by J. R. Rain
Gah. I gag and choke on a few breaths.
“Ow,” says Melodie in a strained voice. “My leg is burning up.”
Ethan and Noah scramble into the room and nearly trip in their effort to stop before running me over.
“What happened?” Noah looks around, evidently unable to see a damn thing, and clicks on a full-size Maglite. “Mel? You okay? You trip?”
“We saw something… It grabbed her.” I trot over to her. “Think I got some pictures.”
“Dude.” Ethan covers his mouth, coughing, and whacks Noah on the arm. “You shouldn’t have eaten that monstrosity.”
“That’s not a fart, man,” says Noah past the sleeve he’s using to cover his mouth. “And if it is, it ain’t mine.”
Melodie grabs my legs, clinging. “How bad is it? I can’t look.”
Her flashlight heeds a small magical poke and comes skittering across the floor to my outstretched hand. I love Fetch. I don’t love the look of her wound. Shit. Her leg’s torn up pretty bad. Bloody from the knee down. “Uhh. We need to get you to a hospital.”
“So much for trespassing,” says Noah.
Disappointment at our trip coming to such a fast end is clear on Ethan’s face, but he doesn’t hesitate to hurry over and help me pull Melodie upright. She puts all her weight on her right leg, leaving her left foot off the ground.
“A dog attack,” says Melodie. “I want stitches, not a straightjacket.”
“Right. Good call. Maybe even a coyote. We were hiking in the woods.” Noah recovers Mel’s camera and covers our exit with his Maglite.
With a lot of hopping and grunting, we get Melodie outside and into the Suburban. Noah digs a towel out of the back and wraps it around her leg. That thing had four-inch claws and fangs like a vampire. This is going to be an interesting trip to the ER.
don’t get home until a little after 7 p.m. Saturday.
Mr. Moody is underfoot the second I step inside, meowing over and over as if asking me ‘Mommy, why did you leave me alone for so long?’ After tossing my coat on a peg in the entry hall and setting my camera bag at the foot of my bed, I pick him up and try to make up for twenty-four hours of no cuddling. He tolerates me for about ten minutes before zipping into the kitchen. I’m looking way forward to sleeping in my own bed, since I spent last night curled up on a chair in Melodie’s room at the ER. I peel off the clothes I’ve been stuck in for more than a whole day straight, hurling them piece by piece into the ‘too-dirty-to-wear-again’ pile on the left side of the bedroom door.
Mr. Moody yowls at me, interrupting my attempt to luxuriate upon the softness of my bed.
“I’m coming, I’m coming.”
With a groan, I sit up and drag myself to the kitchen. He hasn’t touched the dry food the machine dispensed at 6 p.m. “Oh, you knew I’d be back and wanted the good stuff, did you?”
He makes a half-meow-half-pigeon-coo noise. I scoop him up, mimicking the sound while kissing him on the head a few times, and telling him all about Melodie getting hurt, the weird creature I saw, and how the doctor wanted to keep her overnight to run a rabies test. The doctor radiated newness, but not so much we worried. Plus, an older doctor might’ve asked awkward questions about those wounds. This guy wore his doubt on his sleeve, but didn’t have the confidence to challenge four of us telling him a wild dog got her.
Once the cat’s legs start going, I set him down and cave in to my master’s demands: a can of wet food. I get the good stuff. All-natural from a little mom-and-pop pet store. Sure it’s $1.50 or so per each tiny can, but I don’t want my li’l guy getting cancer from that cheap shit.
That done, I nab a Ziploc container of tomato-cucumber-onion salad from my fridge and carry it to my room to munch while transferring the pictures I took off the camera to the iMac. Out of fifty-nine images, eighteen are clear enough to show the entity as non-human. The rest are various degrees of blurry or Melodie’s flailing gets in the way.
In the calm of my apartment, free of clothes with my feet up on the desk, I stare at Mr. Ugly while I eat my sad little dinner. A bit heavy on the white pepper, but it’ll do. The critter’d be about four feet tall if it stood straight up, and has the build of an NFL linebacker. Broad shoulders, stubby legs, huge chest. The face resembles an old man with no hair and pointy ears. Something like that old movie Nosferatu, only the fangs aren’t together in the middle, and he’s darker grey. Whatever it is―was―couldn’t have been terribly dangerous if I liquefied it in one shot with magic I’d never used before.
