My name is Susan Donnelly, and this is the story of what happened to me on my summer vacation in 2014. The doctors couldn't explain how I could disappear for a week and come back turned into a girl but I can, even if it sounds insane. “Trauma induced hallucination” is what Dr. Morris is calling my story.

Like I am so traumatized! This is what I'd always wanted, and I couldn't be happier! But people will only believe what they can believe and that isn't me, apparently. And while my parents do believe my whole odyssey actually happened (having read my classified case file), when it comes to other people they’re sticking to the story that I’d been intersex all along...

But I can’t blame them for not wanting folks to think our whole family is nutso enough to buy a story like mine. Because with the pirates, the mermaids, moonmaids, genies, fairies, tentacle aliens, time travelers, jackalopes and those sinister government Men Without Hats, it was like reality itself had gone...

OFF THE DEEP END
CHAPTER ONE: “A-A-AARRRRR!!!!!”
Laika Pupkino 2016

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)))========> VACATION

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I didn't think we were going to ever get to go on our vacation. We had bought the RV---as sleek and modern as a spaceship and right off the assembly line---and we were going to spend most of the summer touring the east coast from where we live in Delaware down through Florida and then inward along the Gulf clear to Corpus Christi Texas..... but two things happened.

First Dad kept having to work a lot, which was no big surprise. He'd cleared the vacation time already but there kept on being all these crisises at Zevon Plastics, and the number of places we planned to visit on our road trip kept getting cut back as the date we were supposed to leave by kept getting pushed forward.

The second thing that happened was I decided I needed to come out to them. Which means saying: “Mom, Dad, you better sit down. I have something to say-” and then telling them all about me being transgender.

I knew it was going to be a big huge deal to them, and I'd worried about all the different ways things between us could go after I dropped such a massive surprise on them; but the one thing I didn't think of was how it would suddenly mean we couldn't go on vacation because they had to put everything else on hold while they tried to fix my broken gender.

It was the first time I ever said anything to them about the girl I am inside (Or at least the first time that they weren't able to blow off as the babbling of a child too young to know what male and female meant...) and I was scared as hell to finally be doing this, but I knew I had to. To not do it wasn't simply like living a lie, but it felt to me like BEING one, if you get what I mean.

But now instead of visiting old Civil War battlefields and a bunch of relatives I barely remembered all through June and July, I was getting all these off-the-wall lectures and interrogations, like how it must of been my “weird gay friend“ Chiro McMillan who had talked me into this---Wasn't it? WASN'T IT?!!---and then being dragged to all these doctors to help me get over this crazy idea that I must have caught from somewhere; and nevermind that “phase“ I'd gone through where I was the princess from every Disney cartoon I watched (I was especially obsessed with Ariel the Mermaid...) before I learned that these were not proper games and fantasies for little boys, or at least not to tell anyone about.

But Mom and Dad couldn't seem to find a bad enough doctor. After a lot of tests and counseling and them looking at my blood, the professionals I got taken to wound up telling THEM what they didn't want to hear instead of me. And then there were even more trips to the head shrinker, which my dad says was coming out to cost like five dollars a word, when all I needed was to cut my hair and start acting normal and find a girlfriend (a normal one, not that Pepper Davis who seemed to be encouraging this stuff!).

So it was getting down to a week or two before I went back to school; or not “back to” because I was headed for 10th grade at the brand new Gene Pittney High School; when finally Dad decided it was now or never for this trip of ours. We had just enough time to drive straight down to Florida and spend a week there; telling the people at his work that he needed this time to be with his wife and SON (making sure I heard that), and off we went.
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SUNDAY, AUGUST 24 2014:
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And so yeah, our vacation started out pretty tense and weird. Dad's knuckles looked like they'd squeeze right through the steering wheel when Mom would forget to be all horrified about me, and her I got to chattering- “like hens”, he called us.

But what was scarier was when he hit the point where instead of acting irritable and sarcastic like he'd been doing he just sort of shut down. By the time we got to Florida and made our farthest stop south there at Bokonon Bay State Beach it seemed like he was just going through the motions. Taking the park ranger's tour and hearing about the Smythetown Colony that had been here briefly, and Bokonon Bay's history as a pirate hideout, which was exactly the kind of historical stuff he loved---(“…and over there, where the Beachcomber Drive-In Theater now stands, is where the notorious pirate Marion 'Three Fingers' Mutton met his end in 1717, when he was ambushed by a special squad hand-picked by Commodore Wilford Smudgington Nosethorpe-”)---but he wandered away right in the middle of it. And when Mom and I got back to the RV he was on the computer, looking at long lists of little numbers that had to be about his work...

I decided to get out of there---where the vibes were like radioactive or something---and go down to the beach. I put on my trunks, thinking some day it might be a bikini, and that if I did have one I could actually pass as a skinny flat chested girl, even now. Passing is what they call it when you put on girl's clothes and nobody sees a boy, but to me it's a stupid word. Like you're trying to pass yourself off as what you're not, when that wasn't what it seemed like to me at all. If I was ever “passing” in that way it was with what I was doing now, all this dressing and trying to act like a boy to keep everyone but me happy.

I grabbed my towel and Mp3 player and my bottle of Screen n' Tan. I didn’t take my phone or my wallet, wanting to bring the fewest number of things that I'd have to worry about walking off when I went in the water, which I intended to do if the waves were any good. But my mom did make me take along our cheap little wind-up travel alarm, so I'd remember to turn over and not get burned.

At the last second I grabbed the book I'd been reading, my father's copy of that recently published “lost” novel by the late Douglas Adams. A hundred and twenty pages into it, The Penultimate Clamboggle was totally silly, full of bizarre situations and deliberately bad jokes, the plot meandering from one crazy unbelievable scenario to the next- in other words perfect summer reading.

