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Mrs. Cooper Changed Me Into A Young Girl - Ch 1
🕑 Added 2024-02-12 16:11:10 +0000 UTCSynopsis - As a college student, a young man is lucky to find a cheap place to live. However, some changes need to be made by the owners first. I don't mean the room. The room was fine.
ALL STORY LIST | CHAPTER - CH 2 | CH 3
The ad was nestled amongst much larger, more imposing notices. Any reader would have easily skipped it, and many did. Others ignored it because it had no bold type, inverted headline, stars, or a dearth of exclamation points. And an ad like this simply did not make the effort to attract one's attention in this busy, fast-paced world we pride ourselves on.
The ad that went the extra mile, with double-sized words that boasted of their obvious virtue, was the one that scored with the masses. Which is probably why there weren't more than three hundred people who responded to it.
Most people would be ecstatic at a small classified ad's response of 300, and indeed, the people who placed the ad were quite pleased, but the actual content of the ad by itself would have easily attracted four or fivefold more.
If only it had a star or even a single bold dot next to it. Nevertheless, on this hot, late summer day, three hundred people had queued up in front of a small suburban house in hopes of being the ones to qualify for this undeniably compelling offer. There was even a police car out to monitor the situation, parked under a tree for shade.
The neighborhood kids had set up a water stand to sell refreshments at a reasonable profit to a hopeful but aggravated mob of young students. More aggravated than most was Vermin. If one were to look at the amassed crowd, the sea of inexpensively acquired white t-shirts and more affluent pastels would have a small speck.
Like a single flake of pepper in a glass of milk. That speck, or flake, would be Vermin. Vermin was also older than most of those around him, but they would have singled out the spiked purple Mohawk or the multiple studded belts wrapped around his black leather jacket as being the most notable thing about him. Vermin was a punk rock nightmare.
He knew full well that he was a walking parody of what punk kids dress like. Indeed, you only saw him in movies or television when they needed to show a dysfunctional family with a self-involved mother, an abusive father, and a loose sister.
There would then be the punk rock kid. Sullen! Alone! Angry! This is what Vermin always wanted to be. But in fact, Vermin was a very different kid altogether. He was 25 years old. But his face, visible only when he took the piercings out, made him look almost thirty. The life of hard living on the streets for the past few years had all but sucked the essence of youth out of him, replacing it with cold, calculating adulthood.
Vermin's world was one of sleeping fitfully on long-dead mattresses and flattened cardboard in abandoned buildings or forgotten alleys. The day was spent positioning yourself for the prime panhandling spots for the evening and then spending the night deciding between a bottle or shelter for the night.
Maybe he could even scrape enough together for a quick rendezvous with one of the area ladies. The bottle was always the heavy favorite in such contests of will. As of the last two years, though, Vermin has done what seems impossible to most. He turned away from such vices and started to turn his life around.
It was a lost cause; of course, he well knew that. Failure was always just around the corner, and he did look forward to the day when he could fall back into the comfortable rut he had just left. Annoyingly, though, things just kept working out for him. Two years ago, he made a stop at the city agency charged with looking after his illness.
An unusually naive counselor had convinced Vermin that applying for some obscure work training program would be his "ticket" off the streets. Not wanting to seem like the sort of person who would refuse a helping hand, he took advantage of the offer.
And in a week or two, he'd ditch it and get back to his long-standing experiments with rippled wines. So he thought. But before he knew what was happening, he had passed intelligence tests, equivalency programs, and even a driver's permit. Two years later, he had his GED and an SAT score somewhere between genius and infinity.
Of course, he had cheated at every opportunity, as school is far too competitive not to. Despite this, colleges were calling him for scholarships and grants. And today on this well-manicured lawn in front of a pokey little suburban house, in what for all the world looked to him like Disneyland, he was trying to get a room for the fall term.
Which is what everybody was doing here, waiting impatiently for a room above a garage. Probably a half-converted attic with a rickety bed and a light bulb hanging from the ceiling. But the price was good: free.
