Fortnight of Fear Read Online Free PDF Page B

orphans out of my own children. I loved them too much for that. I love them still.”
    â€œYou left them alone?” Gil whispered.
    â€œWhat else could I do? I flew back to Holland and here I am.”
    Gil said, “Couldn’t you have
stayed
like Anna? Why couldn’t you stay the way you were? Why did you have to take
my
body?”
    â€œBecause I’m a man,” David Chilton told him. “Because I was brought up a man, and because I think like a man, and because it doesn’t matter how beautiful a woman youare, how rich a woman you are … well, you’re going to find out what it’s like, believe me. Not even the poorest most down-trodden guy in the whole wide world has to endure what women have to endure. Supposing every time that a woman came up to a man, she stared at his crotch instead of his face, even when they were supposed to be having a serious conversation? You don’t think that happens? You did it to me, when we met at the hotel. Eighty per cent of the time, your eyes were ogling my tits, and I know what you were thinking. Well, now it’s going to happen to you. And, believe me, after a couple of months, you’re going to go pick up some guy not because you want to live like a man again but because you want your revenge on all those jerkoffs who treat you like a sex object instead of a human being.”
    Gil knelt on the floor and said nothing. David Chilton checked Gil’s wristwatch – the one that Margaret had given him on their last anniversary – and said, “I’d better go. I’ve booked a flight at eleven.”
    â€œYou’re not –” Gil began.
    David Chilton made a face. “What else can I do? Your wife’s expecting me home. A straight ordinary-looking man like me. Not a voluptuous brunette like you.”
    â€œYou can’t do this,” Gil told him. “It’s theft!”
    â€œTheft? How can a man steal something which everybody in the whole world will agree is his?”
    â€œThen it’s murder, for God’s sake! You’ve effectively killed me!”
    â€œMurder?” David Chilton shook his head. “Come on, now, Anna, I really have to go.”
    â€œI’ll kill you,” Gil warned him.
    â€œI don’t think so,” said David Chilton. “Maybe you’ll think about it, the way that I thought about killing the guy who took my body. But there’s a diary in the living room, a diary kept by most of the men who have changedinto Anna. Read it, before you think of doing anything drastic.”
    He reached out and touched Gil’s hair, almost regretfully. “You’ll survive. You have clothes, you have a car, you have money in the bank. You even have an investment portfolio. You’re not a poor woman. Fantasy women never are. If you want to stay as Anna, you can live quite comfortably for the rest of your life. Or … if you get tired of it, you know what to do.”
    Gil sat on the floor incapable of doing anything at all to prevent David Chilton from leaving. He was too traumatized; too drained of feeling. David Chilton went to the end of the hallway and picked up his suitcase. He turned and smiled at Gil one last time, and then blew him a kiss.
    â€œSo long, honey. Be good.”
    Gil was still sitting staring at the carpet when the front door closed, and the body he had been born with walked out of his life.
    He slept for the rest of the night. He had no dreams that he could remember. When he woke up, he lay in bed for almost an hour, feeling his body with his hands. It was frightening but peculiarly erotic, to have the body of a woman, and yet to retain the mind of a man. Gil massaged his breasts, rolling his nipples between finger and thumb the way he had done with “Anna”. Then he reached down between his legs and gently stroked himself, exploring his sex with tension and curiosity.
    He wondered what it would be like to have a man