Some days you wake up feelin kinda funky and you don't know why. Other days its clearly because you suddenly have huge wings and a tail.
Believe me, I know. I have absolutely woken up feeling funky for no reason.
Just kidding, yes I know about the wings and tail thing too.
Wednesday morning I suddenly had some additions. I woke up when my little Kitty-boo made a squeaking noise like a scream crushed down hard. (Yes I know being in love makes a girl use stupid baby names, not the main issue right now.) I opened my eyes and said. "What's up, baby?"
"Sam, I need you to not move." My girl said softly, obviously near shock from fear.
I thought maybe I had a black widow on me or something. So I didn't even move as much as I already was. I froze completely and said, "Okay, Kitty, what is it?" I tried not to even move my mouth and just talk out the corner.
"I don't want you to get scared or shocked Sam, but something happened in the night." Cat began.
"What, babe? What happened, are you okay?" I asked.
"I was, Sammy. Now I don't know. I woke up all warm and happy, I was having the best dream. About the wizard of Oz. But it was better, more realer. And I woke up on what I thought was a soft warm fluffy pillow. But it wasn't a pillow Sam. It was your... your wing, Sam. Sam, you have wings."
I jumped out of bed, my wings fully extended in surprise. Which made the 'no I don't' I almost said pretty ridiculous. They were about ten feet across, and they did look pretty soft and fluffy, more angel wings than bird wings. Except they were mainly gray and golden brown. Getting darker toward the top edge, and lighter in the down. I had down! The ugly duckling seems to have become a freaky swan.
I turned and turned, trying to get a look at my wings.
My girl made another 'eep' sound.
"What? I asked.
And that was when we discovered I also had a tail. There was now a fuzzy little happy trail about the width of my backbone that went all the way down my spine from my hairline to my brand new tail:
It was almost as big around as my wrist at the base, narrowing a bit along the length, but not much.
It was about two inches longer than my legs. So just the fat end of it lay on the floor when I held it straight, but unless I concentrated, it kind of moved around on its own behind me like a counterweight.
I had complete conscious control of it. But if I didn't think about it, it just kinda did its own thing back there like a furry python rooted to my spine.
That was another thing, it was much more prehensile than even a monkey's tail, more like a large snake.
The last five or six inches of it didn't have any fur, but were a bit thicker than most of it and the skin was dark brown. So you couldn't tell it was bare from a distance. The skin was thick, like a callus, but smooth and about as sensitive as the palm of my hand. Not quite finger tip but more than regular skin especially the furred skin of the rest of it.
I couldnt think of any benefits of it being sensitive immediately but the fact that it was solid bone and thicker than the length, if not the base, it seemed like at the very least I would have an extra fist growing out of the base of my spine if i needed it.
As if this wasn't all strange enough; when I grabbed it to look at it closely I noticed something I had overlooked in the excitement of having wings now.
My calves and forearms were covered in long silky fluffy hair like cashmere leg and arm warmers. Not that I'd ever wear either of those.
"Ohhh, I told you not to say all those bad swears Sam." My love said, anxious and maybe about to cry.
"What do you mean, baby?" I asked.
"I told you not to use all those bad swears. I told you to be nice to people. I told you not to torrent those movies. But you always gotta know what's best and now you're a demon. You're a demon from always doing bad things and I want my Sammy back." She started to cry for real then.
"I'm right here Kitten, right here. I'm still me. There's just more of me to love." I tried to joke, but she wasn't buying it.
"Its not the same, now that you're a demon you will have to serve your dark masters and go out corrupting innocents or whatever." She wailed.
"Cat, I'm no different inside than I ever was. And thinking I'm going to turn into a demon for swearing or torrenting movies is the same as saying I'd go to hell for being gay." I said.
"Now who's being ridiculous?" She cried, even though I'd never said she was being ridiculous. "You say that turning into a demon for real bad stuff you do. On top of what, lets be honest, is a pretty rude selfish personality; is the same as God punishing you for who you love. Who he made you to love and obviously wants you to."