Vermin was always in for a score, and this was a big one. With no rent to pay, he could spend the rest of the term plastered on the finest 40-ouncers money could buy. He'd be back in his old alleyway in three months, sure, but who could pass up this kind of opportunity? And this time, he wouldn't let that pesky studying get in the way. After what was about three hours but flew by like eight, Vermin was finally a few spots away from the big interview.
He would have left long ago, but the combination of free rent, nothing better to do, and an afternoon of "freaking out the norms" kept him there. The twisted, fevered looks he was getting from the cop under the tree were reward enough. Nothing seemed more certain to him than rejection, so any fun he could get out of this afternoon was going to be his only interest in staying. He had even thought about creating a small riot in this compressed crowd, but it was too hot even for Vermin to work up the energy.
He figured he'd take one step inside the house, and the people inside would immediately thank him for coming and show him the door.
He reckoned and reckoned quite correctly that the scariest thing they'd see all year was going to be him. So when he was called in, he was not surprised to see the jolt of shock fly through the expressions of the couple seated there.
He had waited for and anticipated that look for some time, and he was very pleased to have been rewarded with a classic. What he was not expecting was the appearance of the couple themselves. He was easily in his late fifties or sixties, and he was half as wide as he was tall.
Bald on the top of his head, and what hair there was had bypassed gray and gone all the way to white. A bushy, nicotine-stained mustache complemented the tanned hue of his thick bifocals. He dressed like he hadn't bought clothes in decades. She was even older, if such a thing was possible, and was a perfect compliment to her husband. Her thinning white curly hair precariously sat upon her completely round head, which featured sagging leathery lips with three or four coats of red stuff on them.
Her eyes squinted to the degree to which one would doubt their functionality, and they nestled in behind the horned-rim glasses with a chain that disappeared into the folds of her neck. She was in sanitary white from head to toe, except for a tan sweater, thinner than tissue paper, draped around her plump shoulders. These people were geezers. Why was Vermin even still here?
The Coopers, as it was printed on the white mailbox outside, were agape. Vermin was basking in the open-faced staring that he was getting. For a while. But then it started to get strange.
"Hey," he tactfully remarked to break the tension. The Coopers snapped out of their collective daze and gathered themselves. One would easily assume it was the stripe of colored, unnaturally shaped hair they were staring at.
Or possibly the piercings. Maybe it was the studded belts. It could have been the tattered combat shorts, the worn red leather boots, the gauzy, shredded undershirt, or any number of things. But it wasn't. The Coopers had seen a ghost.
"Oh, where are my manners?"
Mrs. Cooper said.
"Please have a seat, my dear boy. You're here about the room?"
Mrs. Cooper was either totally unaware of the obvious or being polite. Vermin had to think about it for a moment before he realized they were just being nice. This wasn't his usual scene, and he was totally out of his depth. Therefore, he ignored his instinct to be an ass.
"Yeah, the room," he said. Mr. Cooper adjusted his glasses to read from an index card. What he said wasn't relevant to repeating here, but it covered the basics of a rental agreement.
Vermin nodded in all the right places and, at least, looked like he was paying attention. Mr. Cooper asked a few questions about nothing important, like family and his age. None and twenty-five seemed to satisfy.
In the middle of another dumb question about health, a flash surprised Vermin. Mrs. Cooper was taking a picture.
"Just for our records. I'm so bad with names, but I always remember faces. Please turn to the side," said Mrs. Cooper. And she took another picture.
Vermin was too used to having mug shots taken to notice anything odd about them. It seemed normal to him.
"And your name, son?"
Mr. Cooper said, grabbing a pen to mark the Polaroid. Vermin hadn't said anything offensive for hours, and it was starting to get to him. He welcomed the chance to say, proudly, "Vermin."
Mr. Cooper fiddled with his pen for a second before peering over the tops of his glasses at the boy. Realizing it was too late to avoid a very uncomfortable moment, Vermin continued, "VERMIN."
"Phone?" said Mr. Cooper, unconcerned.
"650-4982. It's the City Youth Center. Ask for Vermin."
"Ah," Mr. Cooper said, with the slightest tone of sarcasm. It was the first real crack in his cool. That made Vermin feel a little more in his element. His element is the art of ticking people off. But just when Vermin figured Mr. Cooper was going to toss the picture away, he was instead warmly thanked.
