Graft - opening chapters

Chapter One

I tried not to mutate, but the rest of the world wasn’t making it easy. Sweat trickled down my back as I biked through my neighborhood, the late August sun set to full blast and a backpack full of groceries cutting into my shoulders. Summer was always a rough season for me, but I probably could’ve managed if it weren’t for the pervasive rotting odor.

It’s not a gas leak, I thought, walking myself through the county health department’s statement. It’s not smoke, or an issue with the sewage system. Sometimes smells just linger in the air before they dissipate. It isn’t anything that can hurt you. So it’s fine. You’re fine.

Did being told something couldn’t hurt you actually work on other people? Because even with the bandana covering half my face, I was still overwhelmed. The stench had hung over town for the last couple weeks, and instead of growing used to it, my lungs were still insisting it was poison. It didn’t help that in the last couple days, the strong vegetable-decay rotting smell had gained a more… animal note. Musk, maybe. Or meat. I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to breathe it in even more so I could find out. I felt a full-body shudder on its way and pedaled faster down my street, needing to get inside and out of view before it could happen.

Across the street, my neighbor Matilda had made the perplexing decision of weeding her front yard despite the gag-worthy odor. I envied her ability to exist outside in these conditions, to do things she didn’t just need to do, but wanted to; I’d hated every moment of biking to and from the grocery store, and had briefly thought about hiding in the temperature-controlled aisles until it finally felt safe to venture outside again. I knew I had some struggles other people didn’t because of my autism, but my sensory issues had been making regular life almost impossible lately.

Matilda’s head whipped up as I rolled to a stop. My eyes stung, and I hoped it didn’t look like I was glaring at her. It seemed like she was having the same problem, her own eyes damp. I’d planned to be outside as briefly as possible, but I couldn’t just ignore her.

“Hi, Ella,” she said, sounding exhausted.

“Hey. Nice day, isn’t it?” I said politely.

“Name one nice thing about it,” she said.

She was right, of course. I’d said it on instinct, reaching for something bland and inoffensive. Noises, sights, and smells that bothered me affected my ability to concentrate, and the current reek was the nasal equivalent of a screeching fire alarm. Not that I was socially skilled even when I was comfortable.

“Obviously, it stinks to high heaven out here,” I said, fighting to keep my hands from twitching too much. “I’m very sensitive to strong smells, and while I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, it’s nice to not be the only one struggling for once.”

Matilda’s eyes narrowed.

I floundered again. Despite our long proximity as neighbors, I didn’t know all that much about Matilda. “I’m surprised the weeds aren’t, you know, wilting from the smell like in a cartoon. But I guess it wouldn’t just be the weeds affected, would it? It can’t be that easy. That bag of mulch looks heavy. Is Brian going to give you a hand later or do you need help?”

“Just go,” she said, waving me towards my house.

“I, uh, I hope you have a nicer day.”

I made a hasty retreat home. Smooth, Ella. Real smooth.

It was good that my parents were out of town; the moment I had our comfortingly solid front door between me and the outside world, I lost control. A violent tremor ran through me from head to foot. I leaned against a wall for support. My short sleeves cut into my shoulders. I tugged at their stitching, barely able to keep an instinctual panic down as the bare skin of my arms broke out into rough calluses. They itched horribly as they appeared, spreading out up to several inches wide like an advanced stage of some new pox. My fingers cramped with the desire to scratch at the calluses, to pinch or peel or apply pressure, anything that would keep them from spreading further. But I knew that wouldn’t help. Nothing did. Once it started, all I could do was find somewhere private to hide while my body warped. And try not to cry. Sometimes that was the really tough part.

I took a shower, trying to wash away the stink from outside without touching the latest additions to my body. The calluses were often sensitive, as though they were a deeper, raw layer of me pushed to the surface. Better that they have some sensation than not, so I knew when they appeared, but accidentally brushing or bumping them against something could be so intense a feeling that it was adjacent to pain.

Once clean and scrubbed scentless, I wrapped my arms tight around myself, focusing on my breathing, on being home and safe. Gradually, the rough and raised patches on my skin melted away, shrinking and dissolving. It was hard to describe the process otherwise; if I did it right it was like they’d never been there in the first place, leaving behind the facade of a normal human. Running my hands over my arms, I was relieved to find only smooth skin and delicate hairs. I wiped away the fog on the bathroom mirror, stared into my own brown eyes as I told myself a few affirmations:

You are human.

You are a decent person.

You don’t mean it when you upset people.

I got dressed in fresh clothes and carefully arranged my damp, shoulder-length dark hair so it lay just right, creating a dark border, a barricade, at the edges of my vision. It was the one part of my body I could trust not to slip into another shape when I wasn’t looking. That wouldn’t mutate.

I’d been stuck with this… ability for at least a dozen years, and I still wasn’t sure what to call it. There were days when it felt like a curse, but to me that implied I’d done something to deserve it. My parents were entirely normal humans, and I seemed to be that way too, until I got overstimulated or upset. Then my body became a free-for-all; surface changes like the calluses if I was lucky, solid lumps of soft tissue if I wasn’t, and in a really bad case… let’s just say I was fortunate my ability hadn’t torn or broken me. At least, not yet. Sometimes it happened while I was in public, leading to moments of silent panic while I tried to figure out what had changed and if it was visible to others. I could reverse these changes with some struggle; I could even deliberately make alterations myself, not that I had any desire to. It seemed like a pointless and unnecessary risk.

If anything about this was normal, I would surely know by now given the countless nights I’d spent desperately searching online, searing my retinas on bright screens and scared to make any noise that might wake my parents. As early as elementary school, I’d known there was no going back once you were labeled as strange. People always had to know why you were a certain way. Explaining my neurodivergence could be difficult enough, but this? No. I couldn’t risk being studied. I knew what happened to new, strange things. They wound up under the microscope, even if they had to be cut into little pieces to fit. I’d kept my secret through annual checkups, changing into gym clothes alongside a dozen other girls, even through the cruel and unusual punishment that was puberty mood swings. I was twenty years old, and sometimes it felt like I had an unbearably long number of years ahead of me where I’d have to keep hiding it.

Having that awful reek outside had been less than helpful, turning my entire town into an environment that triggered my ability, making me go from a few incidents a week to sometimes multiple a day. Another one of my affirmations: You are never more than twenty minutes from home and its comforts. That line had gotten me through plenty of rough days, but lately it had been hard for me to go more than two minutes away, let alone consider shelling out for a hotel room somewhere that didn’t stink. Today’s outing had been my first this entire week.

