugged.  I pressed a button.  Instantly, Katie was wearing exactly that.  Her makeup had vanished as well; she was now wearing ugly horn rim glasses that made her look like a dowdy secretary.  She had a priceless look of shock on her face.

“Now you!” I pointed to another woman.  

“How about a blue sweater, and jeans?”  Poof.  Katie was now dressed in the suggested manner.  

I could tell the audience was getting amazed.  Having the women transform to my specifications just meant I was broadcasting their images from a tape.  But if the audience suggested the transformation, then the trick was much harder to explain.

“Ski clothes!” someone shouted.  Katie was now wearing a coat, ski pants, snow hat, and carried a set of ski poles.

“A clown!” shouted some wag.  Katie was now dressed like a joker, complete with makeup.

“Punk rocker!”  Katie was wearing a leather jacket, chains, and fishnet stockings.  A blue mohawk haircut and a nose ring completed the image.

“Ballerina!”  A tutu and leotard appeared.

“Bikini!” shouted several guys, each having the same predicable thought at the same time.  I changed Katie in a modest, but still very revealing, two-piece.

“Stripper!” some guy shouted.  I couldn’t resist.  Katie had just enough time to clap her hands over her chest before I made her top disappear.  “Jabe!” she shouted, angrily.  I smiled and returned her top.

By this time, the audience was going wild.  While the high-thinking crown had no trouble explaining the first two tricks, now they were at a loss.  How could I produce whatever clothes they came up with?  That’s the sign of a truly great magic show: you have no idea how they do it.

“But that’s not all!  Not only can the magic remote change your clothes, but your image as well.  I demonstrated by changing Katie’s hair color and length, including demonstrating what Katie would look like totally bald.  I contemplated changing other things as well, such as her chest size, but figured I had already skirted the bounds of bad taste.  Just one more thing and I’d let her go.

I pressed another button.  The word ‘tint’ appeared on the bottom screen.  Katie’s skin began to change color.  It darkened, then became green.  Real green.  The bikini made it hard to miss that she was changing all over.  When I finally stopped, all her flesh was a nice shade of medium green.  Her nails, hair, and eyes were dark green.  Only her teeth and the whites of her eyes maintained their original white.

The crowd whooped.  Katie shot me a ‘this better be temporary’ glance.  “Ho, ho, ho,” I whispered (a la The Jolly Green Giant).  “Give it up for Katie!” I instructed the audience, so their cheering would cover up what she was calling me.

With my controller I changed the channels on all the screens.  Katie disappeared, in her place was Cheryl.  Cheryl looked nervous, but strangely happy as well.  Someone backstage had done her makeup, her bruises were almost invisible.  

“One final feature,” I grinned.  I was enjoying this.  If I couldn’t make it as an engineer, I could probably work in TV sales.  “Ever felt like you wanted to get away, but couldn’t?  Ever wanted to leave it all behind, but just felt like there was no escape?”

“Yes,” I heard Cheryl murmur.  

“Well, I have just the plan for you.  With my magic remote, I can send you anywhere you want to be!”  A stagehand wheeled out a computer printer on a table.  I had stolen this last bit from some magic act I had seen, but as Napster has shown us, intellectual property can be a sketchy thing.  Pressing a final button on my remote, Cheryl began to sink lower and lower, her feet and calves disappearing in the bottom of the box.  At the same time, the printer chugged to life.  A piece of paper emerged, with the image of a woman’s feet on it.  As Cheryl vanished, her image appeared on the paper.  Her head was now so low that it was in the middle box, instead of the top.  

I had expected her to be frightened, but she wasn’t.  Maybe after everything her boyfriend had done to her, this was a piece of cake.  Her stomach appeared on the paper.  Just before her head vanished, she looked up at me, smiled and winked.  It was the happiest I’d seen her in a long time.