"I'll call you tomorrow evening to let you know when you can move in," Mr. Cooper said. He appended the statement with a hasty "If we select you."
Vermin was then escorted to the door, still under close observation by the Coopers. They seemed happy and relieved for some reason. If Vermin didn't know better, he'd have assumed they had already chosen him to get the room. And with that, he got back on the bus to town, confused and silent. Once again, things seemed to be working out for him. He was very uncomfortable. He had only one box and a duffel bag stuffed with clothes. So the lumbering journey up the weak stairs to his new room was quicker than everybody assumed.
Which left Mr. and Mrs. Cooper and Vermin standing around in the empty room with little to say. The room was freshly painted white and was a little nicer than what he was expecting, but he wasn't expecting very much. A made bed with its headboard against the front-facing, lone window was the major piece of furniture. To its side was a small, beaten chest of drawers, and to the other side was a small closet.
The roof worked its' way to a point where a long lighting fixture efficiently illuminated the entire place. And there was a shaggy brown carpet, with bits of sawdust embedded in it. Indeed, it was the room above the garage that he had assumed it would be. Vermin had asked the big question, wondering why the room was being rented for free.
The Coopers had mentioned something about getting a tax break for having a "dependent" live-in student, but Vermin wasn't quite sure that it was told with the greatest degree of truth. Even though the real reasons were trouble, Vermin figured rightly that he could handle whatever trouble these two fossils could get into. Mrs. Cooper broke the lengthy silence with information.
"The bathroom is at the bottom of the stairs, next to the laundry room. If you need any towels, please let me know. We have plenty."
She smiled for a brief moment.
"And please feel free to use the kitchen. But we go to bed a little early, around nine, so if you could keep it quiet, we'd greatly appreciate it."
"No prob," said Vermin. Free-rent meant he was actually considering being a decent guest. That box of his house contained a burgeoning collection of homemade tapes, which he had intended to blast loudly over his old player to celebrate his new place. But now, maybe not. He did have headphones.
"Well, uh, Vermeen, we'll leave you alone to get settled in," said Mr. Cooper.
He had to gently nudge Mrs. Cooper, who was doing more of that staring thing. She moved her body, but not her head, and exited the door. Mr. Cooper followed behind but then stopped. He turned around to face Vermin. Slowly, his eyes dragged up and down Vermin's body. A thin grin came upon his face for an instant, but only for an instant.
"Glad to have you here, Vermeer. Make yourself at home."
He said it without showing a trace of emotion. And then he gently shut the door behind him. As the creaky sounds of Mr. Cooper's steps faded, Vermin shivered a bit. That, Mr. Cooper, was a strange one. Vermin took an extended survey of his new room.
It had not changed in the last five minutes. He dropped the duffel at the foot of the bed and crashed. His head was spinning a bit from all the changes in his life today. At least the worst of it was over. An afternoon of waiting on the phone and punching the occasional touch-tone button rewarded Vermin with a class schedule that had absolutely no relation to what he wanted to take.
His intention to take a minimum load of classes that fulfilled the minimum requirements had now exploded into a heavy load of elective courses that were going to tax his ability to keep up. The fact that the courses were designed to work towards a major in American history was a total mistake. He just wanted to get off the phone and had signed up for anything available. He hung the phone up and wandered over to the Coopers' fridge.
He was going to steal something, but when he opened it, he found a note taped to a shelf reading "Help yourself!" It took the wind out of his sails, but it did put food in his stomach. Unlike most people, Vermin truly valued the simple pleasure of eating. After all, he didn't get to do it that often. Vermin trudged up the stairs to his room and threw his boots on the floor as he lay down on the bed. He had no real concept of how he would start with this college thing.
He'd only been to the campus twice, and even then, it just seemed like he was visiting some alien landscape. But he wasn't really concerned, because he always had that career of heavy drinking to fall back on. Vermin relaxed on his new bed to contemplate exactly what he would do first to tick off the Coopers. It had to be subtle so that they wouldn't kick him out, but enough of a scare so that they would stop being polite with him. He hated it when people were so phony.
