Title Victoria - Access - Date 13 April 2004 - Words - 3.05 CG

 

Victoria

by Dave Hicks

 

1

As I sat in my small, damp basement apartment and my underpants, savoring my fourth glass of a cheap little something only a desperate wino would rave about, my bloodshot eyes drifted towards a particularly strange advertisement in the newspaper, I'd carefully crumpled away on the floor.

It read; 'The opportunity of a lifetime. If you want to become a woman and you're prepared to sell your soul to the Devil - call this number'.

I've worked in sales and so know a con job when I see one. I noticed they gave a mobile phone number. What concerned me was - it was my mobile phone number they were using. Bloody newspaper I thought, they're forever getting phone numbers wrong. Now I'll have every weirdo on the planet ringing me.

Out of curiosity, I switched on my very second-hand Nokia® phone, expecting to see a large number of missed calls and messages. There were none. I stared at the phone's display, letting the alcohol in my bloodstream do the thinking for me - for a while. Eventually, since nothing much seemed to result from this approach, I dialed my number.

"You are being diverted to Hades, please wait," a pleasant female voice said. "Thank you for calling. This call may be recorded for quality assessment and training purposes. If you hang up now, your body will break out in lots of really nasty boils."

After thirty seconds of a badly played instrumental version of "I'm Just a Girl Who Can't Say No" from some old Broadway show, whose name I couldn't remember, an affable female voice spoke.

"Thank you for calling Hades - Customer Service Division - New Accounts," she said charmingly. "My name is Victoria. Please select from the following, one option. If you are calling because you're angry because some idiot used your phone number in a newspaper advertisement - press 1. You can press 9 at any time to repeat this option."

There was a long silence.

"You have not selected option 1," the voice said happily, startling me. "Since your brain is so pickled, you'd obviously have difficulty understanding anything more complicated than the internal workings of a house brick, you are now being transferred to one of our consultants."

This time the music was a shaky rendition of "That Old Black Magic" played on a harmonica.

"Hello," a slinky female voice interrupted the melody. "I'm Victoria again, but I'm using a different voice this time. May I have your user name and password please?"

"I don't bloody have one," I replied angrily.

"That's okay, David," she responded cheerfully. "We don't need it anyway. We know very well who you are."

"What?"

"Did you see our advertisement in the newspaper?" she asked proudly. "We're all very pleased with it down here. It's part of our new IBM® - Innovative Business Marketing."

"That's what I rang you assholes about," I answered. "Why did you use my bloody number? And who the Hell are you, anyway?"

"You've already answered your second question," she laughed playfully. "And the reason we used your phone number was - you probably wouldn't forget it. At least hopefully, not too easily, anyway."

"And what's all this shit about me becoming a woman? I don't even want to be a woman."

"Yes you do."

"No I don't."

"It just so happens - we know you do," she insisted.

"Then it just so happens - you're bloody wrong."

"It's a perfectly genuine offer, David," she continued, ignoring my comments. "It's just like it says in our advertisement. You want to be a woman - you give us a call. It's that simple. We tried to put the ad in simple enough English, with no really difficult, big words and made the contract so a five year old could understand. We'll turn you into a woman, that's the deal. All you have to do - is go through the boring bit about selling your soul to the Devil. For Lucifer's sake David - you know the drill. It's been done to death in movies often enough, over the years. Think of when you saw the movie Dracula as a kid, but instead of all your blood, we get your immortal spirit. You won't even know it's gone. First - you sell your soul to the Devil and then we get to screw you over."

I took another large mouthful of my revolting wine and forced my throat to swallow it, against my stomach's urgent advice to the contrary. I knew someone was having fun at my expense, so I decided I might as well have some fun of my own.

"So how do I go about selling my soul to the Devil, Victoria?" I asked patiently. "Tell me that."

"Do you have a cross-eyed female child with extra fingers and toes, under the age of six, with a birthmark on her chest of an inverted cross, whose throat you can slit with a knife, washed three times in the urine of a black pregnant goat, that's only been fed the entrails of dead rats for a week?"

"Of course not. How would I manage to keep a pregnant goat in the shitty little basement apartment I've got? Anyway, I don't seem to have any dead rats lying around at this precise moment. All the rats that live here are very much alive - and doing rather well for themselves, as it happens."

"Just checking, David," Victoria replied merrily. "You never know when someone might just manage to pull it off. Not to worry - there is another way we can do this."

"What's that?"