I flipped off the now blank monitors.  Walking over to the printer, I removed the paper and held it for the audience to see.  Five feet of paper with the picture of Cheryl, still smiling, on it.  Only Cheryl and I knew it was more than a printout.

After having instructed the audience to applaud for Cheryl, I carefully folded her and placed her in a large envelope.  “Cheryl has just earned an trip to Italy, for just a few dollars in stamps.  Thank you!”
The audience roared.
***
I sat at my workspace and addressed the envelope, making sure the address and postage was perfect.

“So where are you sending her?” asked Katie.  Katie was perched on the my table, back in her original clothes but just as green as ever.

“Milan.  There’s a scientist there who is working along the same lines.  He can restore her upon arrival.”  It was hard to believe the escape was going so flawlessly.  My friend’s company had agreed to hire Cheryl at her previous wage. In addition, we had passed the hat, and the cashier’s check that I had slipped in with Cheryl was enough to get her on her feet in Italy.  I licked and sealed the envelope.

“Jabe, Cheryl owes you a lot.  I don’t think any of us would have thought of a way to help her escape.  If it wasn’t for you, she’d probably still be with that SOB.”  I smiled, embarrassed.  

“At least I finally won a prize in the talent show this year.”  True, it was second prize, but it was something.  First prize had gone to a female coworker whose singing was good enough not to inspire jealousy.  Third place went to a guy who could break a cement block with his head.

“Stop underestimating yourself,” said Katie.  “You’ve done a good thing here.  We’re all proud of you.”  She put her arm around me.  At first I thought she was going to hug me, but instead she got me in a chokehold.  “Now how about turning me back to my original color?”

“Yes,” I gulped.  “Just give the machine a few minutes to reload.”  I decided faking a computer failure wouldn’t be funny after all.

She released me.  “Good.  I’d hate to think what Duke would say if he saw me like this.”  I thought she looked rather striking like that, but I guessed her high society boyfriend wouldn’t think so.

I handed Cheryl to Katie.  “Could you take her down to the mail room?  Make sure they send her overnight.”

Katie took the package and got up.  Then she mussed up my hair.  “You’re a good man, Jabe Oakridge.  Now we just have to find you a wife.”  She smiled and left.

I leaned back in my chair, listening to the silence.  I had done a good thing, I decided.  I wished I could see the look on that jerk’s face when he realized Cheryl was gone for good.  I just didn’t realize that wish was about to come true.

He was standing in the doorway when I got up.  He instantly rubbed me the wrong way, probably because he strongly resembled a mechanic who had once destroyed my transmission.  He skinny, weasely, and wore a permanent sneer, along with a huge trench coat.

“Where is she?” He asked, softly and angrily.

“Who?”  I smiled.  Tough shit for you pal.

“Cheryl.  I’ve come to take her home.”

“I thought she’d left you.  Try the bus station.”  Wait there and rot, I thought, happily.

He moved forward.  “I saw the little magic trick you did with my woman.  She wasn’t backstage afterwards.  Where is she?”

“Dunno.  Tried the airport?”

“I’m going to give you one last chance.  Where is she?”

I stood up and faced him.  Please, please, throw a punch, I thought.  Please give me an excuse to smash your nose in.

“Up yours.” I taunted.

My confidence quickly vanished when he pulled a sawed-off shotgun out from under his coat.  “I said,” he barked, “where is she?”

The sweat under my armpits turned icy.  I wasn’t sure if he was bluffing or not, but I sure didn’t want to find out.  At least I didn’t have to worry about betraying Cheryl.  He’d never believe the truth anyway.

“Just calm down, buddy.  Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

“Who’s the big guy now?” he hollered, poking my chin with the barrel.  “Where the fuck is my girlfriend?”

“I ain’t telling.”  Gulp.

“You want to die?”

“Just take it easy.  Why don’t you give me that gun?”

“I’ll give it to you right in the chest, if you don’t answer me!”

“I’m not talking.”

“Then you’re going die!” He shoved me against the wall and stepped out of the blast range.