He contemplated backing up the toilets or cutting the tires of their car.
Maybe he could put a little 'e' in the orange juice. That'd be something to see. Before he knew it, it was already evening. This bed was just far too comfortable. He fell asleep instantly whenever he was on it. And for the first time, he had just dozed off for a few hours. He was going to have to stay away from it in the future if he wanted to get any studying done.
On further reflection, Vermin decided that maybe it was a good thing. As he got up, he swung himself over the side of the bed to get into his duffel bag. The movement was slightly miscalculated and wound up with Vermin planting his feet on top of the bag.
This unfortunate placement of his supporting limbs caused the lower half of his body to bend in an unusually stork-like position and the top half to bail out of the affair. The result was that Vermin fell over forward, putting his shoulder through the flimsy door of the closet.
As he lay, stirring in pain, on the floor, Vermin heard the quick charge of footsteps from the Coopers as they ran up the stairs.
Mrs. Cooper looked like she was about to jump out of her skin. She was so scared. She ran over to the sprawled boy, asking if he was hurt or not. Her grasp of the obvious had not loosened. Mr. Cooper considered the condition of the door, which was very definitely now a collection of splinters and scrap lumber. Vermin pushed Mrs. Cooper away in a violent fit of instinct.
He was used to some opportunistic comrade taking the chance of lifting money or a prized trinket from the body of a fallen friend. That's what he would do, after all. But Mr. Cooper immediately stopped Vermin from doing anything harsh.
"Calm down there, boy. The Mrs. used to be a nurse, you know," he said.
Vermin immediately recognized his error of etiquette and allowed Mrs. Cooper to do what she could. Which is never quite enough from the perspective of the injured party. But she did let the boy know that nothing was broken or dislocated. Sure enough, in a matter of minutes, what seemed like a death blow had reduced itself to blinding pain.
"Gonna need a whole new door, uh-huh," remarked Mr. Cooper. Mrs. Cooper was applying the fourth in a series of ice packs to Vermin's shoulder as he lay back in his bed. Vermin was more edgy than he was in pain at this point, not used to the mothering he was receiving from the elderly woman. She sensed the boy's uneasiness and tried her best to soothe it with her homespun way of talking. That made Vermin even edgier.
"Is that helping any, dear?
There doesn't seem to be any swelling," she said.
"Yeah, it's better, Mrs. Cooper," Vermin returned.
"Please call me Evelyn," Evelyn Cooper said. Uh, all right," a confused Vermin replied. He didn't see where this was leading.
"And, pardon me for asking, but it feels sort of silly, calling you... Um, Vermin," said Mrs. Cooper.
"What's your Christian name?"
"My what? " said Vermin.
"The name on your birth certificate.
"Mrs. Cooper revised. "John Doe," he said.
"Oh my." said an embarrassed Mrs. Cooper. This eventually led to Vermin telling his short and bleak life story. Abandoned at somewhere around three years old, he was made a ward of the state and was raised in foster homes until he was old enough to make trouble. Which is exactly what he did with reckless abandon. He had been in and out of juvenile hall innumerable times and began moving from state to state to avoid amassing the magic number of offenses in any given place before being given serious jail time.
His life had been a wreck, and now here he was. All of this came out rather easily out of the boy, which surprised him. He wasn't one to talk about himself much. He would have also chosen to remain discreet about his past, as his new benefactors might not be so magnanimous if they knew the whole truth. But the truth had a surprising effect on Mrs. Cooper, as with every word out of Vermin's mouth, the sadder and more concerned she became.
She had even started to pat the poor boy's forehead in sympathy. An act that would have resulted in at least one or two roundhouse punches from Vermin in other circumstances. When he was done, a real tear was coming from those squinting eyes of Mrs. Cooper. And Vermin was more than hesitant to say anything more. Frankly, the gears in his head had ground to a halt.
He was deep into uncharted territory, with a weeping grandmother at his bedside. Again patting his forehead, Mrs. Cooper said "Well, this is a new start for you.
I hope that we can give you every advantage you never had growing up."