Speaking of, I had to go through the groceries. Keeping myself fully fed and on a reasonably varied diet was already hard when I found so many tastes and textures off-putting; any trace of rotting smell during a meal ruined my appetite. I used my cell phone as a speaker, needing the strong beat and choral harmonizing of my favorite playlist to help drive me into action. Wearing gloves, I shucked the packaging off lunch meat and sliced bread, undid the triple layer of bags I’d put around the produce, washed and dried sealed yogurt cups. Everything went into clean containers. Even the frozen chicken nuggets I split between several ziploc bags.

My phone buzzed against the countertop, interrupting my music. I glared at it, feeling robbed. I only ever got calls from two groups of people, and one of them was scammers. I shed my gloves and grabbed my phone, wanting my tunes back…

It was the second group, my frustration melting away as soon as I saw the caller ID. I picked up.

“Hey, Mom,” I said.

“Ella! Are you holding down the fort alright?”

“Yep, everything’s fine. How’s Nevada? See any aliens yet?”

She laughed. “No, but if we’d stayed out in the sun for any longer today we might have hallucinated we did.”

“If you guys don’t come back with a bunch of Area 51 bumper stickers on the car, I’ll be disappointed.”

“We don’t have much bumper space left, but we’ll do our best. For now we’re stocking up on postcards. Your dad’s planning to draw a bunch of nonsense symbols on the back and mail them to your grandfather,” she said with a sigh. “Because they already get along so well.”

My dad’s voice was distant and muffled, but it sounded an awful lot like “he won’t know they’re from me!”

“Who else?” Mom said dryly. “Anyway, you wouldn’t believe the landscape out here. Parts of it are dusty, but it smells so… clean? It’s hard to describe, but I think you’d like it. There’s more life than you’d think, you just have to work to find it. We’ve seen three lizards today but I imagine you’d have found ten times that.”

“Lizards aren’t my animal-spotting specialty,” I said.

“You could diversify.”

“Most furry things aren’t venomous.”

“Fair. I’m considering drawing two purple dots on my ankle and pretending I got bit by a snake once I get home. Use sick time to avoid office bullshit for a little while longer. Oh! That reminds me. I brought something with us to take pictures with.”

I opened the photo she’d texted me and nearly choked. “You kept those?”

“Our daughter made them for us, of course we did,” Mom said, sounding wounded. “We just, you know. Lost them in a closet for about a decade.”

I zoomed in on the lime-green paper mache masks my parents wore in the picture, cringing at each bump. Although they were both far more outgoing than I was, they’d long given up on playing office politics. After hearing them complain about being unable to avoid annoying conversations with their coworkers, a much younger me had made them… what had I called them? Don’t-talk-to-me masks? The green alien faces had no mouths. No antenna either, but I couldn’t remember if that was because I’d decided antenna were ears, or if I’d just struggled too much to make them. I assumed neither of them had actually worn the masks to their jobs, because they hadn’t been fired. “They look awful,” I said.

“You were still working very hard on your motor skills back then. Here, your dad’s squirming. I’m handing the phone over.”

“Hey there. Been locking up at night?” Dad asked.

“Of course. And I always double-check.” Being home alone at night made me anxious, though I hid it from my parents.

“You’re not feeling sick, are you? I know the county doesn’t think it’s a chemical spill…”

“I’m fine.” I said.

“You could always order in groceries if you—”

“I’m. Fine,” I said. “I can do these things. You know I’m moving out in just a few weeks, right?”

“Accepting help with this wouldn’t mean you’re not ready for college,” he said. “It would just mean you needed some extra support while you were going through a hard time.”

I swallowed back my frustration, knowing his worry came from a place of love. “How’s the plan going?”

“Haven’t made first contact yet,” he said with a sigh.

“They’d better hurry up. You’ve only got another week to make alien friends and overthrow the government.”

“We’ll go to Loch Ness next year if it doesn’t work out, try our luck there. In the meantime, I’m getting plenty of orange pictures for the Blur, if you want them.” He sounded nervous, like he wasn’t sure his contributions were welcome.

I wandered upstairs to my bedroom, scrutinizing the tapestry of photos I had taped to a closet door. The Blur was a collage of hundreds of out-of-focus pictures I’d taken, the result of my nature photography hobby and general jumpiness. It was a big ordered mess of motion I was constantly adding to and rearranging into bigger patterns, all browns and greens with the occasional pop of other colors. I traced my fingers along its paths, considering. I couldn’t imagine much room for orange in it.

“Maybe they can be the start to a smaller one in my dorm,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Oh! Once you make some friends, you should ask them for pictures from their homes to add to it.”

“I think most people delete blurry pictures immediately. It might come across as a weird request.”

“Just be yourself and I’m sure it’ll work out. They might not get it at first, but once they see you’re passionate about it, that’ll change.” He paused. “I love you, kiddo. I won’t say I wish you were here, because I know you didn’t want to come, but… I wish home wasn’t so uncomfortable for you right now. Does that make sense?”

“It does,” I said quietly. “Love you too. And you, Mom.”

We said goodbye and hung up. I loved my parents dearly for doing their best to help me be comfortable, but they weren’t on the spectrum and didn’t know my secret, so I wasn’t sure how much they truly understood. Did they know that I didn’t feel like I was a real adult? That the idea of leaving for college felt both necessary and terrifying, despite the two gap years I’d taken? Sometimes I wished the world was just our town and I’d never have to submit to the stress of new people or places ever again—that one, they probably knew. I kept tracing along the Blur, using it as a way to stim and calm down. I’d miss it when I moved to college, but the thought of taking it apart was too upsetting to me.

You’ll never be more than three hours away from it, I thought bitterly. Yes, I’d have to make a new one. I knew there were other things I’d bring with me that would be a source of comfort, but it was hard to cheer myself up with that when I hadn’t decided what they’d be yet. I hadn’t started packing yet, and I didn’t start today, either, my trip to the store having exhausted all of my task initiation energy. Finishing putting away the rest of the groceries was all I felt up for, and then it was recovery time. AKA lie in bed for an hour or two time.

Or the rest of the day.

I’m not saying it felt good. It honestly didn’t. But getting up for more than snacks and to use the bathroom felt out of reach. And then by the time I was ready to get up and do things…

It was two a.m.