“Last chance, WHERE IS SHE!”

I shook my head, terrified.  Several things happened in rapid succession.  

Someone stepped into the room.  The guy pulled the trigger.  Something shot into my line of vision just as the gun went off.  I felt white hot pain tear into my arm.   I collapsed on the floor.  Mr. Latrell tackled my assassin and began pummeling the crap out of him.

As I blacked out I could see Susan standing in the door, her arm still extended from throwing my radio, which had hit the gun and deflected the blast.  And saved my life.
***
“So that was that.  I was in the hospital for weeks.  They couldn’t save the arm.  I got buckshot in my eye as well, I could never see out of it again.”

Alexis was looking at me in numb shock.  “What happened to that bastard?” she asked.

“Not surprisingly, it wasn’t his first brush with the law.  He went away for a long time.”

“Good!” said Alexis, suddenly furious.  I felt secretly proud that someone who hurt me would inspire anger in her.  I took her by the hand.

“So what happened after that?”

“It took me forever to recover.  It’s kind of funny, I was so wrapped up in my own problems, I didn’t realize I had forgotten to do something rather important.”

“Oh my God, you didn’t forget to mail Cheryl, did you?”

“Oh, no.  She went out the next day and was back to normal within a week.  She’s in Italy right now, and doing just fine.”

“I bet she’s grateful to you.”

“For sending her there, yes.  But she never knew about me getting shot.”

Alexis looked shocked.  “Why not?”

“I wouldn’t let anyone tell her.  Can you imagine the guilt?  She knew her boyfriend shot someone, but didn’t know that it was me.  I wrote her later that I had been in a car wreck.”

“So what was it you forgot to do?”

“I forgot to change Katie back to normal.”

“What?  You mean she stayed green?”

“I was so doped up on pain killers at first I couldn’t think straight.  Then I was all upset about my arm.”

“Couldn’t anyone else change her back?  It must have been hard for her to live like that.”

“No one would mess with the thing without me.  And Katie refused to let anyone remind me, she was afraid I’d leave the hospital early if I knew.”

“Knowing you, you probably would have.  What did her boyfriend say?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nope.  As soon as he realized she might be green for a long time, he left her without a word.”

“Just like that?”

“Guess a high society guy didn’t like the idea of having a girlfriend who looked like a Martian.”

“Poor Katie!  So what happened to her?”

“It hardened her.  I called her as soon as I remembered.  She said that she’d never forgive Duke for what he’d done.  Said she’d never let me go near her with that machine again.  She was just going to stay that color, and didn’t care what anyone thought.”

“She took it hard.”

“Can you blame her?  Luckily, she wasn’t angry with me.”

“So how long did she stay green?”

“Years.  Kept going out, going to work, everything like that.  One day she went to a science fiction convention, and met this guy who assumed she was wearing makeup.  By the end of the week, when she told him the truth, he had fallen for her so hard it didn’t matter.”

“Get out!”

“It’s true.  They were engaged over a year.  She didn’t have me return her to normal until the day before they had their wedding photos taken.”

Alexis sat on my lap.  “And you?  What happened to you?”

“I had a breakdown.  Couldn’t work anymore.  I had enough money coming in from patent rights that I just became a wanderer.  Did odd jobs.  That’s when I met you.”

Alexis buried her face in my shoulder to mask her tears.  “You brave, brave man.”

“It was nothing.”

“Yes it was.  Cheryl might have been dead now if you hadn’t helped her.”

“I suppose.”

“Jabe, I hate to see you tormented like this.  I want to help you.”

I held her.  “You have helped me.  Before I met you, I was a wreck.  I drank, I popped pills, I couldn’t hold a job.  That memory kept haunting me.  Now I’m sober, I’m living with you, I’m getting better.  I used to have that dream every night, now it’s more like once a week.”

Alexis took make face in her hands.  “Jabe, I never realized how much I love you.”  She kissed me.

I never had the nightmare again.

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