Dressed for Disaster: The Sequel
Keywords: for, The, Dressed, Disaster:, Sequel,
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"FORWARD: This is the third of five episodes of the Dressed for Disaster saga, immediately preceding "Vendetta"s Diary.""
Patrick Summers wandered the streets of lower Manhattan in an aimless fog, the chaos surrounding him a lurid backdrop for the turmoil between his ears. He had just suffered two tremendous shocks: his narrow escape from the collapse of the World Trade Center, and his unmasking as a crossdresser on television.
As he moved north towards Greenwich Village, Pat desperately tried to think. The local station, which had filmed him fleeing the disaster in a woman's wig and earrings, would surely discard the footage as out of keeping with the enormity of the event. Even if they did show it, it was unlikely that any of the networks would pick it up and broadcast it in Chicago, he reasoned. As far as his family or co-workers knew, he might well be dead.
Had it not been for the twin shocks to his system, it is likely that Pat would have called his wife and secretary, assured them that he was alive, and gone about making arrangements to return to Chicago. Instead, as he turned down a narrow street into the heart of the Village, strange thoughts began to excite him. He could escape his humdrum existence, leave his family set for life with the insurance money, and establish a new identity in his alter ego. He could reinvent himself as Patricia Summers.
Pat's compulsion to dress as a woman had grown stronger over the past year, and perhaps it was inevitable that he would have been led to this path. In any event, his vulnerability following the trauma of the morning, and the unique opportunity presented by his brush with death, fueled his fixation and emboldened him to live out his fantasies.
As he moved down the quiet street, Pat took stock of his situation. He was dressed in a cheap sweat suit and sneakers, still clutching the wig, which he had torn off his head as he ran from the cameras. His earrings, and all of his other feminine paraphernalia, had been lost or destroyed. He had about ten dollars in his pocket. If he tried to access his bank accounts, any chance to fake his death would be foreclosed.
He found himself approaching an adult bookstore. Entering without hesitation, he picked up a newspaper filled with personal advertisements and started to leaf through it. The greasy cashier behind the high counter eyed him warily as he turned the pages, until one advertisement, in bolder type than the rest, caught his attention:
WANTED: SUBJECTS FOR ROLE REVERSAL EXPERIMENT. Must be heterosexual, under thirty, and in good health. Successful candidates will be required to live as a member of the opposite sex for a minimum of three months. All expenses and a generous stipend will be provided. Deadline for application is Sept. 15, 2001.
The advertisement ended with an email address. Pat memorized it and returned to the street, looking for an Internet café.
***
Dr. Vendetta Frankenwiener switched off the television and walked out onto her rooftop terrace, overlooking Washington Square park and the horror to the south. The air was thick with dust and debris, and she wondered if the wail of sirens would ever end.
To most New Yorkers, daily life had been eclipsed by the events of the morning, but such was not the case with Doctor Frankenwiener. Her bizarre compulsion to feminize unwilling men had long ago crowded out other, human emotions, and her principal reaction to the events of the day was frustration that her latest round of experiments might be delayed.
Returning to her small study, she switched on her computer and checked her emails. To her surprise, she read the following message:
Interested in your experiment. Please provide contact information. Must have response no later than five o'clock today.
That was odd. She had never been pressed by a subject for a response like that. Usually she had to cull through an assortment of pranksters and deviants, looking for a witless subject who would submit to her experiments. Rarely did they take the bait like this. Nevertheless, she decided to reel him in. She replied:
Come to 19865 Bleeker Street, Apt 4C, at six o'clock tonight.
When Pat returned to the café a half hour later, and logged on again with his dwindling supply of cash, he retrieved her message, and jotted down the address. He had been careful to use an Internet address, which he had set up for transgendered chat rooms, and thus unknown to his family or employers. He thought briefly of his wife and daughter, and of the rest of his family, who must be worried sick about him, and assuming the worst. They would be better off financially with the insurance money, he assured himself. Soon there would be no turning back.
At precisely six o'clock, Pat was buzzed into a narrow brownstone building, and he walked up four flights of stairs to apartment 4C. The hallway outside the apartment was dark and musty, and he hesitated for a moment at the door. Before he could knock, he heard the deadbolts sliding back, three in all, and the door opened to reveal a woman in her mid thirties, dressed in a long white coat. She was attractive, with curly black hair and piercing brown eyes, and she waved him into the apartment without a word. After closing the door behind him, she carefully engaged the deadbolts, locking them with a key, which she replaced in her coat pocket.