My other closet door had photos taped to it as well. Ella’s Enigmas, my parents called them. With only my bedside lamp on, the pictures’ glossy finish made their unidentifiable subjects’ fluorescent green eyes shine. Even with my parents out of town, I was still quiet as I gathered my camera and put rubber boots on over my pajama pants.

The reek wasn’t as bad at night, allowing me to spend time in my backyard in the tent I had set up. I turned on its dim fairy lights and lay on my front beneath a blanket, watching the border between lawn and forest to see if anything would appear. The grass smelled like pure green, blocking out any leftover stench. I still worried there was something horribly wrong just past my neighborhood, something wetly falling apart and spreading through the soil, but right now all I needed to care about was my backyard. That was an easy, manageable place, one I’d known my whole life. This was my home. I knew it, and it knew me.

A wave of motion went through the cluster of ferns at the edge of the yard. I held my breath and waited, taking a picture right as the animal appeared.

The creature that slipped by was fox-height with a too-long snout. I bit back a gasp, suspecting a glitch somewhere between my eyes and my brain. But then the creature stepped fully from the ferns. Six legs. Six. Mutant? Alien? Undiscovered species? The last option somehow seemed the most far-fetched. This animal was too asymmetrical, some of its legs sporting more joints than the others. It was covered in a strange mix of textures, splotches of matted fur and damp bare skin.

The creature turned from the light. I followed it into the forest, hoping to get a better picture without spooking it, comforted by the sight of my backyard lights between the branches when I glanced behind me. I liked the idea that my home extended beyond the mowed grass and among the trees—and I was curious about this new resident whose living space overlapped with mine.

I should’ve noticed the first inklings of that awful rotting reek sooner, but I’d convinced myself that nighttime was better, safer, and I stubbornly clung to that idea until I was gagging on the smell, leaning against a tree to catch my breath. By the time I’d recovered, I’d lost track of the creature.

Something rushed out of the shadows past me. I scrambled away, an attempted shout leaving my throat as a squeak, aware of a yards-long thing I could barely see. I stood still, distrusting every tree trunk and swaying branch, not knowing which might be hiding another living thing behind it, or what that thing even was—nothing I’d ever captured a picture of for the Enigma had been quite that shape before. The temptation to call out for help, to let someone else know I was out here and alone and scared, was strong, but what questions might come from that? What else might be drawn to my voice?

I drew in one last deep, polluted breath and ran home, fingers shaking as I locked the back door. My clothes had once again picked up the reek. I kicked off my boots with some difficulty. When I tried to change out of my pajamas, I had to yank to get the pants off, the fabric catching on a swollen knot of tissue around one of my ankles. I dragged myself upstairs, lifting the taped-together tapestry of the Blur so I could take inventory in the mirror hidden behind it.

My whole body felt stiff, similar developments weighing down my knees and shoulders, as if my strange ability had wanted me to freeze until the danger was past. There was pressure against my throat too, tight around my voice. Silent and stationary like a prey animal, even though I had no idea what I’d seen or if I’d even interpreted its size correctly. But now that I was inside and safe, those changes were just nuisances. I was too worked up, the changes too extensive, for a little controlled breathing to fix this.

I pulled my mattress out of its bed frame, retrieving the shoebox I kept hidden underneath. Inside was an instant camera, film, a heatproof bowl, matches, and a photo album. The album was a reference library of my own body, dozens of pictures from different angles and distances, a blueprint of normalcy. I laid out several pictures of my limbs, and then used the instant camera to take photos of my altered arms and legs. I placed the new pictures into the bowl, comparing them to my album before dropping in a lit match. While they burned, I concentrated on thoughts of soothing and smoothing irritated skin and stress-swollen muscle, a process I found easier ritualized. Let the fire take away the unwanted changes, let them be carried out of my body and home along with the smoke through an open window.

My locked muscles loosened as the new growth gradually melted away, the pressure on my throat easing. I looked in the mirror again. Part of my reflection was still wrong. I pressed my arms together. One was a good two inches longer than the other. I gritted my teeth and made it shrink back, enduring the painless yet distressing sensation of bone and soft tissue grinding and squishing down. I put my ritual tools and photo album away, holding back tears. Growing up, I’d been told by teachers that everybody struggles with something. They probably had meant it to be reassuring, but I doubt they would’ve said it if they’d known more about me.

I showered and got into bed, still shaking, and checked the newest picture on my camera. My mouth twisted. The single picture I’d taken was underexposed and so out of focus that I couldn’t even tell animal from background, yet alone count its legs. In contrast, the glimpses of what I’d seen couldn’t be clearer in my head.

Then again, would I mind being wrong? The world would be easier in many ways if it didn’t match my understanding of it.

Chapter Two

You are human.

You are.

You are.

You are—

I didn’t have a word for what I was right now. That was okay. This was just a dream. I could tell because my altered body was working too well, like a naturally born thing. I wasn’t human in the same way a dog or bird wasn’t human. They weren’t supposed to be human, and so that was no failing of theirs.

My current shape was perfectly suited for the riverbed I was exploring. Water passed over my gills with a heavy comfort. My fins made me agile. The riverbed was tiled with colorful, shimmering stones, and I let the current and my easily-distracted eyes guide me between my favorites, enjoying the scavenger hunt and how the smooth bumpy ground felt against my unscaled belly.

The sound of familiar voices made me stick my head out of the water, the bright sunlight almost too much to bear. My parents were walking alongside the river, holding hands. I knew I was their biological daughter, and it hurt that we were different shapes, that the air they breathed so easily stung my gills. I let the water lap at my chin so it hid the changed parts of me, and called out to them. They were happy to see me, and I them, even though my smile hid a deep fear that they’d join me in the water and see me for what I truly was.

That didn’t change that I wanted to be with them. They were my family. They were basically my only friends. They stood on the bank, and waited for me, and I—it was beautiful and comfortable in the river but I was alone there—outside the water hurt but—

With a sudden rush of courage I flopped out of the water, awkward, unsightly, and suffering outside of the environment I’d adapted to. My parents looked down, seeing me changed for the first time —

A scream woke me. I lay shivering, wrapped in sweat-soaked blankets. My hands were clammy, my fingers wedded together by a thin sheet of skin stretched between them. I fumbled for my instant camera, hurriedly snapping pictures as someone outside continued to yell. It sounded like Matilda, though I’d never heard her that shrill before. Between my hobbled hands and the panic of the moment, it took me many tries to get a clear photo and successfully light a match. With that frog-like webbing finally gone, I hurriedly dressed, wound a scarf around my nose and mouth, and ran across the street.

