Being Monica Seles

An average Manhattan bureaucrat travels through time and enters the brain of tennis star Seles and learns the value of superstition.

One more non-heist vignette this time inspired by "Being John Malkovich" [1999]. Hope you like it,


====

A port hole was discovered in the back of my office cubical. My name's Isaac Satan. I've been working in this clerical office in Manhattan for 2 years since graduating from Dartmouth College. I consider my job quite important and bounteous if tedious. I do legal and financial clerical work for my constulting firm in Manhattan. A little background information about myself you might need or want to know is that I have been an avid fan of baseball cards and toys. That's about it. So I found this port hole in the back of my office cubical. I thought about what to do for a while before deciding finally to crawl inside the hole. When I came out the other side of this proverbial rabbit hole from some bizarre Lewis Carroll plot structure, I discovered my consciousness was fitted inside the brain of 1990s tennis legend Monica Seles.

Now, you may or not know Seles was a real women's tennis superstar. She rose to grand prominence primarily because she was the only woman to finally challenge and usurp the seemingly invincible women's tennis reign of German tennis phenom Steffi Graf. It seemed no one would or could defeat the invincible Steffi Graf. Only one woman, Sabatini of Argentina, managed to grab a single set from Graf in an albeit 3-set losing match. Graf simply defeated all her opponents in just 2 straight sets. Writes declared Graf to be the female Reaper who made women's tennis perfectly predictable. It was Monica Seles who finally defeated Steffi Graf and having done so proceeded to grab multiple Grand Slam women's tennis tournament titles and earned the world #1 ranking in the WTA (Women's Tennis Association).

So why you might ask did my office portal hole in the back of my boring cubical in my Manhattan clerical office take me to the brain of darling Monica Seles? I mean, this proverbial rabbit hole actually transported me inside the virtual mind and the actual brain of Monica Seles! I'd become a sort of specter phantom inhabiting her body if not completely controlling her life. I was sort of haunting her person as if I was a demon and she was a Linda Blair character from those eerie Exorcist films. I was inside Monica Seles' consciousness when I noted she's eating lunch in a fine tennis resort restaurant and Steffi Graf walked in with an entourage, compelling Seles to shake her hand! I saw Seles' emotional response through her brain since I'd inhabited her soul somehow.

I decided to jump back out of the hole and ended up in a tunnel beneath a highway near my office. I walked back to my office and told my female coworker Shelbye what happened. She didn't believe me! She'd wondered why a man would have the magical right to inhabit the consciousness or brain or soul of a women's tennis star. Shelbye had a solid rational point here. We'd dated on and off and I wanted to ask her to marry me and she's wondering why I never had and now thought I was a nut. I told Shelbye I'd go back into the port hole and bring back evidence of my outlandish claim. She dared me to do so, so I crawled back into the port hole. When I ended back inside the brain of Monica Seles, she's in a sauna in a gym and asks herself, "Should I tell reporters I have a fantasy about time travel that has nothing to do with Steffi Graf?"

I'd performed a nifty trick to procure the nice evidence Shelbye wanted. I'd whispered inside Seles' ear to advise her to tell Tennis Magazine that she'd want to meet a Manhattan working girl in the year 2010 named Shelbye. The port hole had traveled me back to the 1990s so I needed a time piece for my own time of the year 2010. I procured a Tennis Magazine Seles interview and saw that she did indeed mention she'd want to travel through time and meet a Manhattan working girl named Shelbye! I showed the article to Shelbye and she giggled joviously. "This is obviously the basis of your clever jest to me, sweetheart and doesn't prove you cajoled Seles to make a comment about me in the past!" Shelbye didn't believe me, but I now knew that what I'd really learned from 'being Monica Seles' was that I'd discovered the strange magical charm of imagining a strange and profound sentimental diary. Perhaps I'll finally ask Shelbye to marry me!

====


"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)

Reviews

[Vertigo Cat1111]

This is such a cool concept, and wonderfully written, too! I love the dialogue and the idea, but what's better is how you executed it, and I even really enjoyed the name. It caught my eye definitely. It was detailed just enough and really interesting and appealing to read. The protagonist was plenty likable too, even if we only got this story of him and I'd love to see more. Keep writing!