Mr. Moody leaps up to the back of my chair without warning.
I shout, waving my arms, expecting to fall over backward, but I don’t. Oblivious to my freak-out, Mr. Moody settles into a cat loaf across the top, purring. Oh, he noticed. That’s his little feline revenge for my leaving him alone all day. Anyway, I fire off an email to Mom and Dad, sending a good image of the entity after cropping Melodie out of the frame. No need to harm her dignity. Another one goes to Fenton at The Spiritualist, with a ‘this is what I’m working on next’ email. Before I write that up, I need to see what my parents have to say about it. Dad knows a lot of people in ‘the biz.’ One or two can do real magic, but most are damn fine lorekeepers. The word makes me laugh. Dad always has to make things sound like we’re in medieval times or something.
Writing the story to go along with those images can wait. I’m in no mental condition to do much but veg. Mr. Moody and I couch surf for a few hours, catching the last three-quarters of a cable edit of Jerry McGuire before I marathon some episodes of Bones off the streaming service. By that point, my brain is about to mutiny so I go straight from the couch to the shower. Before I even turn the water on, I get a bad case of the ‘screwits’ and decide to hold off. I’ll shower in the morning. With a well-practiced maneuver, I fall into bed and burrito myself in the blankets.
A moment later, Mr. Moody wedges himself against my back.
Boom.
One of my eyes pops open. My room is still dark. Mr. Moody zips around my head and squeezes himself into the blanket against my chest. He hates storms, so that must’ve been a―
Boom.
I jump.
“Crap, that’s loud.”
My room flickers bright purple.
“Huh?”
Mr. Moody shivers and lets out a long, frightened meow.
“Hey, buddy. It’s all right. Just thunder.”
I push up a bit and stare out the window behind my headboard. The sky is crisscrossed with bright purple lightning in a continuous mesh, like the whole of New York City’s been caught in a net. Looks close to the spell I pasted that thing with, only crooked. Mr. Moody growls, vibrating against my sternum. Higher up, flashes of deep emerald green roll above the clouds, and a shadowy image―like a floating island city―hangs off in the distance.
Boom.
Three seconds after a thunderclap hard enough to shake my walls, the lightning-net outside flares bright, doubling the number of visible jags in the sky.
“Uhh. Nope.” I lay back down. “Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. I’m not seeing that.”
Clinging to my cat like a little girl holding her teddy, I decide to ignore my crazy dream.
“Solstice, you should get up. You’ll be late.”
I moan into the pillow. When did Diego come over? He hates coming here. My place is too small, too cheap, and he thinks it’s a ‘bad area.’ If it’s so dangerous, why hasn’t he invited me to move in with him? Maybe I have been expecting too much from our relationship. “What are you doing here?”
Silence.
A moment or five later, I uncurl and sit up. Mr. Moody glances at me from where he’s perched at the corner of the bed, his tail curled around his body. No Diego. Outside, the city looks normal and calm. No bizarre colors in the air, and thankfully, no weird alien city floating on an island in the sky. I’d imagine if there’d been a purple lightning storm raging all night, there’d be at least a mild roar of panic out there, but not even one car alarm is g
oing off.
It’s Sunday, so I don’t need to rush anywhere. Good, because the thickness in my head feels like those ‘hangovers’ Melodie describes. Either that, or I’m about to get my first cold. Mr. Moody keeps staring at me as if expecting something. It takes me a minute or two more to find the desire to move, and I trudge in a fog to the kitchen. Mr. Moody sashays up to his bowl. It’s a bit odd that he doesn’t meow at me once, but maybe he finally learned that I’m going to feed him either way. Might as well do a fried egg-and-toast sandwich for myself.
The auto-feeder’s bowl is overflowing. Damn. Already? It’s not even six months old and it’s on the fritz. Guess he really does hate the dry food. After giving him a can of wet, I pour the pellets back in the hopper. If it goes crazy again, I’m going to send a nasty email and demand a replacement. You’d think for almost $250, the thing wouldn’t dump three portions out at once.
