(Focus on the animal that you've selected. What it feels like, what color it is, its name, whatever.) Cassie's voice was growing fainter.
So we did. Bernice and I sat cross legged across from each other, on top of broken glass and splintered wood, a few feet away from the corpse of the bladed alien, and with Tropical Storm David screaming away outside. Somehow, Bernice focused on her kitten and I focused on my ant.
After a while, you just get used to stuff, I guess.
"Hey, Nat." Bernice said conversationally, stroking her kitten.
"Hmm?" I asked, staring intently at the short fuzzy hairs covering my ant. I never knew that ants had hair. They look so smooth unless you examine them closely.
"This is crazy, isn't it?" She asked. She stopped stroking her kitten and looked up at me earnestly. "I mean, like, literally crazy. I'm in a straight-jacket right now, rolling around a rubber room drooling and screaming and resisting sedation."
"I don't know." I said. I really didn't.
(Let go – animal but don't stop - focusing.) Cassie's voice came again, faint and broken. (Whatever - , DO NOT - FOCUSING. It will – weird, but – KEEP FOCUSING. We'll – back for -.)
"I think we're supposed to put our animals down but keep focusing on them." Bernice suggested. I nodded and dropped my ant. Bernice placed her kitten on the ground next to her.
"Jesus Christ!" I yelled. Bernice's face erupted immediately erupted in tiny, fine white hairs. She reached up to scratch her face, looking worried.
"What's happening?" She demanded. I must have looked horrified, because she began to panic. "What's on my face?"
"Hair! I mean, fur!" I babbled. And now she was shrinking, tumbling out her clothes. She was mostly human still, but there was nothing exciting about it. It was gross, freaky, and on the verge of giving me a panic attack.
"I'm turning into a cat!" She exclaimed, sounding terrified and excited. "Nat, you're not focusing!"
I was focusing, but on the pale, flesh colored tail that had just exploded out of her rear end. I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes, forcing myself to ignore Bernice's transformation. Someone or something was pounding on the door, and whatever it was would probably kill me if they found me. How fast could you change? The other girl, Cassie, had done it in seconds. Bernice was taking longer, but she had a head start.
The image of the ant formed in my mind. Pincers, antennae, fuzzy little hairs-
My waist shrank suddenly, decreasing in diameter until I thought I was going to fall apart from the sheer weight of my chest. Shrink!I willed myself, while at the same time trying not to puke. My stomach was so tiny that I doubt that I could have.
The door shivered, and I heard the sounds of someone trying to break it down in a faint, distant kind of way. I realized that my ears had shrunk away, and my eyelids had vanished.
Across from me, Bernice was mostly kitten. Her human feet and hands shriveled away, giving way to tiny paws. The real kitten had long since rocketed out into the storm, unwilling to put up with any of this nonsense. I envied it.
And now, finally, I was shrinking. In seconds, Bernice the kitten was towering over me. She was the size of a house, then the empire state building, and then her head was so high above me I couldn't even see it anymore. Then she disappeared completely as the folds of my shirt encompassed
My skin was hardening, turning even blacker than it already was. And my cheeks – oh god – were giving birth to two horrendous pincers. It was like having a pair of shears broken in half and attached to the side of my face.
My butt extended outwards, forming a hardened ellipsoid. And finally, two limbs exploded out of my chest, slithering out of my chest and touching down next to my other four legs.
It was complete. I was an ant.
As if by some sort of cruel joke, I was allowed to experience a single second of pride. I had just survived a man with a laser gun, a talking wolf, grizzly bear, and gorilla, and now I had turned into an ant and evaded capture by some sort of creepy 'yeerk' organization. I may have been a segmented insect, but I was a proud segmented insect.
And then, a second later, I found out that I was not yet completely an ant.
Because in that moment, the ant brain kicked in.
And in that moment, I was lost.