CHANGE
Rochester, Minnesota
Present Day
Rain falls down during a chilly night in September. Thunder rumbles in the distance, but heavy rainfall blocks the flashes of lightning. Several miles outside of the city in the wide open spaces, the world seems deserted at this hour. The atmosphere is threatening yet comforting, as nature shows its presence. Straight roads cross the farmlands, but not a living soul is riding them. No one is on his way home or driving away from it. Then again, in this weather, who would want to get out? Then, in the distance a light appears, something that seems to be only one headlight. A bright shimmering reflects in the water on the roads as the sound of the engine increases. It's not an ordinary engine, not just a simple sound like those modern Korean cars produce these days. Actually, it's not even a car. A black Harley Davidson rides through the night, roaring like a lion. Its headlight makes the chrome sparkle brightly as the classic motorbike leaves a trail of water spraying up from the back tire. The black paintjob shines despite the dark surroundings, proud and majestic. It's obvious the owner of this beauty takes good care of her. It's the type of bike you would expect an old rocker to ride. The kind that listens to Metallica, has big whiskers, long hair and a beard, who rides from bar to bar, consuming nothing but fastfood and beer. Nevertheless this lucky Harley is ridden by a young woman. Her rider seems to be in a hurry; despite the slippery roads, she speeds down 75th street NW a 100 miles an hour. But then, this woman and her Harley have all reason to hurry. She tries to focus on the road ahead, but keeps glancing in her back mirror, checking if she's being followed. The sharp pain in her side keeps her awake as she muddles to herself. How could she be so damn stupid? She knows this kind, she knows how they operate, and yet she was caught off guard. She was totally prepared and ready, but somehow something changed between this encounter and the one before. The suburb of Rochester appears in the south; she's almost there. She bends over her bike and clamps one arm around her waist.
"Son of a bitch", she curses, fighting the pain that shoots through her body.
She refuses to look down and keeps herself together. Hopefully it's not too bad, she can't risk going to a hospital. It's during moments like these she regrets falling in love with her 94' Harley Davidson Road King, because a much faster bike like a modern Yamaha would be much more convenient at the moment. She follows the road, which is shadowed by trees along side as she trespasses through the small town called Douglas. Again she looks in her back mirror, but there's nothing behind her. In front of her she sees several cars and trucks driving up Route 52. A sigh of relief escapes from her lips; she's back in the civilized world. She turns right just before the highway and speeds up again on the road parallel to it. Finally she sees the motel in the distance. A building with a large neon light number '6' on the roof is located on the right side of the road. The bike slows down as it approaches their place for the night.
She parks her Harley in front of the motel and turns off ignition. Not as elegant as she normally does, she gets of her bike and heads towards the entrance of the motel. With her right hand in her painful side she stumbles across the parking lot as she takes off her helmet. A flash of lightning lights up the area and is reflected on the cars parked in front. For a split second she thinks she sees a shadow standing in the rain. Quickly she turns towards it, but it's gone. Instinctively her hand goes for the gun on her waistband. Alert she scans on her surroundings, her intuition tells her that she's not alone. Nervously she looks over her shoulder, trying to convince herself that she's paranoid. He wouldn't come out here and follow her by car, that would be insane, he'd be too exposed. She lets go of the gun and makes a run for it. Hastily she enters the motel and closes the door behind her. It's warm inside, country music plays in the background. Standing in the light the hallway makes her feel a bit more comfortable. Which is total crap of course; if he wanted, he could strike right here, right now. An old man behind the counter looks up from his paper, glancing over his reading glasses. An empty beer bottle decorates his desk along with some paper wraps which once beheld a Wendy's cheeseburger. She stares at the paper wrap for a moment; hell, she would die for one of those.
"You're behind in payment, Mrs. Johnson", the old man notifies bored.
She throws a Mastercard on the desk, which the motel manager takes with a straight face without thanking her politely.
"I'm afraid I'll have to charge you the extra night too. It's way past check out", he claims.
"No worries, book two more, I'll be sticking around for a few more days", she sighs.
"Business taking longer than expected, huh?", he comments while working the computer.
