I
Marceline pushed her long skirt out of the way of her feet before smoothing it over her thighs to sit on the thin black bench in front of the piano. She'd lusted over this piano in the store for the past six months. A Bösendorfer. It was the most beautiful sounding grand piano she'd ever encountered—and she'd encountered a few. Her mother had bought her three since she started playing piano, seven years ago. A classic white one, a newer mahogany, and her current one, a tall black Belarus.
Marceline looked out through the audience, trying to find her mom and dad in the crowd. They were in the front row. She counted the seats in—seven. Seven seats from the left. She would remember that, for when she finished playing, so she could go find them.
They had finally paid for the piano. Not bought it. Not for her. Nothing that expensive on a 'hobby' that she would get over in the next couple years. Of course not. Even though the past three pianos had added up to much more than the Bösendorfer. They had just rented it for the past five or six recitals, to sate her hunger for it. But it hadn't worked. It just made her want it even more.
Tonight, she was playing an arrangement by Tchaikovsky. It was a slow, sort of simple piece. She didn't mind the simplicity, it just made her feel less nervous when she had to go in front of people to play it. She had mastered it in a matter of weeks, she didn't even need the music for it anymore.
She scanned the rest of the first few rows, there was a man, a large man. A very large man. He was so large, the width of his shoulders took up almost two seats. He was crowding the people next to him and was stooped over awkwardly and uncomfortably to keep from blocking the view of those behind him. Despite his awkward appearance, she observed that he was beautiful. Astonishingly so. He had long hair and a beard, a pair of spectacles perched on his lion-like nose. He was wearing a bow tie and a beautiful suit.
The most shocking thing about him wasn't his yellow eyes, set in a determined look, or his giant hands, which were covered in hair. It was his blue fur. She'd seen pictures of this man in the news before, but they were always black and white. He was a doctor of some type, and worked with this committee of people who were just as strange-looking as he was. There hadn't been much on TV about it, and she wasn't allowed to read the news. Her mother thought that it would make her too depressed. Which made sense, considering what she did see on TV with her father seemed pretty upsetting.
There was a cough from her mother—she knew it was her mother because of its location. First row, seventh seat from the left.
She knew she had to play something. She couldn't take her eyes away from the man. He adjusted his spectacles, making her smile. It was odd to see something like a giant gorilla wearing spectacles, but also strangely adorable. He had noticed her staring, as he now made eye contact with her, and gave her an encouraging nod. She knew she couldn't disappoint him And that meant she couldn't play Tchaikovsky. She needed to play something bigger than that. She needed to play Brahms.
Brahms had always been her favorite. Her father had played her his lullaby for the first eight years of her life. She had grown up with Brahms.
Piano Sonata No.3 was the first song that came to her mind, and her fingers started playing it with almost no encouragement. She knew it by heart, and had since she was nine. She knew she couldn't play the full song—she didn't even know the full song, just the first 20 minutes. And after the first 10, it was pretty dodgy.
She would have to improvise an ending.
Five minutes into the movement, she felt a burning in her fingers.
She ignored it. There wasn't much she could do, now. The same burning started under her shoulder blades and at the base of her spine. There was a cramping feeling in her lower abdomen as well.
Something was definitely wrong with her.
She only had another four minutes left before she would improvise an ending. She couldn't just cut it off now—it was in the middle of a crescendo!
The burning continued. It didn't hurt, it was just uncomfortable, like she was in a car with the heat to high up, or the sun bursting through the window on her face, or like the feeling of coming into a warm house after playing in the snow, or waking up on a cold morning and getting into the hot shower, extremities burning with the unfamiliarity of the warmth.
She knew she could make it through. Once all the heat had grown to encompass all of her spine, her shoulder blades and both of her arms, all the heat morphing together from the tips of her fingers, she felt the skin break beneath her shoulder blades, near her armpits.
She could feel something, blood perhaps, trickling down, and continued to ignore it, playing still. There was a gasp from the crowd, on the opposite side of her parents and the blue man.
After the feeling of hot liquid dripping down her back came the feeling of something forcing its way through her skin, from the inside out. She clenched her teeth and continued playing. She had to finish. For the beautiful, blue, man. Her arm felt like it was on fire, now. She could feel her skin ripping, starting at the elbow. She wanted to know what was wrong—what was happening to her.
"Marceline," her mother's voice came cutting through the silence of the crowd, over the loud Brahms. "Marcy..."
That's when her arm started to change. Her elbow seemed to disappear into a black nothingness until a large point busted through—something that looked like a wing, but was just solid, black, something. She stopped playing then, and reached to touch it. It felt sort of like a beetle's shell, only stronger. It would take more than a boot to break this, she could tell.
"Mommy..." she mumbled, looking at her mother first, then the blue man. He was staring back at her, his mouth slightly open to reveal sharp, white teeth.