"Just tell me; you'll believe it when you see it and I'll instantly appear before you in a impressive explosion of iridescent, white smoke. We've done away with rising out of a big crack in the floor with lots of flames, these days. Not since Hollywood started using it. Also, people complained it blistered the paintwork on their walls and ceilings."

"I'll believe it when I see it," I laughed.

There was a rather weak pop of thunder and a small puff of greasy black smoke. The most stunningly beautiful woman, in a very expensive full-length, low-cut black, shimmering gown, stood before me. Her face was heart-achingly angelic. She had a figure that would cause the to blood rush to the head of any male cemetery resident. The dress looked like it had been put on with a paint roller.

"I've brought the contract, David," Victoria announced, with a disarming smile, waving a sheet of paper.

Fortunately, my alcohol levels by then were sufficiently high enough, to prevent me from dying of cardiac arrest.

"And what if I don't sign it?" I managed to ask.

"You don't have to," she laughed, sitting gracefully into the chair opposite me. "This is only a copy for your records. We keep the original - not on paper either. That would only catch fire all the time. You really should read the advertisement again – a little more carefully next time. You're already signed up."

"What's the Devil going to do with my soul?"

"Absolutely nothing," she chuckled. "The Princess of Darkness, Queen of Lies and Mistress of All Evil and Really Nasty Horrid Stuff, simply doesn't want You Know Who to get it - that's all. These days, it's more a habit than anything else. We've always done it and it gives us all something to do. No one really knows why we do it anymore. Hell's already got more souls than it knows what to do with – in fact, we got so many, we're bursting at the seams with them. They're immortal so we can't just kill them off when the place gets crowded."

"I thought Hell was infinite."

"No," she corrected me, pointing upwards. "You're thinking of the Other Place. They can make more real estate as they need it."

"And how will I end up looking - if I become a woman, that is?"

"Do you like the way I look?" she asked, with a disarming smile, crossing one extremely shapely long leg over the other and barely concealing an especially attractive knee through the long slit in the side of her gown.

"Sure. I guess I do."

"Fine," she smiled happily. "Well, I'm glad we've got that all sorted out. You wouldn't believe the time it takes some of our clients to make up their minds about that sort of thing."

She vanished in another weak pop of black, sticky smoke.

"Wait?" I cried out pointlessly.

 

2

 

The next moment, I was dressed in a very expensive full-length low-cut black shimmering gown and a perfect pair of breasts sticking out in front of me.

"Oh shit!"

Before I could find out what else had been done to me, a leggy blond fashion model-type of woman burst into my apartment. She wore large, bright-orange plastic earrings, a bra two sizes too small and carried a 'genuine' imitation, pink Gucci® handbag. Her bottle-blond hair had a faint tinge of green, from using too much White King Bleach®.

"Victoria?" she cried, tossing a set of keys to me. "Come on, darling. We've got ten minutes to get to the photo shoot. And thanks for the use of your Ferrari®. I'll pay all those silly driving citations - when they arrive. I promise."

I sat like a stunned goldfish, with my mouth open, staring at the keys resting in my lap.

"Oh shit, Vickie," she exclaimed, sitting opposite me. "You're not drunk are you? It's me Cathie. Do you remember me?"

I shook my head unsurely.

"Well, that's okay then," she sighed in relief, completely ignoring my response. "For a moment, I thought you didn't recognize me."

"I've just been turned into a woman," I told her weakly.

"Sure," she smiled, rising quickly from her chair. "I know the feeling. It happens to me every time I put my makeup on."

She held my forearm.

"Come on Vickie - please," she begged urgently. "We've really got to go now. It's all right for you to show up when you feel like it - he'll wait for you, probably until Hell freezes over. But models like me - he can buy at the local Night Owl® supermarket. This is my one big chance. Remember, you promised me. Try and stand up."

I rose as she asked and followed her carefully out of my apartment. I could already tell, high-healed shoes were going to take a little getting used to. As I mounted the steps up to road level, I saw the latest model Ferrari®, in bright red, parked at an odd angle at the curbside.

"I think I'd better drive," she said, taking the keys from me. "Whatever you're smoking, I want some of it - but later."

I got into the passenger side of the car. Cathie started the power plant and as my spine was pressed firmly into the leather seat, she laid two perfectly straight, long, parallel strips of rubber, on the road behind us.

She glanced at me as she drove.

"You're not with me - are you?" she observed.

"No," I replied. "I've had a bit of a shock."

"Just tell me the name of the bastard and I'll cut his balls off," she growled. "No one treats my best friend like that and gets away with it. Not without at least giving me his phone number first. Men? They only want one thing from a girl. You'd think unlimited free sex would be enough for them - wouldn't you?"

