Just so y'all know, I stand firm on my statement from before that I am NOT giving up on writing this story and am set on completing it. Am currently dodging a bunch of weird stuff IRL at the moment but I hope to get more consistent with my updates. I appreciate those who've stuck around and left me reviews!
Chapter 12: Freaking Out
I was engulfed in what I could only describe as a vivid hallucination; more like reliving a clear-as-crystal memory than a dream. I looked outward into a crowd at my old university stadium. I was wearing my black graduation gown, and someone on the speakers had called my name.
A diploma in my hand and a smile on my face, I posed for my photograph with the dean, whose name or face I couldn't remember. Her face was a blur, alien, unlike the vivid memory around me.
A flash of a camera, and then darkness, but the alien figure was still in front of me. Voices spoke out of it, all from people I have heard before. Greetings, congratulations—"Kailey, we're so proud of you."
I blinked, and the blank figure looking back at me was now myself, now in the graduation gown, smiling, but for the life of me I couldn't manage to smile back. After a while, I almost couldn't tell if it was even myself I was looking at. You know that saying that goes something like: if you were to see yourself, would you even recognize you? I guess this was it.
The smell of smoke suddenly filled my nostrils, intense and painful, and with that the image of myself in front of me vanished. For a moment I stood again in that weird dream void, in front of me a small light glistening like a bright star.
"Today is the day," I whispered to myself, half-jokingly. But before I could contemplate what I thought was my end, the light started shooting towards me, and like a train, punched my entire body, sending me flailing to the ground.
That was when I woke up.
I was lying on the ground, face first, the ground beneath me having somewhat caved in from my weight. I was too dazed at that moment to understand what had happened, so for a moment I sat there groaning in pain and confusion. Then, I began to hear the mutterings and gasps of people around me.
"What is it!?" I heard someone say.
"Is it dead?" another asked.
I was starting to come to by then, slowly lifting myself up from the ground. My eyes were looking at my immediate horizon as I pushed myself up, the first thing crossing my vision the golden arches of a McDonalds. At the moment I couldn't put two-in-two together, so I catastrophized, seeing the "M" shaped arches with the backlog of an orange, twilight-lit sky, started freaking out that I must've died and gone to hell, and yelled with confusion, "Mephistopheles?!"
I heard a cluster of voices gasp.
"Oh my God, it's a demon!" I heard a lady yell.
"Somebody call the authorities! It's the alien from the news!"
I blinked again, my overall consciousness clicking back to reality somewhat as I mentally responded to all the accusations. Were these people really talking about me?
I looked around to make sure I wasn't these people's center of attention, but after seeing that I was surrounded by a group of onlookers, I realized I was the only one they could be talking about.
I stood up, rather quickly, and this caused them to gasp again, all taking a step back in unison.
"Uhmm, can anyone tell me… hmmm," I tried to speak, hoping to get some help from these people, but the fact that I even opened my mouth sent them into a chaotic uproar, some people actually beginning to run away from me as if their life depended on it, while others started taking out their cell phones (if they weren't out already) and began snapping pictures of me.
"IT CAN TALK, IT IS TRYING TO ASSIMULATE!" someone else yelled. More screaming.
All the yelling and running was throwing me off so much that I started to get dizzy, and suddenly my own urge to run clicked. I made an insanely fast dash across the McDonald's parking lot, diving directly into the street without looking. A horn blared at me from my left as the sound of wheels squeaked against the concrete.
Screaming myself at that point, I acted out of instinct and slammed my fist as hard as I could on top of the hood of the car that had nearly hit me. My fist literally buried itself in the metal of the hood, causing the car to shift forward and its engine to start reeking of transmission fluids.
That was the moment I realized what was happening. More like what had happened.
I looked at my arm and fist that had buried itself in the hood of the car, and realized my limb was green. It was green, no longer a normal human skin color. I retracted my arm from the car, and looking at my hand, seeing the color change wasn't the only difference. My hands had a hauntingly long stature about them, my nails dark, making me look like I almost had claws.
I started panicking even more then and stumbled backward. All kinds of thoughts were shooting through my head, but I couldn't possibly contemplate them all. All I could think was: run away.