When I reach for the cabinet to grab a pan, I feel… short. I mean, I’ve always been small for my age. First day of third grade, I got dragged across the hall to the first-grade classroom by an idiot teacher who thought me a six-year-old who’d gone to the wrong room. I came out to five-foot-even when I stopped getting taller, which annoyingly enough, didn’t happen until college; that said, the cabinets feel higher up. I swear I shrank an inch in my sleep.
Shaking my head, I sigh, “Whatever,” and lean up on my toes to grab the knob.
Cooking is a blur, and the next time my brain lifts out of the fog of oversleeping, I’m at the table with my fried-egg-and-toast sandwich in both hands. For this task, I don’t need to use my eyes, so they can stay closed. A couple of bites in, a drip of yolk lands on my thigh. Damn, it’s hot.
I look down to wipe it off and feel like I’ve had a memory skip. The last time I looked at myself, I’d been a little overdue for another Brazilian, but… not now. My legs even look like I had a $2,500 an hour spa treatment. I can barely even perceive follicles. That starts to register as strange until I notice my hair. Yeah, that straight soft stuff hanging down my front almost to my lap that’s supposed to be blonde? Well, it isn’t. It’s grey. Okay, panic over. It’s not grey. I didn’t wake up an old maid. It’s white. Like… snow, with hints of metallic silver.
Mr. Moody leaps up onto the table and sits at the corner.
I grab some of my silver-white hair and hold it up to him. “What the heck happened? Did someone ambush-prank me when I was asleep? Ooh… I’m going to kill… Melodie? No, she’s on crutches.”
“Are you all right?” asks Mr. Moody.
“No, I’m not.” Stunned motionless, I blink, staring at the cat. “Fuck. Did you just talk?”
Mr. Moody tilts his head. “Yes.”
“Deep breaths, Sol,” I say to myself, rubbing my temples. “Talking cats are not normal.”
He grins. Or at least, does the closest thing a housecat can do to grinning. “Neither are you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I drop my remaining half-sandwich on the plate.
Mr. Moody licks at his paw and cleans his mouth. “If I were you, I’d be asking that question to your mirror.”
Oh, shit.
I spring from the chair and dart down the hall to the bathroom. The scene waiting for me is impossible. No… My eyes, which should be green, have gone ruby red like gemstones, and my ears… are… pointed. And not Spock pointed either, I mean they’re a good two inches taller than they ought to be. Pinching the tip hurts. It’s me; not makeup. And crap! My boobs shrank. Not that they were ever epic, but damn. That’s not fair. No shade under the pits either. Smooth as a baby’s backside. At least I still have eyebrows, even if they’re white.
“What the hell is going on?”
Panic rises and falls over the next few minutes. I somehow wind up in my bedroom pacing circles and can’t remember leaving the bathroom. Mr. Moody sashays in and leaps onto the bed, where he curls up. When my head stops spinning, I grab the iPhone and call home.
Mom picks up in two rings. “Oh, hello, sweetie. So nice to hear from you.”
“Uhh.” My voice quakes. “Can you conference Dad on? Something… oh, I think I messed up a glamour. I need help undoing it.” Aha! I tried to conceal myself when I went to Starbucks the other night. Of course, it backfired. Sigh.
“Sure, one moment.” Mom mutes the phone and shouts, “Jonathan. Pick up the line.”
Did I mention they don’t believe in cellular? They’ve still got actual house phones, like with cords.
A moment later, clicking and crackling announces my father fumbling with a receiver. “Hello?”
“Dad… Mom…”
“Oh, hi hon. What’s up? You sound… worried.”
I sit on the end of the bed and tell them about my attempt to glamour myself so no one could see me when I walked to Starbucks. I shouldn’t have taken nothing obvious happening as a stealth spell working. It would be too perfect that nothing went wrong. “… and my eyes changed color, my ears are pointy, I think I got a little shorter, and like all my body hair is gone. What did I do to myself? How can I fix this?”
They’re quiet. For too long.
“Umm. Hello?” I ask.
“Solstice…” Mom sighs. “You should come see us in person.”
Dad makes a hmm of agreement. “Some things have happened. We need to talk to you.”
“What happened? Are you guys okay?”
“We’re fine, but… not on the phone,” says Mom, nervous.