A person might think my mom owns a lot of books---marine biology, art history + detective fiction, mostly---until they noticed my dad's science fiction collection threatening to push her books out of our family's little study. Hardbacks when he could find them, and as complete as he could get for his favorite authors---from Asimov to Zelazny---from which he'd been suggesting and lending me different books ever since I'd learned to read.

I wanted him to notice me reading his latest find. Hopefully it would help him see that I'm not trying to turn into some whole different person here; that in every way that should matter to him I was still that same kid---his kid---who had devoured that first book of Jules Verne stories he gave me when I was six.

The campground's beach was crowded and not very nice, so I started walking south, around the bend in the shore, where there was a chain-link fence with a sign on it that was too old and weather-beaten to read a single word of. And if it was a KEEP OUT sign I could just point that fact out. I waded out into the water and went around the end of the fence; and from there the beach was as perfect as a postcard with a bunch of palm trees and everything, and totally empty. There was a house sitting up past where the sand ended, a big old Spanish style mansion that must have been really beautiful back in its day, but the windows were all boarded up and it was so overgrown with vines and giant bushes that it was pretty clear nobody was going to come running down here to chase me away...

I unrolled my blanket and lay on it, thinking about my life. I wasn't going to go back to school as Suzie in September, I'd agreed to take it slow and just go see the shrink for another year (although maybe they'd let me dress as a girl when at home, they were debating it...) in which time I hoped my body wouldn't change too much in the ways I didn't want.

The Florida sun felt good. This might turn out to be a pretty nice vacation after all, even though we'd driven right past the off ramps for Orlando. Like my father had said, our schedule was tight, and we’d already gone to Disneyworld for my birthday when I turned eleven. I didn’t complain. I figured acting agreeable and mature about the smaller things might help them to digest this Great Big Thing I had told them.

I was actually more disappointed when Dad vetoed my suggestion that we visit the aquatic theme park in Weeki Wachee. He said we weren’t even going through that part of Florida, and “Why would you want to visit that run down old place? Especially since we're hitting Marine World on our way home.”

“Well if it’s out of the way then forget it,” I'd replied, because I didn’t have an honest answer to his question that didn’t have the word “mermaids” in it; the main attraction at Weeki Wachee Springs being these women with fake mermaid tails who swam around in big aquarium tanks under colored lights to hokey new age music while sneaking hits off hidden air hoses...

And I really had wanted to go there, but I didn’t want to remind them of my somewhat insane childhood obsession with mermaids; even though this fixation had drastically tapered off over the years. But since it had been closely linked to my earliest transgender feelings (and I guess it had been rather infantile of me to want to be something that didn't even exist), to bring all that back up might make my current talk about transitioning seem silly and unrealistic too.

So it wasn't too tough of a choice, to blow off a thing that might be sort of fun in the interest of something so hugely important in my life. And I really was looking forward to visiting the water park that actually was on our list.

While Marine World might not have any mermaids they do have a lot of dolphins; which have the benefit of being real---not people in costumes---and generally amazing creatures. A friend and former co-worker of my Mom's works there now. Judy the marine veterinarian told us to bring our swimsuits, promising us an early morning meet-and-greet with some dolphins that would be way better than anything the paying customers got...
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The sounds of the breeze rustling the palm trees and of the breakers rolling in were hypnotic. And those waves looked about perfect for body surfing, so I'd go out in a minute. Spend an hour or four out there, come back and read this fat hardback book (It was kind of funny that a man who spent half his free time reading stories about the future would be so dead set against using a kindle device, while my old-time detective fiction loving Mom didn't mind them so much);and then maybe I'd go explore that old mansion over there, see what I could see without actually trying to break in, because it was kind of spooky and neat, the kind of place gangsters might use as a hide out in one of my mom's mysteries. But for right now I'd just lay here enjoying the sun...

I fell asleep, forgetting all about the tanning lotion and Mom's little clock. I probably would have got seriously sunburned but after maybe twenty minutes I woke up when I heard people talking, and felt these shadows blocking out the sun. That's when I saw the pirates all gathered around me in a circle, grinning down at me real nasty.
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)))========> TIME BANDITS
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They looked sort of like the pirates you see in the movies, and for a second I thought maybe they were filming one around here, until I saw that their clothes were way too ratty for this, and their teeth were all fungus-y and they stunk like goats!

“Excuse me Miss,” said the big one, and then when I rolled over he said, “I mean Young Sir. Allow me t' introduce myself. I am Captain Marion Mutton of the Invinceable, and me and me men here seem ter be lost.”

I noticed the last two fingers of his left hand were completely missing. He was smiling and being all polite, taking off his big Cap'n Crunch hat to me, but he was still scary. You could see he was a killer, and some of these other pirates seemed even worse. He told me he was looking for the village of Smythetown, because him and his “confederates“ were “up for a bit of pillagin'...”

I told him what I remembered the park ranger saying about the colony, that it used to be up the beach a ways but they gave up on it about 250 years ago after a big malaria outbreak.

“Blast and damnation!” he screamed, “We're in the future again! I told that wooden-headed navigator to take us north o' Bermuda. But no, he had t' steer us straight into that queer golden fog and the year 2000! I'll keelhaul th' son of a whore!”

“Actually it's 2014,” I said.

“BLAST!! A full three hundred years this time!”

“But some o' that future booty is mighty fine,” said the fat one, “Them little doohinkels from our last comin' here brought us a pretty penny.”

“Until the accursed things stop working! The Governor of San Lorenzo wants my head for sellin' him that Sonicky Hedgehog toy that aren't but a brickbat now.”

“What we needs is t' commandeer one o’ them magic chariots. Imagine having somethin’ like that!” laughed the peg-legged one.

“And how in Hell's Furnace would we even get ‘er onto the ship? Damn it all, I want gold! Silver even. Something ye don't have to figure out or explain, or that'll get ye burnt fer witchcraft! And witchery all this may be. There's a wrongness to this place. It gives me the horripilations to be traipsin' where me own skeleton could be layin' right under me feet! Let's just take what we've found here and be gone.”