I dashed down the street, my surroundings passing me more quickly than I thought was normal, but again, I was green for Christ's sake! I practically had no braincell power to think too hard on what was going on presently; I just knew I had to get the heck out of there before I caused more of a ruckus.
Unfortunately, me running through town, in hindsight, was the total opposite of a good decision. Every step I took I somehow drew more glances my way, more cars honking at me. I finally managed to take cover in an old gas station bathroom, breathing heavy from all the running and trying to calm down to the best of my ability.
Green, concrete, metal, explosions—DAVE! I thought. My brain managed to form an actual conscious thought as I interpreted my running mind. Didn't we just explode?! Shouldn't I be dead right now!?
The idea that I was in an explosion, that I had fallen hundreds, maybe thousands of feet, threw me off to such a degree that I started panicking again. But—maybe this was all a dream! Maybe I was still in another one of my weird stress dreams!
I tried grounding myself by pinching my arm, but doing so, among making me squinch from the pain, placed attention back onto the fact that my hands looked like something straight out of a horror movie. I gasped, eyes widening as I again focused on what exactly was going on with me when the next bright idea came around.
I scrambled over to the bathroom mirror, only to find something else entirely looking back at me. It was me, but like… how do I put this… a GREEN MONSTER! HOW THE HELL DID THIS HAPPEN!?
Imagine if Maleficent had a baby with Slenderman, but then that baby had a bird girlfriend and had a kid, too. I was the craziest fuckup I had ever seen ever, a mixture of all kinds of features from different creatures, from horns, to hauntingly long raccoon-like hands too…
I looked down, my clothes ripped and covered in ash, only to see my feet bare and—
"I'M A HARPIE OH MY GENTLE JESUS!"
I started screaming again, uncomfortable in my own skin, but unable to leap out of it.
After my millionth scream session I tried closing my eyes really tight, acting like if I just tried hard enough I could wake up from a nightmare. But upon opening my eyes again, it all remained. A green face that only seemed to be mine, with red eyes, staring back at me.
Like a pound of thunder, the bathroom door was kicked in, causing the slam to echo through the bathroom. My weird senses seemed to exaggerate the sound too, causing me to lift my hands up to cover my ears. Wide-eyed continuously, I watched as actual men in black stood at the doorway, with guns, and lights flashing behind them.
Before I knew it, one of them shot a taser-thing at me, and being unable to break free from the impact, I flopped onto the gross ass floor, and watched helplessly as they surrounded me to take me to God knows where.
. . . . . . .
If being put into a black vehicle with dark tinted windows wasn't scary enough, I eventually was taken inside a facility somewhere located deep in the woods. Caged and surrounded by weirdos from the government, it took every last ounce of will to keep myself from breaking down then and there. I didn't want to get hit with the taser again, that was for sure, but neither did I want to go to prison or whatever the hell this was!
Stay calm, I thought to myself as I observed the lab, all the computers, tools, and cameras. When we stopped finally, I was abruptly pushed into a corner, realizing a bit too late that it was another cage, and with a whoosh, sturdy and clear glass-like barriers shut me in.
The government agents began to mutter amongst one another, soon scientists arrived in the facility as well. Their joined voices, although mere mutterings, seemed loud, and echoed and bounced among the metal walls and instruments.
I backed myself into the corner of my holding cell—my prison. I couldn't believe this was happening. The fear was so bad, so uncontrollable, that my mind began to spin out of control again. Thoughts of how this could have happened, why it happened, what I could have done differently to avoid this. But soon, the thoughts meshed into another blur, and the only way I could cope was to start crying.
Eventually the crying turned to anger, and the anger turned to rage. I started rambling out loud, unable to recall what I said from one sentence to the next. I felt like I was in a daze, my mouth was moving, I was talking, but my mind couldn't make anything of it.
At one point I must've punched the wall behind me, because an indention was present when a few minutes earlier it wasn't. And one minute I was alone, and the next someone was standing in front of me, here in my cage.
"It's okay… it's me…" I heard, but I couldn't recognize the voice.
I remember yelling again, pouring out my feelings, but words were lost to me the moment they slipped my mouth. I was living in the past and the future, knowing I had said something, knowing that I was feeling a mix of emotions, but unable to piece them together.
