Chapter 10

I couldn't stop myself from looking over my shoulder, up and then down the mildly-busy street. It must have made me look suspicious. Put on an act, Amy. Be relaxed, calm.

But after selected putting in my new PIN number and selecting to see my account balance in the partially-hidden cash machine, I couldn't just act away my true feelings.

Almost two million quid. Right there. Free for me to use. I stepped closer, hiding the screen from any passers-by. I then worked to withdraw fifty pounds, with no idea what I'd use it for. I guess I could do with a food shop.

I snatched greedily at the card when the machine spat it out. Every moment of the meeting with the cash machine was fraught with paranoia that something wouldn't be right, that we'd get hunted down by the police or some criminal gang. But everything seemed legitimate. For all of us. The shared account was for us all, as well as Bert. He never went into details about how he'd make it all seem normal to the authorities and the bank, but he assured us that it was so.

Explaining it to friends and family would be the biggest challenge. It was probably best that they just didn't know. Or I could say that we won the lottery and never show them the lottery ticket.

Yes… That should work.

But what if they told local news? I could end up on the tele. Somebody would see that and find something amiss.

Best just not to tell them. Keep this a secret. Spend heartily, but wisely.

Christ… I was a millionaire for crying out loud!

A millionaire!

I slid the bank notes into my purse and strolled nonchalantly away from the cash machine and back onto Fore Street. Nobody would be able to tell, but I was shaking.

Was it all worth it?

I had a fleeting image of those two monsters, alive, looming over me. They would slice me to little pieces! I'd been paid to arrange my own death sentence! Those horrible alien monsters would have me for breakfast.

Maybe they were watching me, right now. I looked around every corner and alleyway as I wandered down the street. They were around somewhere, I knew it. Just like the Yeerks.

Just like Humans who had been infested. I became acutely aware of every set of eyes as I walked towards Boots. Some people carried on past paying little notice, and other looked directly back at me. Who was one of them? Who wasn't? Who was about to be?

Did they know about me? Did I look suspicious? The way I was protecting that cash machine… somebody must have thought it was suspicious.

Anybody could have seen me. Anybody!

To rein my back to reality, there came a buzzing from my jeans pocket. It was my phone, and it sang a simple jingle to bring my attention. I scanned the vicinity again, but then took a deep breath and reminded myself that paranoia was getting the better of me. I continued walking as I answered the call.

"Hello?"

"Hello! It's your mum."

I smiled, and the street around me became much brighter. "Hi Mum. How are you?"

"I'm doing fine. Just fine. How has your week been?"

I chuckled lightly to myself. "Oh, you know. Normal and boring as ever. I've got an assignment due next week so I'm bogged down in papers."

"Well, you've done well do far," She replied. "Have you found time to take a break from it? You're always working ever so hard."

"Now and then. I've been doing rehearsals for Edward Stone… but I guess that's not exactly a break."

"You enjoy it. That's what matters."

I smiled. "I guess you're right."

"Well, I'm actually calling because we're going to the museum at the weekend. The family. Were you going to come home on next Friday?"

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, I'll be coming home."
"Would you like to come with us? We'll be going on Saturday morning, quite early. I know how much you like a lie-in."

"I'm never in bed past ten!" I defended with a laugh.

"I used to get water poured over my head if I was still in bed at eight." Mum countered. I'd heard it almost every weekend I'd gone home, so I giggled when I heard it again.

"Yeah, right. Sure, Mum," I replied. "I don't know, I've never really liked that museum."

"If we get six going," She said. "We get two tickets for free. It's a deal they have on this weekend."

I sighed. Typical that she would guilt me into going. I supposed that it was genuine, this time. "Yeah, okay then. I'm not paying, though."

She giggled at the other end of the phone. "Since when have you ever paid?"

"That's not fair. I pay for lots of things we do."

"You're a student," She said. "You don't even pay for your own socks."

I rolled my eyes. "Fair."

"Anyway darling, I've got to get this laundry out on the line."

"Okay, Mum. Always so busy, huh?"

She ignored the playful jab. "You take care of yourself, and we'll see you on Friday."

"See you next Friday, Mum," I replied. "Lots of love."

"Lots of love, darling. Drive safe!"

"I will," I laughed. She always told me to drive safe. "Bye."

