by M. O. McLeod
5.
A Raptor is born
Kurma’s hair whipped about wildly, wet and cold, clinging to her face and eyes as she flapped her wings in a steady beat. Tirelessly she flew higher and higher. She didn’t want anyone below seeing her.
Everything was going wrong. There were so many thoughts scrambling in her head, mainly about Santino. Before Kurma had flown away, she had seen him in a frantic craze. She had never, in all her time knowing him, seen him act that way. He’d looked possessed, irrational, like a demon from hell. What was it that had turned him into a monster? What had turned her into a…
Well, she didn’t really know what she was. She could fly, Kurma knew that. And she didn’t have regular body parts. Her fingers and toes and legs were all very different now. She didn’t have any human skin to speak of, and she knew her lady parts were completely gone. Her body was covered in fine, short hair, and her legs were scaly and bone thin. She didn’t feel the urge to eat people as Santino did, so she knew she wasn’t anything like him. Though maybe she hadn’t seen Santino eat anyone, she tried to tell herself. Maybe she had still been in shock from him trying to attack her. Although, now that she thought about it, he’d been trying to eat her as well!
Beating her wings vigorously, Kurma laughed in her head at the thought of it. Wings. She somehow had grown wings, and was hundreds of feet in the air. If she could fly, were there others like her that could fly too? Had someone made her like this? Had she drank something bad and not known there were DNA-altering properties in it? Certainly her genetics had been dramatically changed. There was no denying it. But Santino wasn’t like her. So had he eaten or drank something else that had turned him into a flesh-eating mega-monster capable of jumping from outrageous heights and surviving? Had he survived the jump because he was already dead? If he were dead, and ate people, did that make him a vampire?
Oh my God, thought Kurma. Vampires are real! No, he had been in daylight. Not full daylight, because the sun was setting, but still, he definitely hadn’t burst into flames when the light hit him. So the vampire idea was done.
And why was it that whoever he touched began to act just as weird as he did? Not eating people per se, but obviously something was causing them to stop running and lay on the ground as if the air had been knocked out of them.
So many questions went through Kurma’s head as she flew eastward. Winged and loving it, she tried to imitate the birds she saw in the distance. She remembered stuff about currents and wind streams, but she didn’t know the first thing about being a bird. She still thought of herself as human, even though she wasn’t.
Kurma’s wings had naturally taken over, and they didn’t grow tired. Her arms were attached to the wings’ muscles as if the flaps of skin were sewn along the bone. She felt her arms riding the air, and her legs were sprawled out behind her as if she were floating in a pool of water. The wind was rough; she felt it on her face. Her body, however, didn’t feel anything except a soft breeze. Kurma felt a piece of something between her legs and knew she had a slight tail.
What could a tail be used for on a bird? She thought, though she didn’t really like calling herself a bird. She resembled a flying dinosaur, kind of. Like a Raptor. Yes, that was what she would call herself. It had a nice ring to it. If anybody asked her what exactly she was, she would reply, ‘A Raptor!’
And then they would try to put her in a circus. Her life as she knew it was over.
Kurma felt the sun’s warm rays on her skin as its last light faded over the horizon. She saw orange, pink, red, and yellow hues as the fluffy clouds concealed her from the ground below. She decided to fly lower to the ground now that she had the darkness protecting her. Tiny lights popped on by twos as dusk turned into night. Up high Kurma could hear the wind whistle and the hustle and bustle of the day slow down as she neared the downtown area of Alexandria. The city was made almost entirely of buildings: office buildings, factories, houses, apartments, lofts, warehouses, schools. There were only a couple of parks, woods, ponds, and stretches of empty lots left. Kurma saw the infamous skyscrapers of her city as tiny little figures, like gray and silver Legos. The streets were invisible amongst the large buildings.
Since she couldn’t fly forever, Kurma knew she would have to find a place to land for the night and recuperate. She couldn’t think of any area that would allow her coverage from people, and that was enclosed. Kurma thought and thought about what she would do and where she could go. She knew she couldn’t go back home. What would she tell her mom? Were her brothers worried about her? She hoped everything that had happened to her would not happen to them. If only she knew how she had turned into a Raptor then maybe she could stop it from happening to them. She thought again about what she had eaten or drank, or even if she somehow had nipped her hand on something poisonous. There was nothing she could remember that could have caused her to grow wings, scales, and a metal dagger attached to her wrist.
