click here for chapter 1 of Metamorph
METAMORPH CHAPTER 2
“Members of the press, thank you for coming today” He began, “Please give your attention to Secretary Mullins for an important announcement regarding a new program being offered here at the center”. The Director motioned for Mullins to come forward. Mullins carried himself with a great amount of confidence. He seemed to have that air about him that suggested authority and strength. He cleared his throat and took a sip of water then began speaking to the crowd.
“This new program, called the Metamorphic Identification Program, is a compulsory program for a specific subset of the American society. Most people will not be affected in any way, but a handful will need to report to their local Health Department to meet with our surveyors.”
“Sir, how do we know who has to report and can you explain what a Metamorphic is?” asked a young reporter near the front. This had to be his first press conference because generally questions were held to the end. However, Mullins didn’t look at all peeved and answered him in stride.
“Sure, Kyle,” He said looking at his name tag. “I was just getting there. A metamorphic is a mutation living in the blood of some people. Something about their blood has made them have specific skills or abilities that allow them to do things that most of us would find impossible. We need these people to report to us so we can isolate the difference and make sure it is not a threat to our health and safety. If we do find it is a threat we will work diligently to find a cure, if not, we will merely catalog their ability and that will be the end of it. Either way, there are no ill repercussions for those who come forward.”
No repercussions my ass. I’d read the memo and I knew all that Mullins wasn’t saying. I had to get out of here before I fell apart completely.
“I’d now like to open the floor to questions.” He finished as nearly everyone’s hand shot up. Now was as good a time as any to sneak out. I touched Jay’s face softly, whispering goodbye and started winding my way through the crowd toward the door. As I moved from the back I saw the sunken socket lady leave the room, I just hoped she was going to the bathroom because I didn’t want to see anyone as I left.
I reached the hallway and walked with a purpose, swift and steady but from behind I heard quickly shuffling feet.
“Magda, are you ok?” Jay asked as he caught up to me, “Are you sick or something?”
“No Jay,” I whispered. “I just need to get out of here. Go back to the press room, I’ll call you later.”
But as I rounded the corner, who did I see waiting half way down the hallway but the creepy woman. I stopped abruptly when I saw her then swore internally for giving myself away. Surely she’d know I wasn’t just on my way to powder my nose.
I quickly began walking again trying to pretend to listen to the words coming from Jay’s mouth.“I don’t understand what they’re doing in there, the Libertarians are going to have a field day with this,” he was saying. I didn’t hear anything after that however; the sound of his voice was drowned out by a loud buzzing in my right ear. Then from no where a sharp pain struck my head fiercely and resonated down the entire side of my body. Reacting to the pain I grabbed at my head momentarily then immediately regretted it. Sockets now had a knowing smile spreading across her thin severe mouth. I tried my best to act normal as I continued on my way down the hallway but ignoring the pain and noise was becoming nearly impossible. Sweat was starting to bead my forehead and drip into my eyes as I forced my feet to move one after the other.
Jay was looking at me concerned as I moved sluggishly closer to Sockets. The pain and noise intensified as she stared harder at me and I knew there was only one thing to do. I didn’t want any evidence of what was going to happen so I flicked my eyes to the wall on my left where the security camera was mounted. I focused hard and made the screw loosen at the joint so the camera shifted downward and focused on the floor. I did this so subtly that neither Sockets nor Jay noticed it. Then suddenly the pain reared its ugly head. It moved all through my body and seemed to be burning in my veins. I moaned, gasping at its intensity and stumbled into the wall. I placed my hand on the smooth hard surface to steady myself.
“You wanna play?” I asked Sockets weakly, who was now only a few feet in front of me and clearly blocking my way.
“What on earth are you doing Mag?” Jay whispered fiercely.
Sockets nodded, smiling a sick smile and then I did the only thing I could think to do. I couldn’t take her down outright, I didn’t want to give myself away, but I could take her down in a round about way and I needed to do it fast because I felt a fainting spell on the horizon.
I grabbed my sling back with my free hand and flung it at Socket Lady as hard as I could. But as it flew I focused my will on the shoe and gave it better aim and force than it would have had otherwise. It struck her squarely in the forehead with a force that knocked her out cold. She crumpled to the floor with a dull thud and immediately the pain stopped.
“That’s much better,” I said, breathing more steadily. I glanced over to Jay who was standing, open mouth, staring at me.
“Jay, I’ll explain, I promise.” I said pulling him toward Socket Lady’s limp body. I dragged my nails across my face leaving large red marks and a small trail of blood.
“What the hell are you doing?” Jay shrieked, grabbing at my arms and trying to restrain me.
“Jay, have you ever known me to be anything but sane?” I asked him pointedly.
“No. Until now, that is.” he said, looking at me angrily.
“Then please trust me. I want the other cameras to see the scratches on my face and I need your help. Do you have that stupid knife thingy you always keep in your pocket?” Jay nodded looking even more confused,”
“You’re not going to kill her Mag, I won’t let you.” I shook my head at him and blew my hair from my eyes in exasperation.