Which meant I was being robbed. This was fine with me if they would all just go away. I showed him how to work my Mp3 player. He listened to Pink's STUPID GIRL, grinning and snapping his fingers to the music like he'd just invented doing this, then put it into the bag on his belt. He loved my beach blanket with the tigers on it---their bright orange markings popping out from the background of bamboo plants like they were in 3-D---which he tied around his neck like a cape.

He picked my dad's book up out of the sand, looked at the cover, then none too gently wrenched it open. He read the first page, dragging his finger down it, then part of the second. Frowning, he flipped ahead a few pages and started reading again. His frown deepened. He opened the book somewhere toward the middle, smiling and nodding at something that he finally understood, until his frown came back deeper than ever. He tried a few more pages, muttering and cursing now (“Forty-two? Why the blazes forty-two?!!”), before he slammed it shut in frustration.

“AAAAAUUUUGGHHH! My brain hurts! Ships traversing the heavens?! Sunlight and matter are the same thing?! What sort of mooncalf wrote this gibberish?! This is RUBBISH!” he roared, and hurled The Penultimate Clamboggle into the sea.

Or toward it anyway. It landed about a third of the way there, not even at the high-water line.

“Huhhuhhuh!! You throw like a lih-ul girl, Cap'n!” laughed the fat one, until he was silenced by a look of pure hatred.

“The wind caught it!” snapped Three Fingers.

Yes, of course, the wind, they all quickly agreed, even though there was barely a breeze here.

The item the pirate captain seemed most taken with was my little travel alarm...

“Fancy that! Our very own ship's clock; just like th' King's navy!” he laughed, then frowned, “But will it continue to run, or does it depend on those damnable Aah-cylinders for its life's blood?!”

Which baffled me, until I realized he meant batteries. He was trying to pronounce double-A like it was a word. I showed him the little key on the back, “No, it runs off a spring. You wind it.”

“Perfect then! So countin' our young friend here, I'd esteem this a fine haul.”

“You takin' 'im?” asked the tall skinny one, who seemed to be his second in command, “Why a stiff breeze'd like to blow him down! A whelp like 'im ain't cut out for a life at sea.”

Captain Mutton smiled, “That he ain't, Long John O'Flannel. And thanks be t' the Heavens fer that! With his fair phiz and his willowy build he'll make a fine lass! Is one in his heart already, I surmise'.”

“I ken yer surmisin',” smiled O'Flannel after he thought about this a bit, “E's near pretty enough as it is.”

“You really think so?” I asked even as I kicked myself for it, pleased by the compliment in spite of how scared I was.

“Just look at 'im smilin' and blushin'. This fair creature has a maid's own heart, or I'm a flea ridden coney! The elixir should work like a charm on this one!”

“And if I don't want to go?” I asked.

Suddenly the sharp tip of the captain's sword was against my throat, spilling exactly one drop of my blood, and his eyes were fierce and full of rage.

I told him, “Okay, I was just wondering...”

“Curb your wonderin', hoyden, and we shall get along fine,” said Captain Mutton, smiling in a way that wasn't nice at all as he slid his sword back into it's scabbard.

As they marched me to their boat I couldn't help noticing how short they all were. At maybe six foot one, the Captain seemed like a proper-sized pirate, but most of his buds here were nearly a foot shorter. It seemed odd that I'd be the second tallest person here, until I remembered they were from 300 years ago, and this was a normal height for European males back then.

We all climbed into their landing boat, and two of them rowed us out toward the bigger ship parked out in the bay. I knew this was probably the best time for me to try and get away. Close enough to swim to shore if I jumped overboard right now, and these home-made looking pistols they had were the type that had to be stuffed with powder and reloaded after each shot. But one could still put a hole through you if you got hit, so I stayed put.

The beach with that dilapidated Spanish mansion rising up behind it grew farther away. The two oarsmen sort of grunted as they rowed, singing something under their breath. When we were two thirds of the way to the pirate ship Captain Mutton nodded toward it, "She's the Invinceable. Ain't she a fulsome beauty?"

I nodded, not sure if he was talking about the ship itself or its carved wooden figurehead- a bare breasted woman with a wide-eyed, startled look on her face; like she couldn't figure out how she'd wound up hanging off the front of this boat.

I asked, “So what's this elixir stuff?”

“'Tis a compound from the mysterious East, what works on the flesh of them like you, whose body and soul ain't in accordance with each other and the cosmic-” he stopped, “Now how did that old Chinaman put it?”

“But Cap'n,” said Long John, “Kiki didn't turn out so good when he took the stuff!”

“Aye! But you remember what the yeller feller told us. The elixir will only work proper on a catamite with a heart that's true and a maiden's purity. Poor Kiki had the heart of a devil, and we all know'd he warn't no maiden,” said Captain Mutton and they all laughed. He turned to me, “Tell me, uh...”

He didn't know my name. I gave him my girl name, which made him smile real big.

“Tell me Susan, is yer maidenly honor intact?”

“I guess I'm pretty honorable,” I told him, “So I'm going to be like cooking and stuff for you guys?”

“A bit, when there's better fare than hardtack and devil's root t' be had. And mendin' of garments,” he said, poking his finger through a tear in his shirt to show me, “But yer main duties shall be providin' womanly companionship. A pirate's life is anears perfect fer rapscallions like us. But it's hard on a man spendin' months at sea without the comforts of the fair sex.”

“You're asking me to be your girlfriend? I think you're nice and everything but I don't even know you,” I said, hoping this wouldn't send him flying off into a rage.

“That will change lass, after the elixir's worked its magic and I've bedded ye tonight,” he smiled, letting me know what I already knew. He was talking about sex, and he wasn't asking.

"Would it matter if I told you I'm still a couple of months shy of my sixteenth birthday?"