"Goodbye, Amy."

I put the phone back into my pocket. I was in the lower end of Fore Street, approaching Boots. I just needed a couple items. I was getting hungry, too, so my eyes took a particular interest in the Cornish Pasty shop on the other side of the road.

But behind all the normal thoughts…

Would it be so easy when I saw her real face?

It was strange having everything normal over the backdrop of a world entirely changed. Mum's phone call had taken the edge of my paranoia for sure, but all thoughts that drifted through me were now tinged with suspicion, tainted by the images of those monsters and the dread of knowing that what I'd been told was true.

How long could I keep this up? Was I selected merely because I could keep a straight face? What if this part was beyond me? It's like I'd been given the role of Juliet in the West End and I couldn't quite remember the cues.

What if I started to change into a pigeon right now?

Oh, god, don't think of the pigeon! Just don't! Not the dog or the squirrel, either!

I locked my thoughts on Boots. I had to. I was there now, and so I walked in through the doors to the smells of self-grooming products. The perfect place to immerse myself. I needed toothpaste, firstly, but maybe a new set of straighteners and a brush… A few other things would be nice.

I used it to drown. The retail therapy was perfect, but by the time I'd filled a basket and gotten to the till, I realised that I'd gone a little overboard.

The cashier, coated like a mannequin in beauty products, smiled to me. "That will be three-hundred-and-ten-pounds-fifty, please."

I almost choked. Had I really piled that much into my basket? It didn't look like much.

Of course, by this point it was too late. I was too proud to not buy it all. "Sure." I reached into my purse and pulled up my new bank card. The cashier swiped it through the machine.

Shortly afterwards, I was lugging a very expensive plastic bag back up Fore Street.

Three-hundred pounds? I didn't have even half that in my own account!

I began to feel very guilty. Then, once again, despite the oft-helpful retail therapy, I was brimming with paranoia. I reached my car in the car park at the top of Fore Street and heaved myself into the driver's seat, dropping the bag on the passenger's side. I breathed heavily, and my eyes darted from the wing to rear-view mirror and back again.

Nobody following. Nobody that I could see.

I rubbed at my face with firm hands and cupped them to my mouth. What the bloody hell was I even doing?

I had to check. If somebody was suspecting me, I had to know. But how?

Oh, wait. Could I…?

I stepped back out of my car and locked the door behind me. The car park was busy, so I had to zigzag my way through to the side of the brick-walled garage that guarded me from view of the main street. There were two large green bins, their lips ajar with the angular shimmering of black rubbish bags just barely contained. They were clumped closely together beside a big ugly ventilation unit, and there was a dirty, litter-ridden passageway on the other side.

I looked once, looked twice. There was an old lady way off in the distance. I saw no security cameras. I walked into the dark passageway, scuttling over empty abandoned crisps packets and crushed tinnies. The rays of sunlight were blocked by the brick walls. I was invisible to the world.

Crouching down beside a door that looked that it hadn't been used in years, I held my breath and tried to regain my clear mind. With once last glance to the car park I'd arrived from, I decided that I would go ahead.

I closed my eyes and thought of the pigeon. I saw its beady eyed, its orange-red feet and it's drab grey feathers. I pictured the way it bobbed its head back and forth as it walked. I heard the strange cawing noises they would make.

The fear struck again, and I forced myself into the nearest corner with sudden panic. I looked to the car park again. Not a soul.

When I started to concentrate, I felt the changes taking place. Beneath my clothing was a distinctive itching, and it spread from my back at first, and then all over my arms and legs and up my neck like it was forming a cocoon. What came next was awful. My face contorted, bulging outwards, and my skull altered, eye socket squirming to the sides of my face.

I moaned uneasily, and I was on the verge of stopping. It was a hideous sensation, and I thanked any and all gods that I wasn't sitting before a mirror. I was sure I would have passed out. Then who knows? Maybe I'd be stuck as a disgusting hybrid forever.

But that wasn't the case. I continued the change, beginning to shrink down to the ground, feeling a sense of weightlessness as my bones became less dense. Some of my fingers went entirely numbed. They'd vanished, and what remained was being melted into one single digit that carried the ends of emerging wings. I stopped looking.