"I'm sorry, you're right. Bad example. What I'm saying is if demons exist, which I can't say I believe one way or another. But if they do. People don't just turn into demons. Any more than they don't turn into angels or turn into frogs. Because they are different things. Even if you believe people turn into angels or demons when they die, I'm still alive. And, I must say, it seems to me much more realistic that they are completely different species. Because it seems to be pretty well established across religions that they predate people." I said, trying to make her feel better first and foremost. Not even sure if any of this was my opinion, let alone the truth. It wasn't something I thought about much. And truth was not my priority. Making my love feel better was.
"How do you explain it then? It's not like you're a flying monkey. Like in my Oz dream." Cat said.
"Its as likely as that I'm a demon." I replied.
"Have you seen your nails this morning? Or your teeth for that matter? Demon talons and fangs. Without a doubt." Cat accused, seeming almost like she thought this covered everything.
I actually hadn't. I looked down and there was no denying my nails were longer, thicker and pointed, they also were a sort of greyish brown, lighter near the tips. A lot like my wings. But more dust brown darkening to near black while my wings were golden eagle brown to dove gray.
And my teeth; I didn't want to let go of Cat to look in the mirror but my tongue told me I was packing something in the neighborhood of a vampire. Except I also had slightly shorter fatter ones on the bottom as well.
"Wait," I said, finally catching up through the haze of my confusion waking up like this. "You had a wizard of oz dream, where I was a flying monkey. You wake up to find me with wings and a tail and you go to demon before you go to flying monkey? Many monkeys have claws instead of nails, most have carnivore fang canines, they have prehensile tails. My wings are feathered and my tail is furry. Don't demons have bat wings and naked or scaly tails with a point on the end?"
"You kind of have like a point." Cat said. But you could tell she was really thinking about what I said. "But I've been having Oz dreams for years, and you have been in them as a flying monkey almost since I've met you."
"Hmmm," I hmmmed. I kinda had to agree that as crazy as it sounded it was maybe more likely that the two were not related than that she would have a recurring dream of the future but that it wouldn't include me until we'd met.
"But," I began, when something occurred to me. "Now we may never know why this happened. It still feels like a dream. But there are questions that we can answer. Like, if I have wings maybe I can fly?"
This stopped the crying and the arguing. "Sam! Do you think you really could?" She said excited before some thought hit her and she sobered instantly. "Your wings are enormous Sam, but not when compared to your body size. Its not anywhere near the wing to body comparison of any of the big birds."
"Are you calling me fat?" I joked.
But she took me seriously. "Well you aren't skinny, Sam. You may be nothing like fat but you have to admit that when compared to me and Tori, you and Jade are curvier. And you'd have to be like skeleton skinny and have hollow bones to fly. I'm pretty sure whatever gave you wings did not give you hollow bones."
"Okay, baby. I think we can agree that I can't fly scientifically. But I cant have feathered wings scientifically either. And maybe whatever magic that was in the air is still around or left a little bit behind inside me. If I have wings for a reason, its not insane to think that reason is almost certainly to fly." I mused.
"Well even if you can fly. Which is almost mind bogglingly unlikely. But even if you could. You almost definitely couldn't carry someone. Even if they were smaller than you, and were wishing real hard." She said sadly.
And then it hit me. She was a little worried that if I could fly and she couldn't she'd be jealous and it would come between us. Even though if it did it would be unintentional. "Well there's only one way to find out." I took her hand and headed outside.
No matter how hard I flapped I couldn't lift off. I could feel it pulling but it just wasn't strong enough.
So I tried jumping, I tried running and jumping.
I sorted out that it would assist, sort of like a chicken flying. I could now jump maybe fifteen feet high and maybe a breadth of twenty feet, but nothing that could be more than jokingly called flying.
On the positive side I was definitely stronger and could grab Cat and run with her with no discernible slowing and when I jumped with her it took so little off it was almost unnoticeable.