I bite my lip. “Okay. I―” I find myself staring in disbelief at my alarm clock showing ‘Monday.’ “Mom, Dad, is today Sunday or Monday?”
“It’s Monday morning, dear,” says Dad.
“Whoa. I… think I lost Sunday. I don’t remember it. Did I sleep all day?”
Dad chuckles. “You’re not the only one. Happened to us too. See you soon?”
Not the only one? What’s that supposed to mean? “Umm. I gotta go to work. Shit. I’m going to be late.”
“Well, come as soon as you can dear,” says Mom.
I look down at myself. Whoa. I’m even a little thinner. “Yeah. I will. This is too damn weird. I’ll get out there ASAP. Maybe I’ll head over after work.”
“All right, hon. Keep yourself safe,” says Dad.
Mom puts on that tone she always uses after one of Eva’s nightmares. “Don’t be afraid, Solstice.”
“Uhh. Okay.” Easy for her to say.
“That went well,” says Mr. Moody when I hang up.
I glance at the cat. “Don’t you start.”
fter rushing a shower, I magic myself dry―at least that still works―and hurry to my ‘worn-a-bit-but-not-enough-to-wash-it’ pile. Without thinking, I pull on a pair of sky blue LuLaRoes. Oops. Maybe I shouldn’t show off my new stick legs so much. At least my office is casual. Jeans will work. Since I lost a whole cup size, I skip the bra, going for a tank top plus oversized beige angora top. As I step barefoot into my Uggs, it hits me that my jeans fit. They’re not loose, nor are they an inch too long.
“What the hell?”
Squinting a challenge at my reflection, I pull both tops off and grab one of my everyday bras. I’m expecting it to hang loose over these angry bee stings I’ve been left with, but it feels the same as always, and appears to fit.
“Oh, this is too damn strange!”
I fly into a frenzy, stripping naked again before testing four dresses, two pairs of pants, and a half-dozen tops. Everything fits me like it always has. If I close my eyes, I don’t feel the slightest bit of difference.
Only one thing makes any sense―but at the same time, no sense at all: I’ve always been this size. Whenever I order clothes online, I always get the wrong size… a little too big. If I go shopping in person and try stuff on, no problem. The why of it eludes me, but the mechanics sound like a long-term glamour. I’ve been seeing something that isn’t there, but that would mean…
I lock stares with my new ruby-red eyes. Or, were they my eyes all along?
; “You’re going to be late,” says Mr. Moody.
“My cat is talking to me. Am I going crazy?”
Mr. Moody chuckles. “If you are crazy, that means I am too. And I don’t feel crazy.”
“Schizophrenic hallucination or actual talking cat aside, you’re right. I’m already late.”
I rush back into jeans and the angora top, leap into the Uggs, and head for the door after grabbing my camera bag, purse, keys, and phone. Two steps into the hall, I skid to a stop and run back inside to grab a giant, floppy hat. I should probably hide these ears.
The cabbie doesn’t react much, though I do keep my head down. On the ride, I call Fenton and get his voicemail. I leave a quick ramble about Melodie getting hurt, the hospital, and blame my lateness on staying up keeping her company. I lay it on thick even though my boss is a nice guy.
The Spiritualist occupies a tiny office space at the ground floor corner of a building on East 50th street in midtown. There’s even a couple of skinny little trees out front. The rest of the stories going up hold apartments, and I think Fenton lives right above the paper’s office.
“Oh, hey, love the new color. That’s a real edgy look for you,” says Tracee, the receptionist. She graduated high school last year, and is really sweet―unless you spell her name with a y. No one ever calls the paper, so she spends most of her time playing smartphone games or brushing her mouse-brown hair.
“Thanks,” I mutter.
Jim, our website guy, mumbles something like ‘nice hair’ past a Boston crème donut in his teeth. He’s carrying another one in his left hand and a cup of coffee in his right. I don’t know how that man isn’t enormous.
“Thanks.” I keep my head down, hiding my eyes. For how long? Until I can magic them back sounds like a good idea.
Jazmin and Derek, other reporters, prairie-dog up from their desks as I glide by.
“Awesome dye job, girl,” says Jazmin in her thick Puerto-Rican accent. “An anime look. Nailed.”