Finally she thought of somewhere she could go to land: the Alexandria landfill. She had gone there on an elementary-school field trip with her class some years back. The place was filled with the city’s disgusting trash and recycling, but there weren’t many people working in the landfill, and there was plenty of coverage from the enormous piles of waste and debris. Directing her arms to head south, she flew straight toward the landfill.
As she got close, the stench that surrounded the entire place greeted her. Even the gassy-green clouds above the landfill seemed murky and thick. Kurma flew closer, but knew she couldn’t stay there unless she had a face mask. Even though she was now a Raptor, it seemed as if she still had regular lungs, and she couldn’t breathe in this kind of environment.
Although she had flying down for the most part, Kurma worried about landing. Over and over she swooped in circles around the hazy-looking landfill. The landfill seemed alive, the garbage and trash shifting and piling on top of itself. Workers busily emptied dumpsters and containers of waste onto the piles, and Kurma flew in circles still. She was nervous; she was afraid her legs would give out and she would break one of her wing bones if she wasn’t careful.
Kurma made her body turn downward as she prepared to dive face-first to the ground since every time she tried to drop feet first, the wind created a parachute blockage in her wings, which only made her float more. Nervously she sped toward the ground and tried to aim for a clear space. Her face sliced the air as she descended lower and lower. A couple of feet from the ground, she made her body pull up slightly to level out, so her feet would have a chance to come from behind her. But she overshot, and ended up pulling her feet forward so much that her new tail caught the edge of a pile of trash. Gravity took care of the rest as Kurma rolled and stumbled, wings and all, halfway down the mountain of junk.
Emerging from the garbage, Kurma gagged on the horrendous smell. Old diapers, spoiled food, and dirty everything was all around her. Picking through the rubble was harder than landing. Her hands and wings became smeared with gunk, and the hairs on her body clung to her skin in patches.
“Ugh, my God, this is going to be the death of me,” she said. Trying to stay hidden, she made her way to the edge of the landfill, where the gates sectioned off the rest of Alexandria. Kurma clawed her fingers through the holes in the fence and peered out into the darkness, then looked behind her. The landfill was semi-bright so personnel could see what they were doing, and partially hidden by the main building that accommodated the workers. Kurma couldn’t stay there, though. This kind of place ran all night and through the day.
Kurma looked up and saw barbed wire around the entire gate. Climbing inch by inch, she made her way to the top of the gate and flung her body over, her wings barely missing the razors. Under the night’s cover, she made her way to the edge of Minister’s Lane, a dried sewage line that kids her age used sometimes for drag races. Kurma knew her classmates might have been there, after all it was the weekend. She wanted to cross Minister�
��s Lane and head up to one of the city’s parks, Dover Park Square. Even though homeless people lived there, tonight they would have to make room for something a little different.
Kurma wondered if she was stuck as a Raptor forever. As she neared Minister’s Lane, the dirt turned into concrete, and she noticed her feet, which were now claws, had sharp nails. Every step she took, the nails scraped against the concrete. Tip, tap, pit, pat. She would not be able to hide if she made noise with every step. She needed to change back, but how and where?
As she entered Minister’s Lane, she saw an old, abandoned car. Quickly she hurried over to it and tried to pry the rusty door open. A bum popped up inside, toothless and dirty. The bum opened his mouth in rage; Kurma jumped back in fear, and caught herself with an outstretched arm. Clearly she had disturbed his sleep. She didn’t even think he noticed how she looked at all.
Off to the side of the lane, she heard a commotion. Shit, this isn’t good, she thought. All she wanted to do was try to turn back into a regular person. Once people saw her wings, she wouldn’t know what to do—she’d probably have to run all her life so she wouldn’t end up in someone’s collection, stuffed and gagged for everyone to see.
Kurma saw three young boys heading in her direction. Her Raptor eyes had night vision, and she could see the tiniest movements magnified. One of the boys had a limp, and the other two were skinny and ragged. If necessary she could fly away, but then they might tell somebody who would tell somebody, and that person might alert the cops, or worse the news reporters. Shaking her head, she knew she would have to make a run across the entire lane without being spotted. There was absolutely no chance of that, since the lane wasn’t really a lane but a huge, open space with concrete walls.
“Damn,” Kurma whispered as she dashed from behind the old car and across the lane, right in front of the three boys’ line of sight.
“Do you see this?” asked the tallest boy.
“What is that!” screamed one of the others.
“Let’s get it. Come on, y’all. Catch it!” said the third.
Kurma heard the three little stooges running behind her, trying to catch her. She was too fast though, and way long gone. With the agility of a cat, she used her claw-like hands to climb the concrete walls and her sharp-nailed feet to tear into the sides so she wouldn’t fall.