“Friggin’ animal!” Matilda shrieked. “Hey! Let off!”

I dashed down her driveway. Matilda was on the porch, unstably perched on a rocking chair. I at first thought it was a dog trying to nip at her heels, but she was terrified and the animal had that same patchwork of textures covering its body that I’d seen yesterday. It circled her and, giving off an air of cruel enjoyment, pressed on one of the rockers, sending Matilda wobbling. She caught sight of me.

“Make it go away!” Matilda shrilled. “There’s something wrong with it!”

“I can see that.” This was an oddly shaped creature, weasel-bodied and twig-legged. It growled at my slow approach and circled behind the rocking chair as Matilda trembled.

I lunged to the left, expecting it to go right. Instead, it climbed the chair. Afraid it would bite Matilda, I grabbed it around the middle, struggling to keep hold of the wriggling creature as I carried it away. I hated the feel of it in my hands, like a furry sack full of loose parts. I was holding it too high up its abdomen for it to bite me, though its short claws pressed urgently against my skin. At least, I thought I’d been holding it close to its neck but the part of its body above my grip was getting longer.

And the part below my grip wasn’t getting shorter. I sucked in air as its claws went from a light pressure to the beginnings of pain on the back of my hands. Its claws were getting longer. Not unsheathing like a cat’s, but actually growing, an impossible amount of new length emerging from its paws in uneven, jagged angles.

“How are you—”

It bit me. I flailed, flinging it. It hit a tree trunk at an alarming velocity, falling limply to the ground. For a moment I feared I’d broken its back, but it squirmed to its feet and ran into the woods, its gait disjointed but too fast to suggest it wasn’t supposed to move that way.

Shaken, I turned to Matilda. She tried to climb down from the chair, but her scratched and mud-stained right leg buckled beneath her, dropping her to her knees.

“Are you alright?” I asked.

She stared at me with a horrified expression.

“I didn’t really mean to throw it,” I said. “I panicked.”

“Your arms,” she said.

I looked down. My arms were covered in spotty, sandpaper-looking calluses, nearly a quarter inch thick in some spots. My fingers were lumpy and crooked from spots of distended muscle or soft tissue.

“Oh my god,” Matilda said. “Inside, now.”

She dragged herself to her feet, motioning for me. I felt frozen in place. She wasn’t supposed to—nobody was supposed to see me like this.

“Come on,” she insisted. “There could be more out there.”

I shut my slack-jawed mouth and followed her into her home. Matilda stumbled around locking doors while I trailed after her, numbly waiting for the other shoe to drop. She peered out a window into her backyard, hiding behind the curtains.

“I went out to check on the chickens and there was something hanging around by the back door,” she whispered to me, on the verge of tears. “Bigger than the one you saw.”

“Is Brian home?” I asked. Matilda’s brother quite enjoyed target practice with his BB gun in their backyard, a hobby I’d always disliked until now.

“He’s in the hospital,” she said.

“He what?” I said, startled.

“He got bit,” Matilda said. “You know how he leaves out food for the feral cats so they won’t go after our chickens? Two days ago, only this mangy one showed up. He went to pet it and it bit his hand. The thing didn’t bite like a cat. Tried to take his finger off. I took him to urgent care because I thought he might need a rabies shot, but by the time we got there, his finger smelled putrid and it, I don’t know. It’s like it started melting.”

She was shaking. I replaced her at the window, taking my own anxious look at her backyard and the chicken coop. The birds were running around in circles, bumping into each other and squawking. As I watched, one of them coughed up a dark, muddy liquid that clotted in the coop’s sawdust. My eye was drawn to movement beyond the coop, at head-height. With how awful conditions outside were, it was particularly difficult to imagine it was someone I knew lurking in the trees that bordered Matilda’s backyard.

I shut the curtain before Matilda could see it too. She seemed to think the changes to my body were from contact with that strange creature. The last thing I needed was to seed the idea of a human-shaped… monster in her head.

“Can you get me a damp towel?” Matilda mumbled.

I ran to fetch her one. Matilda tried to wipe away the discolored spot on her leg, only to hiss in pain. She settled for wrapping it around her leg instead.

“We need to get to the hospital,” Matilda said. “I don’t want to wait here for someone else to show up. Brian’s truck is in the garage. Can you still use your hands?”

I nodded mutely.

“I don’t think it broke your skin like it did mine,” Matilda said, in full panic-chatter. “Maybe that makes it happen faster. We need to go, now. The doctors didn’t know what was happening to Brian, I think—I think the sooner we get there, the better.”

My throat went dry. My assumption was that hospitals were bad, that doctors were the people most likely to notice something different about my body and investigate. But Matilda needed medical attention, and I hardly wanted to wait around to see if whatever was outside was interested in us.

We went to the garage. Matilda struggled into the truck’s passenger seat. I hated how high up the cab was. Driving already stressed me out, and being in a vehicle this size made it worse. A familiar rotting smell was rapidly filling the cab, overwhelming the pine-scented air freshener. From the way it clung to Matilda, I had to assume it was from her injury.

“If animals like that one are the source of the smell,” I said, “how many do you think are —”

Matilda hit the garage door remote. “Just drive,” she gasped, like she expected a horde of hostile animals on the other side.

There weren’t any. I rolled the truck forward before that could change.. Matilda glanced anxiously out her window, constantly reaching up to wipe sweat from her forehead.

“Are your arms —” she started to ask.

“Fine,” I said, applying more pressure to the gas pedal. “They’re fine. For now.”

It was that post-commute pre-lunch time where hardly anyone was out driving. I made the first few turns that took us out of our neighborhood without vehicular manslaughter-ing anyone or anything, pointing us towards the hospital.

Matilda was going through her phone, reading over messages with her teeth bearing down on her lower lip. I flinched when she started playing a voicemail without warning, background noise buzzing from the speaker.

“They don’t know,” she said after listening to it. How’d she been able to pull words out of the crackling recorded voice, I wasn’t sure. “It’s been two whole days and they still haven’t figured out how to stop it.”

“Stop what?” I said.

“His infection.” She spat the word out like a bullet. “Didn’t you just hear? Antibiotics aren’t working. They already had to remove two fingers, and they think he might lose the whole hand.”

“I, I’m sorry. I couldn’t understand what they were saying.” It was too much to think about anything other than an apology.

“It doesn’t make sense.” She was staring down at her leg. I risked a glance down too. Her shoes had been white, but the one on her affected side was getting stained red-brown, the towel she held against her wound blocking my view of anything more.