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"It must be living in that rat hole of yours," she remarked, shaking her head. "It's affecting your brain. I've seen the restrooms at Madam Sara's Brothels Inc® look and smell better than that underground bug farm you call an apartment. I don't know how you can stand to live there. Someone, with the amount of money you've got, couldn't possibly use the excuse you need to save on the rent."

"Where are we going?" I repeated my question, a little more firmly this time.

"The modeling job, Vickie," she said, very patiently, as if talking to a simple five year old. "Remember? The one I told you about a week ago - at Micro Hard On®. This is my big break. You promised you'd help me. They'll only use me, if I can talk you into doing it too."

She glanced at me again.

"You must really be spaced out," she worried. "Oh, I hope this all works out okay - I really do. Have you thought of joining AA?"

"Joining AA to what?"

"AA is an organization for problem drinkers."

"Sounds more like a bra size," I responded. "Maybe a battery of some kind. Perhaps it stands for American Athletics. Automobile Association?"

"Forget it, Vicky."

Cathie shot the car into a parking space, reserved for the President, outside a large modern office building. Waiting at the main entrance was a full camera crew. A short, fat, balding man. with an oversized Nikon® light meter hanging from his neck, almost dragged me from the car.

"Victoria, my darling," he beamed in delight, looking at me as if I just cured him from terminal cancer "You look absolutely gorgeous. I simply love the black outfit. It's just so fabulous. I can't tell you what a relief it is, to work with another true professional - for a change."

We trooped into the building.

 

3

 

For the next hour I wandered about like a bewildered fart in a bottle. I stood where they told me to, smiled when they said so and held funny looking pieces of computer equipment and boxes of software for them to photograph. They took a few shots of me with some goofy looking nerd, who said he owned the place.

"You were just so good," Cathie laughed, as she drove us back to my apartment. "And I'm in it too. They're going to use four shots of me, holding a oscillating phase monitoring rheostat - whatever that is."

"Damn," I told her. "I need a drink."

"Under the seat," she answered.

I unscrewed the cap and provoked the contents of the half bottle of spirit into my stomach, in less time than it takes to say it.

We parked half on the sidewalk and entered my apartment.

"There's wine in the refrigerator," I told her, flopping into my chair. "Try not to read what's written on the cask - it'll only frighten you."

She returned with the wine cask and a full, not too clean, glass.

"Where did you get this?" she grimaced, as she took a sip of the wine. "It tastes like pregnant goat's piss."

"Does it?" I asked, her words striking a chord, somewhere in the darker recesses of my brain.

"And," she continued.

"And what?"

"Did you know you've got a really scary-looking, enormous rat living in your refrigerator? It's got glowing red eyes and is covered with long hair."

"That's Arthur," I explained. "He was here when I moved in. He lives in the refrigerator because he doesn't handle the hot weather too well."

"But it's got really long fur," she insisted.

"That's how he keeps warm. It's been known to get cold in there - occasionally."

That was about the time when the booze from the car finally took me seriously and worked out a route from my stomach to my brain. About that time I noticed Cathie had a small mark just above the cleavage of her breasts.

"What's that?" I asked, pointing unsteadily to the spot on her chest.

"It a birthmark," she said. "It looks like an upside down cross doesn't it."

"When did you get it?"

"At birth, Vickie," she replied, shaking her head. "Dumb. That's the reason they call them birthmarks."

In my confused mental state, I wondered if someone with only the mental age of five would qualify to get their throat slit. I tried to check how many fingers she had but I kept losing count.

"Get me a knife," I mumbled. "I have to kill you."

Then I passed out.

 

4

 

I awoke lying on my bed, dressed only in a rather tight tee shirt and a headache that could kill a mule. I sat up with my back against the headboard. I was still a woman. A careful inspection only confirmed it.

Cathie walked into the room, carefully carrying two full glasses, so not to spill them.

"Drink this," she said, sitting on the edge of the bed and offering me a glass. "It doesn't taste so bad - once you've lost the will to live. It's good for getting stains off the carpet too. It sort of joins them all together."

I took the glass unsteadily from her.

"Where are all your clothes, Vickie?" she asked. "The only thing I could find to put on you was some tacky K-Mart® tee shirt, with 'Heaven Can Wait' written on it."

"Give me a smoke," I said.

She lit a Marlboro® and passed it to me. I took a long suck, coughed up my lungs and spilt the entire contents of my glass all over the bed and myself.

"I'll get a rag, Vickie," said Cathie.

