7
“Are you having temperature fluctuations?” said a booming voice.
“Yes,” came a melodic, singsong reply.
“Do you see flashing lights? Hear a constant buzzing?”
“Yes. Yes, exactly! And I have trouble breathing.”
“You have humans.”
A short pause, like a quiet desert at sunrise. “I was afraid of that.”
“Why did you wait so long to come to me?”
“I thought I could deal with it on my own,” said the cosmic singsong voice. “I tried famine, flood, drought, plague….”
“That won’t work,” the booming voice said. “They’ve spread everywhere. Filled your lungs with toxins, contaminated your blood. Without drastic measures, you won’t last 24 hours.”
A racing beat that pounded like an earthquake. “What kind of measures?”
“… Apocalypse.”
A sharp intake of breath that roared like a hurricane. “Not again. It took me years to get over the last one.”
“I’m afraid so. But we’ve had advancements since eradicating dinosaurs. The procedure will only take seven minutes. Recovery time will be a few months.”
“Seven minutes?” said the melodic voice, with a tremble that echoed like thunder. “Will it be painful?
“Yes…very. But you will be rid of humans forever.”
Another pause, like the dead of night. “I’ll do it…”
There was a violent jerk in my stomach and I shot backward through space, past streaks of stars, galaxies and planets, zoomed for a crash-landing on earth and sat bolt upright in bed.
What the hell was that?
Outside my window, a black shadow eclipsed the rising sun, turning the world a cold grey.
And a booming voice echoed in my head.
“Seven...”
The countdown had begun.
Wait, This is My Tuesday Gender!
Quinn groaned as she was forced to roll onto her side, chest aching.
Sleeping on their stomach was never a problem as a boy, but they didn't expect this Shift on a Friday.
Everyone knows that girl is a Tuesday and Thursday gender! She thought. Today supposed to be a boy day, for crying out loud! I even planned out the suit I was going to wear!!
The phone on Quinn's nightstand buzzed, the fanfare of a ringtone that sounded from it forcing her to pick it up. This was a work phone calling.
"Metamorph, we need you in Sector 12, ASAP. Mantis is sending in his Hench-Mutants on the streets again!"
"Coming," she muttered, scrambling to find her Female suit.
Infa-Red, the Telepathic Hero on the other side of the phone, immediately picked up what was going on. "Are you going to be okay fighting today? We can move you to Sector 6 guard if--"
"I'm fine!" Metamorph aggressively zipped up her bodysuit. "In fact, you know that this is better than usual, since most animals have larger females than males."
"Well, yes, I just--"
"Was underestimating me? Was being slightly sexist?" Quinn had only half of her anger on Red, as she remembered that, for a reason everyone knew but didn't say aloud, the women's bodysuit only zipped up so far in the front.
She was going to have to fix that later. The Shapeshifter knew that she had bigger problems to deal with at the moment.
"Metamorph, out onto the field." While the suit was also illogically revealing in the back, she admitted that it was perfect for wings.
Quinn was an Animalia-Shapeshifter, but one of those odd quirks that came with the ability was the occasional gender-swapping, that was found to have a weekly pattern. While they could, theoretically turn into any known animal, it had to be of that certain sex. Metamorph learned a long time ago that, if they attempted to break this unwritten rule, the consequences would be them Shifting from a healthy person into a person in agonizing pain.
Once, even a dead person. Necro-Dancer, the Reanimator of the team, had been a literal lifesaver on that one.
Quinn shook her head of the memory, trying to focus on the threat of the day. Mantis was Poly-Powered, with abilities ranging from Invisibility to Super-Strength and Speed to Enhanced Vision. Technically speaking, all of the capabilities that come with being part mantis shrimp. (Don't be fooled, he's more overpowered than many would think.)
That being said, he was able to pick out a flying Hero from a mile away.
Metamorph was met with one of the Hench-Mutants: Pilot, the Avian-Shifting, Fire Elemental. His partner, the Levitating, Alien-Shifter known as the Bandit, joined him.
"Nope, not today." As quickly as she had taken to the skies, Quinn retracted her wings and dropped down to the streets below.