“I’m not going to kill her. I need you to cut yourself and I NEED YOU TO TRUST ME!” I said that last part rather fiercely. Jay’s eyes were wide with shock and uncertainty but he complied and pulled the knife from his pants pocket. He fiddled with it a moment trying to get it open and got ready to cut himself on the top of his arm.
“Not there, someplace no one will see, and not deep. I just need a little blood. Do please hurry!” I whispered frantically at him. His hands were shaking as he tried to steady the knife on the flesh of his stomach.
“I can’t do it, you do it!”I groaned grabbing the knife and gently, but quickly as I could, I cut a thin superficial line across his belly. He winced slightly but kept silent otherwise. I picked up Socket Lady’s limp hand and rubbed his blood on her tips, then as gross as it was, I positioned her fingers in a claw and then raked them gently down his side.
“Why are you doing this!” he asked alarmed. I let her hand drop with an unpleasant plop and after examining the scene for a quick moment I decided it looked ok. I stood, pulling Jay with me, and led him through the corridors to the service entrance. Thankfully no one was around, so we left unnoticed.
Once outside I led him to the right side of the building where we stood outside the view of any security cameras. My face was still bleeding and Jay looked white as a sheet.
“Mag, what the hell is wrong with you!” He yelled at me.
“Jay, Jay listen to me. I’m one of them, whatever they’re calling us. I’m a Metamorph. I can’t tell you anymore but Jay, he wasn’t telling the truth in there. He intends to intern us and study us. It even said something about Military uses. I saw it in a memo on the Directors desk this morning.” Jay gave me a perplexed, disbelieving stare.
“Don’t look at me like that! I needed to borrow a pencil. It doesn’t matter. Listen, I guess our blood has something to do with it, that’s why I used yours. Just in case they check it. If they ask, you say she attacked me and I left upset, you came with me to make sure I was ok then you called security.”
“But I didn’t call security.” He said confused.
“Jay, you WILL call security just as soon as you go back.” I said, exasperated. Then as an after thought I raked my nails across his hand.
“Why’d you do that!” he yelped.
“Just in case they check close enough and realize the sample I left on her was male.” I answered.
“Ok, but why did you attack that woman?”
“She was doing something to me, she was in my head. Wow, she was a monster Jay. And she could tell what I was too; she was trying to stop me. Listen, I have to go into hiding. They’re going to start checking the blood networks in a couple of weeks to make sure no one is missed and I can’t be around when that happens. Thank God Wyvern hasn’t had his blood sampled yet.” I started pacing back and forth wondering what to do next.
“Jay, after you call security I need you to go inside to HR and get my file from Sylvia. Tell her you need to write up an incident report for what happened, and then remove anything in there that mentions my maternity leave or Wyvern. Also, stop by my office and remove everything in there that suggests I have a child. They cannot know he exists or they may go after him too.”
“Magda, you can’t be serious about this. This is America.” Jay said trying to reason with me.
“Jay! Look around you! Look at yourself. I’ve been pretending to date you for 6 months for Christ sakes! This isn’t the same place it used to be. Now go, please! Please, you have to do this for me. If they ask you deny everything, if they find it’s your sample I left then tell them you didn’t realize you’d been scratched in the fight. And if all else fails just cry and tell them I threatened you. I don’t care. Just do it, and for God’s Sake get away from this place.”
I grabbed him and held him hard to me. I would miss him.
His lips brushed my cheek softly and he breathed in my hair…”if only you were a boy,” he whispered.
“If only you liked girls,” I laughed back. I kissed him one last time on the cheek and ran for the bus.
rough draft but I thought I’d post it. I am still editing.
I walked briskly down the hallway, my brown Kate Spade sling backs echoing against the hard cool floor. Jeez, I had paid nearly $200 for these shoes and now they just didn’t seem practical. I wouldn’t be able run in these shoes if it came to it. Came to what? I wasn’t quite sure myself but I knew it was bad.
As I walked, I did my best to keep my eyes ahead of me, trying to ignore the blood pounding in my head as I made my way toward the pressroom. It was pulsing at my temple and I was sure everyone I passed could see it. See the blood that apparently gave me away, the mark that made me “Metamorphic“, whatever that meant. I smoothed my suit skirt down and adjusted my jacket one last time before I entered the press room of the Center for Assimilation. I took a deep breath to center myself, then I walked in to join the crowd and potentially my doom.
This could have been like any other day, but I found the memo on the Director‘s desk, I saw what they would be saying today and I was afraid. I felt very much like I was walking into my own little gallows.
I’m only a Junior Psychologist here at the Center and having just graduated with a Masters in Psychology I had slim pickings for an entry level position. Originally, the Center was meant to be a filtering ground for new patriots to ease their way into American society. We did things like offering classes like English, History and Political Science. My job was to teach about the American culture and to help the high status refugees adjust to living in a strange new country.
In the beginning I felt like my purpose was to help people, but when William Richter won the Presidency the Center started to take a sinister turn. At first it started with the suppression of certain speech in the Political Science classes. Then it turned into the mandatory English proficiency tests that had to be passed before entrance into the US was allowed. Gradually, I felt like I worked for a xenophobic tyrannical arm of some hostile foreign government. Many of my refugee families were left waiting in limbo while they tried to master the English language so they could pass into the country. At least we gave them lodgings while they waited, though those were meager at best and had gotten us on the radar of Human Rights Watch. And I worked for these people!