It wasn't flying, but my girl did like it. And kept wanting to do it again.
We also discovered; when we jumped first from our roof, then from another one that was twelve stories about half a mile away.
My wings slowed me down enough that from any reasonable height would land no differently than if I jumped.
Later, when we went into the canyon, where there were good thermal updrafts; we found out I could glide and soar almost as good as a hang glider.
And a lot of people asked for our autographs convinced that we were making a movie.
It was at this point that we learned most of the electronics were down. No cell reception or internet. We heard excuses from sunspots to electromagnetic pulse weaponry from our enemies; although no one could say who. But as soon as they discovered we didn't have working phones or a working camera and we were just 'practicing and testing the props' They became much more friendly on every subject.
When I heard everyones tv was also down. I called it a day and rushed us home.
I ran in and turned the tv on, but all I could get was one channel showing a documentary about birds.
I called to Cat who was in the other room that the only thing showing was this bullshit stupid bird program. There was an instant hiccup where the channel switched over to a journalist saying 'Hey." Funny coincidence but I wasn't able to find that station again.
For a split second I was hoping we might get some answers. But it looked like that was a pipe-dream, at least for now.
Turned out Cat wanted to watch the stupid bird program anyway.
At least these were nice birds. Not that creepy ass Duck Channel she likes. Presenting statistics like over 50% of duck mating is rape and almost 14% is necrophilia as if these were just normal statistics one might expect to find with any animal in nature. Instead of horrors only surpassed by the elephant seal where all mating is gang rape and the female dies under her blubbery assailants about 20% of the time.
My girl does not need to have more aberrant and abhorrent behavior presented to her as normal. Thanks to her brother, the difference between normal and outrageously offensive is not her strong suit on the best of days.
But what happened next would have stretched anybody's incredulity.
I went to turn the tv off and suddenly it switched channels between several shows none of which was the bird movie. Saying 'Hey! -Don't touch that- sit tight- for more information.'
Cat looked poleaxed and pointed at the tv.
"Yeah, that was weird." I said, "But we can't just put our faith in some weird tv thing. We need to sort out what the heck is happening. The tv thing has to be either a practical joke or a weird coincidence." I said.
"Says- the girl with- the- wings and tail." The tv replied, switching channel to channel.
"Okay tv. You tell us whats going on." I said, maybe a little snarky. But I think it was fair to say I was under some stress.
"Not- for me to say- young lady. -I am- only me. -You will be told when it is time. -Or- will- figure it out- if you re-ally think." And it turned off.
"What the fuck?" I said turning to Cat. "He tells me not to turn him off, yet then he turns himself off. He says he is only himself but he doesn't say who that is. Do you think there's an alien in our tv? Or an artificial intelligence beamed down from an alien?"
Then my kitten said the most bizarre thing. "We have to think about it logically." As if she was the world's leading champion of logical thought.
She continued, "Obviously, something has happened.
There are two kinds of supernatural. Alien, sci-fi, extra-planetary supernatural. And 'natural', magical, ghosts and witches, earthly supernatural.
Now you didn't wake up half robot and integrated into a cybernetic hive mind. You woke up with wings and a tail. While you can't fly, you can fly a damn sight better than a 125 pound girl with another fifty pounds of wings should. Still points to magic more than aliens to me. And the tv. Did it seem like an alien civilization trying to communicate? Or did it seem alive? It sure spoke perfect English and I did notice it sometimes switched channels for one word, when his meaning would have been clear, if choppy, without it. That doesn't sound like someone struggling to communicate with a new language. That sounds like a machine coming to life.
That's two votes for magic, none for aliens."
"Oh, Kitty, baby, only you would say we have to think about this logically and then move straight into arguing magic versus aliens."
"Having an open mind is the key foundation stone of a science. I agree I'm not exactly logical, or meticulous. I don't really have that sort of brain. But I can still understand and interpret my own experience." Cat explained.