chapter 2
People were starting to regard Harold as something quite strange, after all from the outside he appeared to be an attractive sixteen year old black woman who seemed to be fascinated by the discovery of her own hands. Harold was starting to regard the world as something quite strange, after all he had died of a heart attack less than an hour ago and now he was on the other side of the planet quite rudely inhabiting the body of a teenage girl. He wasn’t quite sure what his course of action should be, who were the appropriate authorities to report this event to? He couldn’t very well walk into the nearest police station and say ‘help i’m actually an 80 year old British man who fell out of heaven and into this body’. Even if he could, what would they do? This whole ordeal was quite foreign to Harold. He felt like a fish out of water. Harold made the rather British decision of considering his options over a nice hot cup of tea, he spied a diner at the end of the street and set off. At first movement proved a challenge, Harold likened it to driving a new car, he had to reacquaint himself with the pedals, but he did eventually master the art of walking. Harold walked into the diner with all the confidence and bravado that he was accustomed to exuding in his previous body, he walked up to the counter and asked, no, demanded a cup of tea from the pretty young waitress behind the counter. She had red hair and a short dress, picture Lindsay Lohan before she did all that crack. The waitress, whose name Harold could discern from her name tag was Darleen, took one look at Harold and told him to sit down shut up and wait his turn. Harold was quite taken aback by this, having always been a privileged middle class white man, Harold was used to being treated with respect. What really surprised him however was the affectionate grab of his arse he experienced as an elderly man walked past him. Harold gave an audible shriek at the unwelcome molestation. The man looked back as he took his seat at the far end of the counter and flashed Harold a cheeky wink and toothless grin. Harold was angrier now than he had been for a very long time and, quite forgetting his situation, turned to the man and exclaimed ‘do that again and i’ll rip your dick off and fuck you to death with it’.
I would again like to take a moment to really stress how vile Harold was as a human being, he says a lot of things like that so if you are squeamish or particularly easily offended i recommend you put this book down. Its also worth mentioning that Harold's voice sounded very odd. You see the body learns to talk with an accent, it becomes used to it. But the brain also develops a liking for accents and so Harold's brain was trying to talk with a Yorkshire accent whilst his body was doing his hardest to convert that into Texan and the whole process was frankly quite confusing for everyone.
The toothless man’s face dropped from a grin to a stern frown, he stood up and Harold got a good look of him. He was about 5’11 which in his old body he would have considered short but in his current habitation he had to look up to meet this man’s eyes. He wasn’t particularly well built but again, Harold's current frame stood no chance against him. Taking all this into account, Harold started to regret his rash decision. Toothless slowly walked up to Harold, whilst the rest of the diner watched in silent rapture. ‘What did you just say to me’ Harold discovered that, now that this man was closer and quite visibly significantly more imposing, he wasn’t really prepared to repeat himself. He stood there in silence hoping toothless would just leave but he kept standing there, waiting for a response. Toothless glanced at his foot, spat on the ground and quite unexpectedly slapped Harold around the face, he then grabbed Harold and pushed him against the wall, ‘talk to me like that again nigger and it won’t be me getting fucked to death ya hear?’ he snarled in a thick southern drawl.
It was at this moment that Harold realised his new place in the world. The threat of being fucked to death would have been a largely symbolic one in his previous body, he wouldn’t have ever taken it seriously. However it was now a very real possibility and this man had already proved himself unstable. Harold did not doubt that toothless would follow through on his threat. This on its own was not what scared him the most though, no, what really got to Harold was the sudden realisation that should this man wish to ‘fuck him to death’ there would be literally nothing he could do to physically fight this man off. He was helpless. In this instant Harold gained a very clear, very distinct slither of an idea of what it’s like to be a woman in a man’s world. Harold wasn’t so bothered about the use of the word nigger because he actually agreed with toothless on that issue. Lets not forget that Harold is still a cunt.