She looked over her shoulder as her hands started changing, and watched as the tendrils coming out of her spine came in and connected to a spot on her upper arm. There were three red circles in a line down her arm, and two of them were connected to the tendrils, the same light shining out of the tip of them.
Her shoulder grew more of the spikes like on her elbow, and her hand changed into a large, three-pronged claw. She stood up, and felt her skirt rip as a tail came from the base of her spine.
Her blouse ripped away as well, as the spines from the base of the tail continued up the rest of her spine, connecting to the black plate-like structures on her shoulder blades, where the outgrowths were connecting to her arms. The same plate-like structure covered her chest, and spikes started protruding from her tail. The tail? She couldn't really consider it hers. More of the glowing red spots showed up on the tail, and more of the tentacle-like things went down to connect to them on her tail, leaving a ring of glowing around them. The same glowing rings were on her arms and her chest, where more of them connected there. She had these tentacles growing from her chest, and upper and lower back. The plating was in the shape of muscles, and if she moved her stomach, they moved with her.
She didn't feel fear. Not like she knew she should. The crowd was screaming, and her mother was clinging to her father in what was clearly terror. The blue man was sitting calmly in his seat, just staring at her. He seemed slightly on edge, like he would jump up at any moment to save all of the people here, should she lose control of what was happening to her.
Realistically, she didn't have any control. She just didn't feel the urge to kill or hurt any one, or freak out. She knew if she just stood still, no one would get hurt any worse than she was.
Everyone was screaming, and running out of the doors. More people busted through the doors that were void of any crowds. Marceline stood silently, staring at them. They held guns, and looked like police, but they couldn't be police. They wouldn't have guns that big. She knew that much.
They came onstage, and pointed their guns at Marcy, standing naked in front of them, with the odd covering of beetle-armor, and nothing else but her little cotton panties, and a pair of completely destroyed pantyhose, as well as her dress shoes, blood trickling over her whole body, coming from almost everywhere-even her nose. She knew what was happening to her, her mother had explained it. 'There came a time in every little girls' life, when she becomes a woman.' Her mother had explained something about a 'period' and 'blood' but had neglected to mention the guns and the tail. The tips of her claw-like fingers rested on the ground, disproportionately large compared to the rest of her tiny, twelve-year-old body. Her hands alone were almost a foot long, the claws coming to a needle-like point.
"Please don't shoot me," she whispered, staring at one of the men.
The blue man stood from his seat, and walked up the stairs on the side of the stage, removing his jacket as he approached Marcy. She stared at him and he lifted the large jacket up over her.
"Wait," she mumbled, and he stopped. "I'm sharp. I don't want to rip it..." The man gave a chuckle.
"I can always buy a new one," he answered, patting her head. She continued to just stare at him as he walked over to the group of men in uniform. Half of the guns switched targets, pointing now at the giant man in front of Marcy.
Marcy looked down at the spot where her parents were. Her father was standing, pulling on her mother's arm as she looked on with wide, scared eyes. She didn't want to leave, but her father was scared and was trying to get away from the men with guns... and from Marcy.
Her father had always looked at her in a strange way. Something close to how he looked now, but not so exaggerated. Something more subtle, in the back of his eyes. She had always known why-because of her eyes. She didn't have eyes like normal people. She never had. She'd heard her mother and father talking about it one time when she was 3, and could still remember it. He'd been expressing that she was a freak-that she needed some kind of surgery. Her mother had disagreed, saying her mismatched eyes made her unique. Her father disagreed, saying that no one with a white eye was normal. He made her wear contacts once she started school-dark brown, like his eyes.
There was a shot fired and Marcy turned to stare at the men with guns, now. There was blood coming out of the blue man's arm, and she felt a pain in her stomach. She looked down to see the bullet—covered in blood, with a bit of blue skin and hair attached to it—smashed against one of the weird plates of armor on her stomach. Suddenly in front of her there was a flash of blue and the men with guns were all down on the ground in an instant. The large, blue, man reached down and looked over her stomach. She wasn't hurt, it just stung a little when the bullet hit her.
"I'm Doctor Hank McCoy," he said, giving her a smile. She stared at him, not able to smile back.
"I'm Marceline Heaney," she answered quietly. She started to lift her arm up to shake but then put it back down. The claws that were once her fingers looked sharp. She didn't want to hurt this man.
"Where are your parents, Marceline?" he asked her, and she pointed.
"They're scared of me." She said, frowning deeply. He gave her another smile.
"They're not scared of you," he said, turning to her parents who still stared at the two of them in fear. He approached Marcy's mother first, offering her his hand and introducing himself. She was polite, and responded to him. Marcy's father was not, pulling his hand away from Dr. McCoy when he offered his own. Marcy walked down to them as well and reached out to her father, making him finally run from the room, the large doors swinging after him.