"Forget it," I said, rising from the bed. "The maid's due in today."

I walked to the other room, while self-consciously pulling the hem of the tee shirt down as far as it would go, in a futile attempt to completely cover my very cute backside. Cathie poured me another glass of wine.

"What's my real name?" I asked her.

"Victoria," she replied. "But you already know that."

"What else?"

"That's it."

"I mean my surname," I told her. "You know - the name that goes on the end."

"Bellefontaine," she replied admiringly. "It's real too. Ah… Victoria Bellefontaine. It sounds just so much classy than mine. Cathie Appfelkompf – what sort of name for a model is that? I hate it."

"Do I have a bank I use?"

"Why are you asking me all this? Have you got anorexia?"

"You mean amnesia," I corrected her.

"Sorry, I forgot. Have you lost your memory?"

I took a deep breath.

"You will either answer my questions or - I'll be forced to slit your throat."

"The National® Bank."

"Good," I said, rising from the chair. "I need to get dressed."

After going through my extensive wardroom, I wore the black number. It was all I had - apart from a soggy, K-Mart® tee shirt.

 

5

 

The bank manager was very understanding when I told him someone had stolen my credit cards and ID. That was when I could keep his mind on what I was trying to tell him, instead of my amazing body. He issued me with a temporary card. I went to a teller, checked my bank balance and then nearly had another heart attack. I was a very rich lady.

"We're going shopping," I informed Cathie, as we left the bank.

"Yes?" she cried enthusiastically. "Are we using your money or mine?"

"Have you got any?"

"No."

"Mine then."

"Good."

"Where's the best place in town?" I asked her.

"Where you always go,"

"Regarding that very serious threat I made to kill you," I warned her. "It's still current. There must be a hardware store around someplace, where I can get a particularly blunt and rusty knife. I'm sure goats piss wouldn't be a real problem."

"La Fame® Boutique," she replied quickly. "And don't blame me because you've got a rotten hangover."

After I'd bought most of the store, including a few things for Cathie, I told them to deliver it all to my suite at the Sheraton®.

"You don't have a suite at the Sheraton®," Cathie remarked, as we headed for the hairdresser.

I looked at her threateningly and made a short call on my Nokia®. I spoke for a few seconds, then dropped the phone in the nearest trashcan.

"I do now," I told her.

"I'm seeing a whole new side of you, Vicky," she remarked in admiration. "You're so demonic."

"You mean dynamic, don't you?"

Cathie nodded.

"You wouldn't really going to slit my throat - were you?" she asked.

"Of course not," I laughed. "I'd soon run out of friends, if I did that."

"That's good," she smiled happily. "It's just - I imagine having my throat slit would really hurt a lot."

Once we'd both been totally worked over by the local panel beater - Ramón of Hollywood®, Beautician to the Stars. I didn't need much work and Ramón did the best he could with Cathie. Luckily, he was a war veteran and had seen things that would make the average person's toenails curl up.

On our return to my apartment, I took Arthur out of the refrigerator and put him into the KittySafe® carrying cage I'd bought. I was seriously tempted to torch the place until Cathie reminded me, I could be arrested for doing something like that.

I walked out of the apartment to the car, carrying Arthur before me. I didn't even bother to look back.

--oo(;;)oo--

 

IBM®, National®, Ferrari®, Sheraton®, Nikon®, K-Mart®, La Fame®, KittySafe®, Madam Sara's Brothels Inc®, White King Bleach®, Marlboro®, Ramón of Hollywood®, Gucci®, Nokia® and Night Owl® are the registered trademarks (and not so registered trademarks) of their respective corporations.

Micro Hard On® sounds a little like a real corporation's name, doesn't it? Who knows? Maybe it is.

Jim Beam® is the registered trademark of the Jim Beam Distillers and Cleaning Fluid Company® but doesn't get a mention in this story - even though it was the brand of the booze under the seat of the Ferrari®.

The wine doesn't even deserve to have a name and the people who made it would rather remain anonymous, anyway.

The authors of the songs, 'I'm Just A Girl Who Can't Say No©' and 'That Old Black Magic©' have been dead for years and aren't in much of a position to do anything about copyright infringements, even if they wanted to.

Hades is a foreign owned corporation and the management really doesn't give a rat's ass whether their name is registered or not.

The names of the characters in this story are all fictitious – except for those who aren't made up. The first Victoria - who worked for Hades - didn't use her real name in this story.

Arthur eventually turned out to be a girl rat and fell in love with a floor mop.

  

  

  

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