“They discover new diseases all the time, right?” I said. “Things that were always there and weren’t severe enough to notice, or mutated, or jumped from animals to us. Most of them just aren’t like, like this.”

“I might lose my whole leg,” Matilda said. “It’s probably in my blood too, so maybe it’s in my heart and lungs and brain. They’ve got Brian on life support, and they can still barely keep him alive.”

I was already driving faster than I was comfortable, and over the speed limit. I pressed harder on the gas, figuring all would be forgiven in an emergency.

“So how are you fine?” Matilda said.

My arms were mutated in front of another person and I was shaking from driving an unfamiliar vehicle so fast and on the verge of vomiting from the reek building up in the cab. And my hands…I was not fine. I pulled over. Once the truck was stopped, I held up my hands.

My left hand had two dark pinpricks where I’d been bitten, and my palms felt slimy where I’d touched the creature. When I pressed on the pinpricks, my skin dimpled in without rising back up.

Matilda briefly pulled the towel away from her leg, both of us getting a glimpse of muddying flesh before she pressed it back into place with a wince, as if applying pressure would keep her solids from turning into liquids.

“It’s still not as bad as mine is, or Brian’s got,” she accused. “And it doesn’t explain the rest of what you have going on. That was instant. You shouldn’t… you shouldn’t have been strong enough to throw it so hard.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” I blurted out. I could feel my body changing with each strike of my pounding heart, skin and muscle and bone lumps on my arms and neck and face—

She leaned against the cab’s door, hand curling around the armrest.

“Matilda, look, I know there’s a lot of weird stuff going on right now…”

“Don’t. Start,” she said. “You’ve always been strange, and I thought there were times when you were… different, somehow. I just, I don’t know, always assumed it was a trick of my eyes. Maybe I needed to see something crazier before I was ready to think… what are you?”

“I’m your neighbor,” I said.

“Aside from that?”

I was hyperventilating, desperately needing a more normal appearance. I scratched at my calluses, scraping off layer after layer of nerveless skin, leaving behind an irritated and uneven surface. Matilda watched me in fascinated horror. I dug my nails into the softened skin around my bite wound too, revealing a hot, darker patch the size of a quarter. It came away like damp autumn leaves, and I was relieved to find there was no blood underneath. Showing her my reddened and roughened arms, I said, “please understand, it’s not my fault. I don’t know why I was born like this. I didn’t ask to be.”

“I guess I’ve known you a long time, even if I don’t really… know you,” she said. “You wouldn’t hurt me?”

“I’m not a monster,” I said, deeply hurt.

She didn’t respond, so I took in a deep breath and started up the truck again, trying not to doom-spiral into thinking about disappearing into the woods.

“Why aren’t we there yet?” she eventually asked.

“Because we’re not,” I said, helpless.

She started to cry. I sucked with people. The kind thing would be to reach over and pat her shoulder, but my hands were frozen on the steering wheel.

“You didn’t even notice,” she accused. “I’ve been a complete mess since Brian got sick, and you didn’t even notice.”

“How am I supposed to know these things if you don’t tell me?”

“How hard is it?” she said, exasperated. “Don’t you care at all about the people around you? You’ve always been like this.”

That hurt more than I could say. Again the skin on my arms toughened and swelled, ready to defend me. Matilda shrunk back in her seat, and stayed like that even after I made the changes go away.

We reached the hospital. I parked in front, staring at the entrance. Matilda watched me, sweat beading on her forehead. She jumped when I used the horn, blasting it for a few seconds.

“Why did you—”

I scrambled out of the truck, fleeing to the trees. Hidden behind them, I stayed to make sure someone came out for Matilda, that she’d be taken care of.

Now what? If she wanted to tell someone about me, there was nothing stopping her. It was all too easy to imagine a life where people knew me for what I truly was—whatever that might be—and there was no longer a place for me here. A place for me anywhere.

There was nothing I could do about that. For now I went home, following the rough path of the road from a distance, trying to balance the danger of being seen while visibly changed with the danger of running into anything strange in the woods. I could feel my body shifting, hardly a surprise given how upset I was, and decided not to even bother checking. I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth right now. The reek surrounded me, but it wasn’t bothering me as much. I guess it wasn’t so bad outside of an enclosed space like the truck. A strangled laugh threatened to break free. Look at me, acclimating.

Someone did laugh, their braying voice bouncing up and down in pitch. I went still as a statue. There weren’t any hiking trails or homes in view. The occasional sound of a passing car was a low hum compared to how that laugh had cracked the air, though both noises had come from the same direction. I wrapped my arms tight around myself and kept going, shifting my path further from the road. There must’ve been some little offshoot neighborhood I didn’t know about nearby, or a group of people who thought untrodden brambles would make a good spot for a picnic, because the human voice had a sound and range to it that you just didn’t hear from animals. And I kept hearing them, wordless calls and exclamations, and changing my trajectory, and —

And the smell changed, gaining a base note of sharp iron. The forest sloped down, its incline dropping me into a clearing. It was empty aside from one large tree standing at its center; leafless, roots swollen above the dirt, bark cracked and leaking red-purple syrup. Small animals milled about it at a distance. While I watched, one that looked like a cousin to the creature I’d found harassing Matilda ran towards the center, dragging a mesh bag of produce behind it. It deposited its stolen food at the tree’s base and glared at me, raising its hackles and chattering. The other animals added food scraps and dead rodents to the produce. The dirt beneath this scrap pile shifted, something pulling the collection underground.

I heard a low growl behind me. I puffed myself up and turned around, ready to shout at something knee-height. Instead, I slowly backed into the clearing.

What followed me might’ve been a coyote once. I’d always thought of them as scrappier, hungrier wolves. But this creature’s body carried that extreme even further. Its pelt sagged off its neck and underside, but was stretched taut over its shoulders to the point I could see the skin beneath its fur. The once-coyote flashed its fangs at me in a slow grimace, all the additional muscles in its lower jaw needing time to flex. I hurried back.

“You’re supposed to be afraid of me,” I said, terrified. “I’m human, or I’m something worse.”

My foot collided with a root. The coyote’s jaw dropped open, letting out a cackling laugh.

Climbing up the tree would get me distance from the coyote without running or showing it my back. I turned to the side, eyes still on the animal, questing blindly for a handhold. I found a branch and squeezed it, only to feel that it was mammal-hot. I dared to glance away from the coyote. The branch’s bark had come off as dust on my fingers, leaving an exposed section of moist red, like naked muscle.