"Of course it matters! I'm not some abominable Musselman who fancies children! But fifteen is a marriageable age fer a lass, and when many a buck ventures out into the world to seek his fortune; as I myself did. I signed on as a swab on the merchantman North Wind, not suspecting I would be throwin' in with a band of mutinous depredators on our first day out! This took my life in a direction I would ne'er have imagined, but which I've found myself well suited to, as you can see," he smiled, indicating the big fancy hat on his head. I imagined that he'd taken it from some British naval captain he had murdered.

"I was just planning on finishing school. You know, college and all that," I said. The fact that something this bizarre and unreal could actually be happening to me had me feeling strangely light-headed.

He chuckled cruelly. "Ye'd best forget ever having made such plans. Fortune is a capricious bitch of a goddess; ye never know what oddments she'll be sendin' yer way. And as she did with me, it seems she's fated you for a life at sea, although of a very different sort. You shall be my 'girlfriend'---as you put it---all day each Sunday and elsewise as th' need may arise. But as fer the rest of the time, well.... Part of th' code we pirates live by is that we share and share alike!”

My pulse was pounding in my head as I looked around the dinghy. The other men were smiling at me, like a bunch of cats at some mouse they'd cornered. And all along the railing of the sailing ship now looming over us were more men, and they were all grinning down at me the same nasty way, that filled me with dread and made my heartrate go nuts.

I probably should of jumped out and swam for it while I had the chance. But I'd begun to see spots, and as I got dizzier I kept seeing more and more of them until they were a foaming, swarming mass that was crowding out my view of the bottom of the boat, which seemed to be rushing up at me-
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)))========> ALL DRESSED UP AND NOWHERE TO RUN
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When I woke up I was alone and it was night. I was below decks, but I could see the sky outside the little window was black and full of stars, and the small room I was in was dark too, with just this one little lamp in a brass cage making a puddle of yellowy light around itself. I was in a huge fancy bed, not some little bunk or a hammock like I expected from movies I'd seen. It nearly filled the little room, leaving just enough space for a couple of pirate chests that turned out to not have treasure in them but clothes and other regular stuff.

I was dressed in this beautiful pink and white dress that might have come right out of my mom's DVD of Dangerous Liaisons. I'd never worn anything that was silk before, and just about everything I had on now was silk. It felt nice!

The top part was like a vest that hugged me tight, with little half sleeves poking out that just covered the tops of my shoulders, and seemed made for someone who had more of a bust than I had, which was none. The dress's bottom was full of petticoat things that crinkled noisily when I moved it to see my legs, which were in silk stockings with velvet slippers on them.

When I went to the little round mirror on the wall I saw that my hair had been teased and swept up into a style that went with this outfit and made it look like I had a lot more hair than I had (which one of these mangy pirates knew how to do this?). But this dumb little flat brimmed hat they'd stuck on me with the bows and ratty feathers all over it had to go. I tossed it onto the bed.

My face was made up like a china doll, totally white with little red lips and pink cheeks. Very pretty in a totally fake looking kind of way. I'd never liked the shape of my nose but within the total picture here it no longer seemed all that funny looking. I went to touch my cheek, but didn't want to muss up whatever they'd used on me (which hopefully wasn't lead-based...).

'Wow,' I thought, 'That's me!'

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This was only the second time I was dressed so completely as a girl. The other was when my friend Pepper loaned me a pair of her jeans, a cute top and a bra that she stuck two little baggies of rice in, a trick she'd learned from watching RuPaul's Fabulous Hour.

She also styled my hair for me, a sort of unisex-but-definitely-not-manly bob cut. As she brushed it down in front and trimmed it into bangs I felt like I was really committing myself to this change. I mean I could have chickened out the next day and ran out and got it all hacked off but I knew I wouldn't. I just loved it too much. When I got home and showed them my mom called it 'adorable' and my dad just sighed...

Then she painted our nails this maroon color (she's a chewer, and hers were as short as mine) and did our faces up with black lipstick and a ton of mascara, which was kind of Pepper's thing lately, and we went to Dover Mall.

That was a real day of “firsts” for me. I was scared walking into that mall, but no one scowled at me or started pointing and laughing at the little cross-dressing weirdo. And even when I had to talk to that sales lady there was nothing about my voice that seemed to tip her off, or if there was she didn't care. I was starting to relax and really have fun.

And then those four older boys came up and started talking to us, saying how “fine” we were and trying to impress us with what important Men-of-the-World they were. And this was okay too, except that one of them wasn't an older boy but the brother of one of these twelfth graders; And when he recognized me from last year at school things got horribly unpleasant and insulting.

They thought Pepper was a “tranny fag” too; and she didn't help things by going “That's right I am!” and calling them idiots who would end up rotting unloved on the dinosaur garbage-heap of stupid thinking, while everyone else was free and being ourselves and having fun in ways their scared little reptilian pea-brains couldn't even imagine. But we were in such a public place that we managed to get away from them without it escalating into violence.

But that day I spent dressed as the real me happened only recently, just after I'd came out to my mom and dad. Before that my only attempts had been the few hurried experiments I'd done when my folks were gone for the day, borrowing my mom's stuff and carefully putting it all back just like the picture I took of each drawer with my phone. You might think I would have tried more of this sort of thing before telling my parents I was transgender, to maybe make sure; but I was already as sure as a person can be about something, and had been for years...
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The way these pirates had me dressed was like nothing I'd tried before or even thought about when I would look through the Hutchinson-Brownmiller or WiLD ThiNG! catalogs and fantasize, but I liked it. It was so totally girly! But what kept me from jumping up and twirling around in the little space next to the bed all happy was the knowledge of where I was.

This was his room. His bed. And what he'd said about his plans for me just scared the piss out of me! I might have turned out to like Captain Marion eventually if I'd had any say in all of this. He was halfway handsome, and only had that corny black villain's mustache instead of those big ugly mossy beards that---from the way these guys were scratching them---looked like they were carrying a whole ecosystem around in them. And he seemed like he might be halfway charming when he wasn't hacking people's heads off; although he sure needed a bath. But the way he was doing this, acting like he owned me and not giving me any choice was just so wrong and horrible it made me sick to my stomach.