When the cracking and the shuffling noises stopped, it felt safe to open my eyes again. But, my god, was it a whole new world.

I could see everything in such detail. Even in the dark, it was like I'd been given a whole new set of eyes, as if my old ones had become worn and useless. As I looked back out towards the car park, I got a sense of just how incredible it was. It was a thing of utter beauty, or if would have been without dirty litter delineating my path.

On tiny little legs I moved, scuttling forwards to the light and the car park. The images I could see were like a series of still images as I bobbed my head backwards and forwards in time to my steps. I caught all the minute movements around me, like insects or pieces of rubbish blowing in the slight breeze.

I emerged into the sunlight. The place looked safe, so my focus went to what was on the ground. There were a few specks of something… I pecked at them, but it wasn't food, so I wasn't interested.

Then… ooh! Crumbs!

I got delightfully busy with a small scattering of pastry crumbs. Just what I'd been looking for!

I'd hoovered up most of it when another pigeon dropped in. Hurried, I scampered over a wider arc to take up more space so that this new bird wouldn't steal what I'd earned. These were my crumbs! I needed them all!

I heard new noises! They were loud and booming! The ground thumped enough to spook me, and from around the enormous building-sized rubbish bins loomed four mobile tree trunks! Legs! Oh Christ!

Abandon crumbs!

I waddled away as fast as my Twiglet legs would go, but they were catching up. Suddenly, out burst my two stumpy wings, and I launched myself forward with effort, flapping those feathery sheets wildly enough to give me the acceleration I needed.

And up I went, zooming up to the sky, the wind rushing over me. I reached over the streetlights and past the roofs of the buildings. The town landscape rose up to greet me, a splattering of greys and whites. Other birds whizzed by in the distance, of little value to me. They weren't the right shape to be a threat, but I kept my wits about me nonetheless.

Down below, Humans strolled around oblivious. They seemed so pitiful from this angle. Just slow multi-coloured blobs. The houses and shops of the middle of town were just perches, some of them occupied by other birds just like myself.

I didn't spend much time in the air, because I didn't need to. What I needed was a place to seek food. I hovered back towards the main street and a set of cables sprawling from a corner shop. I steadied, slowed my speed and gently attached. There were three other pigeons there, too. It felt safe, even though I was much closer to the Humans and cars that went on by beneath us.

I lost track for a while. I was busy either preening myself or searching the ground for something to appease my unending hungry, all the while dodging the scary Human legs that cared little of my presence but nor would attempt to avoid crashing into me. I found a whole chip in a particularly lucky moment, having just been discarded with a whole crumpled paper bag. That was the highlight of a desperate, frenzied search.

Sometime later, something happened. I had no idea what, though, and it seemed that nobody did. A group of probably around twenty of us were searching for anything edible on a raised patch of grass bordered by a stone wall. Then, we all flew. The whole lot of us, and I followed the herd over the big grey-white square perches, flapping manically to keep up, not even knowing what I was flying from or to!

As a group, we landed on a roof not far from the bottom of the street. I took my place on the edge of the wall to get a good look at the ground below, where Humans were still passing by, even as the Sun had started to dip toward the horizon.

For the moment, my hunger had been satiated. It was near time to find shelter, anyway, so I wouldn't spend much more energy, especially flying. So I just watched, and something about doing that just intrigued me.

A blonde-haired Human female appeared as if from the brick wall directly below me. It was a doorway, where they often would arrive from.

He fingers played with something at her chest: A small leathery case, dark brown in colour and with a number of barely-identifiable patterns. When she peeled open the casing with colourful fingernails, I could see notes inside. She pulled them out, flicked through them…

That was money. I recognised that…

Money…

Oh, shit! What if somebody had seen me?!

Why am I on a roof?!

The ground below me span! I was so high up! Why was I so high up?!

I stumbled away from the edge with a flap of my wings and made sure I was far away from any fall. Had I completely lost myself? Is this what Isaac and Bert meant? The pigeon mind was so hectic and driven… What time was it?!

I started to morph back, and to my relief I still had time. How much, I couldn't tell precisely. From on top of an old roof, there aren't many ways to find out. I lay on my back, barely clothed as the evening set in. Eventually, I found the strength to find a ladder down. I drove to my flat and didn't sleep a second that night.