Confusion, but then a touch… a gentle caress of my face, and like the curtains unveiling a stage, everything started to become clear again. The touch was so familiar, so comforting, and with that I could finally understand, like a key had unlocked a door.
"Kailey," Dave said softly, "I thought I lost you."
He was in his Dr. Brine disguise, but it was him, his voice so kind and soft. I felt a tear fall from one of my eyes, an overwhelming sense of relief coming over me.
"I'm going to get you out of here," Dave said next. A determined look crossed his features as he pulled his hand away from my face, sat up straight, and dusted off his lab coat. Like a light switch, I saw him return to acting mode for the scientists behind him. Strangely, there were only three of them now, while before there had been a variety of government agents and weird men in black. Had I lost my sense of time?
"Would you kindly allow me to make a suggestion on how we move forward with this?" he said, turning professional.
"What do you have in mind, Dr. Brine?" one of the scientists asked.
"I believe we may need to allow her more time to… calm down. The creature is obviously distressed, and I believe moving forward with any experiments would only hamper results. We want to see how the creature behaves naturally, correct? I hardly think torturing it is the best way to start with understanding it."
"We do not know its intentions, Dr. Brine," another scientist said. "It is sentient, obviously. What is it doing here on earth? What is its objective? We do not even know if we have an invasion at Earth's doorstep in the making."
"You are assuming the worst outcome," the third scientist added. "What good would our experiments be if we were to rush our procedures? That would harm the integrity of our findings. Not only that, this could be the only specimen we'll get our hands on ever again, so I have to take Dr. Brine's side in treating this situation with caution."
The scientists grumbled for a moment as they thought individually. It took a few moments for someone else to speak up, at last.
"All right, Dr. Brine, we will wait until morning to proceed with data collection on the specimen. We can use the time to document our findings thus far on the crash site and use that information when we interrogate the creature."
"Yes, right…" Dave answered. He looked at me one last time, gave me a smile, and then left when they opened the cage door for him.
Seeing him leave me again, although I knew deep down that he was doing so to play 'human doctor', made me feel a wretch in my chest. I was trying too hard to rely on my logic, realistically knowing Dave wouldn't leave me… and yet when he disappeared somewhere in the facility I started fighting with myself again.
"Hold it together, girl, damn," I muttered, lifting my hand on either side of my head to hold onto my hair, but instead my hands touched the horns, causing me to recoil at myself. I was so disgusted in my own skin that another wave of emotion overcame me, harder than ever to hold it all inside. Like, not even being on my PMS could compare to this, it was so bad.
So on it went, me attempting to maintain myself waiting in the blank prison cell, my eyes ever watchful of the facility beyond me and through the glassy barriers. In those moments waiting alone, intrusive thoughts crept in. I saw the empty facility, the barren walls, the chrome and sterilized gadgets and instruments, and yet the voices returned, filling me with dread, my isolation becoming suffocating.
"He'll abandon you."
"You're alone now."
"You're a monster."
"All you've done is for nothing, what even are you anymore?"
"Kailey," my name was called gently to me that time, a whisper, and that broke the spiral again. This voice, Dave's voice, grounded me in a way the others couldn't, and again, I snapped out of my trance.
The phasing from in and out of reality was becoming tiring, but I still appreciated the breath of fresh air. This time, Dave had returned, and the facility was dark, only my cell lit, making me feel like I was in a weird point of focus and desperately wanted to get out.
"Dave…" I said, my voice raspy from being so tired. "What are we going to do?"
"Don't worry, dearest, I have everything under control," he said. "Everyone's gone for the day and I shut down the security system and cameras. I also got backup outside waiting for us."
My eyes widened, but this time my expression beaming. Yes, good ol Dave. He sure got me into some shit but he always managed to find a way to get me back out of it again. Comically easy.
He typed a few codes into my lock, and with that, the system cut off, my prison went dark, and I heard the whoosh of the barriers parting again, this time leading towards freedom.
Exhilarated, I trotted over to Dave, the sound of my new feet still oddly horrifying as my bird-raptor claws tapped the floor. I looked down at them for a second, but recoiled the moment I was able to comprehend they were my feet, and swallowed uncomfortably. The diversion of my attention to my feet and to Dave, however, now that I was close to him, made me realize I was tall now, too, just as tall as Dave in his disguise.