“Oh,” I said.

A cracked and red-dripping branch circled around my leg and hoisted me into the air before I could run, dangling me upside-down a good ten feet off the ground. The coyote patiently watched while more branches waved around me like lethargic snakes, several wrapping around my waist. I held still at first, dumbfounded by what was happening. The whole time, smaller creatures were still bringing in more organic matter, soft plant parts but also whatever meat they could find. The ground beneath these offerings, beneath me, churned as if liquid, a hole twenty feet deep briefly opening to the air. At the bottom, its foul smell rising to greet me, was a pool of… it was too many colors, reds and greens and browns, mixed into a slurry. The hole’s walls were lined with fist-sized gray points. They seemed too big to be teeth, but too uniform to just be rocks; if I considered what was below me to be a stomach, I supposed teeth made more sense.

I wouldn’t, couldn’t, process it any further. There was no time. The branches around me tightened, squeezing my legs and torso. My unnatural ability kicked in, my body changing to resist the tree’s attempt to crush me. I screamed, hating not just the pain but the sensation of muscle and bone simultaneously being forced inward and growing out. The seams in my sleeves popped and then I was tearing at the branches with strengthened arms. I thought of the weasel I’d held similarly restrained so recently, how it had writhed out of my grip. Curling my fingers around a branch, my nails grew out and cut into the bark, releasing thick, hot sap. The coyote leapt at me, and in a moment of panic I lashed out. It fell to the ground and lay still for a few heartbeats, neck at an odd angle, before the mud opened up to swallow it. I broke the branch around my waist and contorted out of the ones holding my legs. I bolted, barely avoiding the chasm that formed where I’d landed. My world narrowed to the path directly in front of me as I ran. I skirted around streets and houses until I reached my own backyard and fell on the soft, clean grass.

Slowly, Ella. Breathe slowly. I scratched at my arms, building up and shedding layers of skin until I thought nothing that had directly touched the monsters remained. That’s what they were, monsters. Them, not me. I didn’t recognize my hands, the shape of my legs. My waist felt stiff, inflexible.

I dragged myself inside, got out my instant camera. Just had to go one part at a time until I was done. My nails were thick sharp points; I burned a picture of them first to make it easier to handle the camera. I knew for my torso I’d need to take a photo in front of the mirror, so I decided to undo as many of the other changes as I could before then so there wouldn’t be as much wrong with me to see. Legs next, then one arm, then —

I was all out of film. I used up the rest when I woke up.

There wasn’t that much in my box of ritual supplies, nothing an extra roll of film could be hiding beneath. Hadn’t I bought more? I must’ve forgotten to. My head felt hot, like I might pass out or throw up. I slammed my bedroom door in a sudden fit. The photos fell from my closet, scattering over the carpet.

“I needed you!” I screamed. My heart pounded in my ears, mercifully drowning out the subtler sounds of grinding bone as my body further distorted. I fell to my knees, trying to separate out Blur and Enigma photos. My misshapen hands were clumsy, my fingers thick and numb. They only creased the pictures.

Impulse took over. I dumped as many of the photos as would fit into my ritual bowl, lighting a match before I could panic over which were Enigmas and which were from the Blur. This was how it worked, right? I burned the unsightly things, and they went away.

“Leave,” I said, dropping in the match before I could rethink it. My heart ached as the pictures burned, but this needed to happen. It was all I could do.

As the fire died down, I felt cold and weak. Moving mechanically, I got into my baggiest hoodie and sweatpants, the only clothes that currently comfortably fit, and hid in bed. I clenched my fists, felt little sparks of pain from my palms.

I examined my hands. My nails were once again half an inch longer than they had been, their tips pointed. They extended as I stared at them, slowly and smoothly growing as if they were sliding out from some pocket dimension. I tapped one against my arm, making a droplet of blood well up. At what point, I wondered, did they become claws instead of nails? I tried to put them away, to tuck them back into that hidden space. It wasn’t as quick as if I’d burned a photo, but they did gradually shrink, millimeter by millimeter. The way they moved in and out was entrancing, seamlessly lengthening and shortening, like a puzzle piece falling perfectly into place. As if aware of my fascination, they grew out again, and again I tucked them away. I could feel my hastened breathing slow as I concentrated on my nails, the rest of me start to fall back into its normal shape as I calmed down.

But I still wasn’t able to completely relax until I peeked out my bedroom window and saw county Fish and Wildlife trucks, followed by a couple police cars, go by—away from me, and hopefully towards stopping whatever was out there.

Chapter Three

My post-meltdown dream was blissfully calm. I sat on our front doorstep, a six-legged mouse lying dead by my paws. My whiskers nervously twitched as Mom and Dad walked up the driveway, finally home; my pointed ears only reached up to their knees, so it was hard to read their expressions as they inspected my gift. I didn’t know for sure how they felt until Dad scooped me up so I could nuzzle his face with my furry cheek and Mom petted me, praised me—

I was awake, and I didn’t deserve praise. I’d forgotten something, I was sure of it.

The chickens.

I’d forgotten about Matilda’s chickens.

I tore open my curtains. It was after midnight, and the darkness felt solid beyond my window. I gnawed on my lip as I considered the likelihood of something lurking out there, so close to more people.

But there was also the chance of Matilda telling someone about me, and it seemed higher if… when she and Brian came home, they discovered I’d left their obviously sick animals to starve to death. And the chickens themselves deserved better than that.

I grabbed my phone and shoes, ran across the dark street with my heart in my throat. I stopped by Matilda’s garden shed to fill up a bucket with feed, hoping the chickens wouldn’t be too sick to eat.

I’d expected the birds to be asleep, but the moment I went around the corner I heard something bounce off the wire mesh of the coop.

“It’s okay now,” I said. “I’m here, I’ll feed you, I’ll look up what I’m supposed to do with you—”

Metal squeaked as the wire was hit from inside again. The coop had a solid roof that kept the dim starlight from illuminating inside, but the point of impact seemed to be around waist height.

It really stunk back here.

My hand ignored all of my better ideas and pulled out my phone, turned on the flashlight. I saw the contents of the coop for just long enough before common sense took over and turned the light off to think: amalgamation.