"Something like that, yeah", she answers vaguely.
She's glad he doesn't have any further questions, she's not in the mood for a chat with the fossil. She looks outside, a bit out of breath, her face tensed. The motel manager glances over his screen every once in a while, observing her. The black leather biker jacket she's wearing is wet through, but it doesn't seem to bother her. Her brown straight hair is shoulder length, her dark eyes seem worried. A young woman, he's surprised she's married at such a young age. She doesn't really seem like the marrying type and he has seen a lot come and go. She looks pale, as if she's ill or carrying a weight upon her shoulders, who knows? He doesn't bother to ask. Despite her slim figure, she seems like a person you don't want to mess with.
"Here ye go", he hands her back her Mastercard, "You know the way".
She nods, picks up her helmet from the desk and walks down the hallway. As she enters room number 82, shetakes off her jacket carefully and hastens to the bathroom. When she looks in the mirror, she's unpleasantly surprised by the bloodstain on her grey shirt. As she lifts it up, the fabric keeps sticking to her skin and feels anything but pleasant. Then she reveals a bullet wound underneath, several inches to the right of her bellybutton.
"Crap", she curses.
Carefully she takes off her shirt, grabs a towel and wipes away the blood around the wound with some water, after which she stumbles back to the bedroom. Still pressing the towel against her side, she takes a duffel bag from under her bed which beholds a small briefcase. She puts it down on the table in the corner of the room and sits down on the chair. A sigh escapes from her lips; then she opens the lid. Inside she finds surgical equipment, bandages, stitches, sterilizers, tape, painkillers and more. Enough medical equipment to do a minor surgery. For a moment she swallows apprehensively; this is gonna get nasty.
"Hell, I'm not doing this alone", she whispers to herself.
Next to her bed, a bottle of whiskey lurks at her. With a moan she gets up, grabs the bottle and the glass next to it, turns on the radio on the cabin and walks back to the table, where she halts, facing the mirror inside the briefcase. As she fills up the glass with alcohol she grabs a forceps as the first tones of About A Girl preformed by Nirvana come through the speakers. With the bottle of whiskey standby on the table and the forceps in her hand, she clears her throat and sighs; "here goes nothing". The pain increases as the forceps slowly enters her body. With her eyes focused on her reflection in the mirror and her jaw clamped together she tries to reach the bullet. She groans softly, fighting the intense pain, trying to maintain herself. It's that she doesn't wanna draw any attention, otherwise she would scream out at the top of her lungs. Then she feels something solid. While tears burn in her eyes, she tries to get a hold of it, then she carefully pulls back and drops the bullet in the glass. Quickly she grabs the whiskey and takes a few large swigs, after which she breathes out.
"Hell, that hurts", she mumbles, placing the bottle back on the table with a loud bang.
The worst part is done, but she's not quite finished yet. Again she takes the almost empty bottle and pours the last bit of whiskey into the wound. It takes a few seconds before the high amount of alcohol sinks in, but when the heavily burning pain comes to her, she can't keep her mouth shut. And the one thing that really pisses her off right now; she's out of whiskey. Frustrated she walks back and forth through the room while the pain fades away. After several minutes she finally calms down and strolls back to the briefcase on the table, takes the thread and stitch scissors and finishes the job. She doesn't even feel much pain of the stitch needle piercing her skin, it feels like a tickle compared to the damn forceps. She tapes in her waist, cleans up an stumbles to the bathroom. Again she looks in the mirror.
"Well hello, Sunshine", she moans sarcastic when she discovers the bags under her eyes, her ran down make up and messy hair.
