Prick. Mother fucker.I passed the time by calling him names, trying to hold back the fear with some defiance. He didn’t bother to respond. I heard the muted voice of a television, or perhaps he watched something on his phone. I doubted this place had any electricity.
Nothing in the room could help me. I saw no tool, no knife, nothing with a sharp edge that I might reach, cut the rope, and escape. Only broken glass and as much as I yearned for a piece, the window was too far away.
“Fuck,” I groaned, sweating from the heat and terror. “Fuck. Brody, please, please help me.”
The sun passed the window by. Dusk crawled into its place. Full darkness soon settled not just in the window but also the house, the room I lay in. My kidnapper didn’t turn on any lights, reinforcing there wasn’t any electricity to turn the lights on.
Sweat sprang fresh from my pores when I heard his tread approaching. His shadow appeared between me and the window. “I’m horny,” he rumbled. “Don’t fight, little Lindsey, and it won’t hurt so bad.”
Panic roared through me. I screamed, kicking at him as he leaned over me, his strength far outpacing mine. He grunted as my foot connected to his gut, then his strong hand gripped my ankle. Kneeling on the cot beside me, he used his weight to pin me down.
I shrieked.
Blackness tried to creep into my mind, perhaps protect me from what was about to happen.
Suddenly, something did.
The house exploded.
My attacker, shrieking nearly as loudly as I had, was thrown upward and outwards away from me.
Boards, bricks, roof tiles, flooring, ragged carpeting, flew in a shower around me. The night air blew cool, welcoming air against my hot body. Panting, gasping, unable to think, I looked around, panic thudding my heart, for the rapist. Surely he’d come back, knock me down, hurt me.
The remains of the house fell to the ground in clattering heaps around me.
What the fuck?
My eyes, my face, my head, were at least three stories above the ground. I saw as well in the dark as I did in daylight, something I knew to be impossible. I – I wasdifferent. In those flashing seconds as I tried to gain my senses, my perspectives, I realized I stood on four legs.
Not two.
“Oh, God,” I moaned, “what’s happening? What happened to me?”
I wasn’t human anymore. My feet and hands ended in long, deadly sharp talons. My skin had become what looked like shiny black scales. I took a step forward, stumbling awkwardly, and found my balance restored when my long tail whipped around.
Tail?
I turned to look. Yep, I had a very long, thick tail that ended in a spade shape. I also discovered I owned a set of wings. More frightened than ever, I tried to spread them. They worked, sort of, twitching a bit before flopping like spent sails to either side of my body.
“This is impossible,” I muttered.
My voice was mine – and yet it wasn’t. I spoke from a long muzzle filled with ranks of curving teeth. “What am I?”
Stepping carefully amid the rubble of the ruined house, I soon found walking on four legs as natural as two. That still didn’t answer the question of what I was. And how to get back to being human again.Maybe I can’t. Maybe this is how I’ll be forever.
The body of my kidnapper lay under a pile of bricks and boards. I stared down at him from a long way up. I didn’t know if he was dead or just unconscious, but I didn’t care either way. What had happened to my body, changing into thisthing, literally brought the house down on him.
“How trite,” I muttered, looking around for anything that seemed familiar or could tell me where I was.
Vehicle lights in the distance informed me of the highway not far away. Okay, that’s a start. I didn’t know the area at all, but could I possibly find my way home. The kidnapper’s truck sat parked, and seemingly undamaged from falling rubble. Of course, thisthingI’d become couldn’t possibly fit into it, much less drive it.
I sucked in a deep breath. “Calm down,” I told myself. “Think. This didn’t happen by accident. Whatever you are, it’s a part of you. Don’t question how or why or think it’s impossible. Obviously, it’s possible.”
I looked again at my kidnapper, observing blood seeping from his skull. He's dead, I suspected, and didn't bother to feel guilty. What he’d planned for me surpassed all possible remorse for what I did to him. I glanced around again, seeing thickets of trees, weedy fields, broken fences.Away from the city where no one would hear me scream.
The sudden urge to step on the asshole’s body came and went. I had to think of how to return to two legs, hands, regular feet. Calming my anger, my fear, I focused my thoughts on being human – two legs, hands, regular feet –
Instantly, it happened.