A chilling howl echoed over the neighborhood, worryingly close. The creature in the coop hissed and bubbled in response, joining in a chorus with far too many members. One second of thinking about the larger monsters I’d already seen was enough to send me scrambling on top of the coop, moving quick so whatever was inside couldn’t grab me, and then onto Matilda and Brian’s roof. Lights in a few nearby houses flickered on, weak illumination through curtains and blinds allowing for glimpses of the shadows that raced down the street. One of them paused outside a lit window. There shouldn’t be anything non-human and bipedal around here, and that wasn’t even mentioning the fanged muzzle. It startled whoever had turned on the light. Their scream was followed by the monster slipping out of my view, and then the sound of breaking glass.

I lay flat against the roof, shivering. Think, Ella. Your best bet is to barricade yourself inside, or drive away. Can’t get into Matilda’s place without loudly breaking in, so you’ve got to get home.

Easier said than done when I could hardly tell what was happening at street level. I squeezed my eyes shut. The changes to my body had always been muscle, skin, and bone. I’d never wanted them to happen, which meant I’d avoided experimenting. I didn’t know if I was capable of altering other parts.

Come on, I cajoled my eyes and my ears, addressing my closed eyelids. I know you’re already sensitive and I’ve been mad at you for that in the past. But we won’t survive this if I blindly trip over a monster.

If asked, I could describe the grinding sensation of bone lengthening, the taut-loose cycles of stretching skin. Those feelings were tangible, the results of clear causes, similar enough to other things I’d experienced. But I couldn’t put words to what I felt inside my head besides a fullness that began at the base of my skull and poured out my eyes and ears.

A solid wall of sound broke over me like a tidal wave. The wind rustled through a thousand leaves, my heart and lungs pulsed, creatures breathed and snarled all around me. My eyes flew open. The world lay before me in sharp detail, its colors muted but light enough for me to tell apart. I could see broken windows and doors, watch my neighbors running into the street, hear cars starting up in garages and growling and barking and screaming.

I gritted my teeth. It was too much to handle all at once, making my head pound. But this wasn’t a regular headache, or even a migraine. It started as an ache in my molars, the unpleasant buzz of hard surfaces vibrating against each other.

A large mass rounded the corner of the street, knocking aside parked cars and cracking the sidewalk. It resembled a beetle, but the top of its rounded back was level with a single-story home. Overlapping sections of its shell shifted and grated as dozens of black insect-like legs dragged it forward. Its head reminded me of an old-fashioned diver’s helmet. Two massive bubble-like eyes stuck out, unmoving and without pupils.

The pain in my head was growing; I nearly fell off the roof when a spark of orange flashed across my vision, impossibly vibrant compared to the current gray-green of my surroundings. More colors popped and fizzed in my sight, glimpses of images gone too quickly to process. A stranger’s voice whispered nonsense words, the source seemingly all around me. I thrashed my head, unable to relieve the terrible pressure building in my skull.

This was it. I’d messed with parts of my body that I shouldn’t have, and I’d broken them. I was well and truly fucked—except amid the chaos, I saw other people collapse holding their heads. I flinched when a fleeing car swerved into a tree, had to look away from the sight of a monster pouncing on an incapacitated person. I shouldn’t have done this. Seeing and hearing more just meant I could see the spilled blood, hear bones crunch. I tried to drag my attention away before I could see any more —

Two insect legs scratched at the edge of the roof, reaching for me. The giant monster’s other legs dug out a wall, threatening the house’s stability. I grabbed for the nearest handhold, a TV antenna. My brain boiled as one bubble eye loomed closer.

“Fuck off, Pillbug!” I screamed, the name ready on my tongue. I snapped off the TV antenna and swung it, my arm swelling with muscle.

Pillbug’s eye cracked like glass. It let out a high-pitched screech that had me in just as much agony as I’d likely caused it. It tore through the house while I rolled down the other side of the roof, flinging myself into a tree whose breaking branches only somewhat slowed my landing.

I fled down the street and into the forest. I couldn’t take the pressure in my head, the terrible sounds; I needed darkness and quiet but I’d banished them from my senses. I dashed between trees, wanting their stout trunks to soak up the screaming and snarling behind me.

A snarl in front of me had me lunging to the side, barely dodging a misshapen bundle of fur and claws as it pounced. Yes, the screams were getting more distant as I ran, but the sounds of monsters weren’t. They were approaching my neighborhood from this direction—and I could hear the heavy footfalls of more behind me. A brightly burning line of pain cut into my shoulder blade. I cried out, stumbling…

My joints popped as my arms shot forward, sending a second supernova of pain through my back, my forearms lengthening. I caught myself with my hands, swinging my legs forward, pushing off, back on my feet and running as hot blood trickled down my back. I knew I couldn’t run forever, I just, I just had to —

The forest ran out with little warning, forcing me to skid to a halt so I didn’t fall off the edge of a shallow gorge. I twisted around.

Two dozen eyes stared back at me. But some of the eyes were more than two to a monster, so there were actually less than a dozen. Lucky me.

I took one more step back. The edge of the gorge gave way, sending me tumbling down its slanted side. I landed hard on my back in several inches of turbid water. I was tempted to lie there, breathless and still, see if they’d pass me by.

Then the mud started to creep up my sides. I looked beneath the thin layer of water and screamed. Half-formed eyes dotted the muck. I ripped away from its grasp before I could learn if it had a mouth too. The monsters were still in pursuit, taking their own rough trip down the cliff to join me. I frantically climbed up the other side of the gorge, my heart skipping a beat each time I slipped in the mud. As soon as the wall of the gorge began to flatten out I threw myself forward, trying to get my center of gravity away from the edge.

Sharp teeth sank into my left shoulder.

I screamed and beat at the canid monster as it dragged me along the ground. They had carved out the top of the hill, creating a big pit they were filling with more bodies. I saw cloth inside, shoes, panicked. I thrashed, feeling my arms and legs displace from their joints as they warped, hitting the monster’s back legs. It lost its balance and we rolled down the slimy hill together—

I was blinded by an explosion of light, and then there was dust in my mouth, dry ground and slick fur beneath me. We came to an abrupt stop, the monster making a too-human grunt of pain as its jaw loosened from my shoulder. My vision recovered slowly, focusing on the closest objects—the monster lying stunned after I’d landed on it, and a flat stone almost a foot wide. I hefted the stone up and brought it down on the monster’s head. It stopped moving.

I considered screaming again. Every one of my limbs felt out of place; the cut on my back had hurt bad enough, but now I understood that had just been surface pain; there was a terrible heat in my shoulder, as though the monster had injected me with fire when it bit me. Its teeth were red with my blood, so much brighter than the brown fluid leaking from its head. I was still on top of it. I scrambled away even though it couldn’t hurt me anymore, feeling how each movement pulled at my shoulder, my cut, the future bruises from too many hard landings.

