WARNING: This story may cause insanity in its readers. For those in whom this is not a concern, read on (author's notes at the end).....

CALL OF QUINNTHULHU

"In deathless sleep, the Old Ones dream and lie in wait for the time when they shall rise again, for when the stars come right, they shall awaken from their aeon-old slumber. Then shall they return to hold dominion over our world once more, bringing woe and destruction onto mankind."

--Nox Arcana, Necronomicon

1.

"Just relax, Quinn," said Dr. Shar, "you won't feel a thing."

"Shouldn't I like be sudafed or something?"

"Of course not. This is a very delicate procedure, and won't hurt a bit."

"OW!"

"Oh, sorry. Hmmm.... you seem to have worms."

Sandi suddenly appeared above Quinn, looking down. "You have worms? That is, like, so gross."

"But... no one is suppose to know! I mean, no I don't have worms!"

Sandi glared down at her. "How could you lie to me, your best friend, and President of Lawndale's Fashion Club?"

"I don't have worms!" She gasped as Dr. Shar's gloved hand pulled out several writhing worms from an incision in her abdomen. "Those aren't mine! Those aren't mine!" She quickly closed a hospital gown over the incision, holding it shut. "Those aren't mine!"

"Gross, Quinn!" shouted a shocked Sandi.

Then Quinn saw an old, scraggly hippie friend of her mom's, dressed in a creepy black trench coat. At least he HAD been a friend until he tried to kill her, shortly before they moved to Lawndale. He looked at her, his eyes wild and disgusted as the day he tried to kill her, and pulled out the shotgun he had used then. "I've got to go!" she shouted. She got herself up and took off running as Sandi and Dr. Shar looked at her in fear and disgust. Not again! Not again!

She ran through the hospital, the same one she had spent so much time at in Highland, trying to keep the incision closed, but felt a few worms falling out from time to time anyway. She ran, hoping to stay ahead of the armed maniac. She stopped at a crossroad of open doctors' offices, trying to decide which way to run.

Then she noticed that every single person was reading Val magazine. On the cover was a picture of her. With her deformities. She saw the caption Teen Mutant Exposed! A dark look into the secret life of Quinn Morgendorffer, sister to the Anti-Teen. "No," she said. She shook her head as she noticed many were casting surreptitious glances, whispering among themselves. "No."

"There you are, you freak!"

Quinn took off blindly, without bothering to look at the man trying to kill her. She looked desperately for some escape, but she saw no exits. She was in an abyss of never-ending hallways with an armed maniac after her. He'd tried to kill her before and had almost succeeded. She'd only survived because she had surprised him. He wouldn't let her do that again. Aren't there any police or something!?

She stopped by a fire alarm and pulled the lever. The lights all went red, a siren blared, and emergency water sprinklers went off making her gown wet and the worms in her belly writhe excitedly, trying to get out. She took off running again as she saw the shadow of her pursuer at the end of the hall.

She opened an emergency stairway to see stairs going both up and down, barely visible in the dim red light. Up or down? she thought. She decided down was easier and rapidly descended the stairs, worms still falling from her. Only a couple of stories down and she heard the door she'd entered burst open and she knew the guy was still chasing her, tracking her by the worms that fell out of her. She began leaping down the stairs, but his footsteps got louder and louder, rapidly gaining.

Then the stairwell ended by a door with a pulsing dim red light. She struggled with the door, and just as she was about to scream in frustration, it opened into a dark basement. Even though it was dark, Quinn could see perfectly well. She shut the door and ran to the other side, past several containers. The smell of earth and water excited her somehow, but she kept running until she came to a cavern with a pool in it. She heard the door burst open behind her and she waded in, finally swimming underwater.

Quinn waited, underwater, breathing easily, staring up unblinking. A flashlight beam eventually lightened the dirty brown water covered with algae. It would likely hide her from him, though he might still shoot into the water. He was obsessed enough to do it, too.

Then the beam of the flashlight, which Quinn now saw was attached to the shotgun, aimed down into the water. He moved it around slowly. After awhile, the shotgun was no longer pointed at her at all, but further out. And Quinn struck.

Bursting out of the pool of water with shocking speed, She knocked his arm aside before he got off more than one shot. It went wide. Several worms, now gigantic tentacles, shot out of Her incision, wrapping around the human that dared to treat Her as prey. He would've screamed his terror and despair, but Her tentacles were wrapped as tightly around his throat as they were his arms and legs. She felt great pleasure in the squeezing that was crushing the life out of him.

Quinn suddenly realized she was awake in her bed, covered in sweat, making a haunting, inhuman noise in her throat. She stopped her alien keening, and began gasping in sudden terror. She looked down in her dark room and confirmed what she already knew: her deformities were back. She could see everything as if bathed in a bright light.

She had a prehensile tail growing out of the base of her spine that was nearly 3' long. There was a row of "feelers" that looked like fine hairs about an inch long that grew along her spine from her skull on down to the tip of her tail. They were able to pick up the most minute details for her: electrical currents, scents, air motion. They felt rubbery, not hair-like, to her hand. Her toes and fingers had grown by at least two inches and her formerly well-manicured nails were sharpened bone. Each foot had an extra big toe and each hand had an extra thumb. She felt the bony ridges around her knees and elbows, and a thickness through her entire body.

Her canines were longer now, too, visible even when she kept her mouth shut, and her tongue had grown in several inches and could pick up impressions from the air. Her ears had elongated into pointed ridges and she heard footsteps coming to her room. Her nose, turned up and sunken into her face, could smell that it was her mom. Her eyes could barely make out her mom's outline through the doorway, and when her door opened she could clearly see her mother's heat pattern, along with a slight electric glow that only certain instruments could pick up, and another glow that no human instrument had yet been able to detect.

Helen turned the light on and gasped as she saw Quinn breathing hard in bed, in her full change. Quinn's eyes remained opened, yet she couldn't see them, for her third eyelids were back, opaque and impenetrable, though she knew Quinn could see through them more clearly than any human.

"Oh, Quinn," said Helen, tears about to fall. "Not again."