To be someone

How did I find myself strapped to a filthy rusty surgery table in a dank back alley quacks chop shop?

Like so many ridiculous stories, it started as a drunken bet.

After a bad day at work, I found myself where I often do, Jaqui’s bar. It’s one of those bars that reprobates like me go to feel better about themselves to attempt to remind themselves they haven’t sunk to the bottom quite yet.

I was drinking my own business, staring out the window at the world going by, when I sensed someone sidling beside me.

“This seat taken?” She said, more demanding than asking.

I nodded and gestured at the empty seat next to me, returning my stare back outside, sipping at my drink.

“What’s your line of work?” She asked. I rolled my eyes. Just what I wanted, a talker. Obviously not a regular here. Most communication happens at Jacqui’s with grunts and passive-aggressive stares.

“What?” I asked again, surprised by the presence of a conversation.

“What do you do for work?” She repeated, sipping at steaming red liquid.

“Warehouses down the road.” I replied, gesturing in the general direction of my place of servitude.

“Ahh.” She replied, sounding generally interested. Was she hitting on me? I was oblivious to this kind of thing and generally assumed romance or even random encounters were done with me.

“It’s not exactly brain surgery, but it keeps me in the good stuff.” I said, raising my half-empty glass to the room.

She nodded. “That’s actually something of a misconception.” She said.

“Sorry, what is?”

“Brain surgery isn’t really that complicated.” She said with calm confidence, sipping at her drink again, the red steam rising over her face, casting it in a sinister light.

“Sure!” I laughed, thumping my glass on the bench in the window.

“I’m serious!” She said, laughing with pearly white teeth.

I shook my head with incredulity. I could count the conversations I’d had at Jacqui’s on the one hand, and there wasn’t much competition, but this was by far the most ridiculous one.

“Say…” She began, “You look like a betting man.”

Here it came. I knew there had to be a con somewhere. I raised my eyebrows sceptically. “If the stakes are right,” I said.

“I’ll stake the next round of drinks that I can give you a new brain, any one you want, painlessly and quickly enough that we’re back here for another round before last orders.” She said confidently, thumping her now empty glass on the table.

“I’ll take that round now whilst I think about it.” I said, gesturing at my empty glass.

“Sure!” She said, “Same again?”

I nodded and watched her go to the bar. What was this? A hook-up line, a robbery? I had nothing to lose with either of those. Was she really offering a new brain, a new life, a new chance after a pathetic life? Worst case, I would be dead within the hour. Best case, a second chance. I thought of the long days ahead of me, split between lugging goods around a warehouse and sitting in this dump, and made my decision there and then.

“You’re on.” I said when she returned with our drinks, sealing the deal with a clink of our newly full glasses.

Ten minutes later, we entered a doorway that managed to out-compete Jacqui’s for dinginess and win grimy hands down. The door slammed behind us as she flicked a large switch by the entrance, and the fluorescent strip lights sputtered into life. They illuminated the bare cement-walled room, and I am sure I saw rats and assorted bugs scuttle into the dark corners they called home. She gestured at the metallic slab that served as a surgical table in the middle of the room. I gulped as I saw the tattered restraints and faint reddy brown stains above the headrest. Only the strong drinks swilling inside me kept me from bolting out that door.

“Oh, don’t worry, I’ve perfected the technique now…” She said, noticing my expression, “…Those are from earlier experiments.” She gestured casually at the stains and worn leather restraints.

I could only manage an uncomfortable laugh, removed my jacket, and lay gingerly on the slab.

“So…” She said, busying around with mysterious dials and levers out of my peripheral vision. “…Who would you like to be?”

“Sorry? What do you mean?”

“You wanted brain surgery, and I am offering to give you the brain of whoever you want to be… If I have it in stock.” She said, now standing in front of a large shelf of jars that I couldn’t quite see the contents of, and decided it was best not to question.

I thought. She claimed to be offering me a chance to be someone new, well, at least mentally anyway. I’d still be inside the same wrecked body. But who knows a new owner might treat it better. With the proper care and attention, I could scrub up half-decent.

“Erm, will the new ‘me’ remember anything about, well, err, ‘me’?” I asked, wondering if I made any sense.

“Not at all. I’m giving you a new life here.” She said matter of factly. “I suggest that while I prepare for the surgery, you note down any important information you want to know in your new life. Your address, phone numbers, bank account details, family contacts, and place of work. Things like that.”

She handed me a tattered notebook and a pencil, and I thought. There wasn’t much to note. I added my sister’s details. She might care at some point in the future when she realised I hadn’t made my yearly call. I put down my address. I was planning a new life, but I would still need somewhere to stay at first. Hopefully, not for long. I despised my dismal hole.

That was it. I folded the piece of paper and placed it in my jeans pocket.

“So, know what kind of life you want?” She asked.

“I know it’s probably a cliche, but all my life I’ve been a failure, and it would be nice for once to have some success. I’d like to be someone educated, good with money, and gets the wins in life. Not a loser like me.”

“I get it.” She said. “Not much point being offered a new life and taking something similar to what you already have, is there?”

“I guess not.” I said, trying not to dwell too much on the ethics of this situation as she clattered glass behind me.

“Ready?” She said, hovering somewhere in the room.

“Sure.” I said. I have no idea what ready meant in this strangest of situations.

She wheeled a small metal cart next to the slab. On it, I saw some gruesome surgical implements and a large glass jar with a large rubbery pink walnut shape floating in a purple liquid. There was a handwritten sticker on the jar with the word “James”.

“Take this.” She said, handing me several large white pills. “They’ll send you to sleep quickly, preventing you from feeling any pain. And well, it can be disconcerting transitioning between two mental identities. Best to just shut one down and start up another.”

I took them from her and swallowed them immediately.

“Thanks–” I uttered quietly as she stood with a rusty saw in her hand over me, and my eyes rapidly sunk shut.

“James. Are you there, James?”

I opened my eyes. There was a woman in a blood-covered white coat in front of me. Attractive, but not my type. She looked familiar. Didn’t I meet her in a bar? She bought me an expensive drink. The kind I like. It tasted strange, but I drank it anyway. And then things went black.

“You!” I shouted, my throat dry and unfamiliar. I touched my face. I wasn’t this old, battered, or ugly.

“You kidnapped me?” I shouted again. Why did my mouth taste like cigarettes? I didn’t smoke.

“Kidnapped? No. Not at all.” She said casually, wiping the bloody saw in her hand on her white coat, adding large smears to the existing ones.

“I just… Redistributed you.” She said.

What did that mean?

“I suggest you take a look at the piece of paper in your jean pocket. It details whatever this body’s owner wanted you to know.”

What was she talking about? I pulled the piece of paper out of my pocket and stared at it. There was a woman’s name and phone number and an address of an apartment in a bad part of town. A part of town I’d never be seen dead in.

She walked towards a large metallic door and opened it to a cool morning light as I stood from the metallic slab I was lying on.

“Time to go.” She said.

“You… You. What have you done? I’ll sue you. I’ll get you shut down!” I shouted.

“Really, James, who will believe a story about a back alley brain transplant surgeon? That stuff’s complicated. It's not possible. They’ll laugh in your face.”

I stood, staring at her, feeling the unfamiliar sore body I inhabited. She gestured out of the door.

I stumbled, blinking into the bright sunny morning.