Pat stood awkwardly in her small apartment. It was modestly furnished, with an oriental rug over a worn oak floor, a sofa with two unmatched chairs, and a few antique pieces.
"Please, sit down," she told him, gesturing to the sofa as she sat herself in one of the chairs. She was wearing a short skirt under her laboratory coat, and as she crossed her legs, she noticed with approval Pat's interest.
"I came about the experiment," Pat said finally.
"Yes, you are fortunate that I received your message and was able to respond before your deadline. Tell me, why the urgency?"
Pat had rehearsed the answer to this question. "I was concerned about your deadline of September 15th. If it weren't for them closing all the airports, I wouldn't even be in New York right now. Since I'm stuck here, I thought I'd try to learn more about your experiment, before deciding whether to leave. Are you a doctor?"
"Yes. Do you have a family?" she probed.
"No," Pat lied. "I live alone, in Chicago. For a variety of reasons, I have time on my hands over the next several months, and your experiment intrigued me. Is this some kind of university study?"
"No," she replied. "It is a privately funded program. I take it you read the qualifications in the advertisement?"
"Yes, I am a straight man under thirty, if that's what you mean."
"Excellent. Let me get you something to drink." She had already decided that he was a perfect subject, slender and relatively short, and his boyish face was too good to be true. She went into a small kitchen, and emerged a minute later with two glasses of ice tea. Pat drank as she observed him carefully, then she took a sip from her own glass and picked up a notepad from a small table beside her chair.
"What is your name, please?" she asked him.
"John Smith," he replied.
She raised an eyebrow as she wrote it down. "Mr. Smith, the program for which you are a candidate requires your one hundred percent participation over a period of twelve weeks. Will that present any problems in terms of your family or employment?"
"I've already told you, I have no family, and I am an independent contractor, so there are no restrictions on my time." He began to feel more at ease, and started to loosen up. "Tell me about the program."
"Certainly. First, I have a few other questions. Should you be selected, and choose to enroll, we have to start immediately. Do you have any other commitments that you will have to disengage from in order to proceed?"
Pat took another sip of ice tea, and began to feel slightly light-headed. "No, I've already told you, I wasn't even expecting to be in New York tonight."
"Does anybody know where you are right now?"
If Pat had not already been drugged, he might have been alarmed by this question, and possibly tried to save himself. Instead, he replied thickly, "No, why do you ask?"
She gave him a grim smile. "The reason for that question will soon become apparent, Mr. Smith. Congratulations, you have been accepted into the study. Please sign here," she said as she produced a legal-looking document and handed him a pen.
Pat flipped through it and struggled to focus on the words. "What does it say?"
"Just formalities, Mr. Smith, don't worry your pretty head about them. Sign it. Now."
With an effort, Pat started to scrawl his signature on the page, realizing too late that he had written his real name. As he started to cross it out, the mad doctor stood up and pulled it away from him. "Pat Summers," she read aloud. "A lovely name. We are going to have such fun together!"
Pat tried to get to his feet, before he passed out onto the threadbare carpet.
***
Pat woke up in a cold sweat in a dark room. His head was throbbing and he was dying of thirst. When he tried to move his arms, he discovered that they had been strapped down. He seemed to be lying on some kind of gurney, under a white sheet. His legs were also immobilized, and his head was propped up on a hard pillow.
A door opened, and lights were switched on to reveal what looked like an operating room. As he squinted in the painful light, the woman in the doctor's coat approached him. Everything seemed vaguely familiar, as if he were reliving a very bad dream.
"Water," he croaked.
Without a word, she produced a glass of water, and he struggled to raise his head and drink it. Swallowing it all exhausted him, and he fell back onto the pillow.
"Where am I?"
"Where no one will ever find you."
"What have you done to me?"
"Don't you remember the personal advertisement you responded to? Or coming to my apartment? Or the legal papers that you signed?"
It was all coming back to him, but there was something else.
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Keywords: for, The, Dressed, Disaster:, Sequel,