And then---as if I wasn't already miserable enough---I thought about my parents. They must have been freaking out from the way I disappeared, imagining God knows what had happened, and I knew they would soon have every cop in the county out beating the bushes for me, maybe even dragging Bokonon Bay for my body.

I had to get out of here! The sooner the better, and definitely before we got to the Bermuda Triangle and went back in time. If I could steal that little landing boat of theirs, I would. Would take my chances out on the ocean in that. But I probably couldn't even get out of this room. The door here had to be locked-

It wasn't.
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)))========> INVINCEABLE
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I stepped through onto a small balcony looking out over a long dark room that was more like what I expected from the movies. I tiptoed quietly down the steps and past the rows of double-decker bunks full of zonked out pirates who were snoring and muttering “Arrrrrrr!” in their sleep. Creeping closer and closer to another steep stairway---practically a ladder---that led through a hole in the ceiling and to the deck above us.

But at the foot of the ladder thing they had what must have been a guard, sleeping in a chair with his boots up on the steps, blocking them. I could maybe climb up it around his big feet, but I didn't even get close before he snapped awake, smiling cheerfully at me and then calling up the stairs, “She's awake!”

He got up and motioned for me to climb up ahead of him, which I did. It was kind of awkward with all the petticoats, and these slippers that kept trying to fall off my feet. The next long dark room had five cannons on each side, each pointed toward its own little window, and another ladder that went up toward where a waning moon a little less than half full hung directly above the hatchway, and where the pirate captain took my arm and helped me up and out onto the main deck. Above us stood three tall masts, their puffed out canvas sails glowing dully in the moonlight.

“Ya slept longer than I expected, my dear,” said Three Fingers Mutton, “It's well after midnight. I trust yeh found our humble accommodations suitable?”

I said yes, and he asked me the same thing about my dress and stuff, apologizing if it wasn't the latest fashion from Paris.

“Oh no, I like it! It's pretty,” I nodded. Although this was the only thing I liked about being here.

“It suits you well. That gawkish short-hacked hair of yours certainly don't, but that shall be remedied soon enough.”

I didn't think my hair was that short, but I suppose by their standards it was. I asked, “So you have like a wig or something for me?”

“There's no need fer that. Accordin' to the old Celestial we got it from, the potion ye'll be quaffing will grace yer crown with tresses as long and fair as Aphrodite's.”

“I suppose if it can change someone's whole body it can grow hair. But how do you know it will do either? That he didn't just sell you a bottle of colored water?”

“Oh, I know! And the elixir can most decidedly grow hair...”

“Let's hope it does,” I told him, while I looked around to see how I was going to escape. “Wow, this is an awesome ship you got here!”

The landing boat was hanging above the deck at the ship's stern, hanging from ropes and pulleys between a pair of heavy beams over this big spool of thick rope- a windlass I think it's called. I saw that even if I could unhook those ratchet things and do it by myself it would take me a while to get the three hundred pound dinghy clear down into the water. No, I wouldn't be escaping any time soon.

“That she is Lass. And livin' aboard her ye'll be wantin' fer naught! On our raids I shall have me boys keep an eye out fer even more pretty clothes, precious ornaments and th' like to bring home fer yez. And I shall build you a tiny cabin to call yer own, which is somethin' only me n' our sawbones Jick has at present. Not that you'd be spendin' much time in there, mind yeh,” he chuckled throatily, “But I believe there's a small space next t' the powder room where one could be fashioned.”

I couldn't figure out why a pirate ship would have a powder room, until I realized he was talking about what that guide at the old fort we visited on Friday had called the magazine- the room where they keep the gunpowder. I attempted to smile, “Thank you, I'd appreciate that.”

Captain Mutton's pretending to be so concerned about my comfort made all this even worse. As if sugar coating it could make what he was planning for me anything but rape; not to mention what he said about “sharing” me with his homies; after which I could crawl back into my very own little cabinet, that would probably have a lock on it. All this made me feel like I wasn't even a person anymore, but just some thing they'd decided they could do anything they wanted with. I started to cry.

He grabbed me in a hug, telling me it would be all right and all that garbage, like he was the cure and not the cause of me crying, and could make it better; when my skin was crawling from having his arms around me and this sick feeling was at a point where I thought I might throw up all over him.

And if I did maybe he would go nutso and kill me right there, which seemed like it might be the best thing that could happen.
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)))========> THE SCIENTIST PIRATE
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Three Fingers let go of me as someone climbed up out of the hatch and came across the deck toward us. He joked, “Susan, this cross-eyed overglorified barber is our ship's surgeon, Jick. Did yeh bring the elixir, Jick?”

“Of course,” said Jick, patting the pocket of his coat. He looked like the rest of the crew except he was a lot cleaner, and clean shaven; and he was wearing a weird pair of glasses that looked like he might have made them himself, octagonal lenses hanging from a straight iron bar across his brow. And when he spoke he sounded more like a regular English guy than a pirate, “Perhaps we three should repair to my workshop where we're out of this wind. And where there'd be abundant light, and I would have surgical tools at hand, should any complications arise over the course of Susan's transformation.”

“And what could ye do if there were?” frowned Three Fingers as another pirate clambered out of the same hatch Jick and I had.

“A sight more than I could up here,” said Jick.

“Workshop?” I asked.

“He means his quarters, Lass. Though how he sleeps in there I'll nae figure, crammed as it is with books, strange rocks, jars full of dead crawlies and infernal devices such as ye've never seen. Our Jick is a bit of a sorcerer.”

“Not a sorcerer, old friend. Merely a humble student of Natural Philosophy,” shrugged Jick. I noticed that two more crewmen from below had joined us here on the deck.