I listened to him start talking again, but now with the realization of my presence next to him being very different due to my significantly increased stature in height.
"Okay, follow me," Dave said, turning towards the entrance. He clicked a few more buttons, and the doors parted, but before he could take a full step out into the hall he stopped abruptly, turned around in a perfect 180 degree twist with his legs in a knot, and looked at me as the doors shut again behind him. "Okay, maybe don't follow me."
"What now!?" I gasped, trying to keep my voice low.
"There is a security guard in the lobby."
"Why!?"
"Look, dearest, rescue missions are harder than they look, you should know. I didn't know they had an on-call night guard coming in."
"Obviously they would? This is a government facility!"
"Let me think about this for a second…" Dave said, but as he started stalling to think things through, the doors behind him opened again. This time it was the security guard's doing.
All I saw was the guard's face form into fear, his arms instinctively darting down to grab the pistol at his belt, when I acted completely out of control, like my own body had a new mind of its own.
I dashed forward, grabbed the man's entire face with one of my new long hands, and with my other grabbed hold of the arm he was using to go for his gun, and squeezed. I maneuvered my legs around, twisted my torso with me, and threw him clear across the lab, sending him plummeting into a large computer screen.
"Okay, that works," Dave chimed, but I grabbed his arm and started running out the lobby and to the exit. Just outside, now in the dark cold autumn woods, we met up with some of Dave's henchmen, but among them another God-awful creature that looked just as screwed up as me.
"Classified?!" I gasped. I had no idea why I recognized him so quickly, but to me it just clicked. "What the hell happened to you!?"
"I'd ask you the same thing," he replied, deadpan.
"Dave, what is he doing here!?" I continued to fuss, forgetting we were supposed to be escaping for a second.
"He's an ally now!" Dave answered, his voice much more chipper compared to mine, let alone Classified's. "We need his help."
"Yes, and we have no time to lose either. We need to clear out of here before someone sees us," Classified acknowledged.
"Somebody already saw us, but I think he's dead now?" Dave shivered and gagged a little. "Gross."
"You killed someone?" Classified asked. "Good lord, David, did you do it?"
"It was me, ass-wipe," I sneered. "Although I don't think I put enough pressure on his skull to kill him…" Jesus, what was I even saying!? Would I ever say this for real in any other circumstance? I had so many questions to ask Dave what the hell had actually happened to me, but again, I had to delay those rushing thoughts to focus on actually getting out of our situation.
With that, we dashed back into the woods, trying to get as far away from the facility as possible, all the while trying to maintain awareness of where we were. We could tell by the sightings of lights beyond the trees and sounds of traffic that we were near a small town. In the misty distance, we were still close to civilization, but exactly what way to turn still seemed to elude us.
"So what's the plan?" I asked, trying to focus.
"We're still near Woodstock, so we'll need to head southwest if we hope to make it back to New York." Dave instructed. "After our arrival, we can stop by Octo Corp and work from there."
"Are we walking!?" I gasped. Yes, I was jumping to conclusions but, as you know, I've done this walking thing before and it is NOT fun. Granted now I was an abomination, so everything would be immensely harder, but whatever. Great, let's just walk around the woods like cryptids, totally normal and okay to do considering that we were practically putting ourselves in a witch hunt situation and everything!
"We'll that was the plan…" Dave finally answered. "We could always consider getting a vehicle, but at this point I'm not sure that would be wise, considering everything.
I grit my teeth together, irritation slithering up my spine like the chills along my back.
A heave of power overcame the facility then, like the building had been holding its breath. This caused Dave to recoil and grab my arm. By the sounds of it, the facility was resorting to a restoration of its power, meaning our time had officially run out.
"We need to go," Dave warned, beginning to gesture to retreat into the woods. "I'll explain everything when we make pace."
. . . . . . .
We had crept around the woods for a long time, the distant town lights fading somewhere in the night behind us. It was so cold that I started to see my breath in the moonlight, but for the life of me I couldn't feel the chill on my cheeks like I had done before when I was… well, human.