At the last second, she Shifted into a dull-colored butterfly, floating safely the rest of the way to the ground. Right to where Mantis was throwing his usual hissy-fit.
Pilot crashed to the ground with his Area 51 boyfriend. "There's a hero somewhere around here, trying to stop us!"
Mantis looked around, only noting his henchmen and a bug landing on his suit. Just as he was about to fire his two most distracting cronies, he felt a weight that definitely wasn't as light as a butterfly on his shoulder.
"What's up, Shrimp?" He met the gaze of a grinning boy in a women's bodysuit.
Naturally, yelling from both sides commenced, Mantis realizing he was in the presence of a Hero and Quinn realizing that he was in the wrong body (and in the presence of the city's most notorious Villain).
Morph was promptly pushed to the ground. It then occurred to the Hench-Mutants that their enemy was already writhing in pain, so they simply stood back and let their boss have the last hit.
"Wait... time-out," Quinn croaked, attempting to switch back into his morning self.
In the process of Shifting into a human, they had imagined themselves as their Friday self (ie. male), and in response, every cell in his body wanted to pack up and quit for the year.
Mantis scowled. "I have no time for a Hero who can't control themselves."
Just as he turned his back on the young Shifter, the Villain heard Pilot and Bandit let out a strangled yelp. Sighing, he swiveled back around, meeting the gaze of a murderous, female Metamorph. Her hands had extended into the tentacles of a giant squid(?), simultaneously ruining those two perfectly-good, throwaway servants of his.
"Come on!" Mantis shook his claws in frustration. "Fifth time this week!"
"Make that the sixth," Metamorph said. "Only, this time it will be you... I guess that would be the, what, seventeenth then... for that case?"
Infa-Red found Sector 12 lined with tentacles, Quinn in the center of it all. Some of Mantis's accomplices were being constricted or thrown around, but him and couple of other ones had managed to run off.
"Finally," she said. "I was running out of tentacles! Go get the ones that got away and Shrimp, then help me with these ones."
"Good work, Morph," Quinn knew that Red was hiding his shock by using his authority-voice. "you really outdid yourself today."
She smiled, going into her own scientist-mode. "See, I told you the females are generally larger than males. And they are also less colorful, making better disguises."
Shrimp didn't even see me coming! She added mentally. Friday should be a girl day more often. My body better be taking notes on this.
Noah Room on the Boat
We're gonna need a bigger boat
Said Noah as he led the goat
And elephant into the hold
This job was big, as he'd been told
But leading them in two by two
The hippos, rhinos, giraffes too
He saw his boat was way too small.
There's no way he could take them all.
He stood and looked and felt forlorn
He'd have to leave the unicorn.
The griffin and the minotaur
The dragons and the sphinx for sure
No room to fit the flying horse
It made him sad of course of course
But he couldn't get them all afloat
He should have built a bigger boat!
Yes, Again.
As I walk into school, I imagine seeing couples kissing, holding heart-shaped cards and candy.
Instead, I'm seeing black and orange, ribbons being held to hearts.
Not again.
The morning announcements confirm my suspicions:
"...Today is February 14th, Valentine's Day and anniversary of Parkland. Please take a moment of silence."
It has never been so quiet.
No one stands for the flag.
The silence perseveres with us.
Inspired by the stillness, I begin to write:
"Oranges and blacks
will not stop their bullets.
Our silence
will not stop their silencers.
Are guns
worth more than daughters and sons?"
No So Perfect After All
A child is born. A mother cries. An absent father flies away.
*blink*
A happy child. A perfect family. A mother, a brother, a new father.
*blink*
A screaming child. A broken body. A lack of answers.
*blink*
A hospital stay. A surgery. A scared family.
*blink*
A diagnosis. A genetic disease. A dying child.
*blink*
A family struggling to adapt. A terrified daughter. A lack of hope.
*blink*
A year of pain and fear.
*blink*
A child with an all A report card. A girlfriend. A future.
*blink*
A college experience. A marriage. A child.
*blink*
An ICU. An aortic dissection. A failed surgery. A deathdate.
*blink*
All black at the funeral. A family without a daughter. A child without her mother.
A not-so-perfect family after all.