Mutton shuddered, “Much of what yer doin' do down there don't seem very natural to me!”

I tried to recall where I'd heard the term 'Natural Philosophy' before. Oh that's right-

“You mean science. Physics and chemistry, geology and stuff.”

Jick looked at me in surprise, “And where did you learn such words?”

“I've always been interested in any kind of science,” I said.

He broke into a big smile, “Ahhhh! A maid---or soon to be one---after my own heart!”

He seemed more excited by the prospects of having finally found someone he could talk to than by what the rest of this crew was interested in me for. Not that he wouldn't probably take his own turn on top of me; but maybe in time I could convince him to help me escape. I smiled back at him, “I'd love to see your workshop.”

Captain mutton said, “When you do, steer clear of that sulph'rous whirligig of his. It gave me such a jolt when I touched it!”

“And didn't I warn you?” chuckled Jick, “That's my friction machine. This very morning I used it to make a dead fish jump. I believe I'm not far from unveiling the force of life itself!”

“So you're studying electricity,” I said.

“Eeee-lec-tric-city,” he rolled the word around in his mouth, “That's as good a name for it as any, I suppose. Is that with a 'c' or an 's' ?”

From the string purse at his side he'd pulled out a modern ballpoint pen and a little pocket notebook with a day-glow yellow cover that seemed jarringly bright in this murky brownish place, and wrote it down as I spelled it.

“I believe it to be connected in some fashion with that mysterious agency that permeates the aether and makes a compass always point north, and may well be the driving force behind these flameless lanterns and these marvelous engines the inhabitants of this century use for every task. But I'm keen for any knowledge that you---someone born in these times---might have about such matters.”

“I have some. Electricity and magnetism are pretty simple,” I said. Another pirate had crawled out of the hatch and was helping his peg-legged friend up onto the deck.

“I fear not simple enough for my simple mind. Our Captain was kind enough to give me several of his devices, which I disassembled in hopes of learning the modus of their workings-”

“Like 'reverse engineering'.”

“Exactly!” cried Jick. He seemed to like that word even better than electricity. “I must say, Susan, you're exceedingly well spoken for one so young.”

“And you're pretty smart for a pirate,” I said, not bothering to correct his assumption that I'd coined this term just now. If it helped to make him my ally here I'd let him believe that. “I guess I picked up the well-spoken thing from my parents. They're both kind of nerds...”

“Nerds?” asked Jick, ready to write it down.

“She's a bright penny alright,” the Captain beamed, addressing the glowing cluster of pirates around us, like someone proud of some trick their new dog can do, “Even knows how t' read! Had a book back there on that beach full of the most confoundin' jibble-jabble!”

“Of course she knows how to read. This is the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Fourteen. On my sole venture ashore here, after I was separated from the rest of you during that wild rumpus in that Burgher King-”

Captain Mutton exploded, “They wouldn't take my gold! What bemaddened sort of public house won't serve a man with a whole bag o' gold?! What else could I do but demand an audience with their king?”

“As I said at the time, it would have been more prudent to depart for some more affably disposed establishment. And after they summoned the sheriffs with that curious horn they talk into, well I saw no reason for all of us to end up in the gaol.”

“Which we didn't. Yeh should've stuck with us, Jick. The landlord at WILD HONEYS rec'gnized the value of our coin and was decidedly more reasonable. And they served ale there! Of a sort,” he said, making a sour face. “But by Thunder, what a spectacular they put on! Ye'll see nowt like that back on Drury Lane! I almost choked on that peppered squab's wing I was gnawin' on when that woman came prancin' out wearing little more than Eve back in the Garden!”

This brought laughter from the other pirates here. There were now a dozen of them standing around us, make that thirteen. It seemed word was spreading below decks that we were up here and my that transformation would soon take place.

“Yes, as you've retold many times. But such bawdy proceedings are hardly a fitting topic to discuss in present company,” said Jick, nodding toward me.

“They will be soon enough! Speculatin' about the whats and whyfors of things that are no mortal's business is all fine, but have no illusions about our young captive's true purpose here,” jeered the captain, to more laughter. “But I have been curious t'know where you disappeared to that day. Yeh never did tell us.”

“I was just about to, as it pertains to the matter of Susan's learning. Although I fear my meager adventures pale next to your own. I didn't hazard far from there, just over the concourse, which I made my way across to a chorus of rude halloos from the operants of those damnable steel carriages. Our attire marked us as foreigners to these times, and I was seeking a place where those thief-takers wouldn't take notice of me when they arrived.”

“T'was no great hurley-burley when they did. Those county sheriffs simply advised us to 'stop bothering people'; and after searchin' us and findin' no weapons on us, ordered us to move along. It seems we'd been wise to heed yer warning regardin' that NO FIREARMS sign they had on the door, and to stash all our guns n' swords in that barrel they'd put beside it. We were able t' go back and retrieve them later, but some hoople-head threw garbage in their gun barrel and got ketjap all over my Bessie here,” said Three Fingers, sliding his hand over the pistol stuck through his belt with an affection that bordered on perverted. He nodded, “But go on, Jick. Yeh crossed th' street, and...”

“And found myself at the steps of a grand structure. I hastened up them and into what turned out to be a library. A public library, of all things! Inside were tables, benches and divans where a great many townsfolk, and several tatterdemalion vagabonds---who seemed to take me for one of their own---were engrossed in books containing romances, histories and treatises of every sort. And not just menfolk, but ladies as well! In fact the intendant of this library was herself a woman, a handsome young blackamoor, who showed me how the volumes were arranged, and guided me to the sections I sought. I took all the books I could carry to one of the tables and began perusing them. After what had seemed mere minutes I glanced up at the clock on the wall and discovered that in excess of four hours had passed. And I thought it best to return to our ship. There were three volumes I'd taken a particular fancy to; Modern Physics For Dummies, On the Origin of Species, and a most gripping tale of thievery, subterfuge and detection entitled Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Missing Muffin, which I'd begun and just had to know how it ended. And I fear I never shall...”