She then promised another ice pack was on the way as she left the room. Vermin, as was his way, uttered only one thing before falling asleep, "I'm so fucked."
The sunlight from the window shined brightly through the thin drapes of Vermin's room. He was up early, and he was feeling peculiar about it. He actually had a bit of energy in him, which he never had associated with rest before. Normally he wasn't up until noon at least, and usually only because someone had kicked him awake.
But it was a beautiful September morning, with the leaves starting to turn and a gentle cool breeze wafting through the pruned shrubs and along the tips of trimmed grass lawns. The shadows of dawn were quickly disappearing on the driveways of the houses along the street. He hated it. Vermin was now just plain pissed off. This wasn't any fun at all.
No friends, nowhere to have a good time. Early bedtimes and early mornings. He wasn't going to be able to do this for three months.
He almost felt detoxified. Two weeks, tops. Vermin rummaged through his duffel and exchanged what he had been wearing last week for what he was going to wear this week. The jacket stayed, the communist flag shirt was about right, and the horizontally striped socks were a good choice too.
And the black knee-length cutoffs were a must. And his hair needed a fresh batch of egg whites to keep it nice and stiff. This was going to be his first day on campus, and he wanted to look as obnoxious as possible. With tasteful restraint, though.
Maybe he was just thinking about the pressures of college, or his new surroundings, or even just not paying attention. But when he opened his door to leave on this brand new day, he was totally unprepared for the large plank that greeted his face in the most unappealing way.
When Vermin was loaded into the ambulance, he was quite sure that something had gone terribly wrong with his plans for the afternoon. And when they ran him into the operating room, that clinched it. It was another three days in the hospital with no visitors before he was discharged. The enormous bandage wrapped tightly around his face was embarrassing, especially when people saw a Mohawk attached to it.
He tried to look inconspicuous as he approached a bus stop. Still, it was a sight no one in the area could help but snicker at. Few people have sympathy for the damaged punk. Waiting, he was surprised to see Mrs. Cooper pull up. She waved him into the passenger seat.
"I'm so sorry, dear I meant to be there as they let you out.
"She seemed to be telling the truth. "But Mr. Cooper feels so sorry about the whole thing. He was going to repair that closet door, and I guess he just assumed you were already gone for the day."
Vermin glanced over the tops of this bandage to let her know he was listening. But wanted to remain quiet.
"Are you going to be all right, dear?
I promise that we'll pay all the bills. Oh my goodness. I'm so sorry." She started to break down a bit. Fearing that the car would now veer off into oncoming traffic, Vermin felt obliged to console the woman.
"Eeets awhile, mrsus gooper. Ah, 'l be fine," Vermin muttered through his temporarily noseless face. That didn't seem to cheer her up much. But enough to avoid a bloody pile-up on the highway.
When they came in the front door of the house, Mr. Cooper was nowhere to be found. Maybe he was feeling a little remorseful over the accident. Mrs. Cooper busied herself with fixing a drink for Vermin, insisting that he sit down on the sofa. Vermin wandered into the living room for really the first time.
It was deadly dull, the colors in pea greens, wood grains, and mustard. He noticed that most of the furniture had probably been purchased back in the fifties, but was still in immaculate condition. It was hopelessly out of date and seemed sterile to him.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of bright color. Wandering in its direction, he found a door ajar to a room that contrasted in every way with the rest of the house. It had bright, almost fluorescent pink on the walls and bright white furniture with posters splashed on the walls. Knickknacks and keepsakes strewn about in every available spot. Stepping inside, he was attacked by a barrage of teenage girl decor. It was a strange sight in this old-fashioned house.
"This room is off limits," came the stressed and angry voice from behind him. Mr. Cooper's dark figure seemed to tower above Vermin as he was turned around by a forceful grasp of his neck.
"This is not your room. Your room is upstairs."
A surprised and concerned Mrs. Cooper stood behind the scene grasping the promised iced tea. She watched as Mr. Cooper swiftly conveyed Vermin out of the room and up the stairs.
They both remained behind but watched the boy as he climbed the stairs to his room. Vermin had done a very bad thing.
Comments
Amanda
An unusual and promising start.😂