“You guys see that?” one of the boys cried out. “Get this on camera. We gonna be famous!”
“Try and climb up after it.”
“Are you crazy? What am I gonna do with it once I climb up there?”
“I’ll do it,” proclaimed a voice.
How these boys could be so stupid, Kurma had no clue. If she had found something that looked like her, she would have been running the other way, not toward it. Boys were made up of different chromosomes, though, and they tended to think after, not before.
Kurma made it to the top of the wall and felt the earth beneath her feet. In front of her was another gate, fencing off Minister’s Lane from things such as the three stooges below. She turned and saw the boy with the bad leg trying to climb the wall.
“Look, it’s looking at us,” said one of the other boys. He had curly hair and green eyes, and jagged teeth. “You see how big that thing is?”
“It looks like a lizard. A big ol’ white lizard,” said the other one still on the ground.
After a good attempt, the boy with the bad leg stopped trying to climb up the wall and returned to stand with his friends. He gazed up at Kurma, who was looking down at them. “No it doesn’t, you moron. It looks like an oversized bat. You see? It has wings. It must have gotten bit by a bat and turned into Batman.”
“And you call me a moron,” one of the others said, and both laughed at the boy with the bad leg.
Kurma turned to leave. On the other side of the gate was Dover Square Park, and there wouldn’t be any annoying little boys there who would insult her by calling her a lizard. If anything the bums in the park would be so stoned and drunk that the sight of her would be a mediocre surprise at best.
Kurma smelled pine trees as she crossed into the park. This was the only place in the city where trees and plants were allowed to grow. The mayor had sanctioned it off years ago for greenhouse usage. Flowers were sparse in the city, but not in Dover Square Park.
She crept under the moon’s light and tried to stay hidden. Kurma saw homeless people sleeping under the canopy of trees and old tents. Maybe this was the exact place she needed to be. She remembered there was a museum in the northern part of the park. As a kid she used to play on the gargoyles at the entrance. The museum was made entirely of stone, with stone stairs that led up to a second floor and pillars and columns made of rock all around. All the statues were made of stone too. Kurma could remember how her mother used to tell her that if she was bad she would have to live there, with no lights or food. The museum was long since abandoned, and Kurma was sure there would be people living in the stone rooms now, though she hoped not all of them would be occupied.
The bushes gave way as she stepped out from the lawn of the park onto the stone floors that made up the museum’s entrance. There, as she had remembered, were the gargoyles that protected its occupants from evil. Their faces were smashed in and ugly. Kurma hoped they would keep out as many people as possible.
She silently walked through the tight entrance. When she was a child, the place had seemed huge, but now that she was older and her body was bigger, she realized it wasn’t so big and grand after all. The stairs to the left that led up to the second-floor balcony was old and decrepit. The steps were chipped and crumbling from years of usage, and Kurma feared the noise would give away her presence.
On the second floor, her own shadows frightened her. They made her body look even more morphed, and her wings were expansive. The moonlight amplified her transformation against the stone walls, and in agony she tried to tell her body to change back. She could feel her old bones breaking and her muscles ripping even as she thought about the change over and over again. Sweat coated her forehead, and when she tried to wipe her face she felt tiny, hard scales that she hadn’t noticed before.
Repeatedly she told herself to change back into her old self, who didn’t have scales, and metal daggers, and wings. Finally, on the eighth try, while she crawled on all fours, her bones listened to her demands and bent her legs back into place. She felt her skin tighten underneath her arms and her wings disappear into her skin, though she could still feel the rubbery spots where the wings used to be. She had all five fingers back, and her toes looked normal. She felt her face, and her skin was clammy and moist.
Pushing her hair back from her face, she tried to stand and could barely keep her footing. She was cold; at least in her hairy form she hadn’t felt the damp air. Naked and tired, Kurma curled up in a ball to keep the night air off her body.
High up on the top balcony overlooking the park, there were no bums or homeless people to her knowledge; there were only mice that scurried away from Kurma and bugs that crawled over her. She watched the stars outside and wondered about her family, and what Santino was doing at that exact moment. She knew he was lost to her unless there was a way to reverse his condition, as she had somehow done. Kurma didn’t see how their old relationship could work any other way.
She never felt so alone in all her life. In a world where space was limited and people lived on top of one another, Kurma only wanted to be a part of it all, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t normal anymore. She could morph and change on command, but she was the only one of her kind that she knew of. No mother, no brothers, and no Santino.
6.
These teeth were made for biting