“She probably gets her muffin back,” I guessed.

“So they caught yeh, did they?” grinned Captain Mutton.

“Red handed! And it was most curious. I had secretted the books under my garments in such wise as I was certain that none could see, but as I made for the door there came an infernal shrieking---like some great mechanical insect---and a brawny fellow named Security was on me in a flash. After I relinquished their tomes and answered their questions they concluded I was just some befuddled Tom O'Bedlam, and gave me exit without calling for those sheriffs; and I made with the utmost haste for the Invinceable, which I was relieved to find still at anchor. And had I known you wouldn't return until near daybreak I would have done more exploring,” said Jick. “Such wonders and prodigies had I witnessed! If it weren't for the superfluity of public overseers and the mayhem of steel carriages hurtling everywhere one is trying to walk, I should be tempted to stay in this world.”

“Yeh can have it! Aside from that one agreeable evening with Roxy and Tiffany, which cost all the gold we plundered from the brigantine Cordelia Chase, I've seen naught that I ken to here, and far too much that aggravates and disturbs me! But if this westerly wind stays this brisk and we keep true to this course we should be south of Bermuda and slipping back into that strange golden fog by-" he pulled my travel alarm out of his belt-bag and peered at it, "-by dawn tomorrow, dawn and sundown bein' when it always seems to appear."

Peering over the railing I could see the Invinceable's phosphorescent wake, great ridges of water churning violently. We were moving like a speedboat! I said, "I never realized these old sailing ships went so fast."

"They don't usually, but it's always like this on the trip back. As if old Father Time suddenly realized he made a mistake and is tryin' t' put us back where we belong. Although Jick here reckons it's caused by- Hullo?! Who's this?”
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)))========> SIDE EFFECTS
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There was somebody---something---coming toward us across the deck in the darkness. It was like a hunchback gorilla wearing a tattered dress that showed a lot of furry cleavage, only as it got closer I saw that it was built wrong for a gorilla, way too skinny, and its face was all wrong too. More like a forensic anthropologist’s picture of what some recently dug up species of Australopithecus might have looked like.

It stared at us, seeming to understanding what was going on, and fiercely resenting me and everyone here. And somehow I knew: It used to be human!

I screamed!

“Don't worry Susan, that's only Kiki,” said the captain, putting his arm around my shoulder and ordering sternly, “Kiki, you unholy wretch, go make yerself useful! Go swab the deck or somethin'...”

The Kiki-thing showed her long sharp teeth and lumbered off, filling a wooden bucket with water from a barrel. Then she grabbed a mop and started mopping the wooden deck, like some cleaning woman from Planet of the Apes, glancing over at us every so often, her eyes burning with hatred.

“Kiki has taken a singular fancy to you Jick, followin' yeh everywhere yeh go! Ye'd think he would blame you for what happened to him,” said the captain.

“Kiki doesn't look like a him,” I said pointedly. I hate when someone mis-genders a transperson, even if she's not quite a person.

Three-Fingers laughed roughly, “Under that dress 'es more of a man than I am!”

“Yes, I'm afraid poor Kiki's dreams were not realized even in that respect,” Jick sighed, and produced what looked like a small brandy bottle, “But it's not me she fancies Captain, it's this. She reasons that another go at this nostrum might bring her to rights. I hate to think what might happen for fact. This elixir represents something entirely outside of my intellective purview. It takes a mind into the jumbled realm of.... if I believed in such things I would call it magic.”

“Look what it did to Kiki, and right in front of our eyes! What could it be if not magic?”

“A transmutation of blood, flesh and bone, brought about by the interaction of the elements in her body with new elements introduced by the elixir.”

“New element?” snorted the captain, “There's only four elements, Jick!”

“I've determined that there are as many as twenty, and none of them are earth, water, air or fire. Well maybe water...”

“Shut up n' give her the stuff!” bellowed a pirate, pointing at me with his hook.

By now it looked like every man on the boat was up here was up here with us. Apparently I was tonight's entertainment. They formed a wide circle on the deck around us, with a big gap in it where Kiki stood. They were all keeping a careful distance from her.

“Yarrrr!” shouted another, “Quit yer yawpin' n' make 'er drink it!”

“We wants the redhead!” screamed a third, who was either color blind or hallucinating.

One of the pirates had an actual pirate-type parrot on his shoulder- a fat, greasy looking thing that was missing whole big patches of its feathers in several places. There is not one single thing that bird was shrieking that I can print here. A stream of violent misogynistic filth, and it really did sound like it was screaming this stuff at me! The bird made that villain from Aladdin's parrot seem positively lovable.

Ignoring it, Jick waggled the bottle, “But as I said earlier, Suzie should be imbibing this in down my workshop. She'll no doubt sleep through her metamorphosis and I need to observe the changes in good light, and to take notes. Also I shall want to examine her.”

“As will we all,” leered Mutton, “But we're givin' her the potion up here, says I. You can scribble all the notes yeh want, and 'examine' her to yer heart's content... when it comes yer turn! But I won't deprive the men of bein' able to witness this miracle? The crew needs this! We're outta rum, and yeh can only sing so many shanties when yer not drinkin'. And it's not like they has one o' them tele-whozits they can be watchin'...”

The scientist pirate shrugged. They were friends, but the friend who was wearing the Cap'n Crunch hat and who didn't care about the science behind my transformation had the final say. Jick shrugged, and pushed the bottle into my hand.

“You're- No, come on man, you're kidding!” I stammered, “You expect me to drink this after what it did to her?”

Three Fingers smiled, “If yeh have truly never lain with a man yeh should be quite happy with the changes it'll bring. T'will make yeh as comely and finely turned as that poor beast is hideous. Now drink it, I say! One way or another ye'll be learnin' the feminine virtues of silence and obedience---to trust in the decisions of yer God-adjudged betters---and ye'll look back in shame at this waywardness yeh be showin'...”