I had thought about quitting, but as I saw the open employment slots filling with Richter supporters, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. These new employees seemed to have little regard for those different from them and I knew I might be one of the only people here that could give comfort and hope to those passing through. Plus I had Wyvern to support. There was no way I could support myself and a two-year old without a decent paying job and great benefits.
My boss and I had hit it off so well that he’d offered me the job during the first interview, before I‘d even realized I was pregnant. So when the little pink line showed up a month later I felt both scared and relieved. I knew that I would be taken care of financially but I had no idea how I was going to take care of my baby by myself. So I called Chigger to see if he wanted to move in.
Chigger is my step brother and the closest thing I have to family. He is a free spirited hippy type that has a Masters in some obscure field. Incredibly smart, but really just a big kid which never went over well with his employers. Showing up to work unshaven in your pajamas wasn’t going to get you on the fast track to tenured professorship. So I offered him food and lodging in exchange for caring for the new baby. He was able to play responsible fun uncle during Wyvern’s waking hours and during naps and downtime he worked on one of his many manuscripts.
It worked out well for both of us and I felt like my little world was almost perfect. Only almost because I was a single parent and a boy needs a father. But Wyvern’s father still didn’t know I’d had his child and I‘d been trying to find the right way to tell him for the last 3 years. Nevertheless, I was happy with almost.
However, now my little almost perfect life was in jeopardy. I had seen the memo talking about the blood, talking about the anomaly of it. I had just learned from that memo that there were others like me out there, I wasn’t alone. I guess we’d all hid our “difference” so well from the world that we all thought we were the only ones, but that would soon be over when this conference began. I moved toward the back corner trying to calm my racing heart. When I had seen the memo earlier that morning my instinct told me that I should have pled sick and got out of dodge for good. Unfortunately my boss grabbed me for a particularly distraught woman who I’d been working with for the last 3 months. She and I had great rapport and I couldn’t leave her to be jeered at by my nasty co-workers.
I couldn’t leave my boss either. I knew Jay, or Dr. Malick as he was known, would not survive here without me as much as I couldn’t without him. Like I said, it had been different in the beginning but now, in just three short years, things were becoming less and less…tolerant of things considered abnormal. The anomalies. Us.
His problem was not so severe as mine for the moment, he was only a homosexual and gradually started to hide that from everyone but me. As more people left and new ones came in he could see the meanness in their eyes as they looked at him suspiciously, so he begged me to pretend to date him and throw them off his scent. At first I thought this was ridicules, this was America after all! Land of the free, home of the brave. But these days people seemed more scared than brave and from where I stood in the Center, considerably less free. I started to see what he was seeing at the top as it trickled down and took away my co-workers, replacing them with Richter drones. People who did, said, and believed whatever our “beloved” leader did.
So Jay and I started “dating“, it was a free meal and he and I had such an easy relationship that it wasn’t hard for me to fake lovey eyes at him when others were looking. The heat on him died down, but it was about to come at me in a full force inferno. As much as Jay loved and respected me, I was doubtful he’d ever be able to protect me. Maybe I was being paranoid, maybe they’d never guess about me. One could hope…
I sidled through the crowd and nudged next to him where he was standing at the back near the emergency exit. The room was filled with media from every station and every country imaginable. I waited, a trickle of sweat sliding down my temple. I tucked a stray lock of my dark pageboy haircut behind my ear for the billionth time and then started chewing my lip, a nervous habit I’ve always had.“What is it?” Jay asked noticing me chewing on my face. I just shrugged and shook my head ever so slightly telling him now wasn’t the time. He didn’t know my secret and I was safer with no one knowing, if I was safe at all. However, if it came down to it, I may have to confide in him so he could protect Wyvern.
The Director of the Center walked into the room followed by a man in a non-descript blue suit who was accompanied by a tall very thin woman with deep set dark eyes. Something about her gave me the creeps, but then again I was strung so tightly I think just about anybody who looked at me wrong would freak me out.“What’s the Secretary of the Interior doing here,” Jay whispered with a furrowed confused look playing across his dark features.
Jay was one of those gay men that you knew was put on the earth just to taunt women. He was beautiful, with a dark olive complexion and piercing blue eyes that danced when he smiled. His shoulder length hair was pulled into a tight pony tail at the nape of his neck and his thin wire glasses just added to his “sexy professor” look. Too bad he liked boys..sigh.“That guy? You are such a geek for knowing that. What does the Secretary of Interior even do?” I whispered at him, I was doing my best to try to seem normal even if I was terrified on the inside. I nudged at him playfully. I did things like that occasionally in public to boost the appearance of our fake relationship.“Department of the Interior controls things like cultural preservation and natural resources. I think the Bureau of Indian Affairs is a sub agency too.”
Visions of Indian boarding schools, cruel and forced assimilations and the Trail of Tears ran through my head. Jeez, I was in trouble.
As the Director stepped to the Podium the crowds din fell to a whispered hush and was replaced by the snapping of cameras and popping of flashes.