And I couldn’t stop. I wasn’t allowed to yet.

I took in more of my surroundings before anything else could try to kill me. Rock-strewn beige wasteland beneath a bright sky plagued with green and yellow clouds. The ground had been churned by dozens, if not hundreds, of animal tracks, some of them obscured by a flat trail formed by something big and flat being dragged—Pillbug, maybe. The air several feet away shimmered, forming a distorted window perhaps a few yards across, dark as night. I couldn’t see through it, but distantly, as though from underwater, I could hear baying and barking.

Had to assume I couldn’t outrun them all forever, so I looked for a weapon instead. I backed away from the window, only to trip. A thick, rusted chain lay on the ground. It circled the window, metal links connecting several ceramic plates together. The abandoned chain wasn’t the only sign people had been here. A waist-high rock with engraved drawings stood nearby. They depicted a square surrounded by a circle of connected dots. Inside the square were crude renditions of toothy monsters; outside the circle, what looked like people. One of the monsters had its blocky legs up against the circle as if pushing against a wall.

I looked back at the chain. It was broken in one place, a few links snapped. The baying grew louder. I grabbed the disconnected ends of the chain, almost dropping it when they stung my hands like an electrical shock. I wrapped my hands in my sleeve cuffs before bringing the two ends together.

Light flashed, making me jolt back. There was a gray hue to the air in front of me. The color extended up from where where the now-complete chain lay, forming a dome that fully contained the distortion. I cautiously reached out. My hands met smooth, hard resistance as if I were touching plexiglass. I tried to grab the chain again, but the dome was in the way.

A monster rushed through the distortion, appearing as if it was being created from head to tail, suddenly and violently here; it slammed into the dome from the inside, unable to get any closer. It seemed the translucent dome would keep me safe for the moment.

It would also keep me from going home.

I screamed and kicked the dome, the monster and I striking at it from opposite sides—then I got my wits about me. Better away than dead. The monster’s furious snarling was muffled, but I could hear much clearer animal calls in the distance. More on their way? I took out my phone. No signal I could use to call for help, and GPS had no idea where I was. Why would it? The sky was fucking green and yellow. Why would there be anything so human as a cell tower in a place that couldn’t possibly be Earth?

Someone had created this strange barrier and left instructions. Maybe if I found other signs of civilization to follow, I could find who it was and get help.

I took one last look at where I’d come from. The monster, the nearest thing to a real werewolf that had ever existed on Earth, still clawed at the dome, teetering on its back legs so we were at eye level. Its mouth was packed with several rows of sharp teeth that stuck out at odd angles, like they were meant to maul instead of just cut. Scabs were visible on its gums and tongue as it panted with exertion. No, that mouth had never been meant to close without doing harm. The dome was so smooth that there was nothing for its claws to catch on; blood welled up at the base of its claws as it compensated by trying more force instead of giving up. It obviously couldn’t get to me, and yet it was hurting itself to try.

“Just go,” I whispered, backing away. “Why did you… just leave us alone!”

It snarled and bashed its head against the dome instead. I hurried back to the engraved stone, trying not to listen as the monster used its own skull as a hammer. There was one more marking on the stone, an arrow pointing out into the wasteland. With no other ideas, I followed it, dragging myself along as fast as I could.

I continued to pass signs that someone else had been here before me, more worn-down stone markers covered in symbols I couldn’t read, only their directional arrows offering any help. My adrenaline wore off, and I felt more pain with every step. According to my phone, I made it four hours before I reached the end of my stamina. Longer than I’d’ve thought myself capable of, but the sky and landscape were unchanging, making it hard to believe I’d made any progress towards the safe destination I was only hoping existed. I stopped at the next indecipherable sign I came across and let my legs fold beneath me.

I passed out for a while and was woken by a short bout of rain. It was cold and soaked through my clothes, but it gave me a chance to drink. My shoulder burned. Just touching around my bite wound was excruciating, the area horribly soft and leaking a murky liquid that wasn’t blood.

I swallowed back bile and imagined a healthy set of tissue beneath the injury, scratching at the affected area with unnaturally long nails. The… pulp came away easily. Yes. That was a good word for it. Human bodies didn’t contain pulp, so the decomposing stringy bits I was scraping away weren’t part of me. When I was done, I thought I could feel a shallow depression in my shoulder.

Again I walked for as long as I could. Again I needed to rest. Again, my shoulder was hot and disintegrating when I woke up. I wrapped my arms around myself, finding that at some point I’d unconsciously built long flaps of skin from them, as if to replace a comforting blanket. They did nothing to keep me warm. I was too tired to try to get rid of them. All my energy had to be focused on moving forward. Hours bled into each other as I walked.

I tripped over a desiccated plank that blended in unfairly well with the ground and tumbled down a ledge. This time, my landing was followed by a surprised shout. I lifted my chin, the rest of me uncooperative.

Two people stared at me. Both looked male, maybe in their mid-twenties. My vision was blurred, my mind worn out. Most of the details my failing eyes could pick out made sense—one of the pair had tanned skin and dark blond hair, the other a darker skin tone and black curly hair. That was totally acceptable, as was the fact that they were trying to get a campfire going in the indented circle between collapsed ruins I’d fallen into.

What made less sense, and convinced me that I had likely started hallucinating, was that the blond one seemed to have wings. White feathers, quills of gold. His companion had a green cape over his shoulders.

“ ‘M fine,” I said automatically. I wasn’t fine.

The two of them shared a quick back-and-forth in an unfamiliar language before the blond one cautiously stepped towards me.

“How did you get here?” he said in an accent I couldn’t place.

“Are you an angel?” I murmured from the ground.

He pointed to himself. “An angel? Is that your word for me?” He looked back at his companion, shared another indecipherable exchange with him.

“That’s weird. I don’t believe in angels,” I said. I tried to push myself up, only to hiss in pain. The English-speaking stranger knelt beside me, maybe to help. I had to keep trying to stand on my own, though, because if they had wings then they couldn’t be real, and I’d need to get out of this mess on my own.

If they were real, then that was another problem, because it meant they’d seen me changed.

I started to cry.

The other stranger drifted closer, making soothing noises. The blond one touched my tormented shoulder, and his touch certainly felt real, the pain of it solid and sure even as everything else slipped away.