I instinctively touched my cheek the moment I had my revelation. It would be the first of many realizations of what had changed about me, but even there at the beginning of it all, I felt a sigh of sadness wash over me.
How long would I be like this?
I mean, surely Dave had a way to fix this, right? That was why Classified had to be working with us too, after all. Why would he team up with us if it wasn't for his own gain? Based on his exasperated sass I knew he hated being a weird creature just as much as I did.
"So, Dave, would you please tell me what exactly is going on?" I asked as we walked. "Why am I like this?"
"Like what, dearest?" Dave responded, too casually for my taste considering the urgency of the situation. Heck, this was an emergency!
"I'm a harpy, Dave! Duh!"
"Oh… that," Dave mused, putting a hand to his chin in thought. "Well, it's obvious, right? The wolf stole my Medusa Serum, which mind you was the entire reason I was trying to overtake their airship, and due to his negligence it exploded in the ship's engine, and—"
"My negligence?" Classified interrupted. "You were invading North Wind's ship and put us all in danger, you twit!"
"And you kidnapped me and put us in there!"
"So you're telling me I have chicken legs because of your stupid serum!?" My conclusion was probably the one that Dave didn't want to hear, but it came out nonetheless. The whole "he said this, he said that", was irrelevant as far as I was concerned. "If it wasn't for your stupid serum I wouldn't be like this, would I, Dave?"
"Kailey…" Dave muttered, awestruck again—dumbfounded. "I would never—"
Penny and Kenny started gobbling then, back at Dave first and then to one another. Their conversation seemed to turn the tide of the conversation to focus on the task at hand, leaving me still seething in the feelings and thoughts I held prior, unable to let go.
Again, met in the silence of the night, following Dave and the henchmen, with our enemy no less, I tried to move on with them. Despite that our legs were moving and we were making progress through the woods, my mind remained back in time.
I knew what Dave was going to say…
He would never hurt me. At least, that's what he may have thought. Did that really mean he'd never hurt me, or at least on purpose?
I started to go back into my own mind again, being a frequent occurrence as my brain attempted to settle in this new body of mine. Everything was confusing before but now it was even more so. To put it quite simply, I was all over the place.
I must've slipped into another mental time gap because my ability to disassociate was ten-fold when I finally came out of my head. We had stopped, but the forest, with its endless autumn foliage and damp soil, was now covered in a light layer of white, snow falling through the branches and onto my face, glittering and dancing in the moon's rays.
However, unlike the silence from before, I heard music playing nearby. Lights of green and orange flickered on and off like party lights just beyond us, that slightly annoying but catchy song, "I Like to Move It" echoing in the forest.
I was so jarred by the sudden shift in time and scenery that I fell into a panic, looking around the woods first and then towards Dave, desperately waiting for him to say something. When he didn't, I finally had it, and yelled, "GOD FUCKING dammit, Dave, where the FUCK are we!?"
Dave put his finger in the air, saying, "Shhhh, keep your voice down!" which did anything but calm me down. However, his next sentence caught me off guard: "We need to investigate it."
"Are you sure your head is on your shoulders, David?" Classified asked sarcastically.
"If you don't want to go do it, then I will." Dave ventured forward without us, walking past the remainder of the brush ahead and up the hill, arriving atop of it before taking one good look, and then making it back to us in record time. "Okay, this might be our chance to hitch a ride," he said then, this time Classified scoffing at Dave's suggestion.
"What on earth do you think is going to happen if we do that, David?" Classified asked. "You do realize we are actively being hunted by government agents, correct? That your so-called "Octavius Brine" persona could very well be a fugitive of the law at this point, right?"
"Could," Dave corrected. "I turned those cameras off, so nobody knows how Kailey escaped. Besides," Dave paused as he thought, thinking more of future consequences than the present ones, "it will be days, weeks even by foot to get to New York. We can hitch a ride on this circus caravan."
Circus? I thought, my eyes widening. Good God, not again. "Dave I can't do this again."
"Don't be disheartened, dearest! I assure you, this time won't be like the last. We aren't here to kidnap penguins or anything, after all!"
I guess clowns need to go where they belong. Being the person that did literally everything Dave suggested, you know what happened next?
We went to the circus.