[ WP ] A shape shifter who is dealing with an identity crisis .

Stacy Tucker, the girl next door with saffron eyes and milky skin, sits alone on the bus. She gazes out the window and spies Dave Earing, an out of work builder desperate to lose the ten pounds that snuck up on him over Christmas. Dave's pronounced jowls and stubby nose are a far cry from Stacy's cute smile, but no notices when it's Dave sitting by the bus window instead of Stacy. No one ever notices, Dave-Stacy thinks. 
 
 And now Dave-Stacy is Freddie, the new butcher whose second name you did n't catch. He's a scrappy fellow, full of piss and vinegar, with a disarming gaze that makes young women blush and look away. Freddie-Dave-Stacy gets off the bus, thanking the driver. The driver does n't notice that the stranger never paid a fare: he's still thinking of that beautiful wallflower, Stacy Tucker. 
 
 Freddie-Dave-Stacy arrives home. Home is an instantly peculiar, isolating place. It is a walk-in scrapbook more than a bachelor's domicile. Many homes are furnished with photographs of loved ones, family and friends. Walk an inch in this grim flat and you'll trod on a photo album. I guarantee it. Yet every photograph is just a different image of the occupant. He/she is the nucleous of attention. The memorandums are trinkets from past lives: The vivacious long distance runner volunteering in an aid centre somewhere in Bolivia. A homeless man with bleary eyes cradles a drained champagne bottle beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. That same homeless man looks in the mirror with Stacy Tucker's tender eyes. So many lives lived, so little to show for it. 
 
 `` I am pathetic'' he says. 
 
 It's not an attack on Monty Mann, the fabulously named travelling vagrant who provided inspiration for this get up. It's an attack on the mirror watcher, the nameless and formless being longing for an identity. 
 
 I have a whole flat of identities, Monty thinks, but none of them are mine. Once the photo albums made him happy, the cheered him up when his spirits drooped, but now they are sad reminders that he can not live like his muses, that even his ghosts are n't his own. 
 
 `` I could dye my hair, grow a beard, get botox, then I'd be different'' he whispers to the mirror. The reflection knows it's a lie. 
 
 There is only one way out for Monty-Freddie-Dave-Stacy. One true identity. He/she trashes around his apartment and finds it in an old coat pocket. It is a shining cutthroat razor, as sharp as the day he/she bought it. Monty-Freddie-Dave-Stacy runs his finger down it like it's a marble counter top. At last he will look unique. The reflection on the blade smiles, biding him to hurry along. 