She looks like crap and that's an understatement. But considering she just got shot, she's lucky she's not seeing the reflection of a ghost. She bends over the sink and opens up the faucet. Water circles down the drain and feels refreshing when she splashes it in her face. Her hands lean on the sink as the water streams down her skin, for a moment she opens her mouth and closes her eyes. What a night, what the hell happened out there? Where did she go wrong? She found the pattern, she found the next victim, at least she thought she did. She turns around and slowly walks back to the main room. The interior of the motel is rather boring, but the bed is nice and she has a television. She was pleasantly surprised when she discovered this motel also has an outdoor pool, but she can forget swimming with her new war wound. She stops by the bed, where a whole bunch of newspaper articles, pictures, books, blue prints, maps and a Macbook are spread out over the mattress, as some sort of mind map. An outsider would think that this so called Mrs. Johnson is a murder investigator, an FBI agent maybe. Undercover that is, because what investigator or fed would ride a Harley in full leather? But she is neither of that. In fact, her name isn't even Mrs. Johnson. Biting her lip, she tries to find some sort of link, an explanation for what happened tonight. Terry Cliffer, the dude she expected to be the next target, turned out to already be one. Somehow her guy was on to her or made a change of plans for some reason, but what triggered it? Or maybe this is nothing like she has ever seen before, maybe this is really out of the ordinary.
"For as far as my cases aren't", she mumbles.
She picks up two articles, both from the local paper the Post-Bulletin. One is about a murderer with an iron clad alibi and one tiny report of a strange robbery. Both incidents took place during the same night, both suspects were caught on surveillance cameras, both have alibis and both don't fit the profile of a killer and a thief. Two separate mysteries for the local police, one crystal clear case for a hunter. Until now, that is.
"Crap", she curses, knowing that she's one step behind on her guy.
Then there's that other question, maybe one of even bigger importance; how the hell did he shift that fast? She picks up a book from her bed and reads the passage again, which is titled "Shapeshifting".
"'Shapeshifting is a common theme in mythology and folklore. In its broadest sense, it is a metamorphosis (change in the physical form or shape) of a person. Shapeshifting involves physical changes such as alterations of age, gender, race, or general appearance or changes between human form', Great, like I didn't know that", she sighs.
Still standing up she leafs through the book, trying to find what she's looking for.
"Forms of shapeshifting, powers, punitive changes, needed items, yada yada yada. Damn it! Where the hell is it!", she throws the book back on the bed, sits down and grabs her Macbook.
Concentrated she starts up her internet browser and looks up her archives. After a bit of searching, she finally finds what she's looking for.
"Shifting progress. The shifting progress takes several hours, but can be fastened by the shapeshifter itself, by …. Oh, that's just gross", she stares at her screen full of disgust.
It might be gross, but that's what's going on. Something disturbed him, but she's not sure if she was the one who did. Thinking of it, she didn't give herself away when they made an appointment, he couldn't have known. She must go back to the roots of this case for this all to make sense. She knows at least five people are connected to each other. Five people who don't work together, who don't live close by, but there's one thing they have in common; they've all been at the 110th Ave NW just outside Rochester during the last month. So her shifter must be hiding somewhere along that road, somewhere… She opens a satellite picture of the area on her Mac and observes the houses alongside that road. The houses are spread out, have long driveways or even their own street, it would take months to figure it out and he would be long gone by then. A few days ago she thought she had a lead. She figured the shapeshifter has to leave his crime scenes fast. All the tracks just vanished into thin air, so it seemed, but when she took a better look, she discovered the shapeshifter uses the sewer system to travel. More than 50% of the houses there aren't connected to the sewer system but have their own septic tanks, so she could write those off. Only nine houses of the remaining ones are empty. The problem is, that she already checked those homes; she's at a dead end.
"Come on, girl. What does your gut tell ya", she whispers to herself, while checking out the satellite photo and maps.
Her eyes capture one house, deep into the forest. It's not connected to the sewer system, but it's empty. It wouldn't make any sense for the shapeshifter to hide out in the woods miles from the sewer, but she has a feeling she might find something up there. Her intuition is the only thing she's going on right now; she has absolutely no lead.
"This is insane", she mumbles as she puts on a new top.
Insane, maybe. But she is not gonna sit on her ass and watch that son of a bitch get away with more murders. What concerns her is that most of the people he spied are now missing. They could be dead, but they could also be captured someplace and in that case, every second counts. This stops tonight, she has been hunting this dude way too long. Determined she grabs her stuff and leaves her room. Back into the dark night, back on the road, back into the hunting field…