It seemed pathetically deluded for this crook and murderer to think he was better than me in God's eyes just because he was a boy. But as much as I wanted to I didn't say that.

Sneakily, Kiki was dragging the mop closer and closer to us, watching me even more intently than all these old sea dogs circled around us were. Wanting to see what would happen to me.

Fighting down my fear I uncorked the bottle and lifted it toward my mouth, telling myself that if this stuff worked right I'd have what I always dreamed of. And as far as becoming their sex toy, I'd put up with that---I would have to---but would get off this damn boat the first chance I got. And as Jick had pointed out, even with a ninth grade education I had an edge on these people when it came to science. Back at the turn of the 18th century I'd be like Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee. I pictured myself making my way to London and starting a life there. I would patent the steam engine, the electric generator, the Edison light bulb, anything else that was simple and I knew how it worked, and with the money I got I would hire a small navy to hunt down the Invinceable and kill every last one of these motherfu-
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)))========> KIKI GOES BANANAS
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There was a blur and the bottle was gone from my hand. Kiki had lept at us, and in the next split second she had the bottle in one hand and the captain's saber in the other. She drank all the elixir in one gulp and spiked the bottle onto the deck, smashing it! Then she let out a horrible hateful scream that wasn't like anything I'd ever heard and came running at me with that big sword.

Someone had tossed the Captain a foil and he starting fighting with the creature, which was the only thing that gave me time to get away. I jumped and pulled myself up onto this net-thing that was hanging just overhead and led up into the rigging. I lost my velvet slippers pretty quick, but barefoot was better anyway. When I got to the big crosspiece that the lowest of the three sails hung from I stopped to glance down.

The Captain's sword had been smashed by the heavy saber and he was holding his bleeding shoulder and swearing, but Kiki hadn't taken the time to kill him. She was coming up the rigging after me!

The yardarm was just barely wide enough walk on, and more scared of what was coming after me than of losing my balance in this fierce wind I scrambled across it to the mast---which had two rows of evenly spaced dowels stuck into it to make it into a ladder---and started up it. I'd come up here because I didn't want to get cornered down inside the ship by this crazy ape-thing in a dress, but seeing the way she could climb I realized this was a huge mistake!

Also the men had all drawn their guns and were shooting at Kiki, who crossed the line when she attacked their Captain. But it was so dark up here they were more or less firing blindly and had as much chance of hitting me as her. There was nothing for me to get behind, I was wide open. All I could do was ignore the explosions and keep climbing, and hope I wouldn't feel a musket ball tearing through my spine in the next second. Thankfully they had to spend most of their time going through the elaborate reloading ritual, so their shots were few and far between.

I was already at a scary height above the deck, and the rest of this mast soared up above me like a redwood tree. Kiki had almost caught up with me but now she was starting to slow down, and I could hear her whimpering horribly as she began to swell up like some hairy water-balloon. But she still kept coming after me with that cutlass in her hand and murder in her eyes!

A meter or so above the yardarm of the third sail was a little platform with a rail around it. I climbed up through the hole into it. This was as high as I could go.

Up here the back and forth motion of the deck was like amplified, so that I was actually over the water part of the time. Holding onto the mast I climbed onto the railing around the crow's nest, which was scary enough just to stand on, let alone what I was planning to do.

It was that scene you've seen in a hundred movies, where it's too far for anyone to jump but it's the only choice they have. When Kiki's furry fingers (inflated by now to the size of bananas) came into view, grabbing the edge of the platform's floor I jumped, hoping the skirts of this outfit might act as kind of a parachute-

I dropped like a rock, my skirts all getting yanked up around me, turning me into something like a banana inside its peel. As I fell I heard an ungodly scream above me and then this loud horrible wet explosion, and then all the pirates on the deck going “EEEEEEEEEWWWW!!!” as I plummeted past them.

If what I thought just happened really had I was happy I didn't see it, and it was another reason to be glad I didn't try that potion. Falling blind, I pointed my toes down and waited to hit the water, which took so long I started to have the crazy notion that I might avoid it somehow---like maybe I wasn't falling but floating, up and up, toward some magical fairyland high in the clouds, where the tiny natives would revere me as some sort of god, and the Lollipop Guild would do a little dance for me---a notion that was knocked out of me with the force of getting hit by a truck.

It was probably only this petticoat cocoon around me that kept the impact from knocking me unconscious. I plunged down through the water like an arrow, and when I stopped I shoved my shroud of skirts down out of the way and started fighting my way toward the surface---at least I hoped I was headed the right way!---chucking off my clothes as I went.

'Poor Kiki!' I thought as I swam through the black water. 'What a horrible end to a horrible life!'

And okay, I know she tried to kill me but I just couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She had started out as a boy like me---feeling and wanting all the same things I felt and wanted---but there was no gender surgery back in the time she came from. Or if there was, and it was typical of the kind of surgery they were doing back then you wouldn't want to risk it...

And then they promised her they could fix her with that elixir, getting her hopes up and probably not warning her about the side effects, which had turned her into a freaky monster. I think if that happened to me I'd go a little crazy too!

I still had a couple of the long petticoats on when my head broke through and I breathed the wonderful, wonderful air. After pulling off the last of my clothes I waved and hollered for the ship to come back and get me.

Captain Mutton was at the railing along the Invinceable's stern. It was night but I could tell him by his big sideways hat, which he lifted off his head and sort of bowed: Sorry! Tough luck, kid!

They didn't turn around for me or even slow down. Without the elixir I was just a boy in a dress. Of all the pirates I could've hooked up with I had to find a bunch that had scruples about that sort of thing...
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NEXT: A WHoLE NeW WoRLD UNDeR THe SEA

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(COMMENTS MAKE LAIKA A HAPPY, HAPPY PUPPY!!!!)